| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:07.59 | Mayor Kelman | Welcome everybody to the Sassano City Council meeting of February 8th, 2022. We are returning from closed session and we do not have any announcements from the closed session. So we're gonna go ahead and approve the agenda. Do we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda? |
| 00:00:23.79 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | No. |
| 00:00:23.96 | Mayor Kelman | We have two. |
| 00:00:24.35 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:00:25.04 | Mayor Kelman | again. Clerk, will you please call the roll? |
| 00:00:29.06 | Serge Avila | some members, |
| 00:00:31.05 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:31.08 | Council Member Hoffman | Yes. |
| 00:00:32.18 | Serge Avila | Council member Hoffman. |
| 00:00:33.49 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:33.51 | Council Member Hoffman | Yes. |
| 00:00:34.47 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blaustein. Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:00:39.80 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. And I'll note for the record that council member Sobieski is not with us tonight. but 4-0 approves the agenda. So this evening item number one, special presentations or mayor's announcements. There are no special presentations or mayor announcements. So move on to item number two, which is approval of the draft minutes of the January 25th, 2022. Is there a motion to approve the minutes or are there any corrections? before we open up on the comment. Okay, not hearing any city clerk is there? Anybody from the public who would like to make a comment on the approval of the draft meeting? |
| 00:01:21.06 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, I see no hands raised, but if you would like me to read how to provide public comment, I can do that. Sure, go ahead. Video or audio public comment participation is limited to three minutes per speaker. If you would like to make a comment, please raise your hand. in the Zoom application and you will be called upon when it's your time to speak. to raise your hand from a phone press start nine and each speaker will be notified when the time has elapsed. |
| 00:01:49.31 | Mayor Kelman | Right, thank you. You've got to marry me. |
| 00:01:50.92 | Serge Avila | It looks like we do have one hand race and it's Linda Piper. |
| 00:01:56.33 | Mayor Kelman | Ms. Pfeiffer, you have? Three minutes. |
| 00:02:00.28 | Serge Avila | Linda, you've been unmuted and has to share your video. |
| 00:02:00.32 | Mayor Kelman | Linda, you've been Thank you. |
| 00:02:07.40 | Linda Pfeiffer | I'm sorry, the lighting's not too good. Can folks see me? Yes, you can. Okay, thank you. OpenSafe Sausalito was invited to participate in a housing element stakeholder meeting facilitated by the city's consultant in early 22. I'm so sorry, Linda, I'm sorry to interrupt. |
| 00:02:25.04 | Mayor Kelman | but this is only for public comment on the agenda item, which is approval of the draft meeting minutes. Sorry, I didn't wait. That's okay. Thank you. |
| 00:02:31.82 | Linda Pfeiffer | I'm sorry to Okay. |
| 00:02:34.81 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:02:34.82 | Linda Pfeiffer | you |
| 00:02:34.91 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:02:34.98 | Linda Pfeiffer | my best. |
| 00:02:35.26 | Mayor Kelman | that. |
| 00:02:35.57 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 00:02:36.60 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. Any other members of the public wish to speak to the draft approval of the meeting minutes? Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment. Do I have a motion and a second? Don't move. |
| 00:02:47.97 | Serge Avila | What? |
| 00:02:48.41 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. THANK YOU. Right. Serge, please call the roll. |
| 00:02:53.44 | Serge Avila | Councilmember Cleveland also? |
| 00:02:55.09 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:02:56.39 | Serge Avila | Council Member Hoffman. |
| 00:02:59.18 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 00:03:00.22 | Serge Avila | Ayes, Mayor Blavstein. |
| 00:03:06.09 | Serge Avila | Here it says, you Vice Mayor Blasden, close there for a minute. |
| 00:03:12.93 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Yes. Yes. Yes. |
| 00:03:17.75 | Serge Avila | And Mayor Kelming. |
| 00:03:20.54 | Mayor Kelman | Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you everybody. We'll move on to the consent calendar, item number three. So matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous council support, 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 the consent calendar items, council members, 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. So this evening we have seven items on the consent calendar. Item three A is to approve retitled and amended sewer maintenance worker job classifications. Item 3B is to adopt a resolution to continue conducting the city's council and all other city board commission and community meetings remotely due to health and safety concerns for the public. Item 3C is the Saucedo Police Department's Crime and Traffic Report for calendar year 2021, fourth quarter and year end report. Item 3D is adoption of a resolution declaring a climate emergency. Item three, Southern Marin Fire District quarter fourth report fiscal year, And item 3F. termination of October 2021 storm event declaration of local emergency. And finally, item 3G, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the professional services contract amendment with SWA to include project management services for the Saucelado Ferry landside improvement project phase two in an amount not to exceed $60,000. |
| 00:04:56.44 | Mayor Kelman | So I think we will go ahead and open this up for public comment. City Clerk, please let us know if we have any public comment on the consent calendar. |
| 00:05:04.52 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, we do have a hand raised and it's Sandra Bushmaker. Sandra, you've been unmuted and asked Please share your video. |
| 00:05:16.86 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening, council. Good to see you all. I'm commenting on 3G. I'm not asking that it be pulled from the consent calendar, but I, |
| 00:05:18.24 | Serge Avila | I just- |
| 00:05:18.51 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 00:05:26.68 | Sandra Bushmaker | I really want to applaud the city for following the requirements of 1128 and getting this matter to the ballot. For those of you who don't know that what this requires is that any Alteration of the parking lots, one, two, three and four require a vote of the city. citizens here in Sausalito. And I'm pleased to see that this is moving forward. I do have one question, several questions. In the staff report, he talked about SWA doing the ballot initiative. And I just was curious whether that is within their scope of work or within their purview. to prepare a ballot initiative for the citizens. Secondly, the references to widening the plaza I am going to be very curious to see what that means because we do have an issue of parking and parking revenues in the parking lot. And I'm looking forward to seeing the details on this particular sketch. And lastly, although the staff report did not recommend bidding on this project and I see the reasons why I've read the report. I am curious why we are not in a position to do bidding on this type of contract. And I recognize the work that SWA has done so far for the city. So I realize it's a balancing, issue at the moment, but it did raise my interest as to why we are not doing a bidding process on this. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:07:08.01 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you very much for those comments. us, the city clerk, anybody else from the public? |
| 00:07:14.46 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, it does not look like we have other hands raised in |
| 00:07:20.62 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, then we'll go ahead and close the public comment period And does anybody want to make a motion to approve the consent calendar? |
| 00:07:27.71 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:07:27.73 | Mayor Kelman | I can. |
| 00:07:28.00 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:07:28.20 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:07:28.21 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | to ask. |
| 00:07:28.50 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. |
| 00:07:28.70 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:07:28.74 | Mayor Kelman | you |
| 00:07:28.81 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 00:07:28.92 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:07:28.94 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | different calendars. |
| 00:07:29.70 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. We have a second. Second. Serge, please call the roll. |
| 00:07:36.37 | Serge Avila | Councilmember Cleveland, Yes. Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:07:42.31 | Council Member Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:07:42.34 | Mayor Kelman | Yeah. |
| 00:07:42.37 | Council Member Hoffman | Yes. |
| 00:07:42.59 | Mayor Kelman | you |
| 00:07:43.18 | Serge Avila | VICE MAYOR BLOUSTEIN. YES. Mayor Kalman. Yes. |
| 00:07:46.96 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Great. Thank you, everybody. Wonderful, onto item number four, which is business items tonight. So item 4A is adopt a resolution approving a citywide historic context statement. And we will be receiving a presentation from Heidi Scoble, our assistant to the city manager. |
| 00:08:07.94 | Heidi Scoble | Good evening, Mayor Kellen and members of the City Council. Let me pull up my screen and I will begin my presentation. So thank you for that introduction. As you know, the city has been working on the preparation and adoption of a historic contact statement for almost 12 years. And we're getting close or 10 years and we're getting close to the |
| 00:08:29.03 | Robbie Powelson | and we're getting close |
| 00:08:31.33 | Heidi Scoble | to completion, but before I get into this presentation, I just wanted to provide a recap regarding what is a historic contact statement. and what it includes. So this is a policy document that includes important themes relevant to the history and development of the city of Sausalito. It provides periods of historical significance and establishes them so that the city knows what's really important from a historical standpoint relative to property and development and patterns. It also highlights the character defining features associated with physical structures and the built environment. An example of that would be if you have a Victorian house, what is important about that house that would be important important to preserve. if the house is found to be important to the city relative to its architectural features. It's also a very helpful tool in the decision-making process for staff, for applicants, for architects, and for decision makers as to whether or not to design any renovation to a property, whether it's considered to be historically significant or not. And this document will help to establish its historic significance. And lastly, it provides a framework for identifying and evaluating both individual properties and also historic districts. For example, the city of Sausalito currently has an area in the downtown that we call our historic district. Back in the 2011 timeframe, the city council at that time, expended funds for the preparation of a historic contact statement in the marine ship and there are parcels down there that are eligible for a historic district if the city ever chooses to pursue that route with the property owners that are down there. So I'll just provide a really quick overview and summary regarding historic preservation as it relates to Sausalito and here we are today. So as I spoke at the last meeting in October, 2021, the city's historic preservation policies started in 1976. And throughout the years, we've expanded on these policies and what a significant milestone that occurred was in July, 2011, was when the city of Sausalito became a certified local government. This is a program that's established by the National Park Service in correspondence with the California Office of Historic Preservation. And it's a really important tool that gives the city of Sausalito the power to review historic properties, especially as it relates to section 106 federal funds. So instead of the Office of... historic preservation being that lead agency to review these important properties it gives the the city of Sausalito the actual standing to opine and make the decisions related to these properties as to whether or not they're historically significant So with that certification, the city was also eligible for grant funding. And in 2012, the city received a grant in the amount of $12,500 to prepare this historic context statement. So the city prior to this, you know, had established historic landmarks board, which we now call the Historic Preservation Commission. We had our historic preservation policies and regulations in place. But the one missing link that we don't have currently and was the impetus of filing for this grant and this work that we're reviewing today is to understand how the city is able to evaluate properties that may be historically significant to the city. So what this document is doing is it's looking back at Sausalito's history and prehistory. It's identifying these important moments in time relative to how the city of Sausalito was built. It's identifying certain areas that you know, would be important, you know, well, a relative to a potential historic district or, um, |
| 00:12:16.61 | Robbie Powelson | you Thank you. |
| 00:12:21.10 | Heidi Scoble | architecturally significant historic properties. And in 2014, a draft document was prepared, but throughout time, the community development department has had lots of changes and lots of priorities. And it wasn't until 2020 when the final draft was completed. So what's important to note is that this document was the bulk of the document was completed in 2014 and in 2020, It was slightly modified to address today's current environment but it wasn't a rewrite of that entire document. So a lot of things happened from 2014 to where we are today and so keep that in mind relative to how this document is being presented today. So since the document was completed in 2020, On May 20th of 2021, the Historic Preservation Commission reviewed the document and provided a recommendation to the Planning Commission The planning commission also reviewed the document with the historic preservation commission's recommendation on June 16th of 2021, And the document was presented to the city council for its first reading on August 31st, 2021. At that time it was identified that there were some certain tweaks that the city should consider And I'll speak to those as I get into this presentation. but, From August 31st, 2021, the revised document was presented to the city council on October 26th. And as the council remembers or may recall, that document was then directed back to the Historic Preservation Commission and the Planning Commission for them to review these proposed edits. And since then the Historic Preservation Commission and the Planning Commission has reviewed those comments and is providing a recommendation. But before we go into that, I just wanted to bring everybody up to speed as to what was actually presented at those October, November and December meetings. And the same information was presented to both the city council planning commission and the historic preservation commission. So there were looks like seven areas that were identified. One was including a land acknowledgement statement to the document, correcting the documents, references to the sphere of influence, providing more of a robust description relative to the Coast Miwok period and the Spanish and Mexican periods as distinct and separate periods of significance because they are very separate. Recognition that the Rachel Housing Covenants existed in the city of Sausalito and Marin County. There was a discussion about the slow growth movement. There was reference to Cypress Ridge being a park, and so that was changed to a reserve, which we'll also talk about later on in this presentation. And there was also a recommendation to relook at our the annexation dates that were in the document and what was included in all the staff reports and the presentations was the working red line draft. So in the document, You can see that all the red line edits in The excerpts were prepared by the city's consultant, Christopher Verplank. The yellow highlighted areas were edits prepared by the working group where consensus was achieved, and the working group was comprised of Vicki Nichols, who's our chair of our Historic Preservation Commission. And we had council member Blaustein and our former mayor Hoffman, who was working on this. And then we had the blue highlighted red lines where working, the working group did not reach consensus. So those items were again brought before the planning commission and the historic preservation commission. and both those decision-making bodies are recommending to the city council to approve all the proposed changes with the exception of the information related to this restrictive covenants and a slow growth movement. The explanation and the comments related to that recommendation was that the references may not be Sausalito specific and that this is probably would be more appropriate for a countywide historic context statement and in the staff report staff is suggesting this might be a great opportunity to include in the housing element. And then also the planning commission and the historic preservation commission supported staff's approach regarding the land acknowledgement statement. As the council may remember, There's language in the historic context statement regarding this land acknowledgement statement, but staff is also working in parallel with preparing a land acknowledgement statement and has been reaching out to Confederated Indians of Breton Rancheria and Um, I've been able to make contact by phone, but also by email I forwarded proposed but I've not heard back from the Federated Indians of Great and Rancheria. So I'm hoping that they can with this recommended approach to adopt what is currently there. And then once staff is able to get the formal authorization from the, uh, the Federated Indians are great to rancheria that we can amend the language if necessary. So since the writing of the staff report, there's been a question regarding staff's input regarding the restrictive covenants and an academic response that staff could provide is that the context statement provides an ethnographical relationship to the physical built environment and the architectural character of Saucelito neighborhoods. So a question that one can ask itself, and this is based on direction that the Office of Historic Preservation provides guidance on would be, did the restrictive covenants lead to the specific neighborhood that includes a stylistic type of architecture theme or form? So a great example of that would be the poll houses in Marin City. This is a perfect example of a need for affordable housing in a certain area that is super stylistic. The pole houses were constructed out of reclaimed utility poles. And there's certain features such as the window forms the roof hip style, that one could relate a historic context statement related to this type of architecture. Um, but staff wanted to double check that response. And so I was able to contact Christopher Replank today. He's not available today, but he did opine on staff's response related to the physical environment. But he also identified that there's a potential for a sociological element related to restrictive covenants but that there's not enough information that the city has at this moment in time to be able to do that. So at face value he's recommending that the language should not be adopted because we don't know if there were truly restrictive covenants at that time. But he said that there is a potential opportunity to do additional research related to that. And he also identified, which is important to note, is that there is a certain time when these restrictive covenants occurred, they were post-war and So based on Sausalito's development, this could relate to two different subdivisions within Sausalito, but again, it's too premature. So at the council's direction and will, staff could work with Mr. Verplank to amend a scope of work to research that to see if there truly were restrictive covenants in Sausalito and what that means to this historic context statement. But again, this is, premature at this time. So the council does have options. One would be to you know, adopt the language as proposed. One would be to direct staff to go back to work with the consultant to explore this a little bit further. or to adopt the regulations without changing the, or without that new language included in there. So since the writing of the staff report staff has also received a myriad of public comment, the question has to do with Cypress Ridge. Originally in the draft historic context statement, it was referencing this area to a park and The question is what noun would you like to choose, reserve or preserve? So staff is recommending the city council determine whether you want reference to a restriction or a protection related to this area. And again, there was another comment in support of including the language regarding the restrictive covenants and slow growth movement. And I believe those public comments have been uploaded to the city's agenda and are accessible on the Granicus application. So with that staff is recommending the city council consider the revised historic context statement to direct staff to make any further changes to the document and to adopt a resolution approving a citywide historic context statement. and What I've done is I have the excerpts related to the proposed changes as part of this presentation that we can scroll through if you would like, or I can stop sharing my screen. And we would like at a future time, I can pull up my presentation. So do you have a preference, Mayor Kelman, as to how you'd like to ask questions and next steps. |
| 00:21:39.91 | Mayor Kelman | Well, let's pause. Thank you. That was excellent, Heidi. Very, very helpful. Let's see if any members of the council have questions for you at the outset. |
| 00:21:50.34 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:21:50.36 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Okay, I see a council member of Cleveland North. I just have more of a clarification. Just to provide context, these issues came up of the racial covenants and the slow growth movement because those discussions are already in the draft historic contact statement that we reviewed. So I think the comments we're trying to put those, items in context, not add something new. And I did look through, thank you, Heidi, for providing the and writing historic context document. I think that was really helpful and helps kind of shape the conversation. but I just did want to confirm that one of the items is specifically related to this kind of so what test. And. maybe you wanna talk about that a little bit. And I understand the connection to the built environment Um, But it does reference cultural patterns that impact the built environment. And I don't think there's really any question that in Commissioner Luxembourg at the Planning Commission recognized this as well. that racial covenants did impact our built environment. It's one of the reasons we have so many single family homes some of the more wealthy communities. So can you just talk about why Mr. Verplank included these concepts? initially in the historic concept context statement and um, this document that you were attached about the writing historic context. |
| 00:23:29.50 | Heidi Scoble | Okay. |
| 00:23:30.01 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:23:30.07 | Heidi Scoble | So I'd like to first start off, oh, sorry. |
| 00:23:30.12 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | So I'd like to first start |
| 00:23:30.97 | Mayor Kelman | I want to pile on as well. And as you discussed that, if something is a general concept versus specific to Sausalito, I think that would be helpful to understand that as well as you answer that. |
| 00:23:44.43 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, so I'll start off with the So What test. I'd like to acknowledge that I think this is a dated document and it could be perceived as being totally taken out of context. So when referenced to so what, I think this discussion on restrictive covenants is really important, but in the context, of this policy document, which is again more of an academic, you know, document that's supposed to provide direction it's really in reference to yes we know restrictive covenants existed we don't know and the reason why Mr. River Plank included a little bit of that information in there regarding the post-war construction is that we truly have a connection to Marin City, Um, regarding kind of how the marineship was developed and kind of where we are today. The unknown question really is, Do does Sausalito have any properties that have these restrictive covenants and And our consultant doesn't know that because that was never part of his scope of work. And that was also a slightly different time. AND I THINK THAT'S A GREAT So we have a lot more awareness today So what our consultant did say again is that the restrictive covenants really was a post-war concept that started, you know, in the forties and then ended in 1948. And what we do know is that we have two subdivisions, the Montemar Vista, and we have Twain terraces where, um, in those subdivisions were developed during those times. In speaking with Mr. Verplank, he suggested that if the city wanted to pursue this option verify that there were restrictive covenants in Sausalito that he could do a sampling of a couple properties, do some research up at the county and pull those grant deeds and see what's there. And then based on that, he can include reference to that post construction section of the historic context statements. But it's It wouldn't change what we would be looking at in terms of the physical built environment, but again, it would bring attention to what was happening back in that day. And he also stated that Um, the restrictive covenants would maybe be beneficial actually to Sausalito as it relates to the preservation of single-family neighborhoods and how that speaks to Sausalito. |
| 00:26:07.90 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | So just to chime in there, so we do have evidence of racial covenants in Sausalito that's completely established. And secondly, as you know, the county is doing the racial covenant project, which they have already been collecting. input from people who have racial covenants on their property, who are, working to get those, um, |
| 00:26:30.40 | Robbie Powelson | Bye. |
| 00:26:30.41 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:26:31.21 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | brought to the brought to light and then make statements of their own on their properties to condemn the covenants that are on their property. So that information is in a county bank during, you know, for purposes of that project. I don't think it's a |
| 00:26:47.78 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, and I'll admit, I have not researched that at all. So there is an opportunity for staff then to go back and see what is happening with that bank. of information. |
| 00:27:02.07 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you so much, Heidi. Thank you, Council Member of Cleveland. The Vice Mayor has her hand up. Thank you. |
| 00:27:06.01 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Yeah, I noticed that the HPC and the Planning Commission made a decision to integrate language from the Marin ship historic context statement, which is really key to our history of establishing racial covenants and redlining and access to housing for folks who, which has led to our lack of socioeconomic diversity now. I mean, I don't think that there's any historical argument against the reality that was that black workers in the marine ship did not have the same access to housing in Sausalito for a variety of reasons. So if we're willing to include that aspect of a specific history around the marine ship, I don't understand why we would not include racial covenants, especially considering that Anyone who looks at the statistics surrounding single family homes as council member Cleveland was pointed out. would easily find a link between where there are communities with single family homes and where these types of covenants existed. just would, would ask specifically you know, why is the history of the marineship perhaps not inclusive of the racial covenants in this instance? And could we perhaps then find specific examples so that it might be supported? Because I know that those examples from what I understand exist. |
| 00:28:25.28 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, and that's a great question for the council to direct staff, you know, staff's original direction was to take the information that was presented to the city council at that October 26th meeting and bring it to the planning commission and the historic preservation commission. And maybe staff's lens was too focused on just, you know, not providing our own opinions or input, but truly following how staff was asked to be directed. So, You know, if that's something that the council would like staff to re-look at, we can definitely do that. and kind of do an academic exercise to see how that actually fits into the greater Sausalito outside of just the marinship, but within Saucelita proper, we could do that. |
| 00:29:13.56 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | And didn't our consultant, Mr. Verplank say that it's very likely that, racial covenants contributed to the built environment of single family homes. So it, would be specific under his terms without, if we were able to pull up from working with Marin County, examples of said covenants existing in Sausalito. Yeah. I'm just trying to understand why we might choose not to include something that is so critical to the socioeconomic and built environment of our our community. and especially considering I'm really happy to see we have the land acknowledgement included. Glad to see that that was considered and that there were separate sections for different time periods that have been previously lumped together. this, is also you know, in the context of this conversation, I feel, and I appreciate the staff's recommendation to include this in the housing element. And by all means, it should also be included in the housing element, but I feel at every opportunity, it's really important for us to acknowledge our history so that we can do a better job moving forward. So that's why I'm just continuing to push on this and ask about it. |
| 00:30:27.51 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, and I think the question for staff, and again, our direction, maybe we took a little too literally was, you know, just making sure that the limited scope within our purview was being addressed. you know, with the Historic Preservation Commission and the Planning Commission, and understanding and having that technical expertise and understanding of what a historic context statement is, you know, the lens is typically focused on the physical built environment, even though it is taking in account of the cultural histories as well. So, Again, we did not expend extra time or effort to do further research regarding that. But there is an opportunity if the council wants to do that. |
| 00:31:14.49 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Heidi. Appreciate that. Any further questions about the staff report? herself. I think my question was covered. I was going to ask if you had Um, talked with Liz Darby at the Marin County restrictive covenant project. And it sounds like that's an opportunity for us And as other council members have suggested a real wealth of information there. about this important project. So thank you. Other questions for |
| 00:31:41.03 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, Councilman, I just had a quick question. Our original comment on Cypress Ridge was that We were not sure it was a park. I think it was originally referred to as a park. in the document. It was a very small knit And then it got changed somehow to reserve. And then we've gotten a lot of public comment to change it to preserve. Does staff have, sorry if I missed what you said about that. Is there a problem to change it to preserve? What is the technical? |
| 00:32:11.12 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, well, I think it comes down to semantics and how one wants to interpret it. So if you want to call it a reserve, then it's just a restriction and it's could be perceived as a placeholder for future development. It sounds like in reading the responses is that |
| 00:32:11.58 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I know. |
| 00:32:28.62 | Heidi Scoble | The constituents see this as being a preserve, so it's an open space preservation area. So the question- |
| 00:32:35.86 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | The question is designated on our land is |
| 00:32:38.96 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:32:39.12 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:32:40.16 | Mayor Kelman | Well, there's a sign up there that actually says Cypress Ridge Preserve, city of Sausalito. I don't know if anybody wandered up there. |
| 00:32:46.37 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so is there a problem if it says that and the city of South Slado put up a sign? Is there any issue? I'm just trying to address this issue before we go to public comment so that we can I'm very excited. |
| 00:32:56.72 | Mayor Kelman | Is your question the difference |
| 00:32:59.03 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | urban reserve in this? I just so staff or some Mr. Verplank or someone in response to a comment about whether it was actually a park changed it to reserve. Yeah, and I don't care. I just, if it's called the preserve and our preserve is on our sign up there, then let's call it a preserve in this document. let's call it what we've called it in the past. I don't think we should make any judgments |
| 00:33:24.01 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, and it's considered to be an open space land use designation, but if we call it a And what we, what staff can do is if this item comes back to the council for consideration, what we could do is we can look at the grant deeds and see if there's a specific reference to preserve versus reserve. and then we'll know definitively. but the council could also call it a preserve and we can move forward with that as well. |
| 00:33:50.35 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | or we could call it by its zoning designation, open space. |
| 00:33:54.67 | Heidi Scoble | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:33:56.32 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:33:56.34 | Mayor Kelman | OK. |
| 00:33:57.32 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:33:57.33 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you for that. I see your hand up, Vice Mayor. |
| 00:34:00.99 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Thank you for that. I had a couple of follow-on questions as well about the slow growth paragraph because It seems like the argument that was being made by both the HPC and the planning commission was that there was no place for this type of information in this document. But when I went back through the final version, my initial understanding, I think could have been for a lot of people that that entire section in reference to slow growth was gonna be removed. but that's not the case. So the language still exists, which was originally included, which said essentially the slow growth movement galvanized by environmental protections and created you know, essentially less single family homes. And so I'm wondering, you know, is the socioeconomic aspect of that not considered a cultural aspect? And could we maybe show both paragraphs I had in partnership with the working group And some of what I had written, we had actually reached consensus on around the implications, socioeconomic implications of the slow growth and what it meant for our makeup as a community. Spent a lot of time doing research specifically on a lot of those statistics as they related to our community now. So I just, I'm wondering if that, Is the socioeconomic aspect not deemed cultural? What was the decision there? |
| 00:35:20.16 | Heidi Scoble | Uh, Well, what I can speak to is that our consultant originally, you know, saw that there was merit in including reference to the slow growth period as it relates to our built in environment you know some areas where there's multi-family but it's predominantly single family so He wanted to bring that into the document. I think the concern at the planning commission and the historic preservation level was the academic reference to documents that may not be applicable to the city of Sausalito. So if this is going back to Um, that If the city council would like to direct staff to relook at this and reengage our consultant, then we can have him further define that. And then if we are able to change our scope, then we can actually have him come to this meeting and present as to his findings and reasons as a technical expert in this field. |
| 00:36:12.60 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | So the concern was that the statistics were maybe not accurate, even though they were for the racial economic making of Sausalito. |
| 00:36:20.05 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 00:36:20.72 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Potentially. |
| 00:36:21.45 | Heidi Scoble | Yes. |
| 00:36:22.09 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | but they were or the city of Sausalito. from the census data. |
| 00:36:26.78 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah. Yeah, at the planning commission and historic preservation commission level, actually go deep into this discussion. So I can't speak to the actual reasons why. |
| 00:36:39.05 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Okay, but the recommendation was to keep the language about the positive aspects of the slow growth movement with no implications for the socioeconomic. impacts of the slow growth. |
| 00:36:46.98 | Heidi Scoble | as written. Yeah. |
| 00:36:48.63 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:36:48.65 | Heidi Scoble | by the consultants. |
| 00:36:50.08 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Okay. |
| 00:36:51.95 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you very much. Any other questions for staff? Okay, so we'll go ahead and open public comment. Serge, it might be worth repeating again, how folks may provide public comments tonight. Thank you, Heidi. |
| 00:37:10.80 | Serge Avila | video or audio public Comment participation is limited to three minutes per speaker. If you'd like to make a comment, please raise your hand in the Zoom application and you will be called upon when it's your time to speak. to raise your hand from a phone Press start nine and each speaker will be notified when the time has elapsed. Madam Mayor, it looks like we have three hands raised AND A CALL UP ON Vicki Nichols. You've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:37:40.64 | Mayor Kelman | Great. Thank you, sir. Welcome, Vicki. |
| 00:37:45.99 | Mayor Kelman | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:37:49.84 | Serge Avila | Vicky, you'll need to unmute. |
| 00:37:51.59 | Vicki Nichols | Pardon me. Thank you, Mayor Kelman. My name is Vicki Nichols and I'm currently the chair of the historical preservation committee. And I have been on the previous committee and participated in the city securing the money for this original project. work to be done. As you can see, it's been years since this has been done. I'm happy that there's such interest in our historic context statement, but I implore you that it seems that we keep moving the goalpost here. This document is vital to us being able to do our work because the city has not provided funds for inventories that would normally be assessed to align with our regulations. So without this, we have really nothing to rely on. The document's vital. I think that it's important for the council to know that in both instances, the planning commission and the HPC adopted this language unanimously. I know that there is a concern about the socioeconomic issue that Councilmember Cleveland Knowles and Blaustein brought forward. At the time they brought that forward, they were concerned about it, how it related to the general plan and how that would work out. I went through in our working group and did an analysis after the very first meeting of the instances where our consultant had raised this issue in the context statement and where I could find an active policy or program to address that in our future. There was never any discussion or dispute about that. And that's what we were asked to do and look at. So I feel as important as this issue is, you are delaying the whole document. This has been going on for six months. I would like some really specific clear direction and language, but now we're going to be waiting to do this again on another project. I sound like I'm not in support of these concepts, which anyone would do if they raise any objections to this, but my objections, that is not the basis. My objections are the delay of this document. We cannot do our work here, as well as the planning commission. So if the council is not putting historical preservation in a front and center light, then that's fine to let each council has different priorities but I'm very, very frustrated. And I would like this resolved as soon as possible. We're imploring you. Thank you. |
| 00:40:34.35 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Ms. Nichols, appreciate that. but you call them |
| 00:40:38.27 | Mayor Kelman | A little bit. Thank you. |
| 00:40:39.36 | Serge Avila | Your next speaker is Kristen. Kristen, you've been unmuted. Welcome. |
| 00:40:46.48 | Kristen | Hello, good evening. I live on Ray Avenue and my house has a racial covenant attached to it. It is on page 19 of my property deed. I'm going to read it to you right now. It says that no portion or part of said property shall be sold, conveyed, rented, or leased to, or occupied by, or permitted to be used, or occupied by any person not of the white or Caucasian race. That no person shall live upon said property at any time whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian race. But if persons not of the Caucasian race be kept therein by such Caucasian occupants strictly in the capacity of servants or employees of such occupant, such circumstance shall not constitute a violation of this condition. So there you have it. One example of many racial covenants of houses in Sausalito. My house was built in 1954. It was on land from the Sausalito Land and Ferry Company that spanned looks like about 30 different parcels on Ray, Curry, and Casno Avenue. I'm going to send this document to you after I'm done speaking so that you have at least evidence of one large region of town where there were prevalent racial covenants. I was actually gonna speak on something different tonight, but when I heard that the consultant was not sure if we had racial covenants, I felt compelled to share this with you. I'd like to propose that the interpretation of the guidance from the State Office of Historic Preservation is subjective. And I believe an alternate interpretation to be true. that the policies and practices of exclusionary zoning against renters and racial housing covenants define our built environment. These guidelines are subject to interpretation And I argue that they could equally be used to support inclusion of these proposed additions. And if we do not include them, I think it could potentially make us look really bad. I can see the headlines, you know, that I know that that's not what we're arguing here, but I really think there's no harm in including this language and there is tremendous harm in keeping it out I also want to mention I was on the sustainability commission when we drafted language for the racial justice statement. It was very similar about housing exclusionary zoning and the planning commission did the exact same thing. They recommended that our language be excluded, say that was inappropriate for a general plan. And now they're saying that similar language is inappropriate for the historical context statement. I ask, when is it appropriate for us to accept this part of our past? Luckily, the council voted to keep our statements in. I implore this council to follow that precedent. Thank you. Thank you very much, appreciate that. |
| 00:43:49.98 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Linda Fiver. Linda, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:44:01.29 | Mayor Kelman | Welcome back, thank you. |
| 00:44:06.03 | Linda Pfeiffer | Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you. So my name is Linda Pfeiffer and I'm secretary for Open Space Sausalito and I want to thank City Council and also City staff for this important work. It's it's very, very important. And I think that's a good question. I would like to make a statement regarding open space Sausalito's concerns regarding the proposed change of the use reserve for Cypress Ridge open space. The proposed change, the use of the term reserve instead of preserve, runs counter to the ballot measure language and bond terms that voters pass to purchase Cypress Ridge with taxpayer funds for preservation of Cypress Ridge open space. A reserve is a commodity not needed for immediate use, but available for some future use if required, including development. In contrast, a preserve refers to preservation. In this case, preservation of open space. The ballot measure to acquire Cypress Ridge states, quote, acquisition of the following municipal improvement to it, park and recreational facilities, comprising the acquisition for open space preservation. The city sign at the Cypress Ridge Open Space Preserve says Open Space Preserve. To this point, Cypress Ridge open space is a preserve, as Sausalito taxpayers voted to ensure the preservation of Cypress Ridge as open space. Open Space Sausalito strongly opposes the proposed change to designate Cypress Ridge as a reserve. Open Space Sausalito asks Council to reject the term reserve. and make a quick vote tonight and change that term to preserve. Keep the promise made to the citizens of Sausalito. Maintain Cypress Ridge open space designation as a preserve in the historic context statement. |
| 00:45:54.50 | Robbie Powelson | to the citizens. |
| 00:46:03.84 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you very much for your time. And again, I wanna thank city staff and the city council for this important work. |
| 00:46:11.99 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you very much. |
| 00:46:15.21 | Serge Avila | Sir, she was our next peer. Our next speaker is Jenny Silva. Jenny, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:46:24.46 | Jenny Silva | Thank you. |
| 00:46:24.49 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:46:24.51 | Jenny Silva | Thank you. Hi, thank you so much for this conversation and all the work that has gone into this. And I just wanted to, Um, come in and mirror a lot of the thoughts that Melissa said, the racial restrictions that we had in Sausalito and council members Cleveland Mills absolutely impacted our built environment and really determined the whole structure of Sausalito as it is today. And I was really taken aback when staff said that the consultant said that because this wasn't unique to Sausalito, that didn't make it appropriate for a historical statement. Just the fact that it's not unique to Sausalito doesn't make it irrelevant. It is what has made Marin the second most segregated county in California. And I think it's important that we start recognizing that. not just in the housing element, it should be there. But... This is wonderful. the historical document of Sausalito and it determines what we do in terms of preservation and I think it's absolutely critical that it recognizes our actual history and that's what Council Member Blaustein and Cleveland Knowles are asking and I think that's right. I also would concur with Council Member Cleveland-Molz that we should use the actual land use designation for Cypress Ridge in the document. So, I know that our last commenter said that There's a lot of Sausalito's that want it as open space. I have talked to a number of Sausalito residents who feel that that space should be explored in this housing element. As all the council members know, we have a huge task in front of us in terms of figuring out how we're gonna develop 724 units in Sausalito. And if that space is not a preserve, kind of back ending it into a preserve in this document seems absolutely the wrong way to go. So if it's in there as a preserve then fine have it be a preserve but if it's not in there and preserve this seems like absolutely the wrong place to be making that determination. And then lastly, I just wanted to comment on Vicki Nichols' statement about her frustration and I definitely understand it. It is frustrating. But as she mentioned, it's been several years since we've looked at this, it's almost certainly gonna be a number of years before it gets adjusted again. And so I implore the council to take the time to get it right, to reflect our history and to start making amends for the exclusion and the discrimination that our town is in. participated in throughout its history. Thank you. |
| 00:49:25.29 | Mayor Kelman | Thanks very much. And Serge, I see one more hand up. |
| 00:49:29.78 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Terry Thomas. Terry, you've been unmuted. Nice to share your video. |
| 00:49:41.61 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:49:41.64 | Terri Thomas | I'm going to go. |
| 00:49:42.03 | Mayor Kelman | you |
| 00:49:42.10 | Terri Thomas | Thank you. |
| 00:49:42.55 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:49:42.62 | Terri Thomas | Thank you. |
| 00:49:42.64 | Mayor Kelman | you You're unmuted. You're welcome back. |
| 00:49:44.41 | Terri Thomas | Thank you. Great. Well, good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. My name is Terri Thomas and I am vice president of Marine Conservation. My comments are with regard to the slow growth paragraph in the former draft. which does refer to all of Marin County. Marin Conservation League has been tracking the saving of land in Marin for 88 years. I would like to identify for you the five reasons that most of the land in Marin has been conserved, at least the movements have been. First, land conservation began in 1907, when the North Coast Water Company filed a lawsuit to develop a reservoir in Muir Woods. Just days before that land was to be condemned for that purpose, the owner was able to get Muir Woods National Monument established through the Antiquities Act Most of the rest of Mount Tam was saved to provide water for Marin County. Second was to save the land from being destroyed. After the 1906 earthquake, there was a great need for timber. Logging and hunting was becoming destructive and an ambitious group wanted to save land from being destroyed so it could be used for public enjoyment. Third was the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, which brought opportunities for development of freeways throughout Marin and over the coast and development of wealthy communities. This third wave of saving the land had the purpose of saving beautiful places so that everyone could have equal access to open space land. The fourth reason occurred in 1970, when Secretary of Interior Walter Hickel began the movement of national parks should be preserved near cities where everyone can enjoy them. This parks for the people movement was instrumental in creating GGNRA for all people and not for just those who had money to travel a great distance. to a national park. Quoting the GGNRA Act, the land has been saved for public use and enjoyment. Fifth and finally, the need to save farmland began near the end of the 1960s when the Marin West Marin plan envisioned a new city of 125,000 people on the shores of Tomales Bay and with new freeways and water lines. Then in 1980, the creation of Marin Agricultural Land Trust became the first farmland trust in the nation. And it was founded by a broad coalition of ranchers, workers, environmentalists, and community leaders to protect the future of farming in Marin County and assure the long-term protection of our working lands. almost a third of the county. MCL Marine Conservation League requests that any language regarding land conservation in Marin be consistent with these purposes. Thank you. |
| 00:52:25.34 | Mayor Kelman | Thanks very much, Sherry. |
| 00:52:26.16 | Terri Thomas | Thank you. |
| 00:52:27.34 | Mayor Kelman | Any other comments from members of the public? |
| 00:52:30.59 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, we have no further hands raised at the moment. |
| 00:52:33.75 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you everybody for attending and chiming in. Go ahead and close public comment, bring it back up to the council. Who would like to start us off I'll start. |
| 00:52:43.45 | Council Member Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:52:43.93 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:52:43.94 | Council Member Hoffman | Okay, great. So, I think we had a great discussion. We've had a tremendous amount of, Great staff report, by the way. Thank you, Heidi, and tremendous effort from the Planning Commission we'll start preservation to draft the initial draft and then to review every time we send it back to them. So, I appreciate all the work that everybody's done to get us to this point. I think it's, we have a couple of questions that are outstanding. And as you know, I'm leaning toward, you know, Having staff do a little bit more work and possibly Mr. Verplank, looking at especially the restrictive covenants and how that historically should be called out within the historic contact statement. based on, you know, based on his review. of what existed and how that impacted the built environment in Sausalito. So that, that to me makes, And then the thing is, you know, Council member Sobieski is not here. So I'd like to vote on this at a time when he could be here. I think that makes sense. And so that's sort of my, input at this point. |
| 00:53:56.35 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you, Councilmember Hoffman. Councilman of Cleveland also? Thank you. |
| 00:54:02.02 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I'm sure. Thank you. So I'm fine with the approach that council member Hoffman laid out. I do. There is another, an alternative. back forward tonight, which would get this document kind of back in the hands of um, folks that need to use it. which is to simplify the changes that we've proposed on these more controversial items. I mean, I think my main initial point was that we just recognize that racial covenants exist in Sausalito, and I think that's not arguable. We've had numerous people state that at various times. So, I mean, I would be happy with leaving that statement at that statement. And, you know, if we could come up with a simple statement about the, Thank you. you know, the slow growth movement stopped all these developments, but it also had impacts to the socio economic and racial composition of Sausalito kind of the first line of the paragraph drafted by the Councilmember Boston and working group. be happy with that. I mean I just want this document to be balanced and not to make a representation on one side and then not have um, the alternative and then we could do more in-depth work along with the racial covenant project etc. So, you know, I'm happy with what council member Hoffman suggested. But I also do recognize that this process has dragged out and I'd be amenable to figuring out if we can without too much back and forth, figure that out. to do that. So either way, I am... I was this document was that. Drafted at a place and time that we are not in now. The process has, our thinking and the process has evolved. And I was disturbed. that there was not a more Um, eagerness to grasp those issues and kind of tackle them at the HBC and the planning commission. I, I, that Thank you. kind of was disappointing to me. In fact, the process and some of the language was called dangerous. You know, I just, I don't think it's dangerous to look at our past and kind of face it and move on and be better. So I would like to do that in the document. I think council member Hoffman is proposed a good path forward as well to have Mr. Van Verblank work with our staff to do it. So either way, but I would like to address these issues in a honest, straightforward way. |
| 00:56:36.72 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Council Member Clevenos. Council Member Hoffman, Council Member Cleveland, I'll share anything that you want to speak to How should we go to the vice mayor? Um, |
| 00:56:44.78 | Council Member Hoffman | No. |
| 00:56:44.82 | Mayor Kelman | Oh, I think. Thank you. |
| 00:56:47.21 | Council Member Hoffman | I think that's good. I think Mr. Overplank would bring a sort of credibility and, and, you know, whatever it is he's recommending, right? He's the expert. So if we want to, have a document that we have confidence in and it has credibility beyond Sausalito and within Sausalito, I think it makes sense to go back |
| 00:56:59.58 | Robbie Powelson | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 00:57:06.89 | Council Member Hoffman | someone of his caliber to look at these issues and how do we address them? in this type of statement, I think is super important. |
| 00:57:15.78 | Chair Feller | Okay. |
| 00:57:16.27 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Thank you both. Vice Mayor. Thank you. And I really appreciate all of the public comment that we heard tonight. In particular, I really appreciated the reading of the covenant within a deed here in Sausalito. that this is really truly a part of our past. And I also appreciated Terry Thomas sharing a more robust history of of conservation that I didn't necessarily see included in the context of the historical statement. So I would like to ask Mr. Verplank, if we do send it back and I am happy with that path that council member Hoffman and council member Cleveland also considered to look at that. as well, specifically around the slow growth movement, but more the socioeconomic impacts. you know, disappointed that we're at a point where we made a critical choice to consider and include racial covenants and conversations around our cultural competencies and socioeconomic history in our community. And when it went back to the planning commission and HPC, those things were And I mean, we had this struggle as a sustainability commission when we worked on the statements around equity, as Kristen Wilson pointed out statements around equity for THE GENERAL PLAN. And I think it's very easy to that we're going to be able to comfortable bureaucracy of that's not how it's always been done, but as council member Cleveland knows importantly pointed out. We are at a different time and place, and we are finally starting to have really critical and important conversations about our history and about the way forward. And so I'm really happy to hear from both Council Member Hoffman and Council Member Clevenals that they would like to send this back to Mr. Verplank. And I would really like to make sure, and we'll continue to push for consideration and inclusion of the racial covenants aspect, as well as the impacts on our built environment as a result of you know, the slow growth movement and other pursuits of what our built environment looks like now in the socio-economic impacts, because it is indeed reflected in our built environment as well as who we are as a community and what we will look like going forward. So, I would agree with the consideration and suggestion from council member Hoffman. |
| 00:59:25.57 | Mayor Kelman | Great, well, thank you everybody. It's great conversation and great input. I wanna start off by welcoming the inclusion of the land acknowledgement in the historic contact statement. I think that sets the right tone for what we want to do moving forward as a community. And so no one's mentioned that yet, but I think it's a really important part of this document and wholeheartedly endorse that. I really appreciated Kristen Walzegel's real-time reading of a restrictive covenant in South Salido. That for me was something that I had hoped that the consultant would have brought to the table with some additional information. specific examples. So I thought that was really important to hear Certainly racial covenants were throughout the country. and as well in Marin County and it sounds like in Sausalito as well. So I was pleased to hear that type of information being presented tonight The slow growth movement language, I think could benefit from the consultant reviewing further. I'm sensing just how important this document is to our community and to our community our planning process and our story process. And so I think it really behooves us to take that extra time to make sure that we dial it in really articulate what we want to get across here. So thank you everybody for your thoughtful comments. And then the last thing I'll mention, and this is just for staff to take a look at, since we're not gonna vote tonight because Councilmember Sobieski is not here, If you could go back and look, I think the ballot measure for Cypress Ridge actually referred to a preserve. So I just want to keep things consistent with, any historical document, which I think is the theme for tonight is to really support this with the information in the record. So thank you everybody. I'm fully in support of what you all have suggested That sounds like we have a really good path forward |
| 01:01:13.62 | Council Member Hoffman | I have one for the comment. I'm sorry, just based on yours. And I forgot to mention this, but I too appreciated Kristen reading her covenant out loud. She's referred to it in the past. So I was aware that there were covenants |
| 01:01:13.70 | Mayor Kelman | Bye. I'm sorry. |
| 01:01:25.38 | Council Member Hoffman | on her neighborhood and other neighborhoods around town. |
| 01:01:25.58 | Robbie Powelson | Thank you. |
| 01:01:28.99 | Council Member Hoffman | It's really quite shocking to hear that language was actually in a deed. And so I appreciated her reading that out and calling that out. You know, it is very powerful. |
| 01:01:40.03 | Mayor Kelman | So thank you for that, Kristen. I appreciate it. I think that was really important to hear tonight. And you know, the Marin County has a restrictive covenant project and I, I hope we can reach out to Liz Darby and her team there. because they're compiling this information. I think it's really important for our community to have that specific detail and specific information. So I just want to thank everybody for adding that language and for moving us in this direction. I think it's a big step forward for our community. Oh, sorry, one more thing. |
| 01:02:07.97 | Council Member Hoffman | I'm sorry, if you have a restricted covenant on your deed, there's a process to remove it. And it's on the Marine County website, I think about how to do it. So just Google. |
| 01:02:15.16 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Actually, |
| 01:02:15.87 | Council Member Hoffman | Bye. Oh, go ahead. |
| 01:02:16.24 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Oh, go ahead, Susan. Sorry, it's not to remove it. I think that's really important because there's not, I think the purpose of the project and the consensus is that removing it would be ignoring it. It's you place another covenant on top of it that acknowledges that this is not okay and not right and there's specific language but just to be clear it's that they don't you can't they don't remove it but they it's a, it's a process and it, um, it's very, it's been vetted with Liz and her team and many other folks. So, but yeah, and I, you know, she offered, I was at a presentation And another thing she offered to come and talk to us, or maybe she could talk at the library or some other forum in Sausalito. You know, I do think Council Member Hoffman, it's great to get there. people in town aware that they can address Thank you. |
| 01:03:14.34 | Mayor Kelman | That's a great idea. Vice mayor, let's put that down for our racial justice working group to reach out to Liz and maybe we can coordinate with AVID and bring somebody to the library or another event, I think that would be That would be excellent. Okay, so staff, it looks like we're not going to approve or disapprove, but there is direction here to have the consultant take a look at some of the specifics. So do we want to continue this to a date certain, or I don't know what, his availability is. |
| 01:03:47.36 | Heidi Scoble | My recommendation is to continue it to a date uncertain, but knowing that staff will make this a priority and try to turn this around in an expeditious manner, since this is an important document on many levels. So. |
| 01:04:00.39 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, and as a member of the agenda setting committee, I'll commit to the same to bring this back as quickly as we can. Um, Did you have any, sorry, before we make that motion, did you have a sense of when the Green Rancheria might be able to coordinate with us? |
| 01:04:15.51 | Heidi Scoble | It's a moving target. I've been reaching out once a week since October. So, I'm trying my hardest to get in contact, but But I'm hoping that you know, maybe with our consultant, he might have a contact there as well. And maybe we can try to figure out how to move both our land acknowledgement statement forward at the same time as the historic contact statement. |
| 01:04:39.58 | Mayor Kelman | That would be fabulous. Yeah, full support of that. So thank you. Okay, anybody like to make the motion is just to continue to date uncertain, but I think our intentions are or clear here. So moved. |
| 01:04:50.24 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | move. Thank you. |
| 01:04:51.19 | Mayor Kelman | Oh, sorry. Let's go second. Great, okay. Thank you everybody. Will you call the roll, sir? |
| 01:04:58.17 | Serge Avila | Council member Clive and Oles. |
| 01:04:59.76 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 01:05:01.04 | Serge Avila | Council member Hoffman. |
| 01:05:02.34 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 01:05:03.34 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blavstein? |
| 01:05:04.75 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 01:05:05.19 | Serge Avila | Thank you. Mayor Killman. |
| 01:05:06.93 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. Great, thank you everybody. And thank you for that conversation. Okay, we'll move on to our second business item for tonight. That is item 4B. So we will receive and file just an update actually on the objective development and design standards, the ODDS project. And welcome Jim Moore, our new community development director |
| 01:05:28.87 | Jim Moore | Thank you. Can you hear me okay? |
| 01:05:30.67 | Mayor Kelman | You can. Good to see you, Jim. |
| 01:05:32.14 | Jim Moore | Thank you, it's such a honor and be here and be part of the team now and i really don't have anything to say on this item except to turn it over to bob |
| 01:05:42.55 | Bob | Excellent, thank you. Welcome, Bob. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jim. Let me share my screen. |
| 01:05:51.95 | Bob | Can everyone see that? Yes. Okay. |
| 01:05:54.77 | Serge Avila | Thank you. Very good. |
| 01:05:58.30 | Bob | All right, so tonight we'd like to update you on about eight months of work by the Planning Commission subcommittee that's working on developing objective standards for review of certain types of housing projects that's now required by new state laws. So we'd like to get your mid course feedback on the direction that the subcommittee is taking. So we're going through this exercise in response to three new state laws that the city attorney has briefed you on previously. So I won't go into the details, but the intent of these laws is to limit your discretion on development review as a means of trying to expedite housing production. So the pendulum has greatly swung from cities having very broad discretion on design related matters to being limited to applying only objective standards, which is really difficult in the case of design review because so often beauty is in the eyes of each beholder. So what makes development standards objectives? Those that require no personal or subjective judgment by a public official or public body. that are verifiable and knowable to everyone, including applicants. So the first thing that the planning commission subcommittee recommended was that the council adopt some interim standards in case you received a qualifying housing project. And that qualifying housing project is a project with two or more new housing units. And that could also be in a mixed use development. So the council adopted interim objective standards last July, and these were limited just to the quantified standards that you currently have in your zoning and subdivision ordinances. Things like building setbacks, height limits, et cetera. Those things that are numeric and quantified. However, most design related criteria in your codes aren't objective. They're subject to findings, things like design compatibility with the neighborhood or fitting into the historic fabric or not overly impacting neighbors views. So the planning commission has been focusing on how to create objective view preservation standards, since this is such an important issue to homeowners here. and also on how to create general design criteria that are objective. |
| 01:08:23.52 | Bob | So let's first look at view preservation. So the current standards in the code are subjective. They talk about minimizing obstruction of views from both public vantage points and also from primary rooms in neighboring homes. And the code defines each of these things, which views features are protected, such as the waterfront, the Bay or Mount Tam or Angel Island, et cetera. and broadly which public or private vantage points are protecting. So how do you tighten this up and make it absolutely objective? So first we have to look to see who else was trying to crack this nut. And the amazing answer is no one. Other than other communities that are known for view regulations, those regulations are still all subjective. So we then try to break down into more narrowly defined we're trying to break down what does constitute objective view preservation standards. So we try to more narrowly break down the view features that are protected. and also the very specific vantage points from where you would do a view analysis. So the specific locations in a home, you know, behind which window, what height, the camera focal length for taking an image, how far the proposed projects that you're doing the analysis are from, all of that and much more. And then the hardest question of all was what constitutes an unacceptable view impact? a percentage blockage of an existing view That's a pretty crude measurement, but it can be calculated. So that would be objective. And finally, we talked about how an applicant would do the view analysis. So, which would require cooperation with the neighbors and how staff could verify the accuracy of those view analysis. We then tried to create some examples for ourselves to give ourselves an idea of how this might work out. So we mocked up some examples of previously submitted view analyses So here the green highlighted area is an actual protected view of the Bay and the Tiburon Peninsula. And then we would overlay the new development that was proposed and the area that's in yellow, then would be a blockage of that protected view. And we did this in a couple of instances. protective view scape in green. And then this is where the house was proposed. So again, trying to look at percentages and how this all might work out. We also did this for all the public parks. So the area in red there would be the contiguous view shed from that particular park location. And we also did this from several of the public stairs and open spaces. We also talked to architects and computer visualization experts about the cost and the feasibility of doing this type of analysis. So with all of this input, the subcommittee concluded that developing objective view preservation standards and an evaluation process would probably be in the range of about 10 to $20,000 and half again as much if peer review was necessary to verify its accuracy. It would probably be challenged by neighbors in terms of accuracy or legality. And defining a view impact standards, such as percent blockage, again, we felt was a pretty crude measurement and it doesn't really take into account the quality of the view or other factors. So the subcommittee recommends that we focus on developing regulations for protecting views from public vantage points, which are fewer and within the city's control. but excluding street frontages, street right away. and hold private view protection for a later phase, possibly after having some experience with protecting public views. So, Let me turn now to creating general design standards that are objective. And something to keep in mind is the trade off and that's inherent between creating fewer and somewhat looser standards that give applicants more design leeway versus adopting more detailed and prescriptive design requirements that result in more certain outcomes for the city and the public. So the subcommittee considered two options for creating objectives design standards that would apply to these qualifying housing projects. The first would either be adopting and creating original local criteria that would object building mass and articulation requirements for street frontages allowable materials those sorts of things. or instead using and customizing portions of the Marin County, what's called the odds, the objective design and development standards toolkit. which is a form-based zoning code prepared by Opticos, which is a nationally recognized Bay Area architectural and planning firm. And these standards are based on typical Marin County building designs. This toolkit was jointly funded by the county and nine of Marin cities, including Sausalito, using your SB2 grant funds. The idea was to create a toolkit, sort of like a pattern book, where communities could choose a range of different development intensities and types that reflect their own local character. The advantages of using and customizing the toolkit is that these form-based regulations have been well thought out and tested over a number of years. And there could be some consistency for staff and applicants. If a number of Marin jurisdictions adopt these toolkit standards. And so far, McCorda-Madera has adopted their version. Belvedere is about to. And San Asamo, Fairfax, Nevada, and the county are also in process of looking at this. Another consideration is that the housing element process may result in the need for some higher density zoning to meet the RHNA numbers. And the toolkit contains these options for some higher density zones if that's needed. And finally, I think from our initial discussions, I believe that your new community development director, Jim Moore is a fan of form-based codes and is also familiar with Opticos' work. So that's a plus. The downside is that we would end up with two separate codes to administer. One for the qualifying housing projects under state law of two or more units, and one for our normal development review fair. The regulations are more prescriptive. So applicants would have less design flexibility. And there's a cost to have OptiCoast assist with this customization. At your last council meeting, you authorized a contract with OptiCoast to do this work. And staff and the subcommittee actually are starting our work with Opticos with a kickoff meeting tomorrow. So let me briefly describe what this form-based code is like. So you have an idea of what's coming. The toolkit has zones, which are like regular zoning that range from lower to higher densities. And also based on the location in towns, such as a transportation corridor or development that's downtown. We would pick the zones that most closely reflect our current densities and building size limits. |
| 01:16:00.11 | Bob | And like regular zones, these zones would have requirements for minimum lot size, height limits, setbacks, et cetera. There's a lot of illustrations on how these regulations work, but they also do things like regulating the length of buildings along the street frontage. So you don't have big gaps between buildings, locating parking so it doesn't dominate the street frontage and details about how building entries address the street. Those are all very important considerations in a form-based code. |
| 01:16:31.21 | Bob | And unlike typical zoning, the form-based toolkit defines and allows certain building types, ranging from single family to multi-family to mixed use commercial. And these regulations carefully regulate building proportions and dimensions of the building form much more than typical setbacks and coverage limits would. So here's an example of a stack duplex, which is a building type that certainly exists in Sausalito. A lot of these building types were built back in the thirties, forties. So a lot of these are reflected in Sausalito. And each building type comes with illustrations and tables that then dictate how the regulations apply. Here is an example of a neighborhood townhouse building type And again, you know, there are illustrations and regulations that come with it. And another example is a main street building for a mixed use and again, how it would function on a site. The way a building relates to the street frontage, again, as I said, is very important in foreign-based codes. So there are requirements for private frontage types that applicants can choose from. So they would have to incorporate things like a porch or a stoop. or if it's a mixed use development downtown, a shop front. So here's an example of what a porch looks like. And then again, there are diagrams and regulations that go with each of these. And then the toolkit also has chapters that can be incorporated that have objective standards for parking and loading, landscaping and lighting, privacy between properties, screening of equipment and such, slope standards. and also public frontage standards. And so we can choose to incorporate these and to modify them. Finally, I'd like to talk for a second about historic preservation standards. So as with the general design review, the standards for issuing certificates of appropriateness are subjective in the code today. They require findings of compatibility and affecting the special character of an historic building or district. Luckily though, two of the three state laws aren't applicable in historic properties or districts. So again, the impact on historic preservation will be a bit less than general types of areas outside of the historic. So one possible solution to address historic preservation would be adopting a chapter in the toolkit on architectural styles. These are very tightly defined criteria for a range of historic architectural styles. So if you want to create an authentic version of craftsmen or Main Street commercial, These standards regulate everything from cornices and eaves and window proportions and styles and doors, trim, you know, balcony railings. And so these standards will really get you to a very authentic version of these historic styles. So they'd be perfect for a place like Santa Barbara that only wants authentic mission revival. So we discussed this with the Historic Preservation Commission and they were less than enthralled by the idea of adopting these architectural styles. They expressed that Sausalito is architecturally more diverse than mandating historic styles, even in the historic district. So what we'll do is we'll continue to work with the HPC to see if there's some middle ground or if they're comfortable that our, our general objective design standards that will be developed will be sufficient in the historic district as well. So my last slide is the proposed schedule moving forward without the coast and the subcommittee. As I said, we're starting tomorrow. The idea is that we will hopefully get done with a draft and hold a public workshop with the planning commission and HPC in May. to share the draft document and then go to the council's legislative committee after that. and then get into adoption hearings by the early summer. So with that, I would just like to turn it over to commissioner Junius, if I may. And I tell you, we're so lucky to have a land use attorney that's a member of the subcommittee, it's a gift. And he'd like to summarize the subcommittee's direction. And then with the planning commissioner Feller we'll answer your questions. |
| 01:20:56.25 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you. Really excellent presentation. The subcommittee did just a fantastic, fantastically hard job and consolidating all of this. So thank you. Commissioner Junius, I see the vice mayor has her hand up. So let me ask her first before you, do you have a question before Commissioner Junius presents his consideration? I can ask after Commissioner Junius presents. I would say there are any of it. |
| 01:21:16.06 | Linda Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 01:21:21.82 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you. Commissioner Junius, welcome. Nice to see you. |
| 01:21:24.65 | Commissioner Junius | Thank you, Mayor, and thank you. Council members and thank you Bob for the great presentation. Um, This will only take a few more minutes before we get to your questions, I do want to emphasize just the big picture that we're looking at here and that Bob started with You know, this really is a major change to how cities across the state are dealing with, are gonna have to deal with their zoning ordinances in the future. It's super complex, it's super challenging, Existing planning codes have always included objective standards. So we're certainly not starting from scratch, but over the last 25 or 30 years, Jurisdictions have exercised more and more subjective discretion over land these decisions. And that has brought us to where we are today. The new state laws that Bob referenced at the outset take a ton of that discretion away for certain projects. So Chair Feller and I, along with Bob, have been working for the last six months or so to work through these issues. And we really do think that we're in the final stretch here. We hopefully in the coming months can bring you back the final package for consideration. So in summary, You know, our working group really has three different things we're going to be super focused on with OptiCoast. Views, this is obviously the most challenging one we're gonna face. We look closely at our current view policies, specifically the definition of primary views, You know, we know that this view, this issue is extraordinarily important in Sausalito, so we're taking it very seriously. We certainly hope that the implementation of objective standards does not result in any kind of a massive departure from our current practices, but that remains to be seen. And again, as Bob said, after looking at this really closely, we really believe that moving forward and trying to finalize the public view aspect of this focusing on parks, open space, open spaces, trails and stairways that are defined and knowable is really the best way to proceed with the first attempt to objectify a view analysis. So that's where we'd like to go with the views. On the toolkit, the toolkit is, the optical toolkit is really, you know, something else. It's an impressive and detailed array of form-based zoning concepts and details. It's an extraordinary resource. So our recommendation at this time is to implement several of the basic components of the toolkit that deal primarily with building bulk setbacks and a variety of ground plane design issues This will, you know, thankfully, I think, at the outset here, leave the architectural community with some creative latitude going forward. In the future, if we determine that there are additional architectural design related controls that are necessary. You know, we can always implement those in the future. The toolkit is an excellent resource now, and I think it's going to continue to be so in the future. and on the historic preservation issues You know, Bob pretty much summed it up nicely at the end there. very difficult as well. A lot of subjectivity in there. We need to work closely with the HBC understand how we're going to make this work for qualifying projects. With that, Chair Feller, did you have anything to add or were we ready to take questions? |
| 01:24:20.56 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Commissioner Junius. Chair Feller, any additions to this before we take Council member questions? |
| 01:24:29.96 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, I see. All right, there it was off my screen. So a thumbs up. Okay. Well, again, really fantastic job and having spent 10 years on and off the planning commission, I can tell you some objective design standards would have been quite helpful and made for an earlier evening. So thank you very much for that. Any questions for Bob, Chair Feller, Commissioner Junius? Yes, Councilman Cleveland also. |
| 01:24:56.48 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I didn't wanna jump ahead of the line. I think the vice mayor had some questions, but I'm happy to go after her. Sure, Vice Mayor, go for it. |
| 01:25:03.55 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Yeah, thanks. And thank you for all of your hard work on this. And it's definitely an exciting challenge to take on since there's been a lot of impetus from the community as well, that we really need to take some steps to update our design review standards. I wondered, and I saw this in the staff report, so I know it was considered, but myself and council member Cleveland Knowles served on the then mayor Joan Cox's blue ribbon committee on housing. And there were some recommendations there |
| 01:25:03.77 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 01:25:26.74 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | with regards to streamlining some of the planning processes in a responsible way in thinking about and knowing that these bills would be forthcoming. Could you maybe speak to whether you had a chance to take some of those recommendations into consideration in your working group or, if there's anything we might do. I mean, I'm sure that the members of the task force would be happy to meet with subcommittee as well and revisit some of those ideas. |
| 01:25:52.85 | Bob | Thank you for the question. Yes, I have looked those over. A lot of them are process related and we're really not necessarily delving into the review process more so than the review criteria, but there are some things in there, for example, trying to promote tandem parking as one example. And I think we could definitely do that as part of the parking standards. So the ones that relate to zoning standards or criteria, we'll definitely be trying to deal with and incorporate. |
| 01:26:23.27 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Great, thank you so much. And thanks again for your work on this. That was my only question. |
| 01:26:27.42 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.46 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.47 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | THANK YOU. |
| 01:26:27.83 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.88 | Mayor Kelman | Council Member Cleve-Nulls. |
| 01:26:30.21 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Great, thanks. I had questions in a couple areas. First, I am a big fan of form-based zoning. So I was happy to see that. as a recommendation to move forward. Um, I think the biggest negative that you showed on your slides was to me, was the dual code. issue. And I'm just wondering maybe Is the dual code necessary or is it possible to have a completely form-based zoning code. I mean, it might be a gradual ask here in Sausalito, Does that, is that a, We should talk about that. We have to. Yeah. Thanks. |
| 01:27:13.00 | Commissioner Junius | We should talk about that. Yeah, Council Member Cleveland knows we did, I think we did discuss that and we've discussed it a number of times, Um, You know, at some point, I think the entire planning code needs to be kind of reorganized and updated, and that's a big heavy lift. And if we were doing that same time, we'd probably be integrating the two. We did feel, though, because we're really looking at three different triggers for objective analysis. You know, we thought it frankly would be easier. I'm not this worried about that kind as I think others might be. You know, if you're an HAA project or an SB35 or an SB9, you know, here's what you do. And if not, you know, the current code, I think works okay. So, I mean, I just thought that was more of a I'm not sure. easier to get it done sooner with this direction as opposed to trying to about the blended into the existing code. I don't know, Chair Fella, did you have a thought? |
| 01:28:06.34 | Chair Feller | No, I think it's a really very good question. And we've been focused on the planning commission of trying to develop an initiative to update the entire. municipal code on the heels of the general plan. So we don't want to lose sight of that, but specific to the three pieces of legislation that we're talking about and what the Blue Ribbon Task Force had anticipated before the legislation was published. is also how to sort of fast track or move these projects forward. Well, the legislation takes care of some of that with certain timeframes and requirements. And that's where the objectivity is really, really necessary because it needs to be clear, not only to the applicants, but also to staff and the city in terms of the, intended and perhaps unintended consequences of what some of those codes are and so that's that's why we're looking at currently at the parallel Format. |
| 01:29:05.90 | Bob | And I think as you say, this probably will end up being an incremental approach. I think as it's a very different approach initially for certain projects, but as staff and the decision makers and the applicants get used to, I think this new formatted code, you may very well find that you want to apply it elsewhere in town. |
| 01:29:24.53 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. And then kind of my second series of questions is oriented around the view impacts. And I don't know who's here that might be able to, maybe our city attorney or, Interim Community Development Director, our current Community Development Director can help. But as I understand it, this would apply to both the Housing Affordability Act, which as I understand it applies to many projects that do not necessarily include affordable housing. Does this objective design standard. requirement apply to the non-affordable housing developments under the affordable sorry, the Housing Accountability Act. |
| 01:30:07.47 | Bob | It does. So it does not require affordability, but it does require that there be two or more units built together. So in many cases, you know, the design review you do for single family homes will not be affected. |
| 01:30:08.35 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I'm not. |
| 01:30:21.44 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Great. And then just another application question. So at some point in our housing element process we have toggled between kind of lurching into the SB 35 box. |
| 01:30:34.76 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:30:35.37 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | and not. Do we know where we stand? Are we in compliance with Are we in that SB 35 or in any danger of getting there anytime soon? |
| 01:30:48.94 | Mary Wagner | I can take that one. Council member Cleveland Knowles, members of the city council. South Salido is included on the HCD list for cities that are subject to SB 35. |
| 01:31:00.58 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so That frames my next question about views. So this is not a. many projects that could happen in Sausalito, any two unit project, And any project that meets the low threshold of providing 10% affordable units could be subject to the objective design review criteria. Is that correct? Okay. |
| 01:31:25.77 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:31:25.79 | Jacob | Yes. |
| 01:31:26.60 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | So that puts to me a much higher emphasis on the urgency of the view impact questions. And I mean, what I think what people in the public need to understand is if you have project that falls into one of these two boxes, which isn't very hard to get into. You can build into a view. Somebody directly into someone's view. And unless we have an objective design criteria, your view will be blocked. Is that correct? |
| 01:32:00.52 | Bob | It's a fine point and the city attorney can correct me, but SB 35, yes, that is generally true. You will only have a ministerial process, only objective standards. For projects that are affected by the Housing Accountability Act, you still can do design review and you can still request changes to be made as long as it doesn't decrease the density or essentially cause the project to be denied. So you do have some latitude there, but certainly less. |
| 01:32:30.76 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Right, but if you're gonna put a second story on, for example, on that second story, was the only way to get additional units. |
| 01:32:38.27 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 01:32:38.91 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Okay. So anyway, I'm not trying to be alarmist. I'm just trying to understand and also have full disclosure. So to me, the view impact, it is very important that we get a handle on it. And I, you know, if it's imperfect and if people are gonna, challenge it and if it costs some money. I thought all the questions that the working committee We're asking and the percentage Um, definition, narrowing the definition of a protected view, having a hike. you know, a person that average person of 5'8 or something, all of those from an X distance away, I would prefer actually to go down the path of having an objective whatever we can come up with because You know, many of us on this call have been or are on the planning commission And this issue recurs. And I think people have an expectation here because of our current code that their view is protected. to some extent. I think it would be a pretty you know, I think it would be if we can't come up with a solution. So I understand all the challenges I am not thinking that this is some easy task that you've all decided not to pursue because you're lazy or something. So, and we can talk about it at discussion points, but those were my questions. I just wanted to make sure I understood it. And I would, I would put private views on an equal footing I would just use the same tactic. I have to say those, those, shots that you showed in your presentation. Mr. Brown were like, if I had had those kind of imaging trying to make a decision from the dais at the planning commission i would have found that was exceedingly helpful. But in any case, I'm not underestimating the difficulty. we're going to see these projects. And they, I, you know, from our last housing element, we saw a lot of sites in town that easily had additional density. that are zoned residential that can go up a story that will directly block a major water view in town. We heard pretty strongly from a lot of folks that that was an issue. So, Don't envy you your task, but that's the end of my questions. I guess for comments, we can, we can talk more about directions. |
| 01:35:09.53 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great, thank you. Council Member Hoffman, questions? Okay, thank you. I too follow up questions as we get into the world of objective and objectivity around decision-making. So we have in our prioritization talked about a local hazard mitigation plan as it relates to landslides. And I know that DPW is currently working on the local hazard mitigation plan. A landslide task force identified some concerns. How do things like that local hazard mitigation plan, or even the multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan overlay or interplay with something that's objective. |
| 01:35:50.66 | Bob | Well, if you had, you know, the geologic surveys that would identify, you know, hazard areas specifically, then you could use those as part of objective standards. We have looked at the task force recommendations and some of the things, for example, there was a suggestion to look at what other communities require in terms of engineering studies and you know when those kick in and the level of detail and that could certainly be incorporated also the Opticos toolkit does have slope standards so we would probably start with looking at those and how those compare to San Rafael, Nevada, the county that has something similar so I think we will be addressing slopes in general, probably not to the degree though, and the level of detail that the task force recommended, because again, that requires a lot of technical surveying work |
| 01:35:58.00 | Robbie Powelson | Thank you. |
| 01:35:58.02 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:35:58.05 | Robbie Powelson | Thank you. |
| 01:36:46.90 | Mayor Kelman | All right, okay, well, thank you. I think if my request would be if something comes up that you would need the council to consider or prioritize to facilitate the deployment of an objective design, so please let us know because we are taking another look at the landslide task force recommendations. My second question has to do with something I think, Bob, you're very familiar with the sea level rise planning. So because we're not on the coast, there's no LCP local coastal plan for Sausalito, but we are at risk from king tide storm surges, maybe even a tsunami down the road. But there's no legal requirement to incorporate that into our planning. However, SB 379, does mandate a fire and sea level rise assessment be included in our safety element? How does something like that get included again, when you're trying to have a streamline objective design approach? |
| 01:37:43.20 | Bob | Well, a couple of things we can exempt properties from, for example, SB9 that are in a high fire hazard area. So currently the staff is trying to map those areas that would be excluded. I can only say that in terms of the optical standards, there are requirements for floor elevation, minimum floor elevations above, you know, mean sea level, et cetera. So those could be looked at as one solution, again, kind of crude, but one way of making sure that new buildings are sufficiently elevated based upon current data. |
| 01:38:18.18 | Mayor Kelman | So one of the... follow-up question there. One of the objective design components is bulk mass and I think setbacks, Is there a way to preserve the opportunity, whether it's by maybe designating an area as a need of more setbacks, so that maybe you create a buffer, whether from fire or from flooding, is there a way to bring that into these objective standards? |
| 01:38:41.03 | Bob | as technically as possible. And again, if you could define it numerically and it doesn't kill development, Right. |
| 01:38:49.87 | Commissioner Junius | Okay. I mean, I think the challenge here is that we're starting with the, you know, the OptiCoast models and the, you know, a lot of the work has been done there and we can, you know, tweak them to the extent we want to tweak them. coming to agreement and trying to define where and when those tweaks would apply. It's you know, it can, the detail can start to swallow you up pretty quickly. |
| 01:39:13.33 | Mayor Kelman | Right, okay, that's a good point. |
| 01:39:15.37 | Chair Feller | I'll just add one last point and what director McGowan is working on with the geological hazard assessment, that type of data would be very helpful. because if there are any areas that he flags out of that or the consultant flags out of that, that are more dangerous, whether it be slope or whether it be unstable ground or fire hazard, that would be really valuable to this effort. |
| 01:39:39.23 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:39:42.71 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, that's good to know. We've had some preliminary conversations with Sutherland Fire about taking their evacuation route. data and actually overlaying it on top of the sea level rise interactive map. So you can get a full sense mostly to see where the utility is and the parcel boundaries lay. I'm trying to break down silos and mention anything that might be useful in your work. but I'm sure it'll come back. So that was outstanding, you guys. Thank you so much. Any other questions before we open it to public comment? Okay, so seeing none, Serge, does anybody here have I see one hand up. |
| 01:40:19.48 | Serge Avila | And Madam Mayor, we do have one commenter and it's Sandra Bushmaker. Sandra, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. you're doing. |
| 01:40:29.13 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi, I have one quick question. Thank you for all the work that you're doing on this. It's obvious it's a long haul and a hard haul to pull through and develop these objective standards. I have been attending quite a few meetings, particularly Catalyst, Susan Kirsch's group, And they keep raising the issue over and over again, that SB9 does not exempt or excuse me, let me restate that. Property in high fire risk zones is not exempt from SB 9. And I hear that over and repeated over and over at these meetings. So I would like to make sure we are in clear on this before we start designating property in high fire risk areas and then erroneously saying that it's exempt from SB9. I think that needs some further legal research. or at least some verification because I've As I said, The meetings I've been attending on this issue categorically say that they are not exempt. These properties in these areas are not exempt from SB 9. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. |
| 01:41:41.96 | Mayor Kelman | syndrome. |
| 01:41:42.35 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:41:43.31 | Mayor Kelman | I see another hand up, sir. |
| 01:41:45.07 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Linda Pfeiffer. Linda, you've been unmuted. and has to share your video. |
| 01:41:55.82 | Linda Pfeiffer | Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. so my name is linda pfeiffer i'm secretary for open space sausalito And I wanted to make a comment regarding participation, regarding the housing element. OSS was invited to participate in a few housing element stakeholder meetings. |
| 01:42:14.97 | Mayor Kelman | Linda, I'm so, so sorry to do this to you a second time. |
| 01:42:18.63 | Linda Pfeiffer | Sure. |
| 01:42:18.97 | Chair Feller | Yeah. |
| 01:42:19.41 | Mayor Kelman | We're on the objective design standards |
| 01:42:19.49 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 01:42:19.60 | Chair Feller | Um, |
| 01:42:19.85 | Linda Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 01:42:23.90 | Mayor Kelman | I'm so sorry. I heard public comment, my apologies. Yes, no, for sure. Bear with us, we're almost there. So sorry. |
| 01:42:30.85 | Linda Pfeiffer | Sorry, it used to be at the beginning of the |
| 01:42:34.02 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:42:34.12 | Linda Pfeiffer | So, |
| 01:42:34.97 | Mayor Kelman | Understood. |
| 01:42:35.24 | Linda Pfeiffer | Sorry about that. THE FAMILY. |
| 01:42:36.03 | Mayor Kelman | Yeah. |
| 01:42:36.05 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 01:42:36.15 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:42:36.40 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 01:42:36.42 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you for your understanding. Okay, thanks. |
| 01:42:36.47 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. |
| 01:42:40.44 | Mayor Kelman | Sorry about that, everybody. Any other comments on the objective design standards? |
| 01:42:45.75 | Serge Avila | Madam mayor, there are no further hands raised. Thank you. |
| 01:42:48.70 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. Great, thank you. So we'll go ahead and close public comment, bring it back up to the virtual dais. Great, you know, great work. I think this is a sort of outstanding. in terms of the direction, very clear, Any additional comments or suggestions for direction? I got councilman Hoffman. |
| 01:43:05.70 | Council Member Hoffman | Yes, I'd like to... If, I'd like to open up the view corridor also to, as Council Member Clevel Knowles alluded to, to residential as well. So I think right now you have public spaces and parks, but I think that's a good analysis to have as well. |
| 01:43:23.18 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Right, I'm in support of that as well. Any other modifications or direction? Okay, so our task tonight was to provide any changes or direction. It sounds like we only have one addition along with some of the comments, I think around how some of the new state laws will impact or could impact the objective design standards and some comments and questions about hazards. Okay, I don't see any other hands raised from the council. So I think we are then done with this item. Thanks. Okay, thanks everybody. I really also enjoyed that format. It was nice to hear from the working group. |
| 01:44:06.36 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:44:06.38 | Mayor Kelman | Mm-hmm. Okay. That ends and concludes our second of two business items. We'll move on to communications. And this is in fact, the time on the agenda for members of the public to provide any public comment for items that are not on the agenda. Except in 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 refer matters not in the agenda to the city staff or direct that the subject be agendized for a future meeting. If I'd like to provide a public comment, please raise your hand in the Zoom application and the city clerk will call on individuals who have raised their hands in the order they were raised. After you are called on, you'll be unmuted to allow to share your comments. Remember, public comments are allowed a total of three minutes to speak. Please keep your comments respectful and focused. We want to listen to any individual who requests to speak and each speaker has a responsibility to act in a civil and courteous manner as defined by this body. We will not tolerate hate speech, direct or indirect threats or abuse of language. And we will mute you if you fail to follow those guidelines. With that said, we'll open up to public comment. And I think you see three hands. |
| 01:45:19.09 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, we do have three commenters. The first person it's Alison Healy and Alison, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 01:45:31.63 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:45:31.65 | Alison Healy | El senor, are mute. |
| 01:45:35.72 | Alison Healy | Thank you so much for hearing my comments. Can you hear me? Yes. Now? Okay, great. I've lived in Marin City for 23 years with my husband. And we founded Bay Area Marine Services here in Sausalito. We really love being in the community and want to give back and stay connected. And that's especially true knowing the history of the Marineship and Marin City. We are looking for a space in Sausalito for a business and can't think of a better place to be. We started the business to actually service the vessels here in Sausalito My husband's background started with the Mexican Naval Academy and he was a blue and gold ferry as a senior engineer and he's been an engineer pilot. and captain for 26 years. And my background is not quite as interesting, but I've founded and been CEO of four small to medium-sized companies and have a strong maritime background. One of them brought all of the tall ships here from around the world. And I mentioned that just to give you an idea of our qualification for what we're doing. We're a minority owned small business and we are already training people from within the community and want to continue to bring people up Um, to the levels that they want to achieve without needing to go to school. It's a great way to keep an industry alive that doesn't have enough people employed and doesn't require going back to school. Unfortunately, we haven't found any place. We've had no luck in locating a place that we can operate from both because of lack of availability, and because of pricing in the marine ships. And we're concerned we may be forced to look elsewhere and leave our community, which we really don't wanna do. So I appreciate your taking my comments and keeping them in mind. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:47:40.32 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:47:40.34 | Alison Healy | Thank you very much. |
| 01:47:40.96 | Mayor Kelman | I really appreciate those comments. |
| 01:47:43.83 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Robbie Powelson. Robbie, you've been unmuted. as to share your video. |
| 01:47:52.12 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 01:47:54.98 | Robbie Powelson | Thank you. I'd like to make my comment today in memory of Jesse Mann, Abigail Eggink, and Rafael Lopez. who are all close members of |
| 01:48:06.24 | Jill Hoffman | Camp one. |
| 01:48:06.43 | Robbie Powelson | Camp Cormorant who all died this past month. And. the issue Yeah. when I'm strongly urging the council and the city of South Stados to cease and the use of violence intimidation against people living in Camp Cormorant. we just received. word today from Urban Alchemy that the city of Sausalito tends to violate the past restraining order we had One. new federal court around the shed and that, the city intends to destroy all three of the sheds that people in the camp themselves built. you know, the things that including the Cobb oven, I imagine Um, But everything, the beautiful things that people have made to see them be destroyed thrown into a cage. um, You know, it truly is wintertime. as people are dying, as the city continues its onslaught of it's always intended |
| 01:49:10.18 | Alison Healy | Perfect. |
| 01:49:10.43 | Robbie Powelson | purpose of removing everybody. |
| 01:49:12.49 | Alison Healy | from the city. |
| 01:49:13.10 | Robbie Powelson | from the city. So... With that, with the violence, the attack on journalists that the city of Sausalito just seems to be so certain in itself I'm just, I'm strongly urging you to cease in your unlawful harassing, condoms. And, I just adjourned though it may be wintertime, though you may have millions of dollars to to hurt and run people out of your city Spring is on the way, spring is on the way. God bless you. |
| 01:49:53.70 | Mayor Kelman | All right, thank you. Our next speaker, please. |
| 01:49:56.45 | Serge Avila | Linda Pfeiffer, you've been unmuted and has to share your video. |
| 01:50:08.31 | Mayor Kelman | Welcome, thank you for your patience. |
| 01:50:11.89 | Linda Pfeiffer | Sorry about that. My name is Linda Pfeiffer. I'm secretary for Open Space Sausalito. And I'm making a statement regarding open space. Sassata was invited to participate in a few housing element stakeholder meetings in early 2022. OSS has chosen to participate in the housing element through this written documentation for the record to ensure clear communications as to OSS's position. We decided to participate in this manner in writing after reviewing one of the stakeholder reports created by the city consultant. It was a summary report did not attribute specific positions or views to anyone stakeholder. and rather instead presented themes and general comments. And given what's at stake with Saucido's open space, OSS wishes to participate through written input to ensure a more structured document and manner of OSS position for accountability and clarity and that expressly states our singular position. The OSS position regarding the housing element is Sausalito's open space at Cypress Ridge open space preserve must be preserved and protected from development. Losing any portion of Cypress Ridge open space preserve would decimate Sausalito's indigenous wildlife. which has already been marginalized from development over the decades. Every year development somewhere in Saucyote encroaches on habitat inch by inch. It is habitat death by 1000 cuts. Cypress Ridge has been zoned open space for decades. Its existing protected status therefore must be restated and reinforced by a conservation easement. Cypress Ridge is vital to the survival of Sausalito's wildlife, including but not limited to quail, hawks, owls, migrating birds, coyote, deer, butterflies, bobcat, and the dusky-footed woodrat. The dusky footed wood rod is a keystone species and it's stick mound den homes provide habitat for many other species. Cypress Ridge is also home to a wide variety of native plants, including oak woodlands, chaparral, and wildflowers. Every section of Cypress Ridge is part of an open space, interdependent ecosystem that has evolved over decades. Cypress Ridge is where Sausalito's wildlife lives, hunts, forages, roams, and raises its young. Our biologists set night vision cameras that track the wildlife moving through Cypress Ridge to the water source of the Sausalito Creek Wildlife Refuge. Sausalito's wildlife must be protected from development of you widely held and supported. by scientists and residents alike. OSS believes providing habitat for indigenous wildlife is critical to Saucyutu's essential character for present and future generations. I thank you for your time. Thank you very much. |
| 01:53:04.73 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Jacob and you've been unmuted and asked you share your video. |
| 01:53:10.61 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 01:53:16.44 | Jacob | Ahoy from Molly Stone's parking lot here. I was not able to, hello, Madam Mayor, City Council, and citizens of Sausalito and the surrounding areas. |
| 01:53:37.43 | Jacob | I met with Chris Zapata. with the city manager a few days ago And he told me he would arrange a meeting with the mayor. That's Janelle Kelman now. I sent her an invitation yesterday and As of now, she has not responded. |
| 01:53:59.38 | Jacob | I am going to assume that the response will be the same as it was at South Dunphy Park. Fence is police officers, and bulldozers. against 40 people. The most vulnerable people in Sausalito A town of 7,400. unable to to take care. of. 40 residents. to Take care of them, not in a way as if they have to be fed like baby birds. They had a chance to stay out of the way. when people lived on the acreage And we're not harassed daily with 72 hour tickets and attempts to move from all of our alphabet agencies. I will once again beg the mayor to come and visit and not incur legal fees, which are over $500,000 to a New York law firm as of now to fight the homeless. That is how the money of Sausalio is being spent. I do not want anything to do with the lawsuit against the city of Sausalito. I have been speaking for many years on only three items. Votes. bicycles and budding community gardens. All three of those have been opposed by the city of Sausalito without any meeting or any response. I have persisted in this effort and I will not quit. So we will be there Thursday morning at 7.30 to greet the agents of in the city of Sausalito. Instead of meeting with us and talking to us and doing this in an organized way, they have chosen to use force. They have chosen to use bulldozers. They have chosen to use people with guns. They have chosen to make arrests against African-American journalists. That's their response to bicycles, boats, and budding community gardens. We, the people, will not stop our activism. We will not be defeated. We will lose a few battles. But the war... We'll never be lost. |
| 01:56:18.81 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you very much for the comment. Also city clerk, is there anybody else who wishes a comment tonight? |
| 01:56:24.85 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, it looks like we don't have any other hands raised at the moment. |
| 01:56:29.06 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, we'll go ahead then and close public comment. Move on to item six, council member of committee reports. I'm gonna ask if there are any council member committee reports not in the packet. There is a written machine shop update The reason for that was because it was originally an agenda item. Then we received some new direction from GSA. around talking National Park Service, around a public benefit conveyance. We wanted to pursue that conversation before staff came in with a more thorough report So if you have additional questions, happy to answer those. And if anybody else would like to, Add on other on-committee reports. Now would be the time. Yes, Vice Mayor. Thank you. |
| 01:57:06.70 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | I just wanted to know that the sustainability commission meeting that had been scheduled for this coming Thursday, day. will be rescheduled. be Because there's a conflict with the housing element this Thursday from five to seven. So just that's the sustainability commission report out and also disaster preparedness. The schedule was not yet posted. So the meeting has been postponed. So very few report outs. Oh, and I attended an MCCMC sustainability committee meeting and there's a lot of exciting coordination going on across the different municipalities around potentially hiring sustainability coordinators. So there's some interesting movement. And it's a great group. Great work. Thank you for that. |
| 01:57:58.98 | Mayor Kelman | the Climate Action Committee. Council Member Hoffman. |
| 01:58:05.07 | Council Member Hoffman | All right, thanks. We had a great EDAC committee meeting yesterday and we went through the, list of criteria that the, or list of priorities that the council had given to EDAC at our last meeting. So that was a good discussion. from EDAC on how to get started. We had a great presentation by the mayor, at the sea level. Sea Level Rise Task Force at EDAC was very well received. Thanks to EDAC as always for all of their hard work. Okay, Wednesday Night Lives are starting again Tomorrow night? Yes, I believe that's right. I should know this because I'm on a deck, but I think that's right. |
| 01:58:41.30 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Wasn't it last week? |
| 01:58:43.14 | Council Member Hoffman | Thank you. I don't know, but they're not- It has started, but I think it's- |
| 01:58:45.18 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | There has to be. |
| 01:58:47.26 | Council Member Hoffman | going on okay so tomorrow night so tomorrow night's Wednesday so right so Wednesday I Anyway. Sorry. |
| 01:58:53.84 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Sorry. |
| 01:58:55.10 | Council Member Hoffman | That's super fun. |
| 01:58:56.06 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I thought it was first Wednesdays, Thank you. |
| 01:58:58.07 | Council Member Hoffman | Okay. |
| 01:58:58.27 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:58:58.32 | Council Member Hoffman | So, Okay. I'm gonna look it up right now. Okay. Thank you. |
| 01:59:04.69 | Mayor Kelman | And that's my report. Thank you, Council Member Huffman, Council Member Cleaver also. |
| 01:59:10.85 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | And I had a weirdly wonderful week last week with no committee meetings. And I hung out with my family and it was great. That sounds perfect. The PBAC is meeting on Monday night. I thank you to council member Blaustein for noting the heat of the housing element public meeting on Thursday. |
| 01:59:22.86 | Jill Hoffman | Sounds perfect. |
| 01:59:34.37 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | and OMIT is on Thursday too. Nope, I have nothing to report. |
| 01:59:38.30 | Mayor Kelman | I'm sorry. Okay, I'll just do a forward looking calendar as well. So our legislative committee is meeting on 2-14. and our finance committee is meeting on 228. And then I had the pleasure this week of meeting with Bayway. We talked about Southern Marin issues. And then I also attended an extra credit report from the folks in Tam Valley who were doing a listening session with their community around sea level rise and local hazards, which I thought was really interesting and can get those findings if anyone is interested in that. Yes, Kellen's member Houghton. I have confirmed. |
| 02:00:11.97 | Council Member Hoffman | I have confirmed. Wednesday night live. It's the first Wednesday of the month. So don't go out to, you can go out to dinner tomorrow night, but it's not Wednesday night live. Of course, you can always go out. But so first Wednesday of the month, super fun. Thank you. |
| 02:00:25.18 | Mayor Kelman | I disapprove them. |
| 02:00:25.85 | Council Member Hoffman | you you |
| 02:00:26.14 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you for that. Okay, Serge, let's see if anybody from the public would like to make a comment. I do see one hand. |
| 02:00:34.48 | Serge Avila | Thank you. Sandra Bushmaker, you've been unmuted and has to share your video. |
| 02:00:42.32 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi. Again, my last comment for the night. With regard to the machine shop report, I was very happy to read that. There's a lot of information in there. I understand that the staff report did state, the report did state that we were going to pursue a negotiated purchase, but I understand in my discussions with, Um, Mayor Kelman and Council Member Sobieski that both options are available, correct? You're still on the table. All right. |
| 02:01:15.06 | Jill Hoffman | No. |
| 02:01:16.65 | Sandra Bushmaker | And lastly, with regard to that report, I just wanna bring to everybody's attention, if you didn't get a chance to go through it, There's a 2007 memorandum from the government on the toxicity assessment for that building. And at the very end of the building, very into the memo, it states that this facility is not suitable for residential use or for child care of all the interesting things that they raised but it did state that and that it was used it was more appropriately for use with this historic uh, History. the uses for it. the uses that it historically was used for the industrial and they oddly said commercial, which I think something you should look into very seriously. as to whether that's an appropriate place with the toxicity report. That was proffered by the government in 2007. Okay, thank you. |
| 02:02:20.69 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:02:21.62 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 02:02:21.64 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you very much. So there's anybody else in the public to make a comment? |
| 02:02:25.77 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, I see no other hands raised. |
| 02:02:27.93 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, we'll close public comment. We'll move ahead then to item seven, city manager reports, city council appointments and other council business. Now is the time for public comment on any of those items. So we'll reopen a public comment, but again, they're only asked to the city manager information for council, the appointments, the boards, commissions, the committees and future agenda items. |
| 02:02:53.81 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, I see no hands-raised for these items. |
| 02:02:58.20 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, so we'll close public comment. And I'll invite our city manager Chris Zapata to provide the city manager's report. |
| 02:03:04.75 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor, members of the council and members of the public. It was a two part report this evening. city librarian and communications director, to talk about COVID. And then I want to segue into an introduction. So Abbott, can you please start? |
| 02:03:22.33 | Unknown | Yes. Thank you, Chris. Can you hear me okay? All right, I'm going to share my screen and start the presentation. Are you able to see that? Yes. But, Thank you, city council for allowing me to present another COVID-19 update and what has been a longer than expected series of COVID updates to the council. As far as what I'll be covering, I will briefly talk about the current state of the pandemic in Marin County, the public health orders that are currently in effect and are soon to go into effect. And I'll provide an update on the city of Sausalito's pandemic response. So looking at the current state of the pandemic in Marin, this is a chart showing daily new confirmed cases in the county through February 4th. And you'll see that we're on a pretty steep decline from the surge that we saw from the Omicron variant, which is very good news. And the expectation is those numbers are going to continue to decline in the coming days and weeks. That is a pretty scary surge that we've just been through, but it's been muted by the vaccination rates here in Marin County, and also by the fact that Omicron is not as virulent as past variants. So you can see that hospitalizations and ICU patients are at levels that haven't reached what we saw with the early surges of the virus. With the vaccination rates, we're currently at about 91% of the eligible population in Marin vaccinated, which is an exceptionally good number with the expectation that vaccines for children five and under will be allowed shortly. One place that we could be doing better is on booster shots. And if you haven't yet gotten your booster shot and you're eligible, please do so. Looking at public health orders, just yesterday, it was announced that the state is going to end the mask mandate for indoor public settings. However, there are going to be the following exceptions. And these are exceptions that we should be familiar with from previous mandates. Unvaccinated individuals will still be required to wear masks indoors. They're still required for K through 12 schools, though that order is expected to be updated soon. Public transit, airports, airlines as well, and then hospitals, healthcare settings, and some other institutional settings. We're in public health. When the state made this mandate in December, decided to follow the state guidelines to the letter to not release its own guidelines. So at the end of the state mandate on February 15th, Marin will be queuing to those to the new guidelines unlike a lot of other Bay Area counties that will be making decisions about what to do with with the mask guidelines. There's no indication that Marin Public Health is going to bring back its own guidelines apart from the state and I think it's important at the end also to mention that businesses and public entities may continue to have their own mask mandates, requirements in indoor settings if they choose to do so. A new public health order for public safety personnel is going to be released tomorrow. It's going to replace the current order for either proof of vaccination or weekly testing for public safety personnel. The new order is going to require up-to-date vaccinations for public safety personnel who work with the public and that means booster shots for those who are eligible. The timetable that they're putting in place is that for unvaccinated or partially vaccinated public safety personnel like police and fire. If you haven't been vaccinated, at least one vaccine dose by March 1st, then fully vaccinated by April 15th and a booster shot within 15 days of eligibility after April 15th. So we're kind of getting a loosening of the mask regulations, but also a tightening up |
| 02:07:49.13 | Robbie Powelson | Thank you. So, |
| 02:07:49.28 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:07:53.52 | Unknown | of the guidelines for our public safety workers. Turning now to the city of Sausalito's pandemic response. As we know, testing is an important tool in our kit for tracking, preventing, limiting the spread of COVID. Sausalito has been very supportive of bringing testing into our community. starting with in January of 2021 we started hosting in parking lot two curative and their band for Wednesday testing from 10 to four. And then in October of this year, excuse me, of 2021, we started collaborating with COVID clinic, a nonprofit organization. and they have set up a testing shed in the city hall parking lot and are making testing available from 10 until seven, Friday to Tuesday, so five days a week. And those are free PCR tests, in addition to some other tests that you can get for a fee. They conducted, it's been very successful. I think it was a great move on the part of the city. And the stats that I've gotten from COVID clinic are that about 1500 tests were conducted in January of 2022. So just really, really excellent performance there. |
| 02:09:15.41 | Jill Hoffman | Uh, |
| 02:09:20.96 | Unknown | the Looking at city facilities, we're continuing to require masks inside city hall and other facilities. It's a decision that we'll need to make based on the new state public health order whether that will continue or whether we will relax that guideline but again that's up to the city's discretion. likely in consultation with our union employees. Our HR department has done a great job making masks and other PPE available. To city staff this is a photo of supplies in our administration offices. And last week HR gave PPE gift bags to all members of the city staff, both hourly and full-time that included not just N95 or KN95 masks, but also two rapid antigen self-tests, which would be very important for staff if they are experiencing symptoms or have concerns that they might've been infected. Yeah. |
| 02:10:22.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:10:24.33 | Unknown | So what's next for us in COVID? I would hesitate to make any predictions. COVID has definitely continued to prove us wrong at just about every turn. This is a chart from Marin Public Health showing the arrival of different variants since January of 2021. And I think the big question mark is for us, it's going to be, you know, is there another variant that's going to rear its head Or are we going to get a break? And I know we're all hoping that it's the latter. Before I conclude and take some questions at the request of Mayor Kelman, I'm going to present a little library Interlude. maybe also a little COVID break as well. Um, With the arrival of our new children's librarian, we've been able to begin our direct on-site support for our local newly unified public school, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy. Mishi Ramos is our new children's librarian. This is a picture of them doing a Lunar New Year program with visitors to the school library at Nevada Street. And I've just got a couple photos here and I just wanted to say that already Mishi has proved to be a fabulous addition to the city staff and I'm super excited about the work that we'll be doing with the schools. Mishi will be at the schools at least one day a week and will be helping with class visits in the library and also visiting classrooms. So here's some other pictures from the Lunar New Year programs that you put together for the kids visits. |
| 02:12:12.24 | Unknown | And the dragon costume was loaned by Judy Ann Ainon, who's one of the library's trustees. And I'll end here with a video. It's a little choppy I can consume, but it's so awesome that I have to try it. |
| 02:12:44.56 | Chair Feller | It's worth it, Abbott. It's worth it. |
| 02:12:47.66 | Unknown | All right, let's see if I can get past it. There we go. That concludes my presentation. And I would be happy to take any questions. I'll stop my screen share as well. |
| 02:12:57.32 | Mayor Kelman | Abbott, we would be remiss if we didn't recognize that this is Black History Month. And I understand the library is participating in a series of programs around this. Do you wanna speak to that a little bit? |
| 02:13:09.74 | Unknown | Sure, the Marin County Free Library has a number of excellent, let me just stop my chair here, has a number of excellent virtual programs that they're offering this month. And we're helping publicize that to the community and has also been listed in Currents. And we do also have coming up on February, Well, now I'm gonna have to look at my calendar. I think it's February 26th. We have coming up the MLK celebration in Marin City and would like to encourage Saucyuta residents to email. Let me just bring it up here. To send email to fwilliams at MarinCityCSD.com to RSVP for a celebration on Saturday, February 26th that will feature a parade at 10 o'clock and then a noon program with a keynote speaker, entertainment, community awards, and some youth spoken word performances. |
| 02:14:20.83 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. I really appreciate that. |
| 02:14:22.96 | Alison Healy | Bye. |
| 02:14:24.27 | Mayor Kelman | Any other questions for Abbott or Chris? |
| 02:14:32.34 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, I'm not seeing any hands raised from council members. So I will thank you both on behalf of of the council, really appreciate the update. Okay, moving on then to 7C appointments to boards and commissions. |
| 02:14:44.40 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, if I may, Mayor, I think there's one more item. |
| 02:14:49.23 | Mayor Kelman | Sure. |
| 02:14:49.87 | Chris Zapata | Please. |
| 02:14:50.11 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:14:50.14 | Chris Zapata | Yes. So I'd like to take a moment to first of all, thank the community development team and to thank Heidi Scoble for her leadership as the Acting Director of Community Development. And then to let the folks in Sausalito know after a national search for the community development director position, we were fortunate to hire someone that had ties to Sausalito. And Jim Moore, who is the new Community Development Director brings the Sausalito Great experience both public and private. certainly California and Bay Area experience and Marin County experience. and even served as a planning commissioner in Sausalito at one time. as well as being a resident. So I'd like Jim to say hello. from the city council and to the public. Yeah. Do your thing. |
| 02:15:39.32 | Jim Moore | Thank you, Chris, for that introduction. I really appreciate it. And I just want to say briefly, it's both humbling and a great honor to be here and part of the team. And many thanks, as Chris said, to Heidi for holding down the fort as the interim. and to Chris and all he's doing to address the many challenges we're all facing and improve city services. And as Chris mentioned, I have experience in Sausalito. I actually lived on a boat, a navigable boat, at Marin, sorry, at Sauskumacher Point Marina for 20 years from 1993 to 2013. So, um, This is like coming home. I've never lived anywhere longer than those 20 years. And my heart is really here. And I hope to get back on the water, as a matter of fact. So having said that, we have much to do. And I am looking forward to helping wherever I can in the process. So thank you all so much. |
| 02:16:36.13 | Mayor Kelman | We are delighted to have you, Jim. pulled you away from Hawaii, so aloha and welcome back to Saus Lido. |
| 02:16:42.83 | Jim Moore | hollow Thank you so much. |
| 02:16:45.84 | Mayor Kelman | Yeah, thank you. Chris, anything else to add? |
| 02:16:49.35 | Jim Moore | And I know you're on a |
| 02:16:50.17 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:16:50.87 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. Uh, Only the mayor, definitely not that honorable, but yes. Thank you. Okay, we'll move over to item 7C, appointments of boards, commissions and committees. We don't have any appointments tonight. However, we are currently in the midst of scheduling a special city council meeting on a Saturday in March. And one of the agenda items will be to interview for boards and commissions that are in need of a quorum. So I'll just mention that again here to make sure that we are sending out, I know Serge and our city manager have been working on it, but sending out notifications to bring more applicants in who may want to serve on any of our boards and commissions. Okay, any comments on that? I don't see any, all right. So items 70, future agenda items. We do have agenda items list for February 15th and March, 2022. Any comments on that or anything to add? |
| 02:17:51.40 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:17:51.45 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Did you just... say about the future agenda items on the February 15th? |
| 02:17:58.16 | Mayor Kelman | Yes, I said there should be a list here. |
| 02:18:01.81 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, thank you. So first of all, I just wanna thank the agenda setting committee for this much more robust calendar going out. quite a ways. Also, there just seemed to be a lot of substantive issues on the next couple of meetings. I did want to, I raised at the last meeting. I think that it would better serve our process if we treat all properties that are moving their way through the housing element and the normal course and let the consultant sift through. all the properties and move the ones forward through the HEAC process as needed. I think if we start pulling specific properties into council meetings, we're going to be doing that one after another after another. And I would like to stay the course. I see that. On the 15th, there is Cypress Ridge scheduled for a specific hearing. So I'd like to actually recommend that we put that on the next HEAC and take it off February 15th. |
| 02:19:02.07 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Okay, any other comments before I respond to that? Okay, I'll just say thank you very much, Council Member Cleveland Knowles, for your thoughtful comments and insight. Vice Mayor Blasen and I did have a very dynamic dialogue and conversation about your comment and your suggestion, and also the direction to potentially bring it to council. The conversation that you're encouraging was an important one we felt it would be okay to have as a policy direction dialogue at the council because this property has already been by ballot measure designated as a preserve. And that ballot measure exists on the record. this was a unique circumstance i think you make an excellent point and i hope that we will include that in our discussion on the 15th |
| 02:19:51.28 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:19:51.29 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:19:51.31 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | So we did consider the site and our last housing element process. I don't think it has a deed restriction. We obviously decided not to. designate it, but I mean, it was just considered like every other piece of property. And I don't think the ballot measure, anyway, we don't need to get into an argument about it, but the ballot measure was funding and the designation is open space. It's... I just don't see why we would, you know, it's going to be a lot of public comment, a lot of time. There's going to be another request for another property. I just, I don't really object to taking that off the list at this point. And we made commitments to keep everything on the table and go through our analysis. |
| 02:20:40.64 | Terri Thomas | Thank you. |
| 02:20:40.65 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I'd like to... |
| 02:20:40.67 | Mayor Kelman | Good night. Yeah, other thoughts on this? I mean, I think Council Member Cleveland-Oles position clear, I have made mine I know that we're getting into the Land of Brown Act because Mary has put her video on So, um, I'd like to keep it on. I just ask that my fellow council members allow us to have this very meaningful dialogue. I think it will be very impactful for future conversations. And so, I don't know, Mary, if we're allowed to just poll the council without getting into further Brown Act. |
| 02:21:17.25 | Mary Wagner | It's certainly the agenda item is future agenda items right so if the Council wants to decide whether or not to hear this item, you can certainly have that discussion is wanted to avoid a substantive discussion about the inclusion of the site. Thank you. |
| 02:21:28.90 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:21:28.93 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:21:28.97 | Mayor Kelman | That's right. And so maybe on that point, it's on the agenda. we do understand one another's differing views on it. I think that would be a good opportunity to have the conversation since it's noticed as to whether or not we wanna have the conversation. I'm not sure how to, Mary's nodding her head. So that would be my suggestion on that. Vice mayor? |
| 02:21:51.06 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Yeah, I mean, we had had a robust conversation at agenda setting and I had raised the concern of council member Cleveland Knowles. So it would come as no surprise that I would be supportive of council member Cleveland Knowles's request that it go through the housing element. And then it'll inevitably, my thought it was, it would inevitably come back to the council because it will be considered by the housing element. And given that the general plan consistently when we brought up housing, it was said that that would go to the housing element for every conversation around housing. And so I'm just a little bit, I, and you know, I think we had the recommendation to staff should it be heard was essentially that there would be either a consideration of it going back to the housing element or being like ORS assessing the easement, but given the situation, I mean, I've made it pretty clear that I think it should go to the housing element first and then we would all hear it. I don't know why we would jump ahead, |
| 02:22:51.16 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, well, you know, we did make the agreement and we did talk at length. And so I'm wary of getting into a dynamic where we then debate |
| 02:22:51.50 | Vice Mayor Blaustein | Just to say. |
| 02:23:00.23 | Mayor Kelman | each of our future agenda items, and I'm gonna assure you, we will have differing opinion on future agenda items. So this is something the agenda setting committee did thoroughly that opposing viewpoints were considered and were heard, and it is now on the agenda for the 15th. So unless we wanna begin to debate every future agenda item, which would be very difficult in the Brown Act, I'm gonna suggest we move forward. The council member Hoffman. I just want to say, |
| 02:23:26.97 | Council Member Hoffman | Yeah. having been on the agenda setting committee as council member of Cleveland also all of us here now have been on and started that. I think it warrants vetting. It may be the conclusion at the end of that vetting process next week and the robust discussion I expect that we have. Um, we'll, send it back and or it may take it off. I mean, it may be that we come to the conclusion that there's a good reason to do some other sort of action But I think it's a good level setting as we move into this process for everybody who's gonna watch next week. this is how we're handling this, but we're gonna signal how we're gonna handle so that we don't have an endless parade as Council Member Cleveland-Knowles said, you know, throughout this process. exercise. you know, to to you know, vet this project, right? Either thumbs up or thumbs down, where's it going? Why are we going to do that? like I said level set for everything else coming forward. The other thing is, you know, today's the eighth, we have a rare circumstance where we have two weeks in a row. We have city council meetings. This, which is why you had the agenda already set for the 15th, because you have a short, really, really short window for staff. So it's my experience is that it's really hard for staff to pivot when you have the staff reports all lined up and stacked up and you think that, You're going to do what you're going to do. So I would, I would support going forward. We've gotten a lot of public comment on this project. And it was a subject of a little bit different. situation. So, I would say, let's go ahead and do it. And then at the end of that discussion, we can say, okay, This is our policy going forward with regards to different parcels. And we can give, I think we can give a clear signal at that time too. So to me, it makes sense just to leave it on as is. |
| 02:25:22.57 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, well, thank you everybody. I guess the vice mayor and I will commit to having even more robust conversations before we add something onto the agenda. put that out for the public. So with that said- |
| 02:25:32.86 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Sorry, I still had my hand up. Vice Mayor. |
| 02:25:38.19 | Mayor Kelman | Are you speaking to me or said the vice mayor? |
| 02:25:41.01 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I'm sorry I meant to say mayor. |
| 02:25:42.68 | Mayor Kelman | Oh, yeah, sorry. |
| 02:25:44.37 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | So I just noticed, so A, we have a full agenda next Tuesday. B, the next, very next meeting, March 8th, we're talking about the housing elements. So, I mean, I think it would be much better suited to have it on that day. So I'd throw that out there as a compromise. And otherwise I'd like to make a motion to not hear it on the 15th. |
| 02:26:07.76 | Mayor Kelman | So, There's a motion pending. Robert's Rules of Order is there a second? I'd second it. |
| 02:26:18.56 | Mayor Kelman | Please call the roll. |
| 02:26:22.25 | Serge Avila | Council Member Cleveland Holmes. |
| 02:26:24.75 | Mayor Kelman | Adios. |
| 02:26:25.26 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:26:25.27 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:26:26.29 | Serge Avila | Council Member Hoffman? |
| 02:26:27.62 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:26:27.64 | Council Member Hoffman | No. |
| 02:26:29.10 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blasdy. |
| 02:26:30.89 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 02:26:32.33 | Serge Avila | Mayor Tillman. |
| 02:26:33.42 | Mayor Kelman | No. Not sure what we do with that. I believe the motion fails. |
| 02:26:39.45 | Mary Wagner | A two, two motion when you only have four council members here is a non-action, if you will. |
| 02:26:39.70 | Mayor Kelman | Tutu. |
| 02:26:45.51 | Mary Wagner | Same thing. |
| 02:26:46.79 | Mayor Kelman | Well, again, thank you very much for the robust dialogue and the vice mayor and I will do a better job agreeing or disagreeing before we put items on to the agenda and bring it to the council. Okay, any other items to add to the future agenda items? Okay, not seeing any. go ahead and see if there are any reports of significance. I don't believe there are. So at 9.33, we shall adjourn. Thank you, everybody. Great, thanks, good night. |
| 02:27:16.25 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:27:16.27 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |