| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:04.69 | Unknown | Thank you. . |
| 00:00:10.85 | Heidi Scoble | Good afternoon, Mayor Huffman and Council Members. This meeting has been held pursuant to Section 3 of Executive Order N-2920, issued by Governor Newsom on March 17, 2020, an Executive Order N-2920 821 issued by Governor Newsom on June 11, 2021. All members are joining this meeting telephonically through Zoom, and it's broadcast live on the city's website and on cable TV, channel 27. |
| 00:00:41.58 | Melissa Blaustein | Good evening and welcome to the September 24th, 2021. regular city council meeting or sorry, this is going to be the closed session. It's a regular city council meeting. This is going to be the closed session of our city council. Um, Mr. Clerk, could you please take the role. |
| 00:01:00.66 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Sobieski. |
| 00:01:01.96 | Melissa Blaustein | there are. |
| 00:01:03.06 | Heidi Scoble | Council Member Blavstein. |
| 00:01:04.61 | Melissa Blaustein | here. |
| 00:01:04.92 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 00:01:05.49 | Heidi Scoble | Council Member Cleveland Knowles. |
| 00:01:07.19 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 00:01:07.21 | Melissa Blaustein | Sure. |
| 00:01:07.50 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 00:01:08.02 | Heidi Scoble | Vice Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:01:09.34 | Melissa Blaustein | Sure. |
| 00:01:10.45 | Heidi Scoble | Mayor Hoffman. |
| 00:01:11.68 | Melissa Blaustein | Here. All members are present and there's a quorum. This evening we will be discussing the following items in closed session. There are six items, seven items on our closed session agenda. The first is D1 public employee performance evaluation pursuant to California government code section 54957 title city manager. D2 is threat to public services or facilities pursuant to California government code section 54957A, consultation with Chief John Rowe Bonker. B3, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation Yeah. anticipated litigation initiation of litigation pursuant to California Government Code section 54956.9 D4. two potential cases. D4 on the agenda is public employment pursuant to California government code section 54957 title special legal counsel. D five is conference with legal counsel. Existing litigation pursuant to California government code section 54956.9 D1. Sausalito, Marin County Chapter of the California Homeless Union versus City of Sausalito. United States District Court number I'm not sure. three tack two, one. dash CV 0 1 1 4 3 dash L B. Next item is D6, Conference of Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation Pursuit to California Government Code Section 54956.9A. |
| 00:02:41.42 | Unknown | So, we're going to have a |
| 00:02:42.94 | Melissa Blaustein | name of the cases, Susan Gordon, and Ebert, Titus versus Caltrans in the city of Sausalito. Lydia McNair versus Caltrans, City of Sausalito. Ron Rita and George Glass versus Caltrans in the city of Sausalito and Winston Ashmead and David Johnson versus Caltrans city of Sausalito. And the last item on our closed session agenda is public employment pursuant to CGC 5-4. 957 Title Special Legal Counsel. about |
| 00:03:11.71 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Mary, I apologize if I may, that item seven was included twice in error. So that's really your item four, thank you. |
| 00:03:16.68 | Melissa Blaustein | in here. So that's really- Excellent. Thank you for that clarification. In that case, we only have six items on our agenda. So item seven is a duplicate. So moving on. Um, I will now open public comment on closed session items. Members of the public, and I don't see any hands raised. Mr. Clerk, can you please confirm that? |
| 00:03:38.43 | Heidi Scoble | Mayor, you are correct. There are no members of the public at this time. |
| 00:03:42.12 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, in that case, I will close public comment. We will adjourn to closed session. I will remind people that we will come back for open session tonight at 7 p.m. Thanks very much. |
| 00:03:55.45 | Mary Naples | It was Sausalito. |
| 00:03:58.10 | Heidi Scoble | Okay, we're gonna initiate our... recording sequence and I'll admit all the participants. |
| 00:04:14.88 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, all participants are in the room, and we are ready to begin. |
| 00:04:19.35 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, very good. Welcome to everybody to the regular open session for the September 14, 2021 city council meeting. We've already taken the role and we are all present and accounted for. We have a quorum. Um, And so we have no announcements from closed session. And our next item then will be 2B, approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda? So moved. Back in. Mr. Clerk, could you please take the roll? |
| 00:04:53.79 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Sobieski. Thank you. |
| 00:04:55.12 | Colleen Wigwired | Thank you. |
| 00:04:55.16 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:04:55.43 | Colleen Wigwired | Thank you. |
| 00:04:56.76 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Blavstein. |
| 00:04:58.26 | Colleen Wigwired | Yes. |
| 00:04:59.48 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Cleveland Knowles. |
| 00:05:01.37 | Colleen Wigwired | Yes. |
| 00:05:02.58 | Heidi Scoble | Vice Mayor Kellman. Yes. Mayor Hoffman. |
| 00:05:06.08 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. Very good, motion passes unanimously. Our next item on the agenda is are special special presentations or announcements. We don't have any special special presentations, but I do have an exciting announcement. We uh, with the, uh, Jazz by the Bay. We have extended it to at least one other week, and we're working on the following Friday as well. And so we will have Jazz by the Bay on Friday night, And it will be, it is in partners with Marin performing stars and Felicia Gaston, and she has. secured for us the renowned West Coast Blues Society and they'll start at 6 and they will perform until 8. So that is super exciting news and that's at Gabrielson Park and so we look forward to seeing everybody as we all love Jazz by the Bay and so we'll announce the following Friday as soon as we're able to confirm that. And I... I don't believe I need to take, do I need to take public comment on that announcement, Mary, or not? agenda that I think I think not. No, you're okay, Madame Bear. |
| 00:06:19.89 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yeah. |
| 00:06:21.24 | Melissa Blaustein | Very good. |
| 00:06:21.39 | Carolyn Revell | I hear you. |
| 00:06:22.12 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, so moving on to item two on the agenda, action minutes. of the previous meeting. Um, Do we have a motion to approve? or any corrections. |
| 00:06:38.70 | Janelle Kellman | No corrections, I'm happy to make the motion. |
| 00:06:41.49 | Melissa Blaustein | Do I have a second? Anyone? Second, thank you, Ian. Thank you, Councilmember Sobieski. Um, Okay, so we've had a motion and a second. I'll open this up for public comment. And this is just for minutes of the special meeting of August 31st, 2021. I see no hands. Mr. Clerk, can you please confirm? |
| 00:07:09.84 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, no hands raised at the moment. |
| 00:07:12.62 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, very well, then I will close public comment. And I will ask you, Mr. Clerk, to call the roll. |
| 00:07:21.13 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Sobieski? |
| 00:07:30.78 | Heidi Scoble | Council member Sobieski. |
| 00:07:34.71 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes, he's saying yes. |
| 00:07:35.96 | Heidi Scoble | Okay, he's saying yes. Councilmember Blaustein. |
| 00:07:39.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:07:40.11 | Heidi Scoble | Council Member Cleveland Knowles. |
| 00:07:41.93 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:07:42.74 | Heidi Scoble | Vice Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:07:44.09 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:07:44.41 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. Mayor Hoffman. |
| 00:07:45.98 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. That matter carries unanimously. Moving on to our next item on the agenda is on the consent calendar. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial require no discussion. are expected to have unanimous council support and may be enacted by the council in one motion There will be no separate discussion of consent calendar items. However, before the council votes on a motion to adopt consent counter items, council member, city staff, or members of the public may request that specific items be removed. from the consent calendar for separate action. items removed from the consent calendar will be discussed later on the agenda. and public comment will be heard on any item that was removed from the consent calendar at that time. Um, There is only one item on our consent calendar tonight, which I think is a first in my entire tenure on a city council, that there's only one item on the consent calendar. And that item is item three, a professional services contract, Amendment would be KF engineers for design services related to ferry and land site improvement project increasing the total contract. amounted to $261,801. Um, And that's an increase of 15,000 from the prior number. And so. At this point, I will open up public comment on this item. |
| 00:09:12.15 | Melissa Blaustein | I see no hands. |
| 00:09:15.42 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, you are correct. There are no hands raised. |
| 00:09:18.73 | Melissa Blaustein | Very well, thank you. I will close public comment and I will ask if we have a motion, if someone would like to make a motion and second. |
| 00:09:27.91 | Ian Sobieski | I'll move the consent calendar. |
| 00:09:29.11 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Second. Very well, Mr. Clerk, can you please take a roll call vote? |
| 00:09:36.62 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Salbieski. Thank you. Council Member Blasdine. |
| 00:09:40.57 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:09:41.00 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:09:41.42 | Heidi Scoble | Council Member Clive Light Knowles. |
| 00:09:44.29 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:09:44.31 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. |
| 00:09:44.60 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:09:45.24 | Heidi Scoble | Vice Mayor Kellman? Yes. Mayor Hoffman? |
| 00:09:48.43 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes, thank you very much. That passes by unanimous vote. Item four is public hearing items, but there are no public hearings tonight. Moving on to business items. We have four business items. Our first is item 5A, adopt a resolution to authorize the use of $100,000 of general fund reserves to support the development of a geologic hazard study for the city of Sausalito. and that will be given by our director of public works McGowan. Um, Mr. McGowan, if you're ready to proceed, please do so. |
| 00:10:25.35 | Kevin McGowan | Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. I hope you can hear me. I'm going to share my screen now, and I have a presentation for this item. Please bear with me for a second. |
| 00:10:40.89 | Kevin McGowan | There we go. Hopefully everybody can see my screen, which says geologic hazard study. |
| 00:10:44.15 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Yes, we can both see that and I can hear you fine, so thank you. |
| 00:10:49.80 | Kevin McGowan | Kevin McGowan, Wonderful just checking so good evening everyone i'm glad to be here this evening i'm Kevin the gown the sauce leo's public works director item five a relates to the recommendations by the landslide task force to develop a geologic hazard study for the city of Sausalito. In February, 2014, excuse me, February 14th, 2019, a mudflow event occurred in Sausalito, which damaged houses and property. On June 11th, 2019, the city council of the city of Sausalito established a landslide task force, which was composed of council members and residents with interest and experience in landslide analysis. On September 24th, 2019, the landslide task force made a presentation to the council, which detailed 12 recommendations. The Landslide Task Force also developed a report, which is attached to your agenda package this evening. For Sausalito, mapping of the geologic hazards in regional geology was performed more than 40 years ago. This is the map developed in 1976. And this is pretty old in our time. There's a lot more things that have happened since this map was developed. The mapping also detailed slope stability within the city and rated the stability of the slopes in a gradual or a one through five rating. Mapping today utilizes more precise systems, including LIDAR, graphic information systems, and other satellite systems that can improve our mapping of potential soil instabilities. Geology in Sausalito varies depending upon where you are located, obviously. A majority of the soils in Old Town and portions of Sausalito, especially in the upper hills, is composed of a material called chert. which looks like a heavy rock, which you can kind of see in this picture. However, other areas have more standard material found in the Bay Area, such as sandstones or Franciscan materials. Mapping these materials may be helpful to understand the stability issues in Sausalito. A major influencing factor in landslides relates to stormwater and the slope of the surfaces for which it travels. Sausalito's drainage system also crosses private property as well as public roadways. Areas of destabilization can show signs of erosion from the stormwater that travels past it. And the landslide task force understood these issues and their influence on soil movements. And as such developed 12 recommendations for the city. The first recommendation, which was rather long, and I'll kind of paraphrase a little bit of this and not read every word. The first recommendation by the landslide task force includes developing an assessment of the city's vulnerability to future landslides. This includes assessment of factors that influence slides and early warning signs. Also includes developing a method for residents to report changed conditions with the intent to minimize risk and develop a high risk mapping system to denote potential debris flows. |
| 00:14:43.84 | Kevin McGowan | The report from the Landslide Task Force also recommended other implementation measures, such as additional mapping, funding mechanisms, as well as providing assistance to residents by fast-tracking permits to repairs associated with slides. In addition, certain sections of the California government code require municipalities to include climate adaptation and resiliency into their general plan. Sausalito's recent general plan included the landslide task force's recommendations in the health, safety, and community resiliency or resilience element. The county Marin is currently working on a countywide local hazard mitigation plan related to sea level rise planning. It is anticipated that the county will be utilizing these efforts to coordinate planning and future projects to be in line with FEMA grant funding, which will include subsidence and landslides. |
| 00:15:53.87 | Kevin McGowan | Staff included the development of the geologic hazard, geologic hazard assessment report, on the 2020 capital improvement program, as well as the 2021 capital improvement program. Funding for the capital improvement programs was severely hampered in 2020 as well as 2021, such that this project was considered a secondary priority project and would be supported if funds became available. There are several options available to council at this time. The council may allocate funding from the general fund reserves you to support the development of the geologic hazard study, Council may also direct staff to reevaluate this project with others during next year's CIP process, or you may provide us with additional direction on anything else. So I'd like to add one comment as your public works director. Sausalito is an older community. Its roads and systems were developed many years ago at a time in which knowledge and consideration of soil movement may not have been considered. The development of mapping for the geologic study will improve our knowledge of potential instabilities. This information may also require significant capital improvements on many of our roads, which can be very expensive. That concludes my presentation of this item at this point in time, and I want to thank you for listening. |
| 00:17:35.26 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate that. Do we have any questions for Kevin from the council? |
| 00:17:43.49 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:17:43.51 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:17:44.03 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:17:44.05 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:17:44.08 | Janelle Kellman | No, go ahead. Thank you very much, Mayor Hoffman. And Kevin, thank you very much for this excellent presentation. I think a really timely opportunity to review this. I just wanted to clarify, the staff report includes some language around the scope of what the $100,000 would be utilized for. And I'm speaking about page two under discussion analysis. Looks like soil instability, stormwater, subsurface and surface flows. Do you have any more detail about the actual scope of work that we will be seeking, or how do you want to handle that? |
| 00:18:22.51 | Kevin McGowan | Well, I am sorry. I don't at this time. It's a very good question. I think I would also want to reach out to other agencies who may have started this type of process, specifically possibly the county to find out if they would have some recommendations on what to include as far as the scope of services. We all obviously want to map out the drainage systems, look at scour associated with them, especially related to the slopes of the hillsides. And in addition, you want to look at the general geology and find out where those erosion areas come into play with the steeper slopes. And that may help us to identify further instabilities and geologic instabilities in the area. Sorry, that's a lot of work, so I apologize. |
| 00:19:11.58 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you very much. I have a question if no one I don't see any other hands up from the council so I'll go ahead and weigh in. So Kevin one of the things when I was looking I was on it in fact I think I was the chair for the task force so. I was reviewing the recommendations from the task force this afternoon in preparation for this. And I thank you for preparing this for us to discuss. Thank you. one of the things i saw though in the recommendations was for certain updates to the 1995 general plan that And I wanted to try to confirm whether or not these were actually implemented in the new general plan that we just completed. Do you know... Do you know if those were implemented or if they were not implemented, why? |
| 00:19:56.55 | Kevin McGowan | It's my understanding that the geologic, excuse me, the landslide task force recommendations were included in the general plan as an appendix. And I'm trying to find my email here from Lily Whalen. Maybe she's on the call and she can actually talk a little bit about it as well. But it's my understanding that this was included as far as, let's see. Specific recommendations were incorporated and provided as background information to the public review draft published in April 6, 2020. |
| 00:20:36.07 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thanks. I see that too in Lily's email. So thank you for pointing that out and directing us to that. Um, And then she also says the journal plan working group gave direction on the integrated landslide task force recommendations at their April 21st, 2020 meetings. So, um, So, okay, thank you. So anybody interested in that can go look at those two references. that Lily provided. So yes, Vice |
| 00:21:03.97 | Janelle Kellman | go ahead. Sorry, I have one more question. I'll just clarify on the staff report. On page three, this paragraph starting, identification of instabilities, it talks a little bit about LIDAR aerial mapping. And I just wanted to clarify because I thought the city had flown LIDAR in 2011 and the county has flown LIDAR in 2018. So were you anticipating being able to leverage some of those data points as part of the overall, I guess, work plan? |
| 00:21:31.64 | Kevin McGowan | Absolutely, but my experience with LIDAR and how it works is a little bit lacking. So I'm saying yes at this point, but I don't know the full details yet to know what can and cannot be included. |
| 00:21:46.44 | Janelle Kellman | Okay, great. Yeah, I think we have somebody in town who could help you with that. Thank you. |
| 00:21:52.57 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, any other questions from the council? I don't see any other hands other than Vice Mayor Kalman's hand is still up, but I believe that she's asked her question. Um, Okay, then I'll open this up for public comment. |
| 00:22:09.87 | Melissa Blaustein | I see two hands so far, Mr. Clerk. |
| 00:22:09.88 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. MANAGER. |
| 00:22:12.82 | Melissa Blaustein | I want one. Councilman, I see Councilman Blasting has her hand up. So hold on a second. Did you want to ask something, Councilman Blasting? |
| 00:22:18.89 | Jill Hoffman | I just had one question, sorry. I wasn't on the draw with the hand raised, but you know, in reviewing all of the recommendations from the landslide task force, |
| 00:22:20.99 | Melissa Blaustein | wasn't put on the... |
| 00:22:27.95 | Jill Hoffman | It seems like this is the first step or path towards implementing all of them. So is that part of this plan? Is this the step to making sure that they all go forward? And I mean, for instance, that the create an official, like A, B, and C are pretty much all related to this one. creating the digital mapping database and then perfect preparing a citywide mapping. So it seems like this covers the basis for a lot of them. And I just want to make sure we're, keeping track of which ones and have a plan. to implement the rest of them going forward. |
| 00:22:58.97 | Melissa Blaustein | I think that's for you, Kevin. |
| 00:23:00.68 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, ma'am. I think that is the intent. At this point, we want to start diving into this and find out what we can do. And I would say, yes, you're correct. We want to cover as much of those bases as we can at this point in time. |
| 00:23:16.15 | Jill Hoffman | Will we be considering the geological hazard abatement as part of the assessment or something that would come after the assessment? |
| 00:23:22.43 | Kevin McGowan | I think it needs to come after the assessment. We've got to find out what we encounter first. |
| 00:23:27.42 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Great presentation. Thank you. |
| 00:23:31.78 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. Thank you. I don't see any other hands from the council up. So I see three public hands up and I'll just let the clerk call as he sees them. |
| 00:23:40.75 | Heidi Scoble | Sandra Bushmaker, you've been asked to unmute yourself and start your video. |
| 00:23:48.65 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening, everybody. I'm pleased to see Steven Woodside on here too. So that means we had three members of the task force here tonight and I believe that is it for our group tonight. But I just wanted to remind the council that we worked very hard to get this to the council, Within three months, we had a report to the council in September of 2019. So I'm very enthusiastic to hear that we're going to be going forward with a project. I am not clear what the project is. I am not clear what the a hundred thousand dollars is. It for additional staff. Is it for hiring a consultant? What is the $100,000 going to pursue? That's my main question. And the other point is that Our report had about 18 recommendations. We had a top 12 that got highlighted by Kevin McGowan, and I'm pleased to see that. But I really wanna encourage the council to move expeditiously. I am concerned, and I don't have any technical knowledge to back this up, The fact that we've had a drought for the last two years has changed our soils. and changed our earth and, um, If we have heavy rains again, I suspect we're going to have some problems. So I do feel that there's some urgency to move forward. It's been two and a half years since the incident. And. You'll notice in our staff, in our, Landslide Task Force that we also included a funding mechanism And I think that some contemporaneous work can be done with the planning for the geologic study in starting to research. how to go about exploring this mechanism and Steven Woodside can speak probably more clearly than I can on the geologic hazard hazard assessment assessment district Um, abatement district, excuse me. So I'm very happy to see this happen. I walk by that mudslide every day. and I think that I would like to see us move expeditiously because I think we're in for some more action in this department and I really want Sausalito to be prepared. Some of those other recommendations, as Kevin pointed out, were for the residents of Sausalito to make it easier for them to do preventive maintenance. and to get through the permitting process in order to do that. So it is going to require a community wide um, consciousness raising on these efforts in order to get our city stabilized identify where the weaknesses are and take action. And like I said, I just encourage you to take action. I would like the answer to my question about $100,000. Thank you. |
| 00:26:47.76 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Um, Go ahead with your next one. |
| 00:26:51.14 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker, it's Steven Woodside. And Steven, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:27:00.72 | Steven Woodside | here. Mayor Hoffman, Thank you for your good work to lead us to The result that we're now seeing now on your agenda, the task force recommendations, thanks to Kevin for presenting. I think a nice summary of, of, uh, pretty extensive range of recommendations and I'm enthusiastic about the direction you're about to head that's going to be a I suppose We all have our favorite potential landslides. I don't mean favorite in a positive sense, but I know you're aware, council members, from a couple of weeks ago of a particular area, one of the hotspots in town, that members of my neighborhood are most concerned about. I think there are several others. And one of the things I wanted to highlight and emphasize, and I think it is on page two of the more detailed report talking about some of the next steps, And I hope that when you look at the hotspots You don't limit your inquiry to only those things that occur on the city right of way. but those that threaten a city right of way. As you know from Sausalito Boulevard, most of the slide material came from above. the city's right of way. And I think most landslides behave that way. and, and are of great concern and some of the pictures Kevin put up, two of them are at the corner of Edwards and Marion. One part of that hillside is pretty rocky with the church material The other part is very loose. And I think the other member of our task force who's not here tonight, submitted a communication couple weeks ago pointing out that in that particular area, There's a lot of evidence of subsurface action going on up that hill. So that's the kind of thing that requires some real expert involvement and I'm not going to answer the question that Sandra posed but I would assume that one of the first things you would do is engage a really good geotechnical services to take a close look at the areas that are of greatest concern. and go from there. So those are my comments. And again, I applaud you for taking this step. Thank you very much. |
| 00:29:17.39 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:29:20.94 | Heidi Scoble | next speaker, it's Colleen Wigwired, and you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:29:28.11 | Colleen Wigwired | Hi everyone, I apologize. I just got out of the pool. And so I did miss the beginning of the presentation, unfortunately. Steven, I just found out about it on my way to physical therapy per Steven. and I just wanted to kind of get up to speed. This is actually the intersection that Steven just mentioned Edwards and Marion is right where I live. And this is something that I've been flagging for the past few years, so I appreciate that action is being taken. Um, AND I will have to catch up on the presentation because I didn't see |
| 00:30:05.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:30:05.40 | Colleen Wigwired | fully what steps have already been taken and then the next steps. but I have been documenting the erosion in front of my house |
| 00:30:12.46 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:30:14.30 | Colleen Wigwired | And if anybody needs kind of a history. I have before and after photos. I know Stephen has been taking pictures as well. But I, currently here, gravel coming down like a land, you know, like a water slide. every day. And unfortunately the deer, you know, it's part of the deer path, which I'm sure that's in the report and you're aware of. |
| 00:30:39.42 | Unknown | and |
| 00:30:41.36 | Colleen Wigwired | My main question, I also am calling on behalf of my landlord, Triple Investments. on 78 to 70 Edwards and then also I believe 62 and 64, two different properties. right in front of this concerning area I'm not sure. My main question is, Do we have the, you know, the lot lines. I think this is a tag on to what Stephen was just saying. that it's not just property that you know, the city might be responsible responsible for but is there going to be a partnership with landowners as well? if it turns out that that piece of land I'm not sure. you know, is under a homeowner's jurisdiction. I think we just want to know, you know, who's responsible. And so hopefully that report where the sub-sequential next steps will happen. |
| 00:31:40.29 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Okay, Mr. Clerk, I don't see any further hands up. And if you're not. I think it's good. |
| 00:31:47.14 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, you are correct. We have no further hands raised. |
| 00:31:52.07 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. And so I'm gonna close public comment at this time. I have some follow-up questions for Kevin based on some of the public comments. Kevin, I'll just... ask them, you know, what is the $100,000 is to engage a an expert to do the geologic survey. Is that your estimate? |
| 00:32:17.11 | Kevin McGowan | Well, yes, that is correct. Initially we wanted, let me back up a bit. um at this point in time the capital improvement program for 2021 does not include this project so based off of of requests from the council members as well as others we're wondering if you want to go ahead and fund this project by moving money over from reserve in order to fund Now, Sandra also mentioned, okay, what is this money gonna be used for? I don't think that we have laid out an actual schedule and an actual detail of how exactly we're gonna go about looking at this. But I believe you are correct that we want to start by getting a professional geologist or firm to assist us with this, to lead us down the path of how do we address all of the issues that have come up with this particular landslide task. |
| 00:33:17.37 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. And then the next With regard to, well, let me just say, a geologic survey is something of a term of art, correct? Yes. Okay, so that's what you're specifically asked to decide on tonight, whether or not to |
| 00:33:26.65 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:33:34.27 | Melissa Blaustein | Um, you know, direct you, fund it, and then direct you to go forward with a geologic survey of Sausalito, correct? |
| 00:33:42.52 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 00:33:43.21 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. And then the next one is, kind of I'm just going to ask a more global question. But with regard to the geologic survey at this point, I mean, keep in mind there's a lot of recommendations. in the landslide task force, but report that we're all adopted by the city council, but At this point, we're doing a geologic survey Are we doing it? We're doing it the entire town, right? Not just, we're not cherry picking certain properties, right? Be whether they're, owned by Sausalito or anybody else. We're just doing again back to a term of art which is a geologic survey of the city of Sausalito correct? |
| 00:34:18.59 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, that's correct. The maps that I showed in my presentation for soil stability and slope stability, we're trying to utilize new technologies to produce a geologic hazard map for the entire city. We're not just doing this for individual city roads. It's the whole thing. Full jurisdiction. |
| 00:34:41.01 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. And, and, okay. Thanks very much. Okay. So those are my follow-up questions. and Council Member Cleveland-Nolls, I see your hands up, so go ahead. |
| 00:34:49.54 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, I just had one follow-up question and then some comments if we're... at that point. My follow up question was just I think to our city manager or finance director that we would be moving $100,000 out of our general fund reserve and just whether in his opinion that leaves adequate. reserves for other matters. and risk under our risk assessment that we did during our budget last |
| 00:35:16.09 | Chris Zapata | uh, Mayor, Council, thanks for the question. uh... you have an excess of your 15% reserve She said by policy. It's in the vicinity of 20, plus percent so yes there is funding and you know i don't know if it was clear in the report but i'll make it clear now i think you should take from your reserves this amount to implement this process which so many people work so hard on and i think everyone understands is critical so yes you have the reserve capacity you won't go below your 15 percent and at the same time you The recommendation in terms of the options is either or, but in my mind, it's going forward. |
| 00:35:59.27 | Ian Sobieski | Great, thank you. And then I don't, does the vice mayor have questions |
| 00:36:03.34 | Janelle Kellman | Yeah. |
| 00:36:03.52 | Ian Sobieski | I just... |
| 00:36:03.96 | Janelle Kellman | I just have one question if that's okay. So is it maybe for a city manager or for Kevin, are we going to create an RFP and bid this out? What's the process going to be? And, Will the council be seeing the RFP on consent? I'm just wondering about the scope. |
| 00:36:22.42 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, we will develop an RFP. We have to go through a little bit of research first, like we mentioned before, to try to narrow down what we're trying to accomplish. I believe in our code, we have to bring it back to the finance committee when we have a consultant agreement of certain size. So it depends upon what the cost is of this, but we may end up bringing it back to the finance committee. And we can always bring it back to the council as well. |
| 00:36:47.48 | Melissa Blaustein | You can always do it. Great, thank you. Thank you. Okay, go ahead. Let's see. Council member Sobieski has his hand up. |
| 00:36:58.01 | Ian Sobieski | Dr. McGowan, just a quick question. when after we authorize this today, When will you estimate the project will be completed? |
| 00:37:06.13 | Kevin McGowan | I mean, well... That's a very good question. I think our city manager and myself need to sit down and take a look at all of the projects on our plate and start to prioritize them. We have more than 20 active projects on our plate right now and I'll need to discuss, with him of how do we work this in. So I don't have a great answer for you of when this will be completed. But we need to take a look at our workload to find out how we're going to manage this. |
| 00:37:32.99 | Ian Sobieski | So just a follow-up question to that then, Director McGowan, there have been residents who have pointed to particular areas of concern. Is it feasible? to scope in our for this contract. ability to at least look at some acute locations in town before the rainy season of this year |
| 00:37:52.89 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, that's reasonable. We had talked about looking at Edwards Avenue, getting our on-call geologist to go take a look at it. So I have a call into them. And if there are more areas that we need to take a look at, I think it would be appropriate for us to do a site visit. |
| 00:38:14.81 | Ian Sobieski | Excellent, I'm glad to hear that. I think that should be a good question. help make people feel like there's some responsiveness to areas of concern here in town on this critical issue. |
| 00:38:24.95 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Okay, so let's, I started off with some follow-up questions. So let's now bring it back for comments. And I think councilman Cleveland-Knowles had her hand up first for comments, so go ahead. |
| 00:38:36.06 | Ian Sobieski | Sure, thank you, Mayor. And just thank you again to all the members of the task force and their hard work. I did just want to note as the mayor probably knows as well, you know, we have been moving this forward, the recommendations forward. for a number of years, both we put this particular project, the geologic hazard study, in the budget. We have it as one of our major strategic plan initiatives for this time period. We did work very hard to have all of the task force recommendations included. in the general plan, I think, but for the financial loss that we suffered during COVID, this project would have gone forward last year. So I'm really happy to see it. I'm here tonight and want to thank director McGowan and the city manager for getting it on our agenda. I'm very much in favor of moving forward and using our reserves for this for this issue, you know, prior to COVID, the landslide really was one of the most major disasters had in Sausalito, at least in recent memory. So it's definitely, a good thing to move forward and address these issues. I would just note that the Director McGowan you know, noted that the county is engaged in similar efforts so that I would just hope staff and We'll continue to work with the county and take advantage of any I'm sorry. symbiotic relationships and cooperation that can happen there, both on the financing and on the expertise side. So thank you. Okay. how we can pass this to Nate. |
| 00:40:26.23 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Who's anybody next? Nope. |
| 00:40:30.08 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:40:30.15 | Melissa Blaustein | I'll go. |
| 00:40:30.57 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:40:30.59 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Oh, go ahead, Vice Mayor, go ahead. I mean, |
| 00:40:33.22 | Janelle Kellman | I mean, it's very simple. Wholeheartedly support passing this tonight. I think it's exactly why we have FUNDS, IT MAKES SENSE ALSO FROM A So, timing fashion is I can't believe the Noles just mentioned. The county is working on their local hazard mitigation plan. in the safety portion of the countywide plan update And those are underway. They'll be complete early in 2023. And they're going to be using those required planning efforts to coordinate and develop strategies around this as well. And they fully acknowledge this as an opportunity for municipalities like Sausalito to take part. uh there is fema funding so it's really just great timing uh and as councilman cleveland all's mentioned we did have this included in the general plan So if folks are interested in that, um, we can circulate those resources as well. So thank you to staff and also thank you to the mayor for getting us on the agenda and, uh, I'm ready to vote and approve this. |
| 00:41:25.65 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thanks. Just quickly, I wanna thank, obviously the staff for working hard on this, but also the task force, which student, we kind of, it was a dream team, really, a task force member, Steven Woodside, obviously a resident, a former county council. He was really helpful in all of it, but also, talking with us about the geologic hazard assessment districts and and how that might work as a funding mechanism um standard bushmaker obviously again socio resident all softly residents at the time but standard bushmaker um former you know former saslito mayor and council member christina fell our planning commission chair and at that time was also was on the planning commission and michael stewart who lived in town at the time was a geologic expert. So that's why we had such a huge amount of expertise on the task force, which allowed us to move very quickly and very focused on what we were doing and bring back to the council. the report that we did and the recommendations. I'm happy that we're moving forward on this and at least taking the first step and doing the hazard survey, which is going to be tremendously helpful, I think, for Public Works and for the Planning Commission in moving forward with their respective efforts in town. So if someone would like to make a motion in a second, then we'll call the roll. |
| 00:42:47.51 | Ian Sobieski | make the motion to fund this. from $100,000 in general reserves. |
| 00:42:53.72 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Okay, and Mr. Clerk, could you please take a roll call? |
| 00:43:00.59 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Sobieski? Councilmember Blomstein? |
| 00:43:05.57 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:43:06.51 | Heidi Scoble | Council Member Cleveland Knowles. Thank you. |
| 00:43:08.03 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:43:08.50 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. Vice Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:43:10.21 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:43:10.46 | Heidi Scoble | Mayor Hoffman. |
| 00:43:12.45 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. Excellent. The motion carries five zero. So thank you. Thank you to everyone. Thank you to the council and staff. Okay, moving along, our item 5B on our agenda tonight is to receive the 2019 mudslide FEMA reimbursement report, again from our Public Works Director Kevin McCowan. So Mr. McCowan, if you're ready, proceed. |
| 00:43:34.41 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I think you're going to get tired of my presentations, but let's give it a shot, shall we? Give me one sec here. All right, hopefully you can see my first slide, which says FEMA reimbursement, 2019 mud flow event. Yes. Great, thank you so much. So again, good evening. Item 5B before you this evening includes a short update related to Sausalito seeking FEMA reimbursement related to the 2019 mud flow event. On February 14th, 2019, a mud flow washed across Sausalito Boulevard from properties owned by the National Park Service. The massive soil impacted structures, vegetation, and property between Sausalito Boulevard and Crescent Avenue. The city issued a local emergency or local proclamation for the event. And the president also declared an emergency for this disaster and others in California, which allowed the city to apply for federal funding for action to reopen the public facilities in this area. you Now, over the last week, I was contacted by a resident who noted that I have an older slide here, and some of the information on the slide is a bit incorrect. So my apologies. The idea is just to show where this mudslide occurred. In the fall of 2020, the city procured the services of a contractor familiar with the removal of this type of debris material, which contained hazardous materials. The debris was removed by the end of 2020, and Crescent Avenue was reopened to the public shortly thereafter. |
| 00:45:28.74 | Kevin McGowan | The city of Sausalito made a formal application for reimbursement to FEMA for the removal of the debris. FEMA denied the city's initial application for reimbursement based off FEMA regulations, which notes that federal reimbursement may only apply to public property. In this case, the debris crossed onto private property, however, leaving the material in place and only removing the material on the roadway would still present a hazard to the public. The city submitted its first appeal to FEMA on June 2nd, 2020, well in advance of the due date. FEMA denied Sausalito's first appeal, stating that it was not submitted from Cal OES in a timely manner. FEMA did not acknowledge a notification from the president allowing an additional 30-day window for submittals due to COVID impacts. The city submitted its second appeal to Cal OES on August 18th, 2021. Cal OES has until October 22nd, 2021 to submit it to FEMA. Once FEMA receives it, FEMA has at least 90 days to respond to the city's appeal. However, responses from FEMA have taken a lot more than this timeframe in the past, just so that we're all on the same page. FEMA is also not processing other reimbursement requests from sausalito related to this specific site reimbursement for the permanent restoration efforts as well as the emergency response costs have not been um have not been processed by fema's by fema pending the determination of the city's appeals |
| 00:47:30.45 | Kevin McGowan | Staff is working with a special consultant who is familiar with interactions with FEMA. There may be additional efforts that the city can pursue with Cal OES if FEMA denies our second appeal. Staff may return to council in the near future with a consultant agreement. for their specialty services. At this point, we're just paying them on a time and materials basis. there may be an opportunity to link the amount of reimbursement received to the consultant's contract such that there will be minimal impact to the current budget centers of the city. Now that concludes my presentation at this point. And if you have any questions, please feel free. |
| 00:48:22.55 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thanks very much. Do we have council member questions for Kevin? Thank you. |
| 00:48:28.82 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question. So I understand this is our second appeal, which obviously it's a long process, but do we know if there's other communities. I remember reading in the landslide task force recommendations, for instance, that they reached out to Santa Barbara to come up with recommendations for Montecito for recommendations for how to deal with. um, this type of situation. I'm wondering if we have other communities that have a president where it's a shared property public private property line or anything that we might additionally include |
| 00:49:04.04 | Kevin McGowan | Our specialty consultant is working with those other communities as well. And so they are pretty familiar with the ins and outs of this similar situation. So it's not just there. I think they mentioned Santa Cruz as well had similar issues. I think our consultant is helping us with that specific question. |
| 00:49:24.50 | Jill Hoffman | And do we know if there's a chance as that they might provide a rather than the full 400 some amount, $1,000 amount that they would provide at least some measure of it or? Is it an all or nothing situation? |
| 00:49:40.38 | Kevin McGowan | At this point, we would like to think that they will approve our appeal for 449,000. I believe in some of their initial documentation, they only authorized 50,000 for this entire event. So at this point, we want to seek all of our avenues to receive all the money back that we feel we are entitled to. |
| 00:50:02.38 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 00:50:02.97 | Janelle Kellman | Yeah. |
| 00:50:04.61 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:50:04.62 | Janelle Kellman | Thanks. |
| 00:50:05.37 | Melissa Blaustein | Vice Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:50:06.75 | Janelle Kellman | Yeah, thank you very much, Mayor Hoffman. Kevin, can you maybe explain a little bit more about the process with Cal OES? I understand Cal OES submits the claim to FEMA on our behalf. What opportunities do we have to work more closely with Cal OES to make sure this gets through? Because I'm thinking about Um, So I think that's a good question. along land landslides, subside and sea level rise. It's a real focus for them. This is right up their alley. You know, what can we do to facilitate this? And what is the dynamic with Cal OES? |
| 00:50:39.81 | Kevin McGowan | So that's a very good question. We actually have direct communication with our representatives at Cal OES. We have, in our first appeal, we had somebody specific that reviewed our appeal and approved it. So remember, Cal OES has already approved our first appeal, but FEMA, just based off of a timeliness issue, denied it, which to me seems a little ridiculous. so we do have direct contact with our representatives at cal oas they've been good to work with as well so it's not like we're working in asylum we we send this into them and double check with them first and we also follow up with them pretty much on a weekly basis to say okay are you ready to submit it to female |
| 00:51:23.20 | Melissa Blaustein | Mm-hmm. Interesting, thank you. Okay, thank you. Any other council questions? Okay. I'm going to open up for public comment. I see one hand up, and so I'll let the court call public comment as he sees it. |
| 00:51:48.22 | Melissa Blaustein | Mr. Clerk, you might be on mute. We're not hearing you. |
| 00:51:56.83 | Melissa Blaustein | Still hearing nothing I can see. Ms. Nichols hand is up and so I think you're unmuted. |
| 00:52:04.13 | Vicki Nichols | Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 00:52:05.82 | Melissa Blaustein | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:52:05.97 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 00:52:06.51 | Melissa Blaustein | I can hear you. Yeah. |
| 00:52:07.44 | Vicki Nichols | Did you want to- |
| 00:52:08.44 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, go ahead. |
| 00:52:08.79 | Vicki Nichols | I do I just have a quick comment first of all good evening and thank you for taking our comments. I wanted to just say way to go Kevin. He's certainly having to write this out. I was interested in the amount I thought it was $400,000. 400,000 something, I just heard it was. When we get this recouped, and I'm going to say when, because I think we're going to keep at this. Is this general fund money? Was this capital money? Was this reserve money? What will be replenished? Just out of curiosity. Thank you. |
| 00:52:41.38 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:52:41.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:41.49 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:52:43.39 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, I see no other hands raised. |
| 00:52:46.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, very good. Then I'll close public comment and I'll I'll let Mr. McAllen answer that question if he's able. |
| 00:52:53.04 | Kevin McGowan | You know, I am not sure if I'm the right person to answer that specific question. I'm not too sure where we supply the funding for this project. Maybe our city manager might know a little bit about that or Charlie Francis, or finance directly. |
| 00:53:08.24 | Chris Zapata | you members of the council, members of the public. I would suspect that it's general fund reimbursement Since the work was done by employees that are typically in a general fund, But I don't know for sure. So we can get back to you and tell you where it really is going to go if we're successful. |
| 00:53:26.28 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, that'd be great. That just if you could remember that to include that in a staff report, a later staff report, that'd be helpful. Okay. Okay. I don't believe we need to take any action on this. Is that correct? No. Okay. |
| 00:53:43.43 | Ian Sobieski | case. Go ahead. Oh, so Madam Mayor, I just wanted to make just one comment. for this for years. And I just wanna say, you know, I really, really hope we are successful. I feel like this rule and the, rejections that we've gotten so far just create the worst and most perverse incentives for a city, especially a small city and coming to the aid after an emergency. You know, if we can't rely on the fact that we declared a state of emergency, we went through all of the procedures that we are supposed to do, And then, you know, we've, told we have to divide, you know, stop our work right at the private property line or, you know, risk hundreds of thousands of dollars of liability to our general fund. It makes, you know, just such a hard, an unnecessary choice for, public officials and for a city. So, you know, I know we've made this point and I just really hope we prevail and, So that, you know, I mean, that we have to deal with something like this, again, we won't have to make hard choices between private property and public property. And then we can just address the emergency as one emergency, the landslide obviously didn't distinguish between our public and private properties, and I really hope the federal government won't either. So thank you. |
| 00:55:19.61 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you for those comments. I completely agree. And Kevin, thanks for your tenacity and the staff's tenacity on this effort. So keep going. Okay, any other comment before we close this item and move on? Okay, very good. Um, We're moving on to our next agenda item. which is 5C. And that is accept the report and provide direction to staff on whether to proceed with a rule 20A project on 4th Street |
| 00:55:43.47 | Unknown | is, you know, the |
| 00:55:50.14 | Melissa Blaustein | or Bridgeway Boulevard or other location within the city of Sausalito. And once again, our director of public works, Kevin McGowan, will be giving the presentation. It's kind of the Kevin McGowan show tonight. |
| 00:56:01.28 | Kevin McGowan | That's a little scary, I hate to say it. |
| 00:56:01.38 | Melissa Blaustein | I think. |
| 00:56:03.88 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. And the slide in front of you with Sausalito blue on it says Rule 20 Program and Utility Underground. |
| 00:56:15.39 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:56:16.23 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:56:16.26 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:56:16.28 | Kevin McGowan | I'm sorry. |
| 00:56:16.30 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:56:17.36 | Kevin McGowan | All right so item 5C relates to undergrounding overhead utility facilities. My intent is to provide you with a general overview of recent changes to the California Public Utilities Commission, otherwise known as the CPUC. a recent decision regarding undergrounding in California. This subject can be very complex, and I am definitely not an expert. However, I hope that my presentation can provide you with sufficient information to assist staff and council in moving forward with future actions related to underground. |
| 00:56:56.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:58.08 | Kevin McGowan | So let's start with a little bit of history. The Rule 20 program was first initiated in 1967 by the California Public Utility Commission. The program was set up originally for aesthetic reasons, to remove overhead lines from views within the communities. The program consists of four subcategories, but only three apply to us. The last one applies to San Diego. Each of these are fairly complex. A Rule 20A project is a public interest project, which is initiated by a jurisdiction. For jurisdictions, work credits are set aside for PG&E work. which can be assigned to a specific project. A Rule 20B project generally involves private property owners forming an assessment district. to assess themselves for the cost of underground The rule 20A funds can also be used for part of 20B projects. So here it gets a little complex as well. Now a Rule 20C project is completely paid for by a separate party without an assessment So if I wanted to underground in my house, I can pay for the whole thing. That could be a rule 20C project. As I mentioned before, PG&E sets aside work credits for each jurisdiction. However, other utilities such as AT&T and Cablecom, they do not set aside work credits associated with each project. They have to come in and fund that undergrounding with their own revenues. That's for Rule 28 project, excuse me. Recently, the CPUC came out with a decision which identified some challenges with the current 20A program. A copy of this decision is included with your packet. It's rather lengthy. Some of the challenges identified with the program include these type of issues that smaller communities have difficulty accumulating sufficient funds to develop undergrounding projects. In addition, here's some other ones. The initial program was not geared towards wildfire reductions. However, over the last several years, it's evident that undergrounding overhead electrical systems would be a benefit to the communities as well as the utilities. The cost of undergrounding has increased significantly while the allocation of work credits to perform this work has not matched that increase. The time it takes to implement an undergrounding project can be more than 10 years from the establishment of the district. Utilities are backlogged and it was not the intent of the program to have the work extend out for multiple years. There are more challenges identified in the decision. And if you're interested, it's attached to your staff report and those challenges are noted on page eight. |
| 01:00:17.42 | Kevin McGowan | On June 3rd, 2021, the action by the CPUC also provided 20 decisions associated with the program. Of particular importance is that the CPUC is discontinuing the allocation of work credits as of December 31st, 2022. PG&E shall also not allocate additional work credits as of this date. There may be additional items in the decision that also affects Sausalito, but those main issues I wanted to cover this evening. Based on this change, it may be a good idea to identify a project to utilize our current credits. Now, if you're interested on page 40 of the decision, the full listing of the 20 decisions is enumerated. So as you can guess, Sausalito has executed several undergrounding projects over the years. The city also established an undergrounding committee to assist residents and to emphasize the importance of removing overhead electrical lines whenever possible. To give you an idea of this effort, you can see the extent of overhead lines on some of the older photos of Sausalito. And this shows kind of the extent of a lot of electrical lines in one spot that are now undergrounded on Bridgeway. Sausalito's last undergrounding project occurred in 2006. Other efforts in 2010 for an undergrounding district on San Carlos and I think it's Santa Rosa and Bulkley were disbanded due to a lack of private property support. Um, With that specific project, I've also talked to a resident in the last week or so. who provided me with some additional information on that particular project. And there's been a lot of work done on it already. I have a few comments on that in future slides. So where does Sausalito currently stand with allocations of work credits? And they're basically like dollar amounts. Sausalito's current allocation is about 2 million work credits. Based on the population, the city accumulates approximately 70,000 credits annually. Over the last year, over the last few years, other jurisdictions who did not have enough work credits to support their undergrounding projects have sequestered work credits from those who do not have an active Rule 20A program. The community of Live Oak recently sequestered work credits from all communities in the state, including Sausalito. The amount from Sausalito was very small, but the action highlights another challenge with the current CPUC program. So how much can we get done with our allocation? PG&E recommends that we utilize a cost of about 1,650 work credits or dollars per linear foot as a general rule of thumb to gauge what we can underground, at least at this stage, this preliminary stage. This cost will vary depending upon how many lateral lines are undergrounded as well as how difficult the trenching is on a hillside. Based on the recent decision from the CPUC, and discussions with our PG&E representatives, staff wanted to bring these changes to the attention of the council and seek guidance on whether to proceed with an underground project. The next few slides relate to possible locations for establishing an undergrounding district. Prior to the fall, fire season of 2020, PG&E installed a brand new pole and equipment on 4th Street between North and Richardson. This equipment was called a recloser. And is utilized during a public safety power shutoff or a PSPS event to allow some areas of the city to continue to have power, while others their power is cut off, maybe because they're in a hillside or in there, they're in a high fire prone area. residents in this area have requested that the city initiate an undergrounding district to allow this roadway to, to allow the lines, the overhead lines to be undergrounded, um, including the new PSPS equipment in this area. Staff preliminary estimates that the cost of this work will be about 700,000 work credits. |
| 01:05:20.50 | Kevin McGowan | Most of the overhead electrical systems are undergrounded along Bridgeway, starting from south and heading north, and basically stopping at Johnson Street. Overhead lines along Bridgeway still exist, starting from Johnson Street and heading north. Keep in mind that Bridgeway is our main thoroughfare, and that's one of the criteria associated with the Rule 28 program. And looking at older documentation related to undergrounding on Sausalito's main thoroughfare, The section from Johnson to Litho was identified as the next section of Rule 20A funds to be utilized. Based on the linear footage, staff estimates the cost of this undergrounding to be about 1.8 million work credits. Staff has also heard from other residents regarding undergrounding. Napa Street and areas north of Napa Street on Bridgeway still have overhead lines. Please go. We'll head to the next slide. And I think that's a good question. are also a concern related to wildfire. There may be an interest in working with Southern Marin Fire as well as the Marin Wildlife Prevention Authority to identify areas where undergrounding would be most beneficial. In addition, a project to consider is, excuse me, an additional project to consider is the undergrounding project that was initiated by residents on Spencer, San Carlos, and Santa Rosa Avenue. After the submitted date for this agenda item, a member of the public reached out to me, noting that a lot of the work has been done initially for the design. However, this information is probably about 10 years old. He had mentioned that the linear footage of mainline electrical system is about 900 feet, and that equates to about 1.5 million in work credits. |
| 01:07:38.01 | Kevin McGowan | So a few more slides. Over the last several years, there has been some discussion and comments from council members to consider developing an assessment for undergrounding all of Sausalito's overhead lines. However, no data or idea of the cost of this effort was established. Staff reviewed some of the older documentation and found an estimate of about 173,000 linear feet of overhead lines in Sausalito that remain to be undergrounded. This document was over 10 years old and probably not entirely correct. at least at this point in time. Regardless, If we utilize the undergrounding cost of $1,650 per linear foot, we get a really large number for undergrounding all the overhead lines in Sausalito. We simply wanted to provide you with that number. Funding for this effort may also be available from other sources. For example, as the city repairs roadways, we can incorporate undergrounding with that effort. Other funding from a Marine Wildfire Prevention Authority or federal sources such as FEMA related to the hazard mitigation funds, hazard mitigation can be available to address this type of issues, including fire resiliency. |
| 01:09:09.49 | Kevin McGowan | At this time, staff is simply seeking some direction from the council on whether to consider specific projects for the utilization of our current rule 20A allocation. Staff can also pursue further, a further coordination effort with PG&E to establish more precise costs for fully undergrounding all of Sausalito's overhead lines. Further strategies on the details related to fully undergrounding the entire city will be needed, such as the cost per parcel, as well as seeking assistance from consultants on how to support that cost for each parcel. Staff also welcomes any advice or direction from the council on this complex issue. Keep in mind that as of December 22nd, no more work credits will be assigned to each jurisdiction. That doesn't mean the program goes away. CPUC may further change this program to address the challenges noted in the decision within the next year. One option which was not noted in the staff report is to wait for the next CPUC decision and take no action at this point in time. |
| 01:10:32.11 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:34.71 | Kevin McGowan | Just as a reminder, the Rule 20A projects need to comply with specific criteria, which includes eliminating heavy overhead lines on main thoroughfares. That includes high volume roads in it and having a public benefit. there are at least 10 steps to establishing a 20 a undergrounding district. Well, these may not be pertinent to the actions by the council this evening. We wanted to note that implementing such a project will require staff time allocation and close coordination with PG&E as a lead organization. |
| 01:11:14.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:11:14.54 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Again, staff's intention this evening is to identify the changes identify the changes in the CPUC ruling program. that affects Sausalito. We also want to seek Council's direction on whether to move forward with the Rule 20A project at this time, or possibly wait until additional modifications to the program are developed by the CPUC. In addition, staff wanted to convey an order of magnitude related to fully underground in Sausalito. Much more effort is needed to consider this option, but our intent was to provide a starting point for the discussion. Lastly, the details with this program can become complex very quickly. Staff does not know all the details, but wanted to start the conversation regarding this subject, especially since several members of the community have voiced an interest in undergrounding. And with that, that concludes my presentation. So thank you very much for listening. |
| 01:12:22.00 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you very much, Director McAllen, As an initial matter, I will note that I did not see council member Blousteen's hand up, but she needs to recuse herself because of the proximity of her residence. So to some of the areas that we're talking about, one of the areas that we're talking about. So for this portion of the agenda, she will not be participating. And so at this point then, I will note that that we had Did we call you guys a working group? What do we call it? Council member? Councilmember Sobieski and Vice Mayor Kelman uh we're working on on this effort um i know so i'm gonna let them weigh in first if that's okay unless somebody has questions for director mckellen |
| 01:12:59.06 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 01:13:05.02 | Melissa Blaustein | So. |
| 01:13:05.42 | Janelle Kellman | I actually have a couple of questions first, if that's OK. |
| 01:13:07.45 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:13:07.56 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:13:07.70 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:13:08.14 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 01:13:08.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:13:08.34 | Janelle Kellman | Um, |
| 01:13:08.75 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:13:08.98 | Janelle Kellman | So Kevin, I saw that. you mentioned bridgeway between Johnson and Litho as a potential site. And I know that some of these were in development from years past. We recently shared with you the Bayway vulnerability assessment, which is the sea level rise study done by the county, which identified utilities and low lying areas as being particularly susceptible to a possible inundation. Do you know how PG&E is handling undergrounding in coastal areas or in properties that are close proximity to water? |
| 01:13:43.07 | Kevin McGowan | I don't at this point in time. I can reach out to them to get a little more detail. I would be guessing on what they would do with these particular facilities. |
| 01:13:54.16 | Janelle Kellman | I'm wondering if that automatically takes one of these off the priority list or how that should be considered by the council. You also mentioned combination projects and you listed two examples. my understanding is at some point in the prior council looked at fiber optic cables. Did you, it was that one of the options looked at and do you know, did anybody do like a cost or not a cost, but a potential revenue assessment from something like that? |
| 01:14:20.23 | Kevin McGowan | At this point, I was simply concentrating on the Rule 20 program and didn't dive into a lot of the details from 10 years ago related to fiber optic. But it is always a good idea to put in fiber optics so we can communicate, my thought is communicate between signals and other things. Always a good idea. |
| 01:14:43.62 | Janelle Kellman | Yeah, agreed. Yeah. And then I guess my last question is just maybe so this council knows kind of why, why didn't this move forward in the past? uh, Was there something we should be considering or thinking about as we evaluate this? |
| 01:15:00.78 | Melissa Blaustein | I was on the council, I think when they were working on it, but I know that council member Cleveland Knowles also has some information. Um, if she wants to weigh in, but I don't remember what happened. I think it was just Thank you. |
| 01:15:14.92 | Ian Sobieski | I know that the Councilmember Cox and Councilmember Wiffey have been working very hard on these issues for a number of different years and I did touch base with both of them. |
| 01:15:15.04 | Melissa Blaustein | I know that. |
| 01:15:24.88 | Ian Sobieski | to just, you know, and hopefully the subcommittee has been in touch with them, but, um, you know, they did |
| 01:15:25.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:32.42 | Ian Sobieski | Mention kind of shifting focus away from views to safety. you know, especially in light of the public power safety shut off issues and kind of the timing of that being very opportune right now. um, And the economy, just as the vice mayor just mentioned, the economy is sort of a big, financial scale and, um, combining this type of project with other I think Joan had mentioned that Western cities had a good art |
| 01:16:02.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:16:02.98 | Ian Sobieski | about a city that did a fiber optic. um, project in cooperation with fiber optic and had quite a bit of the cost subsidized. But, um, Yeah, I don't know about this particular, I don't remember actually, Mayor, having a particular discussion about this particular program and, utilizing it on individual projects. |
| 01:16:26.72 | Melissa Blaustein | I don't either. I don't remember it ever making it. I know they did a lot of work on it, but I don't remember it ever making it back up to the city council, but we can certainly follow up with, with both of them on that for input and, And so I don't have any questions. for Director McCowan on this, Yeah, go ahead, Councilmember Sobieski. |
| 01:16:45.20 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, Kevin, we talked, of course, but just to read into the record, the answers to the questions that we emailed you today that the Vice Mayor and I asked you. This question about whether the 28 funds can be used programmatically, can you speak to what you know about that? how we can learn the answer to that question. |
| 01:17:04.30 | Kevin McGowan | Well, There are certain criteria for the 20, Rural 20 program. And when you say utilize programmatically, maybe I need a little more detail on what you're thinking of. |
| 01:17:15.69 | Ian Sobieski | The idea was to use it in a variety of ways. For example, the issue on 4th Street was instigated by the installation of a Paul. Without the knowledge of anyone that had a bunch of stuff on it, the recloser. And that's unfortunately going to happen more in town. And that's something everyone should know is that PG&E is going to be improving their infrastructure in town, but where it's above ground, those improvements currently will be placed above ground. And so the question is, an alternative option to spending those funds undergrounding, is it possible to cooperate with PG&E so that future recloser installations could be incentivized to be installed underground? |
| 01:18:00.78 | Kevin McGowan | you know, It's a big question, and I think we need to pull in PG&E to address it. As far as the Rule 20 program, there are certain criteria that go along with it. One of them has to do with, you have to underground 600 linear feet of overhead line. You can't necessarily say, oh, I just want to underground this one particular pole. I don't think that complies with the program. However, if we do work with PG&E and we still comply with the rules and regulations set up by the CPUC, we may be able to use those funds in a method that you are considering. Thank you. |
| 01:18:43.48 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. So Mayor Huffman, Councilor Sobieski and I do have some recommendations as the ad hoc working group. Do you want to hear those now? Do you want to wait for public comment? |
| 01:18:53.57 | Melissa Blaustein | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:18:53.94 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 01:18:55.43 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, I feel like we should take public comment first. So. Um, |
| 01:18:59.00 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah. |
| 01:19:00.05 | Melissa Blaustein | Council member Cleveland Knowles, yes. |
| 01:19:01.85 | Ian Sobieski | Oh, well, that's... I was just thinking maybe the public would want to hear the recommendations before public comment, but however you would like to do it. |
| 01:19:11.41 | Melissa Blaustein | I think that's fine. Why don't you guys go ahead and make your, I was thinking the same thing, but Anyway, so let's go ahead and do the recommendations. Sure. |
| 01:19:18.63 | Janelle Kellman | Ian, do you want me to start off? |
| 01:19:20.16 | Ian Sobieski | Sort of. Go ahead, Professor. |
| 01:19:22.32 | Janelle Kellman | Okay, great. So certainly I just want to call the attention to two things in the staff report. So rule 28 projects, 100% ratepayer funded, but must meet the public interest criteria. But you'll see on page three of the staff report that there was a June 3rd, 2021 a CPUC decision where communities expressed an eagerness to update the criteria so that the program supported wildfire mitigation and other safety and reliability objectives, rather than the traditional aesthetic objective that most of these projects have been based on in the past. And then also in the stack report rule 20 B, as Kevin just mentioned, must consist of a minimum of 600 feet. There's a rate payer fund of 20 to 40% of the costs. And it normally requires the creation of an undergrounding district. So with this in mind, our high and overall arching recommendation is to formalize the establishment of an infrastructure task force or ad hoc committee that would include utilities, roads, mudslides, etc. with utilities potentially being one of the first items to be covered under this infrastructure committee. And then more specifically under Rule 20A, task force may want to consider creating a two pronged program with two different workflows, one for neighborhoods and one where it's considered a city view shed corridor and the neighborhood decisions could potentially be based on an objective four part matrix that captures what the public comments in that June 2021 decision were, namely wildfire mitigation, community safety, community reliability and aesthetic enhancement. And so we would have some type of criteria to apply for neighborhood projects. And then for rule 20 B, one thing that came to mind as a recommendation would be to solicit the community to start the 20B projects by establishing a streamlined neighborhood program to potentially subsidize projects with a percentage of neighborhood contribution. exceeds 40%. Remembering that 20 to 40% is the normal allocation, but if it exceeded 40%, perhaps there would be a streamline or a reprioritization. We also would recommend that we review a range of funding options, including long-term low interest bonds, green infrastructure, FEMA funds, and state coastal resiliency funds for low lying areas. As Councilmember Sobieski just mentioned, we want to also make a note of preventing future issues. So we should explore using 20 funds to subsidize PG&E so that new power upgrades, such as future reclosures, are buried underground. And then the last was just calling out the question that council member Sobieski just mentioned. whether the 20 B funds could be used programmatically and what opportunities we might find. And so, as Kevin mentioned, inviting maybe Mark Van Gorder or someone else from PG&E TO REALLY HELP US DIG INTO THE DETAILS AND UNDERSTAND how the money's going to be utilised. Council Member Sobieski, did I capture everything we discussed? |
| 01:22:19.90 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, you did. All across the board. I will just emphasize one of the points there is, of course, the $280 million figure for undergrounding all of Susilo seems astronomical and unachievable. Uh, That number may be significantly less if there are some economies of scale. with such a project. and it might be worth just looking at that a little bit more, but much shorter that, the idea of using a 20 structure to incentivize private property owners to contribute to a subsidized undergrounding effort might be a way of leveraging private property capital to actually undergrown more linear fees of Sausalito that Sausalito could do all by itself. So that should be part of the consideration of such an effort. |
| 01:23:10.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, great, thanks for that. Councilmember Cleveland, yes, you have your hand up. |
| 01:23:14.69 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, I just had a question on the recommendation. I apologize because all we had in front of us was the recommendation from staff. So are you proposing not to fund one of these areas, not to move forward with any particular recommendation tonight? but to, you're saying we should establish some process where neighborhood groups could apply to the city? Is that correct? So you are not recommending we move forward with 4th Street or Bridgeway? |
| 01:23:48.68 | Janelle Kellman | but if I may, Council Member Sobieski, that's correct. Council member Cleveland knows the idea being that we need an equitable and objective basis on which to make these decisions. Part of the initial conversation with staff was We initially thought that the funding ran out, I think this year, And we were pleased to find out it didn't run out until December 2022. And so with that in mind and knowing your emphasis and others emphasis on infrastructure generally, we thought taking a step back developing an ad hoc community on infrastructure with a focus on utilities We have a lot of people. allow us the opportunity to come up with something that was equitable and objective. Thank you. |
| 01:24:27.68 | Ian Sobieski | and staff have a Was our city manager staff able to, I mean, is that something they can staff and something that would, be recommended as a path forward here. |
| 01:24:41.13 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. I see our city manager's leaning forward. So go ahead, Chris. |
| 01:24:46.80 | Chris Zapata | I concur with the Vice Mayor's comments about an equitable process and trying to bring in the PG&E folks to provide some clarity to that process in terms of what this program fully provide. and making the effort to do this. again to point out that you know We do have a franchise agreement with PG&E, and the bottom line is There are significant areas of concern in the community And the idea that we would Thank you. pick one at this time. Um, could happen, but I think the idea that we don't hold off and not spend the allocation we currently have would be the biggest concern so there's a little bit of a time push on our part to staff this to work on it because obviously although that couldn't do the whole city that's not an insignificant amount of money so if we develop a process and work with the committee that's been set up we would make the time for it |
| 01:25:46.65 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, great, thank you. It's just kind of a, I'm sorry to ask these questions. It's just kind of a shift from the direction the staff report was going. So I'm. just kind of trying to adjust on the fly here. And, you know, I think your recommendations make a lot of sense. um, But so apologies that I'm kind of thinking out loud here. Thank you. |
| 01:26:06.31 | Janelle Kellman | No, and much appreciated. And you're, you're right. Um, we did run this by, uh, Kevin and the city manager, There's a lot of new information and new understanding coming through and As you can imagine, when this was put on the agenda, we received a lot of information from industry community members. And so that really elevated procedural need here. But thank you for those questions. Well taken. |
| 01:26:29.40 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, so if no further questions from the council members, then we'll open up for public comment. And I'm glad that we did the recommendations prior. So thank you for that suggestion. |
| 01:26:42.56 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, there are several hands raised. I'll call on Vicki Nichols. And Vicki, you've been unmuted. and ask to share your video. |
| 01:26:59.67 | Melissa Blaustein | We're not hearing you, Ms. Nichols. |
| 01:26:59.81 | Vicki Nichols | Right. |
| 01:27:03.55 | Vicki Nichols | Okay, there we go. |
| 01:27:04.97 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:27:05.04 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:27:05.21 | Vicki Nichols | I JUST WANTED TO... make some comments about the previous effort. I don't believe any of you were here when this happened before, but when they were forming the districts, What was really the deal breaker is, you know, It's the assessments, the individual assessments. And in some cases, what people were being assigned for their responsibility, the laterals, was almost as much as they paid for their houses 30 years before. So for a lot of people, it was economics. I just helped a client do this at her house in Belvedere. They formed a district. and she was out of state, so I worked on it. It's a whole long process. I think even just checking into what is required to form a district, will be informative to you. It's not just something that's done simply. So, There's a lot of information out there, and Belvedere would be a good source. They've just done it. At the end, the city ended up giving a little money as an incentive, not a lot, but You know, there are ways to do that because we found through all the paperwork and stuff. So you might get some help there. |
| 01:28:20.01 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:28:25.63 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is Walter Lamerman. Walter, you've been unmuted. |
| 01:28:33.18 | Walter Lamerman | Hi, good evening. Um, Thank you for letting me speak for a moment. I've been a part of a couple of these districts and as Kevin said they are very complex One of the surprises that we will find is that with a straight rule 20a there's exclusions to what's covered So I have established a district, not formally because the city wouldn't endorse it, But I was able to provide the undergrounding free, absolutely free to the homeowners because PG&E's rules were such that they actually paid for some things they didn't pay for before, like laterals, electrical panels, and this kind of thing. But they didn't pay for street lights, vaults, rights-of-way, uh and archaeological um challenges that they run into so if they found like a bee walk artifacts, then that would have to be all opened up. And there's a lot of money in that. So what I did was I went out and got $100,000 of private money to use for that and I was able to overcome that. So I could go to the neighbors and say, Hey, you can have this underground for free because I had, three rich uncles who would pay that amount. very complicated a lot of rules to it Vicki Nichols is almost correct in what she said but what actually happened was the city's process was flawed and not at fault to the city so much but PG&E they kept changing the rules so what I found is they're their rules are somewhat flexible, if you will. I'd recommend to the council consider just getting a project going on the on pgd's calendar so that stop and freeze our credits are being taken by other communities so we've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last several years because we haven't done anything and so the money that's accrued or the credits are then given away or they're lost they expire So we have a pilot project right now. We already have the base map. We already have all the documentation for that. put that in. and at least get on their list freezing our our credits so that they can't be taken from us and I think we might be able to cancel that without any kind of a penalty should we decide not to go forward with it but at least in the meantime we kind of hold PG&E. I recommend maybe Kevin talking with PG&E and informally and asking them and confirming what I'm saying that might be true But I think there's a lot of possibilities here strategically. How does the city of Sausalito protect their credits and get in line today for a project that's down the road? I'd be glad to help with the process if called upon. And thank you very much. |
| 01:31:27.85 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Madam Mayor, do you mind if I ask Mr. LaMoran a question? It's a little irregular, but yes. I'm so sorry. Mr. Lummerman, when you're recommending a pilot, are you recommend, which pilot? Or you're just saying any pilot. |
| 01:31:41.82 | Walter Lamerman | Well... Why? Any, any program, any one of the ones that are suggested, but however, The other one suggested, I'm not sure, I was just told about this on Friday, so I don't know what's in the pike, but the project that I started already had the base map. It takes about. two months for an engineer to draw the base map If the 4th Street doesn't have a base map there are a couple months out from getting that so it could be any of those really any of those projects could be used as a pilot. |
| 01:32:18.20 | Mary Naples | Thank you. |
| 01:32:18.22 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Clerk, you can call our next speaker. |
| 01:32:26.68 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is David Sudo. David, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 01:32:34.30 | David Sudo | Good evening, City Council. Thanks for taking this up. Um, THE END OF THE END OF THE I think my most important point is that This again exposes a weakness to our current capital improvement program. I'm not sure. and we need to have a more robust plan and have it current so that when opportunities come that we can utilize the funding and and also capture our historical knowledge about where we are in projects and where we wanted to go. in the future. You know, it's important for at this point in time with this project. It's also important when we have landslides or something like that and we need to make unplanned capital improvement projects and you know, have a roadmap of what we want to do in a disaster, whether that's a landslide or an earthquake or something else. I'm not sure. And finally, I think we need to, we should prioritize safety and reliability. I think some of the staff report kind of highlighted that too. And I think both the Bridgeway and the 4th Street projects have that kind of wrapped up. And I'm really concerned that when the Fourth Street, when the transformer fire happened, that the PG&E staff said there was nothing they could do. And I guess undergrounding is one way we can take care of this. I'm also concerned that when they say they're gonna increase the voltage on the lines, that that kind of fire to be more frequent, not less frequent. And it's just really concerning. And also it appears that the 4th Street is a major trunk line. in our community there's several there's two sets of power lines running through there and at least one of them is is very heavy duty so it looks like it's hauling much more power than a regular street line thanks |
| 01:34:33.51 | Melissa Blaustein | Thanks very much for your comments. Mr. Clerk, you can call the next speaker. |
| 01:34:42.18 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is Brad O'Brien. And Bratley, you've been unmuted. and ask to share your video. |
| 01:34:53.59 | Unknown | evening thank you for hearing me tonight uh my name is bradley o'brien i'm one of the members of fana which is comprised of a number of long-term residents on both fourth street and north street as you know fana was created after pg e came to fourth street in the early hours without notice and installed a very large viper recloser on fourth street the effects of that were immediate the views were blocked property values were reduced and it impacted the newly renovated uh southview park of course as our initial reaction as neighbors was just to be very upset that a pole was placed there without notice and for those factors i just mentioned but as as phantom became more involved in this process safety became an even more In discussion with PG&E, PG&E made it quite clear that 4th Street is a major conduit for electricity through the town of Sausalito, and it's a critical corridor that needs protection. And so as we continue to span of participants, we really began to focus on 4th Street and safety, and safety, and we believe it's imperative that the city move forward as quickly as possible to underground. of participants, we really began to focus on 4th Street and safety. And we believe it's imperative that the city move forward as quickly as possible to underground the infrastructure that's on 4th Street. um we're here we believe that the best solution to solve each of those problems i just identified is for the city to pass a resolution allowing the 4th Street undergrounding to take place as a district utilizing Rule 28 funds. I want to note at the outset that I want to thank Mr. McGowan for all the work that he's put in on this project. We reviewed his report, and I think it's also important to note that undergrounding the 4th Street quarters is consistent with Mr. McGowan's report, because we also see undergrounding as important throughout the city. But the 4th Street underground should be the first step due to the safety concerns that have been outlined by PG&E. So tonight you will hear from four FANNA members other than me. Out of respect for your time, we try to be efficient and have each of the four members address different topics so we're not overlapping. And I will read what each of the four members will talk about because I don't want to have upset neighbors if I mischaracterize what their statements will be. So the first person you'll hear from is Carolyn Revell, who I think you all know quite well. Carolyn will speak about how the excuse me how the adjacent southview park meets criterion three of rule 20a and authorizes rule 20a funding for undergrounding the fourth street corridor carolyn will also describe that undergrounding the fourth street corridor enhances the southview park's environment and maxes maximizes the city and community expenditure under the refurbished park swen colteran will discuss how the park is used as, maybe used as a refuge and evacuation route and is important to the community safety. Mary Naples will talk about the recent PG&E fire on a pole on 4th Street and how Hurricane Gulch winds and fires are important. And Tim Ryan will discuss 4th Street as a power corridor and some of the engineering aspects. Thank you. |
| 01:37:58.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:38:01.73 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is Carolyn Revell. Carolyn, you've been asked to unmute and share your video. |
| 01:38:12.60 | Carolyn Revell | Good evening, I'm Carolyn with the three of them at 515 North Street, overlooking the power pole under discussion. And as, Brad mentioned our street adjoins or passes through a civic area, public recreation area, or an area of unusual scenic interest to the public. That's criteria three of the rule of 20A. So we're right next to the park. It is the western boundary of the park and unusually a scenic area noted in previous staff reports. And we neighbors attest to the fact that cars stop at the top of the street to admire the view in this unusually scenic area. |
| 01:38:39.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:38:51.07 | Carolyn Revell | undergrounding the equipment on Fourth Street would make a more attractive foreground to that 183 view of the skyline and the hills beyond. It would also enhance the aesthetics of the park environment. As you know, the entrance to the tennis court is on the fourth street. And it was recently refurbished along with the basketball court and the playground. The city spent a total close to $2 million of public funds on renovating the infrastructure of the park through measures F and O and recreation grants. The community stepped up when there was not a landscape plan included in the funding. Sausalito Beautiful, as you know, paid for a landscape plan and the community Some of us from Sausalito Beautiful were on the Blue Ribbon Committee. the mayor's blue ribbon committee, which raised $75,000 to add to the public funding. So my point is that undergrounding the wires on the only of the streets that abuts the park that does not have underground wiring will enhance the public investment in this park and others will talk about the safety aspect. But my point is that we want to have a really beautiful park after all the money that we have spent and the community's time spent working on this project. Thank you very much. |
| 01:40:11.82 | Eva Casante | Thank you. |
| 01:40:11.85 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:40:12.05 | Eva Casante | Thank you. |
| 01:40:16.24 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is Swen Kulterman. Swen, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 01:40:25.23 | Swen Kulterman | Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Swen Colterman, and I would like to voice my support for using Rule 28 funds down around Fourth Street. I've been living here on 4th Street for 15 years now, and for the better part of the last two, I've been working at home at my desk overlooking 4th Street. and Southview Park. From all the time spent at this optimal vantage point, I've observed hundreds of visitors children, mothers with strollers, including I'm not sure. coming to enjoy the park and the sidewalk and views from around the park. My observation is that Fourth Street is a thoroughfare to access the park. and other areas of Old Town to and from Hurricane Gulch. It's a it's a wide street with wide sidewalks on both sides. therefore preferred by pedestrians to get across town Undergrounding power lines along this thoroughfare will benefit thousands of park visitors and children by making the street a safer place. The consistently strong winds that we get here in Hurricane Gulch rock the poles back and forth. and swing the high concentration of lines level and degree that makes us all very nervous. The strong winds combined with the high likelihood of a severe earthquake within the next 20 years lead me to believe that these power lines present a significant risk A recent fire on the pole just outside my house caused by the exposed power lines left us all even more aware of the risks These lines present. We worry constantly about the likelihood of another accident. involving hazardous or loose power lines, threatening the safety of our children, park visitors, and pedestrians along this corridor. 4th Street can also be an emergency evacuation The Southern Marin Fire Protection District evacuation map shows Southview Park as a temporary refuge area. during a fire or earthquake or high wind storm access to and from this refuge area I'm not sure. for pedestrians and emergency vehicles Um, if the fallen poles and downed wires didn't exist. In June, the Sausalito Police Fire and Rescue held a neighborhood awareness event in Southview Park. recommending that residents congregate at the refuge area in case of a catastrophic event. It drew a very large crowd. who filled the entire observation deck Imagine hundreds more people filling the tennis court and rest of the park who are unable to then further evacuate due to downed lines. fire and evacuation related undergrounding. is also an important consideration raised in the recent CP you see hearings on the rule 28 program. So in closing, I'm supportive using 28 credits to underground 4th Street the 4th Street thoroughfare and corridor for the benefit of the park visitors in the community of homes in Hurricane Gulch. I strongly urge the city council to carefully consider consequences of not undergrounding and to consider This is a long-term investment. Um, It will never be compromised by environmental factors such as flooding or sea level rise. Thank you. |
| 01:43:36.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:36.04 | Tim Ryan | Thank you. |
| 01:43:36.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:36.12 | Tim Ryan | Thank you. |
| 01:43:38.59 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is Mary Naples. Mary, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 01:43:46.05 | Mary Naples | thank you so much for your time my name is Mary Naples and I live at 309 4th Street at 3 30 on the morning of June 20th of this year I woke to the smell of smoke but it was only after fire trucks pulled up in front of 319 4th Street that I noticed flames on the top of the power pole in front of it because it was a characteristically windy night embers from the fire were blowing on to the homes of 319 and 317 4th Street in fact The embers were so thick that the neighbor who called 911 reported that a neighbor's roof was on fire. If not for this conscientious neighbor on North Street and our fearless firefighters our neighborhood of densely packed wood frame homes might have been obliterated in a firestorm. We were later told by a PG&E field manager that the pole caught fire because of thick fog rolling in after a recent heat wave which helped ignite a fire on the top three feet of the pole. The same field engineer said this incident was a product of natural forces working together and was not preventable. Hardly reassuring words from PG&E. But not 50 feet from this fiery pole is the out of scale PSPS Viper Reclosure Pole that PG near wrecked with no proper notice or public disclosure in front of 315 fourth street in July of 2020. In talks with PG&E to underground the PSPS poll, we've been told that the third block of 4th Street is a major power corridor for them, which is why they placed their power reclosure on our block to begin with. With extreme drought conditions leading to more forceful and frequent hurricane force gales, watching the gargantuan PSPS power pole and its massive steel attachments swaying uncontrollably in the wind is alarming enough. But added to that is this non-preventable natural forces that we're dealing with that evidently ignite these power poles. And so now also a common occurrence of dry lightning add to the risk of the PSPS power pole acting as a lightning rod igniting a firestorm in our neighborhood of densely packed, older, wood-framed homes, which is a clear and present danger to us residents of our block feel increasingly vulnerable. Not only to the ever unfolding dangers of climate change, but to the arbitrary decisions made by PG&E over which we have no control. The best solution in keeping our community safe, keeping our neighborhood and the block safe is to underground the massive recloser and the abundant power poles on our blocks by using the 28 funds available. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. |
| 01:46:34.74 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. I see one last hand up Mr. Clerk. |
| 01:46:39.82 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, Madam Mayor, our next speaker, it's Tim Ryan. Tim, you've been... unmute it and ask you to hear your video. |
| 01:46:46.25 | Tim Ryan | Thank you. |
| 01:46:47.64 | Heidi Scoble | Okay. |
| 01:46:47.96 | Tim Ryan | Thank you. |
| 01:46:47.98 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 01:46:48.80 | Tim Ryan | Well, thank you for this opportunity to speak to the city council on this issue. My name is Tim Ryan and I'm a resident of 309 4th Street. I'm also an electrical engineer and while I do not work directly with a specific type of infrastructure. I have a lot of experience with large scale construction projects And I was obviously surprised when this huge new reclosure device was installed in our neighborhood with only a very vague notification to us. So I did a little bit of a brief investigation about what led to this. And what I found out is that the California Public Utilities Commission, the CPUC, basically mandated. that PG&E install as many reclosures as possible in as many locations as possible, in the shortest amount of time possible. And in our conversations with PG&E, they explained, as has been mentioned, that Forest Street is a vital electrical corridor and that by selecting this particular location, they were able to minimize the number of PG&E customers that will be affected by a PSPS event, but, What they didn't, you know, mentioned. or didn't, appear to have done, though, is implement the safest solution And what they basically were not allowed to do this because by CPC, it would have required the granting them more time. and CPC did not simply do not grant them more time. very much rushed. And the result is what we have something again that was put in very little notice and very little planning. THE FAMILY. So during our meetings with PG&E, We were able to actually discuss some of these issues related to undergrounding with this particular device with their engineers. FOR EXAMPLE, I asked if there was an underground version of the recloser. And the answer was yes. I also asked, if there was if the recloser could be undergrounded on a relatively steep street, which is what we have here in 4th Street, And the answer to that It was also yes. So for the same reason that the PG&E System engineers chose the location in front of 314 4th Street, sorry, 315 4th Street, THE VIPER RECLOSER. The highest priority should also be given for the protection of that recloser installation. and underground the power lines on this block will be the best solution to achieve that outcome. Not only would underground protect the Viper Recloser and other poles on our block, from increasingly strong winds. but lightning strikes and other things. It would also ensure the power needs of the portion of the community while helping safeguard our homes. And finally, I would like to say that we are now requesting from the city of Sausalito, to allocate the Rule 20 funds so they reclose the device and associated power poles can be designed and underground the way it should have been done in the first place. I'm very proud of all the efforts made by our neighborhood organization We are ready to do whatever it takes to move this process forward. Thank you for your consideration. |
| 01:49:49.43 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Um, Thank you very much for all of our people that participated with public comments. Those are excellent comments. And at this point, I don't see any other raised hands. So I'm gonna close public comment and |
| 01:50:01.90 | Heidi Scoble | and madam mayor just uh for the record i've been notified that will wick would like to speak but he's having challenges connecting um through his telephone um just wanted to make you aware |
| 01:50:08.60 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:50:16.31 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, well, What? At this point, I'm I'm sorry, I'm going to close public comment unless he somehow magically pops on in the next |
| 01:50:27.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:28.11 | Melissa Blaustein | one minute. but I'm going to close public comment. I think councilman Cleveland Knowles had her hand raised and so we'll kick off with her |
| 01:50:38.57 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, I'm sorry, Mayor. I just had a couple of questions that came up during the public comment. Um, And I apologize if they were in the staff report, but one of the members of the public noted that he thinks we're losing credits or we have lost a significant number of credits by not having an active project and I was wondering, I don't I think I read that. In the staff report, I did read that it was possible to do that. But given that we have almost 2 million credits, I was wondering if anybody from staff knows if we have actually lost credits yet or if we are in danger of losing them. Same. |
| 01:51:18.36 | Kevin McGowan | We... Thank you, council member. It's Kevin again. We have lost work credits to a city called Live Oak. And that was last year. It's been very small amount. In other words, less than a thousand, but we have lost it to that particular city. |
| 01:51:39.02 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. And then I, this may have been on the staff report, but under the current 20 B Wolves. does do the work credits. pay for the laterals or is that the responsibility of the individual homeowners along the |
| 01:52:01.97 | Kevin McGowan | STREET. |
| 01:52:02.03 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:52:03.20 | Kevin McGowan | Good question council member and I'm not too sure if I have an answer it gets more complex I know that rule the rule 20-a funds have changed over the last 10 years to include the laterals as well as the circuit box on everyone's house with a rule 20-a district but I'm not too sure about a rule 20-b project so I'd have to investigate |
| 01:52:29.26 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, so under 20A, it's the laterals. But as one member of the public noted, there may be additional costs |
| 01:52:37.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:52:37.86 | Ian Sobieski | we're not aware of. So, but under 20A you get the infrastructure and the laterals, the public infrastructure and the laterals. |
| 01:52:47.11 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, PG&E allocates a certain amount for upgrading the service box. as well as the lateral if you have a circuit box that costs more than let's say and i'm making this number up so i apologize 1500 if it costs more than the property owner has to pay for that |
| 01:53:07.02 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. I think those are my questions right now. Thank you. |
| 01:53:12.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Vice Mayor Kelman, you have your hand up, go ahead. |
| 01:53:15.36 | Janelle Kellman | Yeah, I just want to follow up on Council Member Cleveland Knowles' question. Kevin, I thought I had read somewhere that about five years ago, the Rule 20, B rules changed to include the home laterals and electrical panels in the 20B funding. Um, Is that accurate? |
| 01:53:30.88 | Kevin McGowan | Again, you probably have more experience than I do. I have to dig in a little deeper, but I think you are correct. |
| 01:53:38.76 | Janelle Kellman | Okay. And what is needed to freeze the credits? Is it just making the application? Can we make more than one application at a time? |
| 01:53:50.54 | Kevin McGowan | I think it takes us establishing an undergrounding district that freezes the funds. Can we have multiple undergrounding districts? Yes, we can. |
| 01:54:00.31 | Janelle Kellman | Do we need an underground district for both 28 and 20 B? I thought the statute said 20B required it, but it wasn't clear that 20A required it. |
| 01:54:10.76 | Kevin McGowan | 20A requires the city to establish an undergrounding district. 20B is an assessment district where within that, the property owners get assessed for undergrounding the facilities. Got it. |
| 01:54:30.37 | Janelle Kellman | I mean, it makes sense that there are two different things. I think we probably need more clarity of the difference between the assessment district and the underground district, but kind of where I'm going with this is that, and if it's just take a step back on our recommendations is that, you know, after hearing from members of the public and getting a little bit more color, I definitely think we need to have a conversation with PG&E to understand, can we bifurcate funds? Can we initiate two projects at one time? Can one be 20A and one be 20B? Can both be 20A? And just to clarify the intention I think behind creating an ad hoc committee is not for a seven month process. It would be a very short timeframe with a firm deliverable with a due date, but to just ensure that objectivity that we mentioned earlier. So, You know, do you know, can we bifurcate the monies? Can more than one project proceed at a time? I know under 20A, the city has to contribute under 20B. The city doesn't contribute. Can you can you walk us through some of that? |
| 01:55:28.57 | Kevin McGowan | You know, as you can tell, it gets complex very quickly. So my preference would be to pull in the PG&E expert on this. So their Rule 20A person, I'd prefer to bring them in and talk to the committee that we're going to be setting up, as well as their Rule 20B specialist, have them come and talk to us as well and answer those specific questions. If I start guessing at this point, I don't want to lead down the wrong path. |
| 01:55:58.17 | Janelle Kellman | Totally fair. I guess I'm just sort of highlighting some of the outstanding questions because I don't know about everybody else, but certainly I'd like to move forward. I'd like to make a decision. I want to make sure we don't lose credits and, you know, we freeze whatever we can. So I'm trying to figure out all the details that we still need to aggregate. |
| 01:56:15.36 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, I'd like to just add to your list the question. It's the staff reports that Sausalito used to in 20 projects. Um, have the 20 projects fund the public portion of the infrastructure and then pad. individuals fund the laterals, even though it was permitted to use the funding for the laterals, but it was a way to extend. |
| 01:56:40.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:42.14 | Ian Sobieski | the funds available. So I just, it would be interesting to understand if that's still permissible and I think it would also be helpful to understand I mean, a couple of members of the public said that. costs might be quite burdensome. So to understand what a lateral sort of a range, I mean, obviously, so we could understand that better. |
| 01:57:10.60 | Kevin McGowan | Very good comment. I'm taking notes and I think that we will bring in PG&E to help us with those answers. |
| 01:57:16.33 | Ian Sobieski | And related to all that, Director McGowan is just, the specific the clarification about whether the 20b projects are also dependent on establishing a district or not? |
| 01:57:29.36 | Kevin McGowan | I believe in any case they have to establish a undergrounding district. Now, if you're going to have a 20 B project that assesses each one of the parcels within that area, then you need an assessment district as well. |
| 01:57:43.30 | Ian Sobieski | Correct, but it's not 100% necessarily cost in a 20B project, there can be any split. between funds, between these credits, and the property owners in a 20B district. |
| 01:57:57.46 | Kevin McGowan | Those are some of the questions we need to explore with PG&E to get some clarification. |
| 01:58:05.76 | Janelle Kellman | in it. And Kevin, I'm sorry, is Mark Van Gorder, is he the right person for us? Or we have a contact, we can have that meeting? Expeditiously? |
| 01:58:15.43 | Kevin McGowan | Mark is not the right person for Rule 20A funds. We have another contact there at PG&E. We also have another person involved with Rule 20B projects locally here in San Rafael. So we can reach out to both those people. Mark Van Gorder will be involved, but he will direct us to who to talk to. |
| 01:58:38.16 | Melissa Blaustein | OK. So excellent discussion and excellent effort on this and kind of a long-standing concern. I know of Sausalito is undergrounding and so Anyway, I think unless somebody still has comments or sorry, questions for Director McAllen, I'm going to kick us off with some comments. And then of course, you know, Ian and our Council Member Sobieski and the Vice Mayor can can jump in too. From my perspective, it makes a lot of sense to set up an ad hoc committee and that it be council member Sobieski and the vice mayor, assuming that they are willing to do that because I know it's gonna be a lot of work, but important work for our city I think it's important to obviously what Kevin described or Director McAllen described as working closely with PG&E on getting the expert within PG&E to respond to some of these questions but also in a broader sense of some of the issues that have been brought up by 4th Street about a poll appearing and how do we address that with PG&E and other Other residents I know in town are having issues with resolving what you would think would be minor issues with PG&E, but them just taking a long time. So I think it does warrant an invitation to Mark Van Gorder to come back and talk to us at our city council about that particular issue at the same time that the ad hoc committee is going on and working on their efforts, assuming that they will come back to the committee or sorry. to the city council when they finish their um finish their review and make recommendations also you know i think obviously the priority is that we spend the credits right so the whole effort is going to be that we make sure that we don't lose those credits um and however um the ad hoc committee you know what their recommendation is right that they come back to the city council with something having evaluated all the different um efforts that that we could move forward on um and certainly that it come back before obviously before i think that the credits expire in december of 2022. Um, And so those are my comments at this point. So who would like to go next? |
| 02:00:55.12 | Ian Sobieski | Just one point of important clarification. I don't think the credits expire in 2022 if you don't get any additional credits. starting in December 22. |
| 02:01:05.83 | Melissa Blaustein | Oh, is that right? Mm-hmm. |
| 02:01:07.15 | Ian Sobieski | I'm sorry. |
| 02:01:07.33 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm sorry, I thought the staff report said that they expired, so. |
| 02:01:10.49 | Ian Sobieski | I thought the same thing, which is why I'm right about. Okay, great. Director McGowan, can you just confirm that important detail? |
| 02:01:17.90 | Kevin McGowan | You are correct, council member. The credits don't go away. but you just don't get any more assigned to the city. |
| 02:01:24.16 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, gotcha. Okay, thanks very much for that clarification. Um, At any rate, then, Perhaps the urgency is not quite as urgent as what I was thinking, but I do wanna make sure that we spend them and don't lose those credits. So. Okay. With that clarification, anybody else have any comments? |
| 02:01:41.25 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, I have a couple comments. So first of all, thank you to the Undergrounding Committee for the work and to staff. this really complex issue and clearly a learning curve for many of us. I am... Happy to support the recommendation to kick this back to the subcommittee for now. I think it would be interesting to have a larger conversation about a broader infrastructure um project at our maybe at our at a different city council meeting or at our strategic planning session or some some other time um I think that's an interesting concept that I'd want to learn more about how we see that working. I was convinced tonight, especially seeing that at least one undergrounding process that had been underway for a very long time was not captured. by our staff report that the recommendation of the subcommittee to, um, to evaluate, to get some criteria and have a more objective process is probably necessary. Do a little bit more outreach to make sure that all of the neighborhoods that might have been considering this or at least aware that we're making these credits and funds available. So I think a little more time would be good. I think we are all expressing the same urgency that we should be moving forward with these projects. So hopefully, this and I think that's a really collecting ourselves, getting some criteria, doing a little bit more public outreach won't, won't. take a lot of time. So I'm excited to get this process up and running. I think any ideas that we have to extend The credits that we have through contributions from either residents, you know, other undergrounding efforts. Our combinations of different funds will be fantastic so that we can be the most efficient if we do have several projects in the hopper so that we can hopefully get them all off the ground. And I would, as we've said, just like to understand a little bit better the timing, Um, and process here, I am worried about staffing. I know you know, that we have had PG&E is not always the most you know, easiest organization to deal with. and these projects do sound complex. So when we come back, maybe the city manager, director McGowan and the subcommittee could help us understand |
| 02:04:15.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:15.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:21.24 | Ian Sobieski | how much staff time we think each project is going to take and how, if that works with our other priorities. So thank you. |
| 02:04:31.98 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. you Vice Mayor or Council Member Sobieski? You wanna go? you |
| 02:04:39.22 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 02:04:39.39 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:04:40.08 | Ian Sobieski | No. Go right there, sir. |
| 02:04:42.29 | Janelle Kellman | Well, I agree with everything. No need to belabor it. I feel a sense of urgency around this. So maybe Councilor Sobieski and I can work with the city manager to identify, and Kevin to identify some timeframes to what the deliverable would be over a specific period of time and get those members, Mayor Hoffman, I'll point it to the ad hoc committee so we can make sure this happens expeditiously. I was relieved to hear the credits don't actually expire simply and the program is not ending. It's just the last allocation of work credits was that due date. I also think it would be very very helpful to meet with the rule 28 program liaison which i believe from the fourth street folks is lizette burtis so kevin i mentioned her name just to make sure you've been talking to her and if not it looks like yep thumbs up great so let's see if we can get that call on the calendar it was early as uh first thing next week I think she could walk us through how we qualify for the project per the Rule 28 tariff, how they approve the boundary map and the resolution and provide some guidance. And I think we need that in order to really cost it out from a staff perspective. So just want to express that urgency and thank you. You know, thanks for the members of the public for their knowledge and insight. It is complicated and for the council members patients here. So thank you. |
| 02:06:02.75 | Ian Sobieski | I would just add, no one wants to waste credits. but there are some things to explore. But one thing, the very situation on 4th Street is going to repeat itself again, almost with surety. Someone else is going to wake up one day and find a big recloser installed in front of their house. And all the same arguments that are alarming around the ionization of dirt. swept onto the power lines by our wind. combined with humidity causing spark arcing and fires, can occur on some other street with just as much as it could occur on Fourth Street or anywhere else, very much. So we do have the bigger question. about what we're gonna do. about that and what we can do, just what's within the realm of possibility. we don't want to let the perfect be the enemy, the good, or for the destination being the enemy progress, but still these are things to be engaged with now. And even such a thing as, you know, we lost some credits to this other community that got them from us. My understanding is we can borrow credits. We don't know anything about the process considering borrowing credits. or or leveraging the credits we have to extend our ability to underground as much of our critical infrastructure as possible. And so there are definitely some things that we need to explore and it is a big enchilada to choose. So how to strike the correct balance is something I think we'll to try to figure out, but we definitely want to measure our success by progress. So I hope we can all work together to do that. But it does take, I think, everyone trying to grow together and be fair-minded towards the broad objective. |
| 02:07:48.27 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. I did want to mention I had my notes, but I skipped over it. with regard to the issue of the broader infrastructure. And I'm glad that council member for the Knowles brought that up and reminded me of it. But, but I do as moving forward that we need to, I believe we need to scope out a little bit. We sort of stovepipe our infrastructure issues in different groups, but I think as a council, we need to step back and sort of look at the broader scope of Um, all of the infrastructure needs and how they all interrelate because they all do in Sausalito. And many of them have to do with our disaster preparedness and safety issues. And so I also wanted to report that I think about a month ago, I spoke with a member of Senator Padilla's staff, and who told me that infrastructure is one of Senator Padilla's core concerns, at least for his, for the short, for this year and perhaps next year as well, and that there are some significant federal dollars coming down the pike. So, we want to think about, big, big things that he can help us with and secure funding for. And so as part of that effort, I we want to sort of get back to the basics also and look at Um, look at how our infrastructure in relation to Sausalito. So, um, Anyway. With regard to this issue though of undergrounding, I'm glad, I think we have consensus that we're gonna, that the ad hoc committee will be Council Member Sobieski and the Vice Mayor. Thank you very much to both of you for working on this to this point and continuing to work on this. And I would hope that, perhaps you would be able to come back with a update report or status report. I don't know in the next, what do you think the next four months or something? Is that two? |
| 02:09:38.48 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 02:09:38.49 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:09:38.53 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 02:09:38.87 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:09:38.90 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 02:09:38.92 | Melissa Blaustein | to optimize |
| 02:09:39.47 | Janelle Kellman | STICK. I don't want to promise a time, but I'd like to be sooner, but we'll talk to the city manager. |
| 02:09:44.92 | Melissa Blaustein | THE CITY IS NOT GOING TO BE Thank you. Okay, that's fine. Just update us as you move forward at our committee reports. Okay, and with that, we'll move on to our next, last business item on our agenda, which is, Council protocols. And so this is an item to discuss the |
| 02:10:03.28 | Unknown | you. |
| 02:10:11.13 | Melissa Blaustein | How... |
| 02:10:11.38 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:10:12.65 | Melissa Blaustein | how matters end up on our agenda and the protocols that we approved last March. in our discussion for that. And so I'll note in the staff report it gives a pretty good recitation of how we have addressed agenda setting and how things make it on our agenda. Um, Essentially we have a rolling agenda item list that is added to by city council members. At each city council meeting at the very end of the agenda, there's a section called new items on the agenda. Council members suggest those and those go on our list and we have an agenda setting which is myself and the vice mayor and we work with staff to decide how matters get on a particular city council agenda. and I may let the city manager weigh in about how staff how those staff input for the city council agendas, how that occurs? And then the agenda setting committee tries to balance what we have, what we think we have time for, what we budget for time-wise in keeping with, you know, the general directive from the city council that we'd like to we'd like to keep our meetings to concluding in a reasonable hour. So That's generally it. Specifically, if you're really interested, the public can look at our our agenda tonight, the actual protocols are on there and as is the staff report. And so city manager, if you wanna weigh in on how the staff |
| 02:12:01.60 | Chris Zapata | Just to be brief, Mayor. This is City Council Meeting Number 725 for me. And everybody has their approach to agenda setting. And for someone that's new to an organization, this conversation is really helpful. so that we get the intent of the council as we move forward or agenda setting. One thing I want to note and make clear There is an agenda setting process, as you noted, it's been amended. in Sausalito. recently as well and I was asked to be brought forward at the last council meeting so we bringing it we're bringing it forward The one thing that should be clear is 75% of the agenda for the most part is typically brought forward by staff. And I think if we're talking about items that relate to things that the council wants brought forward or wants pushed forward, that's where this direction should be centered. And with an understanding that, You do have staff capacity issues at times, so I appreciate the questions. But you also have just the normal flow of a city where contracts, agreements, projects are brought forward because they have to be because they're dates on those agreements and expectations. again we're really talking about the 25 percent of essentially it's the business items the consent item is typically staff driven and At times, through the purview and inside of the agenda setting committee, Thoughts that maybe this one's going to take a whole lot of bandwidth and community input or time from the council So we want to manage that so I like to say agenda setting is not an exact science. It's an art and So hopefully we can become all on the same page with your direction tonight as to how proceed or how we keep things the same in the future. |
| 02:13:47.23 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Any council member questions for the city manager? or Any other questions? Okay, no questions? Then I'll open this up for public comment. I'm not seeing any hands raised. |
| 02:14:08.23 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, you are correct. There are no hands raised. |
| 02:14:10.99 | Melissa Blaustein | very well okay then i'll bring it back up to the council for discussion So who would like to lead us on? |
| 02:14:18.22 | Ian Sobieski | I can lead off. I was the one that sort of asked for this at the last meeting. So I want to just thank city manager, clerk's office, and agenda setting for preparing their report in front of us. And I already see it's just such a much more thorough, robust future agenda for September 28th that actually looks like kind of what we used to get. It looks pretty fleshed out about what we'll be considering. I also want to thank everyone for putting our homelessness and housing discussion on that agenda at our next meeting, which was also something I was really have been hoping to carry forward in a public setting. Um, So, you know, I think this is kind of getting back to sort of the way that things, you know, kind of laid out in our, policies and procedures and if we can keep going, moving things, you know, having these agendas that are um, kind of more it's more clear about what we'll be discussing at our next meeting and then even adding more detail for the second meeting out. It's just really helpful. And— just really helps me understand kind of where we're going in the next month or so. Um, the only comments I had really were on the more long-term list. It's been broken up into categories. which we kind of haven't used before and aren't really aligned with our him. strategic plan. I was just one I didn't know where those came from, but You know, I think, Anyway, I would probably just recommend that we put them in the buckets that we've got for our five strategic planning goals since most of them fit in there. Um, I would highlight A few things on the list that have been priorities for quite a while, including the EV charging stations, sea level rise, and the Bank of America building and then I know the vice mayor had mentioned at our last meeting kind of an update on our um, diversity, equity and inclusion. work as a council. So those are things that leap out at me along with our Measure O renewal. um, which I think we need to strategize. not the use of measure O funds. that we already have, but bringing that uh, tax back to the voters at some point. So anyway, thank you. I think this is really great progress and I hope we can continue to keep |
| 02:16:57.68 | Unknown | ANYWHERE. |
| 02:17:02.78 | Ian Sobieski | and updating a list and making sure that it's a real assessment of where we think we're going to be. At our next meetings, understanding of course, that staff time and resources and other things happen in the interim. Well, I'm not. require adjustments. Thank you. |
| 02:17:22.02 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Um, Any other council member discussion? |
| 02:17:29.29 | Melissa Blaustein | That's it. |
| 02:17:31.45 | Ian Sobieski | Well, sure, I mean, just like that, It would be great, I think, to, you know, we have a There's a new sheriff in town, there's a new city council, there's a new verv to you. get things done, do things differently, and do things better. And I... They think that We probably all aspire to the same thing, which is increased more time for consideration, deliberation, better transparency to the public and I think that would all be enhanced if there was greater notice for what's coming up on the next agenda. So in my mind, Amen. I'd be curious to know if others agree, something to aspire to if our future agenda session on our meetings actually was looking at a draft agenda for the next meeting with the high likelihood that those items would actually be Um, able to be at the meeting and that the agenda setting committee uh, do that with the idea that the staff reports would actually be done substantially earlier than they're currently done. So that's something that is an aspirational goal, but currently, the, standard operating procedures that have staff reports done toward the end of the week. immediately prior to the city council meeting which means that there is very little if any time for us to reach out to staff to ask questions directly and and respond to the staff reporting from outside of this public meeting. And again, I'm just talking about directly the staff members to educate ourselves about additional questions. I think we'd do a better job if that was there. |
| 02:19:22.89 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, thanks. Thanks very much. Council member Sobieski, can I just note? So did you see the attachment that has the September 28th and October 12 draft agendas. |
| 02:19:34.42 | Ian Sobieski | You know, I cannot seem to find that. So the draft I'm looking at does not have that. And I understood that that was done because |
| 02:19:42.13 | Ian Sobieski | It's not a draft agenda like doesn't look like a draft agenda. It's okay. I, my screen, you can't see it because of the. that graphing, but it's a table. |
| 02:19:50.32 | Ian Sobieski | that graphing, but it's a table. you Yeah, then I am looking at that. I would think that that's a little different than what I would think we would aspire to is something that that is worked on with staff so that we actually have what the next agenda would be. If that was possible to do, I think that would be beneficial to everyone in the community who would know roughly what's likely to be on the next agenda two weeks ahead. rather than As that list gets longer, it's harder to know what's actually going to be on the agenda And it's even more beneficial if we get the stock reports early. But I guess that's a question for all of us. They were on the same team. doing what to I ask those. City Manager. all of us to kind of shift the schedule so that we get the stock reports earlier. in the current media. That's sort of a question. I'm not sure. and we want to set that as a goal. I think it'd be beneficial if there's more time to read or time to actually directly go to Kevin McGowan or whoever and ask some questions and educate ourselves. Highlights to staff, the kinds of questions they might get in public to be ready for. I think it might enhance the entire dialogue. at our decision making. as well as the video. be more clued in to what's going on. |
| 02:21:10.03 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. So let me just say specifically for the public who may not be used to looking at it, If you click on our agenda that's posted online, and if you scroll all the way down to which is called future agenda items. There's two items used almost always attached. And I did check today to make sure that they have been on past agenda items. there's a future agenda items for the next city accounts meeting and there's tentative agenda items for the next two city council meetings. So those things change though. I mean, to be clear and to be fair, they do adjust as things arise and, you know, as, that. as other more important or more urgent things may arise or we didn't get information that we thought we were gonna get and so the matter's not quite baked yet to go or ready yet to go to city council. But I did talk to actually our city manager today about moving our the issuance of staff reports forward. In other words, so that we get them earlier. I do agree that that would be tremendously helpful for us in our preparation. And so Chris, do you want to weigh in on that? I mean, there are, as you know, there are many moving parts that result in a five page staff report. So go ahead, Chris. |
| 02:22:38.22 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, if I can, again, I go back to there's a legal requirement for posting of agendas, and certainly it's helpful to be in advance of that. In Sausalito's case, we've been putting stuff out in the last couple of meetings on Thursdays. So to Councilmember Sobieski's point about, you know, is that really enough time to do the homework you need to do on something that may be complex or lengthy? And agendas here have been fairly lengthy, fairly complex. So I get that there is a desire to have it out early. What I would need is some lead time. to work with our staff, our city department, the agenda setting committee to figure out when you could implement an earlier MR. release date for the agenda. and the earlier you release it, I think the one thing that you do is you create some |
| 02:23:21.24 | Unknown | and it's not. |
| 02:23:26.65 | Chris Zapata | flexibility issues. So if you're releasing something on a Monday, for the following Tuesday. then what you've done is you've really uh, created an opportunity to ask questions and to do things more, but it's done and it's out there. So you might amend that at the council meeting or some other way, but I'm not sure how that would work. But that's something we need to think through. So getting it early is I think something we can aspire to and we should do, we can do. But we just need some lead time to do that because there are some things right now that... are in the hopper that We know are going to happen. And so I think the first thing I would do for this council and the community in terms of public noticing is give you an annual calendar. And that annual calendar should have, you know, easy stuff that we know is going to happen For instance, in June, we know we're going to adopt a budget You know, in October, November, we know there's going to be a priority setting session. uh, You know, February, March, we know there are other things going to happen that relate to the finance and the whole budget process. And we can start to plug in stuff that we know, so you can see that a year out. And then if we look to add things that are or to enhance our process by enhancing the date for review or the time for review to a week, that can happen. It's just going to take some time to implement. |
| 02:24:39.38 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:24:49.12 | Chris Zapata | And I'm not saying six months, three months, I'm talking a month or two, so that we could kind of build into that structure But it would be a change in the business model here. You've been putting stuff out on Thursday for I don't know how many years here. So if we put it out on Monday, we're going to have to go and amend our budget or agenda calendar so that we can get the staff reports up and out in time for the council to have them. to have a whole weaker 10 days for review is what I would say. |
| 02:25:18.53 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. All right, thanks. Yeah, council member Blasting. |
| 02:25:23.97 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, one thing before you run mayor. |
| 02:25:25.18 | Melissa Blaustein | You run the |
| 02:25:26.06 | Chris Zapata | Sure. |
| 02:25:26.14 | Melissa Blaustein | Sure. |
| 02:25:27.39 | Chris Zapata | But again, And the one thing I really want to stress to the council on behalf of myself and the staff. there's got to be a little wiggle room and flexibility or a caveat built in that this is how you want it to happen, but there will be circumstances and situations where it may have to change. And so to reserve that, you know, in terms of, okay, we would commit to doing this, you know, eight days out, nine days out, ten days out. But there will be some instances where we'd have to pull something from an agenda or amend something in an agenda because new information could come forward in that eight day period or nine day period or that 10 day period. So I wouldn't make it a hard and fast decision. If it isn't all in within 10 days, the world's going to end. It's be something that we should start to do, just as we do on Thursdays. A couple of times when I got here, our agendas went out on Fridays. |
| 02:26:09.43 | Unknown | it is |
| 02:26:21.26 | Chris Zapata | And although we met the legal intent, it wasn't fair to the public or the community to see something over a weekend and then one work day and then the council meeting that Tuesday. So we can do better. We will do better. But just make sure that there's some built in understanding that It may not happen 100% of the time. |
| 02:26:37.52 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Councilman Blaustein, go ahead. |
| 02:26:40.23 | Jill Hoffman | Great, so thank you Mayor Hoffman and Vice Mayor Kellman for your work on the agenda setting committee and pulling this together to the city manager and I think this is really great from a transparency standpoint and just for our community to know what's going on because the purpose of posting the agenda and the purpose of these requirements is so that the members of the public HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO be informed as we are and so that we can do our job well by getting the information in advance. So I wholeheartedly support Councilmember Sobieski's suggestion that we might receive the agendas in advance, but I would suggest Per city managers Apata's comments, and obviously what we all know about changing nature Maybe there's an emergency measure, or maybe there's still something that's not fully baked. Perhaps we create a process where there's a draft agenda, which is posted online by X number of days in advance, and then a commitment to the final agenda being posted upon that Thursday. And that way it's most likely to be the agenda, but from a legal standpoint, we have opportunities to make final changes or things might still come off of the agenda, but that would allow us to prepare and be thinking about what questions we want to ask of staff and give more time And also, I mean, even tonight, and we hear this every meeting, but for instance, tonight, a member of the public said, I just heard about this from so-and-so, And I would like to have more of the public being aware for quite a bit of time so that they have an opportunity to prepare their public comment in the same way that we prepare for these meetings. And given that we're already struggling to read through all of the packets in advance of the meeting, I would imagine that it would be helpful to the public as well. So anything that promotes transparency and more public engagement, and I would suggest some sort of draft agenda being published. So for instance, what we have now for the September 28th meeting, if we wanted to be following along with this process, we could formalize it a little bit and by next Monday, have it posted as the draft agenda subject to change with whatever staff reports were ready, knowing that there might be additions or changes. |
| 02:28:38.79 | Melissa Blaustein | So, okay, thank you for that. I will, for the members of the public, encourage them to sign up for our socio-currents It goes out and it has the agenda and it's very helpful to have that. So what I would suggest at this point is that the city manager has, yes. Okay. So let me, let me finish my comments. Councilman Sobieski and then I'll come back to you. Um, I would suggest that the city managers has heard our comments. And so let's see, let's go through one cycle of this and see how we can, or maybe a month and two, I guess two cycles and see how we can adjust because I'm It is. putting an agenda out and having a staff reports as as I know Councilmember Clevel-Knowles knows, as well as Councilmember Vice Mayor Kelman, because they've served on other committees and of course the city council with Councilmember Clevel-Knowles. So it's an enormous lift to get an agenda out with staff reports. I mean, it's just a lot of work and it's a lot, um, for the city manager to manage and it's a lot for the department heads to get all of the information that they need to write their staff reports and to run it through legal and to run it through finance. And so, our finance director. I mean, I think if we, anyway I think if we adjust going forward incrementally I think it won't be as burdensome on the staff as as saying we're going to start this you know next week but I certainly Um, I agree with that. all of the statements about that we need to be prepared and the earlier the better for us. for the council and for this public. Um, ahead go ahead council member sobyoska you had your hand up and then i'm going to get a public comment |
| 02:30:23.84 | Ian Sobieski | I was just gonna say that it was a very positive vibe, very positive tone here, I love it, and I echo So this echo what councilman Blas the way she framed it, the idea of a draft agenda. The stock reports when they're ready to go is great. I think the city manager is way of characterizing it was spot on, which is, there's a standard operating procedure, but there are always exceptions. The current standard operating procedure is basically to have stack reports published on Thursday. And I would just like the staff, the stair drop raising procedure to be different to to be a different day earlier. not taking away at all from the possibility, in fact likelihood, of exceptions when there's new information to revise staff reports. Um, for instance, in responsive directive. council member inquiries between the first publication and later, but also with new information or new issues that come up. So I just want to say, and obviously it'll take some time to implement this, to transition from one to another. Uh, Deadlines often clarify work, so shifting our standard operating procedure deadline up will be helpful, I hope, for all of us. |
| 02:31:36.40 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. If there's no further All right. I guess we are still in questions. |
| 02:31:40.25 | Ian Sobieski | I guess we're going to Vice Mayor had a question or comment. |
| 02:31:44.38 | Melissa Blaustein | you |
| 02:31:44.43 | Janelle Kellman | Go ahead. We're still in question. I don't have a question. I was just gonna kind of. I appreciate the tenor and tone of the dialogue and just want to make sure we're all ready. So I just want to make sure that we're all ready. So I just want to make sure that we're ready. We really are all on the same page about the public engagement making sure we have enough time to to prep I remember planning commission agendas always came out on Friday and we met on the next Wednesday and there's a lot of site visits and it's it's it's busy time so I looked to the city manager to advise us on how to prioritize with staff. I want to make sure we're not burdening staff in a way that makes it untenable. You know, we look to you, Chris, to give us guidance on that and see what's in the realm of possible. |
| 02:32:30.47 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, at this point then I'm gonna open up public comment. And I see one hand up. at this point. |
| 02:32:38.16 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, we do have Eva Casante. And Eva, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 02:32:47.19 | Eva Casante | I'm sorry, I'm for general public comment items not on the agenda. Oh, got it. |
| 02:32:52.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Oh, got it. Thank you. |
| 02:32:53.55 | Eva Casante | Thank you. |
| 02:32:53.67 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That'll be our next item. Okay, I see, I still see, I think Mr. Sudo's got his hand up. |
| 02:33:02.97 | Heidi Scoble | David, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 02:33:08.15 | David Sudo | Thanks. This is a great conversation. I would just highlight the issue with staff time. you know, it may sound it's kind of an inverse relationship if we have too many items on our council meetings, we make lots of decisions, but actually have staff perform much less work. You know, I looking at this week's city council meeting, I can imagine that Kevin McGowan did very little except for preparing for this meeting for the last week. And there's a ton of capital projects that he's splitting his duties with one other engineer with. So I'm really concerned about you know, we have a lot of important issues that we would like to talk about but we really need to figure out whether we really need to talk about them uh is what i guess my comment would be thanks |
| 02:34:10.08 | Melissa Blaustein | OKAY. THANK YOU. All right, I think our city manager has our direction on this. Does anybody need to make any further comments at this point? I'm not seeing any hands raised by the council, so, Hold on, Council Member. |
| 02:34:26.60 | Ian Sobieski | Sorry, I was looking for my unmute. The only thing I, you know, looking, just looking over this long-term list again, |
| 02:34:28.19 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. it. |
| 02:34:34.13 | Ian Sobieski | there's a lot on here that's not, I think that we've addressed already or you know, it might be worth just going through it. and making a note about what's going to come off. you know, |
| 02:34:49.23 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. |
| 02:34:50.04 | Ian Sobieski | Um, because some things are still alive clearly, but there's a lot on here that somebody mentioned at one meeting, but you know, like North street stairs update, like that's been updated several times in the currents we know. |
| 02:34:50.14 | Melissa Blaustein | doesn't |
| 02:35:02.86 | Ian Sobieski | We're waiting for the railing. Like, I don't think it needs to be on here. |
| 02:35:07.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:35:08.42 | Ian Sobieski | Just as an example, so it might just, maybe we could clean up this list so that it's more current and I don't know who, who could do that agenda setting or staff or, or whatever, but, and maybe just make notes and then talk about it at our next meeting. |
| 02:35:21.21 | Melissa Blaustein | I think, yeah. |
| 02:35:21.55 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah. |
| 02:35:22.88 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, no, that's a good point. And the city manager, I think we talked about it at one of our agenda setting in August about scrubbing our list and, and prioritizing a little bit better. Um, I would say that everybody's got, you know, the future gen dimes right now. We may, maybe at our next meeting, we'll attach an annotated you know, an annotated, updated future agenda items with how, you know, and then we can discuss that. under future agenda items if anybody disagrees and that would be the time to bring it up and people adjust. Okay, Ian, yes, you have your hand up. |
| 02:36:00.83 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, so we're in the discussion period now. |
| 02:36:03.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes, we are. |
| 02:36:04.44 | Ian Sobieski | I have a related thing since we're in this is the last business item and it's germane to this topic we all talked about wanting to ensure that the meetings don't go too late with the goal of and sharing that that we deliberate in a wise way and are at our best. uh and it might tie into david pseudo's point about being sure that we that we manage our agendas with the thought of being able to be parsimonious in how we spend our time. So I'm wondering what we all think, since we have some time to talk about it, about the idea of being upset, work fills the time allotted. actually setting an ending time for our city of Hillsby. actually saying that the last business item will be at 10 o'clock. And if we go past 10 o'clock, unless we choose to go later, the expectation is, that we will push that next business item into the subsequent meeting. And I'm wondering what my colleagues think about doing that. where obviously, Pros and cons to do nothing. |
| 02:37:13.27 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, you know, Last time I was mayor, I tried to institute that and I did that a couple of times where We, when we were past 10 o'clock, if we still had him I mean, you know, if we had something on the agenda, then we would just push it to the next, a future agenda item, right? Like a future agenda. And so One of the issues with that was that people would stay. you know, until past 10 o'clock because they're waiting for their item to get on the agenda and everybody's ready and the staff is ready and they're all prepared. and then you push it. there's that. The other expectation, I think that the goal is, and what I've been trying to do this year is to really focus on our agenda and only put things that I thought we could get, we could complete by 10 o'clock. So we're at 946 right now. And we, this is our fifth, this is our, this is our fourth agenda item. Keeping in mind that we had a two hour closed session prior. So. You know, I, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. obviously a comment from the rest of the city council, Let's try to keep ourselves disciplined during the meeting. I'm trying not to have any more than three items on the agenda. And if it looks like it's a long item, then we're only putting two on. or we're rearranging things like we did last week where we put the, you know, we put a hearing on prior at a special meeting and then we rolled in, which made it a really long day for us because then we did go till 8. um, So I think let's try, I would ask that our policy goal is that we don't go past 10 p.m. and that the agenda setting committee and the staff really look hard at what's on the agenda. Does it warrant? a decision, is it something that warrants some you know city council time which is precious, right? Our time is precious when we're here. in a public meeting. And so does it warrant that? That's the number one. Does it need a vote? Is it something that staff needs a vote on? Is it something that, staff needs direction on and if those two then yeah it probably does warrant being on the agenda but Otherwise, you know, the agenda setting will try to be about what gets on the agenda, but you know, We as a council, we try to be disciplined during the meeting. I think also is helpful. So it, And I think let's start with the policy of we will be finished by 10 o'clock. in our, Right now we're 947. So is anybody opposed to starting off with that as a policy? And then if we need to move forward more specific procedure for finishing by 10 and we can address that. maybe in the future or tonight. Thank you. |
| 02:40:02.73 | Janelle Kellman | Yeah. |
| 02:40:02.92 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:40:02.97 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. |
| 02:40:03.00 | Melissa Blaustein | Mayor. |
| 02:40:03.39 | Janelle Kellman | Thank you. is not a hand of opposition. I think it's a great conversation because it's a bottom up and a top down approach, right? From the bottom up, it gives us some diligence around and discipline around agenda setting and how we pick the items that are on the agenda and with an eye towards making sure we're all prepared and we're giving them enough time. And then from the top down, I think it recognizes that we don't ever want to rush through anything. We'll never want to give anything short shrift. And we want to make sure that we have enough time on the agenda to spend meaningful, engagement on it and we're not asking members of the public as well to stay till midnight one in the morning. That's a that's a hardship as well. So and this is a good conversation and a good goal. to have an understanding of we're going to be efficient with our time, we're going to be efficient in our comments and how we set the agenda with an eye to providing the best customer service to the members of the public that join us and not asking people to stay on until wee hours of the morning to hear their items. |
| 02:41:03.58 | Melissa Blaustein | Is that okay if we move forward in that way? Right. for right now right okay so let's let's do that our our policy is keeping in mind we're probably gonna not make it tonight but um |
| 02:41:07.48 | Janelle Kellman | for right now. So let's go. |
| 02:41:14.92 | Melissa Blaustein | that we're going to finish by that we're going to finish by 10. Like that's our stated policy. So, okay, moving on then we're finished with this item. We're moving on to our next, Um, Okay, so here's one thing that we can do though. So item eight is, you know, matters, you know, appointments to boards, future agenda items, other reports of significance from our city manager report you know, one thing we can do to shorten our meetings is that once we get to this item, we can take public comment on all of these things and then adjourn. and deal with committee reports. Future Genyms, of course, is on there and already there. and figure out how to how to account for those reports in a different method. So we could have written reports that are attached to our agenda for the next meeting with regard to committee reports or things of significance. So that's one thing we might do. Um, So... Let's think about that and then maybe we'll implement that at our next city council meeting. So just so everybody's aware. So. Okay. Moving on to our next, which we are in item eight. Um, and so, We'll now take public comment on items |
| 02:42:26.42 | Unknown | AND I THINK IT'S A GOOD |
| 02:42:31.28 | Melissa Blaustein | Oh, sorry. We're on 8A, which is public comment on items not on the agenda. |
| 02:42:36.31 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, we still need to take public comment under item number six. |
| 02:42:43.32 | Melissa Blaustein | Oh, pardon me. Oh, 6A, you're right, I'm sorry. I was, I scrolled too far. you Oh, six days communications, okay. Um, Pardon me. Serge, do you read that or do I read that on public communications? |
| 02:42:59.51 | Heidi Scoble | You read that, Madam Mayor. |
| 02:43:01.78 | Melissa Blaustein | Very good, thank you. Okay, public communications. This is time for city council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda, except in very limited situations. State law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. However, the council may briefly respond to statements made or questions posed by a member of the public. ask clarifying questions, make a brief announcement, or make a brief report on his or her activities. The council may also refer matters not on the agenda to city staff or direct that the subject be agendized for a future meeting. Um, Okay. And so I see three hands raised. |
| 02:43:42.85 | Heidi Scoble | And Eva Crisante, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 02:43:50.48 | Eva Casante | Thank you. So this is for non-agenda. Am I correct? That is correct. Thank you, Mayor Hoffman. Yeah, I was intrigued by Councilmember Blaustein's conversion to transparency. She was advocating for that about 15 minutes ago. saying that the public deserved it. And I really agree. And unfortunately, that's not what I saw from Councilmember Blaustein on July 27th when She took a very bullying, attitude toward people who were concerned about what had been pretty much a sham petition distributed by Connor Johnston for a cannabis storefront. And there was a lot of information that there was a 14 page writer on that petition that apparently the the nice older ladies who were helping to distribute it were not aware of, and thereby you know, they, they, they helped promote something that was basically only going to benefit Mr. Johnston. Mr. Johnston subsequently claimed that YOU KNOW, WITH REGARD TO QUESTIONS ABOUT WHY, UM, a cannabis storefront wouldn't go to a black owned business. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE He said that that wasn't fair because he was Mexican-American Um, what. What he didn't tell us and what Melissa Blaustein, who knew, and what Susan Cleveland Knowles, who knew about this, didn't tell us is that Connor Johnson is the nephew of a California state senator. His father was the head of a very powerful department within the city of San Francisco. And his cousin, PJ Johnston, was the right-hand man for Willie Brown. This is a very powerful political family. and we deserve some transparency regarding that. which we did not get. And so I think there needs to be some response. from Ms. Blaustein and Ms. Knowles specifically regarding the lack of transparency since Ms. Knowles is very familiar with Mr. Johnston. IN BECAUSE OF HER POSITION |
| 02:46:12.35 | Unknown | AND, |
| 02:46:14.66 | Eva Casante | as a deputy city attorney in San Francisco. And of course, Mr. Johnston is known as the the whisperer to Mayor London Breed. I think he had called himself the the person who would go out and wrestle an alligator on her behalf. So there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff out that simply wasn't explained to the public. and very much Not transparent, Councilmember Blanstein. Thank you. |
| 02:46:49.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:46:51.65 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is Steven Woodside. Steven, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 02:46:51.68 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:47:03.29 | Steven Woodside | Hi there. I don't know if you can see me or hear me. |
| 02:47:06.19 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes, we can see and hear you. Thank you. |
| 02:47:06.80 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay, I'm on my phone now because I had a, unstable connection but I did hear most of your meeting. And in the interest of time, and so maybe you can end by 10, I'm simply gonna say I submitted rather lengthy kind of memo to you yesterday. I hope you have a chance to read it. It really deals more scope of your authority in land use matters to attach conditions, et cetera. And I won't go into detail now other than to say that in the matter that you heard last in the special hearing on August 31st, The neighbors are hoping that you will remain vigilant on the enforcement side of the conditions that you that you adopted in that matter, and we're pretty confident that you will because |
| 02:47:50.20 | Unknown | in that matter. |
| 02:47:54.69 | Steven Woodside | I think important to all of us. And we appreciate your time and energy that you put into all of this. |
| 02:47:56.41 | Unknown | you |
| 02:48:01.09 | Steven Woodside | And again, in the interest of time, thanks. And hopefully you can end tonight at 10. |
| 02:48:06.07 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:48:11.60 | Heidi Scoble | Our next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker. Sandra, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 02:48:17.22 | Sandra Bushmaker | I'm back. Good evening, everybody again. I sent you a follow letter about my unhappiness about you moving the comments for items not on the agenda. to the end of the agenda. I think is a courteous as a courtesy to your constituents who put you on the dais. I think it's really important that you're not require clients or clients. You don't require residents who and participants who want to speak to you briefly to be able to do so at the beginning, instead of waiting through the end of the agenda. I know your job is hard. I know your agendas are difficult. I know the homework is difficult. And not to mention all the work that you have to do on other committees, countywide stuff, and all the things that task forces, I know it's difficult. But that's what you asked for when you ran for the city council. So as a courtesy to our citizens and to our individuals who want to speak before the council for items not on the agenda, I plead with you to put them back on. When I was on the council, we moved it from the end of the agenda. where it is now to the beginning of the agenda for this very purpose. But we did limit the number of people that could speak. And I know that you've limited time to two minutes in some cases, and I hope I don't spend anywhere near that. uh, And you don't have to take action. All you have to do is listen. And if you want to limit the number of people, have at that. but I think as a courtesy to your constituents, please put this at the beginning of the agenda. Not all of our residents and constituents can stay up as late as I do and as you do. So, but let's keep be courteous to them and let them have the opportunity to speak for items that do not appear on the agenda. That's just as an important item. as any other item you have on the agenda. So with that, I'll close and say good night. I plead with you to please move this back to the beginning of the agenda. Thank you. |
| 02:50:34.80 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. I don't see any further hands. Is that correct, Mr. Clerk? |
| 02:50:40.29 | Heidi Scoble | Madam Mayor, you are correct. We have no other hands raised. |
| 02:50:43.65 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:50:43.66 | Jill Hoffman | Madam Mayor, apologies. Holly Holderman is having a hard time raising her hand and would like to speak. |
| 02:50:51.54 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, I see Holly down there. |
| 02:50:52.01 | Jill Hoffman | I see you. |
| 02:50:53.42 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:50:53.47 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:50:53.57 | Melissa Blaustein | She's an |
| 02:50:53.58 | Heidi Scoble | She's unmuted now. |
| 02:50:54.14 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:50:54.16 | Melissa Blaustein | you Okay, go ahead. |
| 02:50:56.81 | Mary Wagner | Hi, I can't get the video, oh, here we go. Hi, can you hear me? |
| 02:51:01.92 | Melissa Blaustein | We can hear you, yes, and we can see you as well. Go ahead. |
| 02:51:04.70 | Mary Wagner | Go ahead. Um, So I was just a little unclear about procedurally where we go with this whole 20 AD. funding committee ad hoc or whatever and whether or not citizens can get on this committee or is this going to be a closed door thing where decisions are made and we you know either rise or fall based on the decisions of an unknown committee Because our group is really solidified in the last year, and it's gone from starting out at outrage and an aesthetic outrage to real dire safety concerns. And so I think there's some interest in our group to get involved further. So could you comment on that? |
| 02:51:50.96 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:51:51.48 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:51:51.52 | Melissa Blaustein | I would not comment because we've already discussed that on our agenda, but I would ask you one question. Which group are you a part of? I'm part of Fanta. |
| 02:51:59.97 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:52:00.00 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:52:00.11 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:52:00.71 | Melissa Blaustein | We're the fourth and north. |
| 02:52:00.75 | Mary Wagner | THE FAMILY. Thank you. |
| 02:52:02.47 | Melissa Blaustein | Oh, gotcha, okay. |
| 02:52:03.43 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:52:04.22 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. |
| 02:52:04.24 | Mary Wagner | from the park. |
| 02:52:04.92 | Melissa Blaustein | Bye. |
| 02:52:04.97 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:52:05.07 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, okay, thank you. We don't normally comment on questions from, you know, comments, but I will note that We did hire, we did. I almost said we did hire an ad hoc committee, but we did appoint an ad hoc committee that's council member Sobieski and vice mayor Kelman. I am confident that they are gonna reach out to your group your group is going to be part of the process and part of their assessment. They are also available by email. Their emails are on the city website. So I would encourage you and your group to send them an email that you would like to meet with them. and then follow up. And with that, thank you so much for your public comment. And we're going to move on to our next agenda item. Thank you. Okay, so next agenda item is, Council member committee reports. since, since we didn't start our new effort of doing this by written follow-up if we're not done by 10. I know that our homeless working group wanted to make a short update. So I'll let councilman Blaustein proceed with that. any other committee reports anybody wants to make. |
| 02:53:15.47 | Jill Hoffman | Great, and I know that this is gonna be on the agenda either on the 28th or the 4th. whatever day in October the following |
| 02:53:22.52 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:53:23.35 | Jill Hoffman | meeting is but i do want to give somewhat of a comprehensive update because it has been a little while since we've really given an overview of what what the committee has been doing and what what is on the committee's docket going forward so just kind of as a recap of some of the tasks that are ongoing for the committee um mayor hoffman meets weekly with the richardson bay regional authority and so do our um and i want to give a big thank you to members of the working group, especially Chief Rohrabacher and Lieutenant Gregory, and of course City Managers of Hodden and City Attorney Wagner for attending these meetings as well, because in addition to the RBRA coordinated operation meetings, they are continuing to manage our successful safe harbor program. We've also decided to go ahead and continue the urban alchemy contract and we have at least another 60 days of working with urban alchemy Um, And recently we agreed to fund the Southern Marin outreach funding proposition brought forth from the county for what's called service utilization needs. So each of the municipalities across the county have contributed funds from their Recovery Act dollars to provide for resources for the unhoused through a new program that will identify vouchers to hopefully get the most critically in need people housed. and this will be used specifically to address the encampment in Sausalito, as well as the encampments in San Rafael and in Novato. Just some of the things that everyone is aware that we've done, of course, at the Marinship Park, we've developed enhanced water service and trash service storage and fencing in a transitional area. We approved the parking permit process to include the marine ship parking area. And we have started a monthly communication with proper adjacent property owners in the Marin ship area to make sure we're aware of what's happening. Um, and, and we're aware of their concerns. So some of the things that we're working on right now is mayor Hoffman is on the phone pretty much every day with all of our county and state leaders asking for any and all resources that are possible and exploring every avenue. We're also um, working on trying to provide as much environmental design and safety advice as we can to property owners and to work with the elected officials in Novato and San Rafael who are in similar scenarios to communicate best practices. We're also consistently working with Urban Alchemy on what potential new service levels we might be able to explore with them. And we're exploring other comprehensive service provisions and providers who might be able to help us But what's really critical as well is we're trying to finally identify what a clear budget impact this might be for our city And knowing that we're approaching winter, we are thinking about studying weather patterns and what the impacts of those will be to the unhoused as well and how we might approach that. Um, A couple of things that are coming up that are really critical. We've been really involved with home key programs and the site selection for consultants of home key working with Marin County. And we're still looking for sites for places where we can find permanent housing for these folks. We're continuing to work mayors working tirelessly with RBRA on water side. and we're trying to work with BCDC as well on some of these issues. Right now we're just in the process of really trying to advocate and speed up transitional site housing identification as quickly as possible and continue to work on how we can enhance safety and security within the encampment in the Marineship Park now by working with the property owners nearby, but also with state and county officials for continued resources. And of course, the most critical thing that we continue to do for the folks in the encampment is look for permanent housing. This is a really complicated and difficult task, but I can assure you it's something that we are consistently looking at, reviewing potential sites, trying to figure out where we could and how we could house these folks. And so next time we have a meeting, we'll have a more comprehensive update. But these are some of the many ways and things that we the committee is working on. Mayor Hoffman, did I miss something that you'd like to add? Um... |
| 02:57:17.31 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:57:18.32 | Jill Hoffman | Nope. |
| 02:57:18.76 | Melissa Blaustein | you |
| 02:57:18.92 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:57:18.98 | Melissa Blaustein | I think that's it. Yeah, that's a brief snapshot. of the work that we've been doing on the homeless committee. |
| 02:57:28.63 | Jill Hoffman | I can give an update on sustainability commission. |
| 02:57:28.80 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:57:32.83 | Ian Sobieski | Can I just ask a question on the report? So I really appreciate that report and it's a great overview and a lot of work so thank you to both of you for your work on the subcommittee When we, in terms of transitional housing last year, when council member Cox and I were working on some housing opportunities and sites for people who were living on the water, And for senior and other transitional populations, we had started a conversation with Congressman Heffman's office about the post office. building among other sites and I was just wondering if that conversation had continued and if we could when we do agendize this topic, get an update on that if we Thank you. if there's not something available tonight. Thank you. |
| 02:58:28.97 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:58:29.11 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:58:29.16 | Melissa Blaustein | We don't have anything available on that particular site tonight. |
| 02:58:29.33 | Ian Sobieski | WE HAVE TO BE INVOLVED. |
| 02:58:36.65 | Melissa Blaustein | interesting thing that's come up is the home key the Home Key program has been issued. I think it was, I don't know, what is today? Friday. So, that We, we, the group, meaning the Southern Moran sort of group had, had been waiting for that to see what the parameters were for that. and that we've been working with Supervisor Moulton Peters and also the other Southern Marin Um, members of our VRA so meaning the county Timberon Belvedere and Mill Valley. about housing for people that are currently on the water and keep in mind that those are not Sausalito waters, those are RVRA waters. RVRA meaning Richardson Bay Regional Agency made up of the county Belvedere, Tiburon and Mill Valley. Um, That's sort of the context and answer to your question, but yeah, we will give you, we'll, we'll include that in our update next week about that, that effort and how that dovetails with what we're working on right now. So. Sure. |
| 02:59:41.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:41.67 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:59:42.30 | Janelle Kellman | you |
| 02:59:42.72 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thanks. |
| 02:59:43.24 | Janelle Kellman | you |
| 02:59:43.81 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:59:43.83 | Janelle Kellman | Any other committee reports? |
| 02:59:43.98 | Melissa Blaustein | any |
| 02:59:46.83 | Janelle Kellman | I think Council Member Bossiem is going to speak to sustainability. |
| 02:59:48.73 | Jill Hoffman | Correct. Yeah, so sustainability heard from the county officials about the new greenhouse gas inventory report, and I have some really exciting news to share, which is that in Sausalito, our emissions are down 23% since 2005. So we are working hard and making progress, which is very exciting. We reviewed the action tracker that the Sustainability Commission has put together, which lists policy priorities and initiatives they'd like to bring before the council. And chief among them is getting EV chargers going. And I'm sure that Councilmember Cleveland Knowles will share out about our progress at TAM on that if she gives the committee report. but also on the list is bicyclists and safe routes to schools and a number of other issues that I imagine will come up. The Waste Subcommittee, I just wanted to report back, are thrilled that we approved the rate review at our last meeting. There was a lot of positive discussion about that. And there was a great meeting with the Sustainability Commission had with City Manager Zapata that everyone felt very great, really good about it, and appreciated his time. So just to thank you to the city manager for that. And the Commission appointed an official drought liaison to focus on water resources as we navigate through the drought. So it was a really another really productive meeting at the Sustainability Commission. And that's all. |
| 03:01:03.70 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thanks. |
| 03:01:05.24 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:01:05.30 | Melissa Blaustein | reports. |
| 03:01:06.87 | Janelle Kellman | Mayor Hopper, and I'm just going to give a quick update on the State Level Rise Task Force, because I know council members have asked about that. So we tried, well, we were going to put on the agenda for the end of September. The city manager recommended that we bring it to the Sustainability Commission first to get their insight and feedback. So we did try to get on to the September 9 agenda for sustainability, we missed that deadline. So we are going to be on the next sustainability commission, which is the 14th. So we'll be giving a presentation, hopefully getting feedback and insight and then bring it back to the council. We also I had a request from Captain Frost to present to him what we had presented to Community Development Department and to the, to Kevin at DPW around the vulnerability assessment and some of the work having been done by the county. And then the last thing is Dr. Christina Hill, who is a professor at Cal who focuses on groundwater upswells and potential contamination as well as subterranean infrastructure impacts has offered to come to brief the task force and has offered to come at any time to brief the council. So I just want to offer that up in the future if it's interesting and helpful. but certainly we wanna bring those resources too members of staff and make sure they have what they need. So that is coming. We heard you and we are preparing that, but we're going to sustainability first to get their feedback. |
| 03:02:25.66 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Okay, so, If any other committee reports, if not, we'll move on to public comment for committee reports. |
| 03:02:35.13 | Ian Sobieski | I have just two things I think the council and the public would be interested in. Countywide Priority Setting Committee, which deals with various federal housing and other grants. And we had, among other things, really interesting conversation and presentation on the countywide fair housing assessment, which is 80 which will add to requirements around fair housing for housing element |
| 03:03:01.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:06.85 | Ian Sobieski | update and then a really just exciting and fantastic presentation about a new project that the county was I don't know if it's that new actually been in the works for quite a while. on racially restrictive covenants. And I did see on our future agenda, it looks like we have the county coming to present to the council in two weeks. So I won't. go into too much detail, but both um, really amazing, um, projects and Looking forward to having the full council get the benefit of those. Um, I'm also part of a re-invigorated new committee or reinvigorated committee of the transportation authority of on commute alternates and trip reduction programs. And so looking at how we're coming back to work and new ways to look at sustainable ways to commute. So I'll be updating people on that later. And then, we had an executive committee meeting for TAM and one of the greatest things to see was a slide during a presentation on alternative fuel strategy that Sausalito is finally on the list of Marin jurisdictions that have Um, got applied for and gotten EV charging um, rebates and vouchers from TAM. So we had been one of the only jurisdictions that wasn't on that list. And so I wanna thank our public works director, Kevin McGowan. and everyone else who got us awarded for EV chargers, which I think are gonna be installed soon in lot too. Very exciting milestone. Thanks to everyone that made that happen and the Sustainability Commission. was really instrumental in pushing that forward. |
| 03:05:01.89 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Vice Mayor. |
| 03:05:03.97 | Janelle Kellman | Yeah, sorry, Mayor Hoffman. I know we're exceeding our time here, but we have a very productive EDAC meeting earlier this week. I don't know if Council Member Sobieski wants to chime in here, They're covering a full range of issues. Amazing what we got done in two hours. We're looking at curating businesses and soliciting ideas from members of the public and other businesses about what type of storefronts we should have in Sausalito and filling those vacancies. We looked at additional events that we can do I'm in collaboration with Parks and Recreation. to really serve the residents, but also bring in some regional visitors during more of the winter months. We had a marineship inventory underway to understand the businesses there, whether they have the right occupancy permits, whether they meet with the zoning regulations and talk a little bit about enforcement. So that group's doing a really great job, very, very busy, a lot of great initiatives on that. So I'd be remiss if I didn't mention EDAC. And it's late, so I might have forgotten an initiative, Ian, but I forget. |
| 03:06:03.33 | Ian Sobieski | just going to emphasize all of the things you said vice mayor and uh just say that edak is really through the volunteer efforts of the membership there. acting like a full-time equivalent economic development officer. Very well. and on all the fronts that the Vice Mayor just delineated. The survey they did of for what kind of businesses we wanna have in town is gonna feed in effort to try to recruit those businesses to come to our storefront. So part of that will be a recommendation that they will be making for incentives that we might be able to provide businesses to help them be here, and a strategy for reaching out and trying to find out. |
| 03:06:43.65 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you. Any other committee reports? Okay, I'm gonna open up public comment for committee reports and I see one hand up, Ms. Crisante. |
| 03:06:48.39 | Ian Sobieski | I'm going to open it up. |
| 03:06:56.54 | Heidi Scoble | but you've been unmuted. |
| 03:07:03.98 | Eva Casante | Thank you. Yeah, I was intrigued by the mention of Urban Alchemy and doing more work with them. I think you're also contracting a little bit with Downtown Streets teams. I've frequently questioned the use of both of these nonprofits by various municipalities and by the county. We had long known that there were issues, employment issues, harassment issues with downtown streets teams, it looks like. in I think. in the last month it was recorded, it was reported finally that they had settled for you know, a wage theft issue with some of their higher level employees that that kind of elides the larger issue is that they've been badly exploiting unhoused people to do a lot of the labor Urban alchemy is a much more problematic entity. And that's beginning to be examined both in Los Angeles and in San Francisco where they are being awarded vast amounts of money. TO PROVIDE almost nothing to the homeless. And unfortunately, because they're nonprofit, they're very hard to investigate. They also have some pretty interesting connections to powerful San Francisco officials who have since been indicted from the Department of Building Inspection, the notorious Department of Building Inspection in San Francisco. So I would urge you not to contract further with Urban Alchemy, especially because it may, there may be some sort of conflict of interest with that. But more importantly, I think the issue is that they don't actually provide what they're supposed to provide. And this is part of a larger problem that the California State Auditor Brought forward, I think last February, which is that in three years, the state of California had spent $13 billion on homelessness. That's over a three year period. During this time we provided, we built no net bathrooms, no net showers, no net anything. Basically, it just was sucked up into various so-called nonprofits that have really been what's commonly called poverty pimps, and they're not reaching. unhoused populations who in fact are being treated worse than ever. So I think you need to take those really hard look at, uh, at the nonprofits you're contracting with, and I can certainly help you do that if you can't get motivated to do it yourselves. Thank you. |
| 03:10:05.15 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Okay, I see no other hands raised for public comment for committee reports. So moving on to our public comment for items 8A through 8E, which are city manager reports. appointments to boards and commissions, which I don't think we have any tonight. Futurton items and other reports of significance. So we'll take public comment for Items 8B. through 8E at this point. And yes, our city manager has his hand up. |
| 03:10:36.81 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. So I might have missed my opportunity, but if I can take it now, I have a couple of important things I want to update the council and community on. |
| 03:10:42.46 | Melissa Blaustein | important That's fine, but let's see if we do. Let me see if we have public comment for anything. Cause you're actually next. |
| 03:10:45.16 | Chris Zapata | That's fine. |
| 03:10:50.29 | Melissa Blaustein | So you're able- |
| 03:10:50.39 | Chris Zapata | So you're a- |
| 03:10:50.90 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 03:10:50.92 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 03:10:51.42 | Melissa Blaustein | You're 8B. So we're going to take public comment for 8B through E. So I don't see any hands up though. If, Our clerk can confirm that we don't have any hands up for that. |
| 03:10:56.65 | Heidi Scoble | clerk. Madam Mayor, you are correct. We have no hands raised at the moment. |
| 03:11:03.08 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, very well then. Mr. Zapata, please continue. |
| 03:11:05.83 | Chris Zapata | You had a floor. Thank you very much. So I want to introduce our Human Resources Manager Sabran Flynn now the third. I want to just provide this information to the community. Sobron has worked for three city managers in his stay in Sausalito, but he's leaving us. He's going to work for the Alameda County Transit Organization in Oakland. And so he'll be sorely missed, but before he goes, he has a report to update us on with respect to some of the hirings that we've been working on with our departments and that the community needs to know about. So, Sibron, can you provide that update, please? |
| 03:11:48.39 | Chris Zapata | I don't hear him. |
| 03:11:51.63 | Heidi Scoble | It does not appear it's Sibranis on this call. |
| 03:11:56.24 | Chris Zapata | Okay. |
| 03:12:00.07 | Chris Zapata | Well then let's shift to item number two then and we'll provide that report. in a different fashion. So we all have been working through the pandemic So a lot of the things that have happening in this fluid environment. library and communications guru abbott chambers has been handling. So Abbott, can you provide an update on COVID for the councilman community? |
| 03:12:23.51 | Abbott Chambers | Um, yes, I can happy to, and a good evening, madam mayor and members of the council. |
| 03:12:30.09 | Melissa Blaustein | Welcome to the show. |
| 03:12:32.12 | Abbott Chambers | As far as what I'll cover, and this will just take a few minutes, I'll start with the current status of the COVID-19 pandemic and public health orders in Marin County. Then I'll turn to the city of Sausalito to talk about vaccine verification for city employees and provide an update on city services and public meetings during the pandemic. So looking at the current status of the pandemic in Marin County, as you probably know, were in very good shape compared to much of the rest of California. |
| 03:12:58.27 | Melissa Blaustein | California. |
| 03:12:58.71 | Sabron | Thank you. |
| 03:12:59.10 | Abbott Chambers | after a spike due to the Delta variant, |
| 03:13:02.02 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm on my phone, let me try. Hold on just a second. Chris, you might want to mute your... |
| 03:13:05.17 | Abbott Chambers | Yeah. |
| 03:13:06.42 | Melissa Blaustein | Thanks. |
| 03:13:08.40 | Abbott Chambers | After a spike due to the Delta variant, daily new confirmed cases here in Marin have been on a steady decline since early August. The current case rate in Marin is approximately nine per 100,000. The reason we're in good shape is not complicated. 78% of all Marin residents are fully vaccinated, which is 90% of the residents 12 and over who are eligible for the vaccine. In case anyone needs another good reason to get vaccinated, unvaccinated residents currently account for about 80% of COVID-19 cases in Marin. The overall vaccination rate should get another boost this fall. as a new age group becomes eligible for the vaccine. Marin Public Health is preparing for the Pfizer vaccine to get emergency FDA approval for ages 5 through 11 as soon as the end of October 2021. It's important to add that we're not out of the woods yet. Colder weather is coming along with fall and winter holidays and the ongoing risk of new and aggressive variants. As far as public health orders in Marin, As you know, we're currently under an indoor mask mandate that went into effect in August 2021. We're also under isolation and quarantine orders from June 2021 for people who have tested positive. or who are unvaccinated and have been exposed to someone with COVID-19. Marin is following state and federal, excuse me, state public health guidelines for K through 12 schools. And the county has issued additional interim guidance on performing arts, sports, and extracurricular activities. The most recent public health order for Marin going into effect tomorrow requires public sector employers in the county to verify the vaccination status of all employees. and weekly COVID-19 testing for police and fire employees who are not vaccinated. President Biden's speech last week, we're also expecting that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, will soon issue a vaccination or weekly testing requirement for companies with 100 or more employees. OSHA has also said that the new emergency temporary standard will apply to public sector, state, and local government workers. The new workplace regulations are expected in the next few weeks, but it's unknown what sort of implementation time table will be provided to employers. So now move on to the city of Sausalito. Tomorrow the city will be rolling out its process for verifying the vaccination status of city employees. If they are vaccinated, employees are being required to provide proof of vaccination to the city's human resources manager in the form of a paper or electronic record. |
| 03:15:28.95 | Unknown | and |
| 03:15:34.45 | Abbott Chambers | Unvaccinated public safety personnel will be required to submit to COVID testing every week. |
| 03:15:39.09 | Unknown | you |
| 03:15:39.40 | Abbott Chambers | with results to be submitted to the human resources manager or to the interim, our interim, our next interim city human resources manager. The city is currently finalizing a contract with a nonprofit organization called COVID clinic to provide a testing ban in the city hall parking lot, most likely on a seven day schedule. |
| 03:15:39.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:15:58.89 | Abbott Chambers | The service will be available to everyone in the community, and COVID Clinic will also be able to provide the city with rapid antigen tests and PCR tests for employees. The police department is also seeking its own source of rapid antigen testing kits for employees to self administer. looking at the current state of city services under the pandemic City Hall is currently open to the public four days per week. during the library hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. All the exterior doors to the building are unlocked during those times. The administration open is open during Monday through Thursday open hours to assist members of the public. The door to the community development department is typically also kept open Monday through Thursday for the department's admin aid to answer basic questions about planning and building services from people who walk into city hall. At this time, most planning and building services are being conducted virtually on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One exception is in-person building inspections for larger projects. Those take place on Mondays and Wednesdays. Most parks and recreation activities are taking place outdoors. Limited indoor activities include weekend classes on dog training and taiko drumming. |
| 03:16:46.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:08.60 | Abbott Chambers | And as we go back to the library then, in addition to Monday and Thursday hours, the library is continuing to offer its curbside pickup service on Fridays. And the library will be welcoming the public back into the library for weekend hours beginning Saturday, September 25th. And our hours are going to be noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. So now I'll conclude with an update on the status of public meetings. An executive order from Governor Newsom currently allows municipalities like Sausalito to continue holding virtual meetings like this one through September 30th, 2021. That deadline is likely to be extended as the California State Assembly and the Senate passed AB 361 on September 10th. AB 361 extends the relaxation of Brown Act rules to allow virtual meetings through January 1st, 2024, provided that California is in the state of emergency as we are now. Governor Newsom is expected to sign AB 361. If he does not, he will revert to pre-pandemic Brown Act requirements for teleconferencing and in-person meetings. And that concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to take any questions. |
| 03:18:18.64 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you Abbott. I don't see any hands raised, so. back to our city manager. |
| 03:18:26.00 | Chris Zapata | I think our technical difficulties are ready, so I think Abbott is done. And so, Sobron, can you connect and provide the update on hiring? |
| 03:18:51.87 | Chris Zapata | that look like it's working this evening. Time is valuable. Um, I thought it would be a swan song with the organization. he'd be able to tell us about all of the positions we filled in finance and what we're trying to fill in community development, some of the part-time work that's been done. And the fact that we have a finance director position that's out, that's online, we intend to close that September on the 22nd. and hopefully bring someone on board to get us into the new year. and he's been instrumental in doing that. Given that he's leaving in another 10 days, I want to just let the council know that We're going to be looking at working with Deborah Muchmore from MuchMore Consulting who has worked with Sausalito in the past and will be a bridge to the future till we bring Sobron's replacement onto the city and I just want to take this moment to publicly thank him for his work during these and interesting times in Sausalito. So that concludes my report, Mayor and Council. |
| 03:19:56.49 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And I'll reiterate thanks to Sabron and we wish him well in his new challenges. I mean, we're going to |
| 03:20:02.97 | Kevin McGowan | Here it is. |
| 03:20:03.83 | Melissa Blaustein | Oh, there he is. |
| 03:20:04.03 | Ian Sobieski | There he is. |
| 03:20:05.63 | Sabron | Thank you. Hey, how's it going? |
| 03:20:07.20 | Ian Sobieski | Congratulations, Sabrina. |
| 03:20:09.09 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 03:20:09.11 | Sabron | Bye. |
| 03:20:09.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:09.21 | Sabron | you Thank you so much. Just wanna give you a brief update. I'm sorry I didn't bring my mask. Thanks for mask on Chris. So today we've, since the... Since we have passed the budget, we brought on 18 hires, six in the library, eight parks and rec, two in CDD, two in finance, and we have basically eight in queue. that we're going to be looking to fill in the next three weeks, which will bring us to a total of 26 hires. So a very exciting time for us right now. Thank you very much for the time. And I've had an honor, it's been an honor to be a part of the team |
| 03:20:50.25 | Melissa Blaustein | I think that's a good question. on. |
| 03:20:54.10 | Sabron | And I'm excited about where we're headed. |
| 03:20:56.90 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you, Sabran. Thank you for all your work. |
| 03:20:58.16 | Sabron | All right. |
| 03:20:58.77 | Melissa Blaustein | We appreciate it. Thank you very much. |
| 03:20:59.95 | Sabron | All right, thank you. |
| 03:21:01.62 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Okay. Moving on to our next item on the agenda, that was our city manager report, appointments to boards and commissions. I don't believe we have any, we've talked about future agenda items. Does anybody want to add to future dinner items, or are we good with the list that we currently have? Good, very good, moving on. Other reports of significance, I don't think we have any, and with that, We're going to adjourn. So thanks very much. Thank you to staff. for all of your hard work and to the city council for all of our current work. |
| 03:21:32.86 | Janelle Kellman | Thanks everyone. Have a good night. Thank you. |
| 03:21:42.97 | Unknown | . |
Steven Woodside — In Favor: Applauded the direction and highlighted that the study should consider hazards threatening city right-of-way, not just those on it. Recommended engaging expert geotechnical services to examine hotspots, citing specific areas like Edwards and Marion. ▶ 📄
Colleen Wigwired — In Favor: Supported action, noting she lives at a concerning intersection (Edwards and Marion) and has documented erosion. Asked about responsibility and potential partnerships with landowners if issues are on private property. ▶ 📄