| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.13 | Serge Avila | IN THE CITY. Thank you. Good to go. to admit all opportunities. public? All participants are in. Good afternoon, Mayor Kellman and Councilor. in health pursuant to government 5495. and in light of the declared state of emergency, The regular. of the city council for March 22nd, 2022. will be conducted telephonically through Zoom and broadcast live and cable TV channel. Thank you. |
| 00:00:35.92 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you very much. Go ahead and call the meeting order and I ask that you please call the roll. |
| 00:00:42.23 | Serge Avila | Council Member Sylviezki. here. Councilmember Cleveland-Noll. |
| 00:00:46.71 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:46.72 | Unknown | Here. |
| 00:00:47.67 | Serge Avila | VICE MAYOR BLOUSTEIN. |
| 00:00:55.48 | Serge Avila | Thank you. |
| 00:00:55.58 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. |
| 00:00:55.62 | Serge Avila | Thank you. |
| 00:00:55.69 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. BUSINESS. My setting. Thank you, Mayor Coleman. |
| 00:01:03.11 | Serge Avila | And Mayor Kelman. |
| 00:01:04.31 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Here. |
| 00:01:06.32 | Serge Avila | MEMBERS ARE Board members appreciate it. have a forum. |
| 00:01:10.38 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you. We have four items to discuss tonight. Item D1, conference with legal counsel. pursuant to California Government Code Section 540. I'm not sure. Sausalito, Yacht Harbor versus the city of Sausalito. I don't need to. A REAL PROGRAM. Pursuant to California Government Code Section 54956. Bye. 100 EPPTIDE suite 220. Item D3, public employee. ...percement to government code section 54957 for the city attorney. which is conference legal counsel existing litigation pursuant to California government code section 54956.9 Gordon. Ms. President. Sausalito, Lydia McNair, which is the county. Ron Rauda and George Glass versus Caltrans, Steve Saucyus, Ashmead and David Johnson versus Caltrans. Serge, do we have anybody here? on the closed session items. |
| 00:02:13.14 | Serge Avila | META MAYOR, I DO. our iPhone, I can provide instructions. THE RIGHT PUBLIC COMMENT. That'll be good. or audio public comment participation is limited to three minutes. if you would like to. please raise your hand. application and you will be called upon when it be time to speak. To raise your hand from a phone, press start 9, and each speaker will be notified when the time has elapsed. um, No hands raised. |
| 00:02:45.64 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. Then we will go ahead and close public comment. Thanks for bringing. |
| 00:02:56.16 | Serge Avila | the re-initiator audio sequence. All participants have been admitted to. in the room. |
| 00:03:09.22 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. Well, welcome everybody. Coming back from closed session for the South Dakota City Council meeting for Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022. Nothing to announce from closed session, but I will ask for a motion to approve the agenda. Tomorrow. Second. Please call the roll search. |
| 00:03:29.99 | Serge Avila | Council Member Sobieski? Councilmember Clive-Lenton. |
| 00:03:33.79 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:03:34.53 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blavisky. |
| 00:03:36.22 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:03:37.45 | Serge Avila | Mayor Kelman. |
| 00:03:38.41 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. PASSES 4-0. Okay, great. Well, we're gonna move on to item number one, number 1A. Yeah, special presentations. I am delighted to welcome our California State Senator for the second district, Senator Mike McGuire. And I want to thank Senator McGuire as well for his patience as we were just a tiny bit late. So Senator McGuire, welcome. |
| 00:04:05.87 | Mayor Kelman | And Serge, he might be under Summer's account perhaps |
| 00:04:13.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:20.23 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, the Senator has been unmuted and has to share his video. |
| 00:04:24.65 | Unknown | Great. Thank you. |
| 00:04:30.25 | Summer | I'm so sorry, Mayor Kellman. It's just me, Summer. Senator McGuire should be joining any momentarily. So sorry about that. |
| 00:04:38.27 | Mayor Kelman | No problem. I knew that we were a little bit late. Should we take five minutes on a different item and come back to that? Sure, why don't we go to the action minutes. |
| 00:04:48.26 | Unknown | GREAT. |
| 00:04:48.66 | Mayor Kelman | THE WORLD. Anybody have changes to the action minutes item number two? Um, Actually, any corrections, any changes to the action minutes? Okay, I'm not hearing any, any member of the public wish to comment on the draft minutes. and Serge maybe announce how that is possible. |
| 00:05:10.30 | Serge Avila | Chair, 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 is 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. |
| 00:05:32.27 | Mayor Kelman | Do we have any speakers? |
| 00:05:33.56 | Serge Avila | I see no hands race. |
| 00:05:35.51 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. We'll close public comment. Is there a motion to either approve as submitted or amended? I'll approve, make a motion to approve. |
| 00:05:44.53 | Councilmember Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 00:05:44.55 | Serge Avila | Thank you. |
| 00:05:46.10 | Mayor Kelman | Serge, please call the roll. |
| 00:05:47.76 | Serge Avila | Council member Sobieski. Yes. Council member, please let go. |
| 00:05:51.54 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:05:52.42 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blasding. |
| 00:05:53.98 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:05:55.08 | Serge Avila | Mayor Kelman. |
| 00:05:56.21 | Mayor Kelman | Yes, that is passed 4-0. So I'm just gonna pause again and see if Senator McGuire might be ready. And if not, we will move on to item three. |
| 00:06:14.96 | Mayor Kelman | You might need to unmute Summer again. Oh, here we go. Looks like the Senator just entered the |
| 00:06:22.35 | Serge Avila | Thank you. |
| 00:06:22.45 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:06:22.57 | Serge Avila | Thank you. Madam Mayor, I'm co-hosting the Senator right now. |
| 00:06:26.64 | Senator McGuire | Thank you. |
| 00:06:27.09 | Mayor Kelman | Great. Welcome Senator McGuire. |
| 00:06:32.09 | Senator McGuire | Madam Mayor, it's good to see you. Council, thank you so much for having to be with you. City Manager, good to see you and City staff. |
| 00:06:39.26 | Mayor Kelman | Good to have you here. Thank you for joining us. We were eager to hear your thoughts tonight. |
| 00:06:44.96 | Senator McGuire | Well, Madam Mayor, I just want to say that I'm thrilled to be with you. Thank you so much. And I'm really grateful for this opportunity and looking forward to having a conversation here this evening. Madam Mayor, if it works for you, I'm going to be very quick in regards to state update. Then I'd like to be able to turn it over to you, Madam Mayor, to be able to lead that discussion. And obviously, comments, questions, criticisms, we take all here this evening. And again again I'm so honored to be with you thank you so much a quick look at where the economy is right now within the state of California bottom line is this we are in our ninth year of a surplus we anticipate that we're going to finish the fiscal year with about a 50 billion dollar surplus could be higher i would anticipate a significant portion of that 50 billion will be going back to california taxpayers as you all know we advanced about a 12 billion dollar tax cut along with business incentives last year plus another 6 billion in direct financial assistance to cal's most vulnerable in 2021 you're going to see a similar package that will be advanced for residents this year we're still working that out in regards to budget negotiations but would not be surprised to see a significant portion of that 50 billion going back to taxpayers We're're going to have a record 35 billion dollars in our rainy day fund this year which is absolutely critical and we should have been doing this long ago and California currently leads the nation right now in new business starts in job creation. We've continued to raise our household income obviously not fast enough with rising inflation and energy costs. We are leading the nation in manufacturing growth right now as well as clean green energy jobs where we remain a bit challenged. is the issue of tourism, especially in Southern Marin and San Francisco. A lot of the state Sonoma North is seeing record number of folks hitting the road and visiting. Because Southern Marin is so tied to San Francisco, we anticipate a lag of about another 24 to 30 months in the convention market rebound in international travel. and that is a soft spot and a concern for san francisco southern marin los angeles orange county in san diego more to come on that as you may have heard we're investing heavily on getting folks back into california in fact we're leading the nation and bringing tourists back now above Florida, but we still are gonna be challenging that convention market as well as international travel, which won't, in fact, impact Southern Marines. quickly on issues of importance regarding policy. climate change. Number one, the state of California has passed the biggest climate action package in America when it comes to fiscal assistance for local governments. $15 billion is moving right now. You'll see a program specifically focused on planning for sea level rise, which is going to be so critical, obviously, to your residents in southern Marin. More to come on that Madam Mayor, I would anticipate several billion in additional dollars that will be invested in sea level rise planning this year alone. We're working on that budget deal even as we speak. In addition, I'm leading the effort along with Senator Laird from Santa Cruz on bringing forward the most robust climate action policy package that we've had in the state in 50 years. It's going to have four focuses on that transitioning the state from fossil fuels, prioritizing a greening... in the state in 50 years. It's going to have four focuses on that transitioning the state from fossil fuels, prioritizing a greening of our energy grid, workforce training, and as we just discussed, climate adaption. And that is mostly going to be focused on budget, especially for coastal communities. I'd like to talk about the Southern Marin stretch of Highway 101, and specifically the Marin City Sausalito exit, and of course, the Manzanita Park and Ride Block. Madam Mayor, you're going to get an invitation along with the Vice Mayor to attend a roundtable that we're going to be hosting with Caltrans on emergency work that we're going to need to be able to perform. around the park and ride lot and at the exit to be able to focus on flooding. This will be a two-phase approach. The first phase will be emergency work, additional pumps, flood walls, new drainage that we hope that will be a fix for the next five to ten years. Long term, we're going to need to be able to fund a project that will actually raise that stretch of 101 here in the coming few years we're going to be bringing in the entire district team from the san francisco barrier caltrans district to meet with folks in april and we'd be honored if you'd attend and we'll be sending you an invite to have that discussion. Know how critical that is for Southern Marin, Sausalito, Marin City and of course to the thousands of commuters that are going into the city and out of the city each and every day. More to come on that but I think we're going to see a short-term fixed advance in the next 24 to 36 I would like to talk about wildfire quickly Madam Mayor. This year in the next 24 to 36 months. I'd like to talk about wildfire quickly Madam Mayor this year in the budget we were able to secure funding for a new firefighting crew ground crew for the county Marin specifically it's through Marin County Fire and I want to say thank you to Chief Weber for his hard work on this and we are honored to partner with him in that legislation that we're advancing this year SB 1062 Marin would get a second full-time permanent fire crew that would be able to focus on vegetation management dead and dying tree removal prepping emergency routes for vegetation management as well fire breaks as well as getting folks on to fires in the county. More to come on that but that's been a real critical focus of ours. Over $2 million flowed over the last 12 months in the Marin as well for wildfire preparedness and vegetation management. Quickly on PG&E We're advancing legislation that would hold them accountable to underground their lines especially the 10,000 miles of electrical lines, transmission and distribution lines that are in Marin, Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, Calusa. You can keep going but hold them accountable to get this 10,000 miles done over the next 10 years to be able to expedite this process. And if they don't hit the timeline, they will face consequences, financial consequences by the state. We are very focused on this. And then lastly, I'd like to talk about homelessness as well as housing. And first and foremost, I want to Bye. I cannot imagine how challenging it has been for you Madam Mayor and to your council and to the city staff and to the residents of Sausalito. With the encampment I know you have been very focused on this issue. Here's where we're at with the state. So as you know, last year we advanced 12 billion. The majority of that 12 billion has been invested in permanent supportive housing, just like the development that the 15 million that supervisor rice secured. We're going to see more of that this year. We're going to add another $2 billion to this for permanent supportive housing. And? We're working on ensuring that counties get flexible encampment dollars About 5 million landed in Marin County last year. We're working on that as well. Plus we'd like to work with you, Madam Mayor, and I know that there is a, there'll be a joint focus, Sausalito, San Rafael, and Navajo, to be able to secure some additional state dollars on a separate track. We look forward to working with you on that. And the other piece I want to say is $50 million over the last 24 months alone has been invested in the County of Moran for homelessness. We know that there's much more work to do, and I promise you we're going to be focusing on that. And I just want to say thank you to Mayor Kelman for her work. She's been on this work group that we have with RBRA, BCDC, along with the County of Moran, now Health and Human Services. and I want to make a commitment to you tonight and Madam Mayor, I've said this privately, and I'll say it publicly, we want Sausalito at the table as you are now, every step of the way as we move forward on the work that needs to happen on Richardson Bay and solve the challenges that we have currently and ensure that this works for Sausalito and the county and I promise you we're going to continue to work with you hand in hand on this critical issue. There will be about three billion dollars that we'll be moving from the state as well for affordable housing and workforce housing. If there's anything we can do in assistance you need on that we'd be honored to partner partner with you. But Madam Mayor, City Council, I've gone on way too damn long. And I'll turn it over to you, Madam Mayor, to lead the conversation. Again, I am so honored to be with you tonight. And thank you for this opportunity to work with you. |
| 00:16:23.91 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Senator McGuire, as always, you bring a tremendous insight and energy. And so we thank you for your leadership. And I did not know you're gonna talk about the tremendous climate change earmarks. So I'm so pleased to see that and hear that and particularly the program specific to sea level rise. I think kind of my big question for you is, when you talk about, say homelessness and housing, 50 million has gone to the county of Marin. How can we as a municipality better either work with the county or work with your office to be the recipient of a larger portion of those funds? |
| 00:17:00.93 | Senator McGuire | Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor. I think one of the items that we need to do, and Madam Mayor, please push back if you think I'm incorrect. We wanna be able to work with you. Number one, City of Sausalito has led on issues regarding innovative solutions to homelessness, and I wanna say thank you. I know that there's been some challenges on some encampment grants. We'd love to be able to work with you on that and bring in HCD. We'd love to, if you'd like us to, to do a post-mortem on that. I think the other piece that we need to look at this year is some direct allocation from the general fund that we'd like to be able to work with you on, along with the county and city of San Rafael, city of Nevada. That's going to be a focus of ours. That would be aside and separate from the grant process that HCD currently has to be able to assist you in your needs in the community. And I know that you have some ideas that you'd like to be able to explore in the challenge with implementing those ideas. assist you in your needs in the community. And I know that you have some ideas that you'd like to be able to explore. And the challenge with implementing those ideas need the dollars to be able to get it done. So I'd like to better work with you on this for a direct general fund request. And I'd like to have a side conversation with you, your very capable city staff and anyone else that you think is necessary to sharpen the pencil, if you will, on that request. |
| 00:18:16.28 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you. We accept, we will be at the table with you and appreciate the collaboration. Kind of related to that, you mentioned $12 billion in permanent housing with another $2 billion coming down the pipeline. Are you attaching timeframes to that expenditure and or construction of permanent housing? |
| 00:18:36.50 | Senator McGuire | Yes, ma'am. So we fully expect that those dollars will be fully obligated within 48 months. We're about a year and a half in now. So at the end of the day, we fully anticipate about 50,000 residents will be taken off the streets and housed permanently. Not all of that $12 billion last year plus additional $2 billion that we're looking at putting into this fund this year will be strictly permanent supportive housing the majority will be but these dollars have also helped for example emergency shelter grants that have been distributed to counties so for example Marin Sonoma received about 5 million and change last year very flexible funding that would be able to assist local jurisdictions on encampments and purchasing tents, sleeping bags, et cetera, and or setting up more permanent encampments. And so those dollars we fully anticipate will be moving forward this year as well. |
| 00:19:40.20 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you for that. It's very interesting. I appreciate that Senator Ware. Let me give my colleagues an opportunity. to speak with you. Anybody have any comments or questions for the center? Yes, Councilman McLevon-Norz. |
| 00:19:52.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Hi, thank you, Mayor, and welcome, Senator McGuire. Great to see you here in Vasilito. Yeah, thank you. So I just wanted to thank you for your thoughts and for... |
| 00:19:56.57 | Mayor Kelman | I'm so good to see you here in Vespa. |
| 00:19:58.29 | Becky Dower | Thank you. |
| 00:20:04.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | taking the time tonight. I especially appreciate your recognition that Southern Marin has a unique economy that's closely tied to San Francisco's. and that we are not quite back. on our economic recovery. So I just want to appreciate your taking an extra look at that. We're looking at our mid-year budget later today. And while we've had some recovery, our transit, our hotel tax and other things are not fully back. So any assistance you can get from you on that is greatly appreciated. And then secondly, I loved hearing about your work with Caltrans and the Manzanita and then Rhin City. We desperately need that park and ride at Manzanita back. I'm sure you're also including the Transportation Authority of Marin in these discussions, you know, and then that exit is super important for our infrastructure and for our workers from the north to get into town, kids to get to school, etc. I just wanted to ask you a couple questions on housing. I wanted to first thank you for your amazing and consistent leadership. at the state level on housing solutions and you're reaching out across a variety, you know, reaching out to everyone involved in the discussion. It's been really refreshing and great to see. wanted to also thank you for your work on SB9. I did want to just raise an issue where the mayor and I are on our housing element advisory committee And two things have come up in that context. One, HCD, is not providing us with a number that we can count for our housing from SB9 yet. So it's really challenging. We're, as you probably know, like most other small Marin jurisdictions, we have a super high, you know, 700 29 or something units that we are supposed to provide with our current population is just over 7,000. So I would love if you have any ability to urge HCD to give us or give our consultants some ability to project I... what we might see from SB9 that helps us figure out what else is there. And then The second issue on kind of meeting our housing element needs, I know we talked about this a couple of years ago, is there's a lot of folks here in Sausalito in favor of water-based housing. We have some great models, including at Galilee Harbor and elsewhere. But as you know, there's limitations to how much water-based housing we can provide imposed through various laws including through BCDC regulations. So I think we have some at least seems like some consensus in town. around that issue and I don't know if you have thoughts on that. It's an area that we would love to see more of. I think I speak for most of the council and saying that that's an area we'd love to be able to expand on in our housing element. And then the last with all your surplus at the state, I know there's lots of uses for it, but I would just like to say, complying with the housing element law, I'm all for providing housing here in Sausalito and expanding and creating new ways to do that. But doing the housing element itself is crippling. staff time, we're paying a consultant over $900,000, you know, with a very small general fund budget. And And, you know, I think that money could go to other things, you know, to actually proactive housing solutions. So I would just raise that. I know the county is spending about 1.5 million on a consultant. think other jurisdictions are too it's just a lot of money um and I don't know if you've heard that before but uh I would love your thoughts. But thank you. Just great leadership on these issues. |
| 00:24:16.80 | Senator McGuire | No, councilman, it's wonderful to see you. And look, you're the one that has been leading for much longer than I. And I just want to say thank you for that. And I'm so honored to be with you here tonight. I'm going to tick down those issues. I'm going to start on the issue of tourism. I'm hoping that we're going to have about 45 million in the budget this year for gateway cities to focus on bringing back conference and international travel. So this past year we secured $95 million statewide that focused on getting folks to be able to travel domestically into California and throughout the state. That's incredibly successful. Where we are continuing to be challenged. San Francisco, LA, Orange County, and San Diego. So councilwoman, you're going to see some very specific dollars spent on getting folks to focused on conference travel as well as international. I will be honest, I still believe we're going to have a soft market in the city of San Francisco, slowly getting better, but soft probably for the next 24 months. I just want to be candid about that, but we will see some return on infrastructure. Absolutely, Ms. Richmond, we are going to want there from Tam and her staff and we will be sending out invites on that and she is absolutely critical to be there. On SB 9, so, I think what would be really good is, and Councilwoman, please push back on if you think I'm staking in this. I think it's time that we get HCD to be able to come and speak with Marin mayors and council members. I think that would probably be really good. Because what Ms. Cleveland Knowles just brought up, very similar questions that we're receiving from other jurisdictions in Marin, other jurisdictions in Sonoma, in jurisdictions in Mendocino County as well. I think it would be really good. I will work on that to be able to get with Marin mayors and council members to be able to have that. I will tell you this, Councilwoman, there are going to be three points which are technical in nature i'll go through them quickly that i know hcd will want cities to look at in regards to qualifying sb9 units i'm going to give you an example of one of them so they're going to want an inventory of sites where sb9 could be applied They're going to want a non-vacant analysis done regarding where the units can be redeveloped. We're looking at duplexes and fourplexes. There is going to be a memo released. in the beginning to mid-April from HCD that will provide guidance to local jurisdictions on SB9. You've asked some really smart questions. Thank you. And I was just on with HCD, I don't know, about a week and a half, two weeks ago, checking in on that. They do believe that early to mid-April will have this guidance document I don't know um Councilwoman if it's going to answer all the questions which is why I think we should just do a question hour if you will with an HCD representative just to be able to get it all out there if that would uh be fit on BCDC I want to say thank you to BCDC because they are now going to allow for additional liver boards. We're going to increase that, as you all know, the 10% as long as it's being used through a project home key funding. So BCDC is going to be flexible on that. And as you all know, and by the way, this is thanks to Councilwoman Hoffman who really pushed this. I want to give credit where credit is due to have that eligible and that is moving now for slips in for example, in Sausalito. And the last piece is, as far as dollars for housing element, I don't know if we'll be able to secure that. And I just want to be candid. I have some real concern in regards to how unrealistic, if I could just be honest, some of these housing element numbers are and how they're going to get built. And I'm happy to go offline and talk with you about that i know we could talk for hours on that issue but um councilman i look forward to working with you on bringing hcd to mayors and council members |
| 00:29:02.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you so much and thank you, Mayor, for the time. And great news on VCDC. Um, Although I would just add there's the liveaboard 10 to 15%, but then we also have, I think, some opportunities in Southern Marin for communities, additional communities, like |
| 00:29:20.50 | Senator McGuire | Thank you. |
| 00:29:20.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:20.55 | Senator McGuire | Bye. |
| 00:29:21.29 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | of the Galilee Harbor model that may or may not fit within that within that metric, but thank you so much, Pariva. |
| 00:29:28.97 | Senator McGuire | GOOD TO SEE YOU. |
| 00:29:30.44 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:29:30.45 | Mayor Kelman | Do you have time for one more question from our vice mayor? |
| 00:29:33.22 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Of course. |
| 00:29:33.80 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:29:33.90 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. |
| 00:29:33.96 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:29:34.00 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Okay. |
| 00:29:34.07 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. |
| 00:29:34.59 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. Hey, Senator McGuire. It's great to see you. Great to see you. Yeah. Thank you so much for all of your hard work that you're doing and for taking the time to be with us in Sausalito. We are so lucky to have a representative like you. And congratulations on your new leadership position in the Senate. It's really great to see that. And we're really happy and proud of you. So thank you again for being here and for that. I had a couple of quick, I'll try to keep them quick questions. I also was really thrilled to see that you are pulling out a new climate action plan with four key focuses that seem really critical. I would love, I have two questions about that. One is what's the timeline for you and Senator Laird? When do you think that will come out? And the second is often with some of these larger state regulations, it's harder for smaller municipalities like Sausalito to, for instance, get access to the grants or to funds. So how will we be able to participate in and be a part of things like the workforce training for climate resiliency and adaptation? How will that trickle down to the smaller cities? And then the second question I had, again, excited to see that there is yet another surplus here in California. And you mentioned the tourism piece, but beyond just the tourism piece, some of our local businesses are still really struggling with coming back from COVID and also our American Recovery Act dollars were just for this year and we won't be seeing them again next year. Can we expect the state to be providing additional support for businesses and for |
| 00:29:36.07 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Great to see you. |
| 00:29:44.88 | Summer | THE END OF |
| 00:30:52.72 | Vice Mayor Blasding | and I think that's a great perhaps some sort of grant program as we continue with our COVID recovery, which even though it may seem like things are getting better, from a fiscal standpoint, there continues to be a number of challenges. And thanks again. |
| 00:31:04.94 | Senator McGuire | Vice Mayor, it's wonderful to see you and thank you again for allowing me to be with you today. So on the climate regs, I think that within the next 30 days, you're going to see a series of bills that will be introduced in the Senate focus on those four key pillars. In addition, we're going to link the budget to those priority bills. to ensure that they could get funding. on workforce training, that's going to be one of the more challenging. So I'm a Democrat. And I think Democrats have forgotten that if you live in Kern County, The only living wage job with benefits and retirement is working in the oil field. And where I would hope that we can focus is, and this is gonna have to bring in the governor on this one, is he has a retraining program, which I greatly respect. But I think where those women and men who work in the oil fields are going to want is rather than retraining, Where is the job going to be? So where I think we need to focus as part of our package is how do we incentivize, for example, additional offshore wind. how do we incentivize onshore wind solar and geothermal so that we actually get those jobs quicker. More to come on that. I think it's a trickling down, as you had said, to the local level. and I'm not trying to be coy with you, to be determined, that's something that we're working through even as we speak. The grant programs as well for sea level rise preparedness still being worked through. Could be coming from Coastal Commission where we could beef up. Could be coming through the Coastal Conservancy. More to come on that. And again, Madam Vice Mayor, I am not at all trying to be coy, but just being honest, we're still working on those details. Additional support for businesses that you just brought up. More to come, I think where the state is going to be focused this year is on direct assistance for Californians to be able to offset the cost of higher energy. Gas prices, electricity, etc. especially for the most vulnerable. So that's something that we're working through and there's also additional attention and focus on rent and back rent. We still have about 120,000 folks who have applied for rental assistance who are in the queue. And that's something else that we're gonna need to continue to set aside for. It's probably gonna be another billion dollars if I could be candid, just to pay off that back rent in COVID era, from COVID era times. So more to come on that, Madam Vice Mayor. Again, I'm not at all trying to be squishing your answers, but I promise to get back to you on them. |
| 00:34:04.86 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you so much. I will definitely follow up. I always love a reason to have a meeting with you, Senator McGuire. Thank you again for being here. We really appreciate it. |
| 00:34:08.27 | Senator McGuire | were like, We look forward to seeing you and the mayor out on highway 101. here in the coming few weeks. FREEDOM. |
| 00:34:18.56 | Mayor Kelman | So I know you probably have to go, but I really do want to introduce you to council member Sobieski. And you've probably met before, but I wanted to give the council members a quick moment to say hi. And if he has a question, if that's okay with you. Of course, council member, |
| 00:34:30.64 | Councilmember Sobieski | Council member, how you doing? Thank you. Thank you, Senator, for being here. It's good to see you. Thanks for all the information and for being candid on some of your answers. Let me just go back to... the point that my colleague Susan Cleveland Knowles raised on the BCDC restriction on how many slips can be used for housing. I appreciate the movement on Home Key former Mayor Hoffman helped me, but Really, please be candid. How can we get this? state agency to be nimble in how it assesses their mission across very different kinds of shoreline. So Slita is unique. and fundamentally different. affects us differently than other communities. We have. very substantial marinas that are a unique asset that provides a unique housing solution, or homeless, but in general. But it requires a kind of nimbleness that I know agencies don't always have and will only have after So is there any chance of getting the special consideration for South Korea's unique character when BCBC makes choices about its policies and enforcements. |
| 00:35:40.93 | Senator McGuire | Councilmember, thank you for that. I'm going to give you my own editorial, and I'm not speaking for BCDC on this. And look, I want to give... BCDC some props because they have been willing to be flexible and at the table and they continue to be at the table in our working group meeting. So, I'm going to put it in two different tracks. If we're talking about the build out of new marinas, I think that's going to be a real challenge. I think where Sausalito and please push back on me council member would like to be able to go if there are older marinas that could be revitalized that historically had been a marina, how can we revitalize those and look for housing? And I would look at that, my own personal opinion, as a different approach that I would hope there could be additional flexibility. I think it's going to be challenging environmentally building new, but if there are marinas that can be revitalized and redeveloped, then I would hope that there could be additional flexibility. And it's something that I'd be honored to work with you and the council and the city on. But, Council Member, I'll give you the last word on that. |
| 00:36:53.09 | Councilmember Sobieski | Well, I don't want the last word. I'd like you to have the last word. We have more than 2,000 slips. We're currently restricted to not more than 10% liveaboards. If you increase that percentage even slightly, you'd make a meaningful dent in the housing problem. And you could take all the anchor outs off the water in one fell swoop. |
| 00:37:00.09 | Senator McGuire | Thank you. |
| 00:37:10.64 | Councilmember Sobieski | And that kind of jujitsu is prevented by a one size fits all policy that we applied in principle, but when it gets down to particulars, it should have more flexibility. Thank you. What do you think? Can you make that happen? |
| 00:37:24.74 | Senator McGuire | Yeah, look, I think that, BZDC has shown some initial flexibility, truly, of allowing of lifting the 10% cap Um, I am more than committed to continue this conversation with you Councilman and the Mayor to have a further conversation about additional flexibility. I will say this. I also think as far as the Richardson Bay issue, my candid assessment is this. I think that there are going to be three approaches. Number one, looking at additional slips. Number two, looking at pre-existing inventory within the county system. and I know we have the VI SPADAD that we're going to need to work through on scoring and then three, I think we're going to need to look at additional permanent stock, housing stock, to be able to transition folks off the water and into safe, secure permanent housing, wrap with services as well. Um, there are going to be some individuals who are living in the Richardson Bay that will need more acute services, potentially mental health, potentially addiction services, and I think that those folks, easy for me to say, would be best served potentially on permanent on-land housing, but that's where I think we're going to land in regards to the transition, additional slips, pre-existing stock and new units built and or transitioned and have some ideas on that, on how that could be done. And I'd be happy council member to go in depth on that with you and have a further conversation if that's something you'd like. Thank you. |
| 00:39:11.12 | Councilmember Sobieski | Senator. |
| 00:39:11.71 | Senator McGuire | Thank you. |
| 00:39:12.37 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Senator. I know you need to go, but I hope you are comforted by the fact that we did not prep ourselves beforehand, but we had a lot of similarities over conversations that I've had with you, Councilman Hoffman's had with you. And so I think you can see a theme here. So we are happy to join you at the table with RBRA. We are open to these ideas and innovation with BCDC, and I look forward to continue to work with you. So thank you, Senator, for joining us tonight, and to Summer for help facilitating your attendance. |
| 00:39:41.45 | Senator McGuire | Mayor, you're the best. Thank you so much, Mayor. Thank you, Council. Thank you, City Manager. And we all love Summer Cassell, so she does a fantastic job. It's great. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Senator. |
| 00:39:49.57 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Senator. Okay, well, thank you everybody. I thought that was extremely interesting and informative and I appreciated the overlap with a lot of our comments and our direction. So that was really fun. Okay, well, I guess we now will move on then to item three, which is the consent calendar. So matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, or expect to have unanimous council support, and may be enacted by the council on motion. There'll 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 actions. 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 prior to opening up for public comment, let me list the 11 items on consent. Item 3A, assign Marin IT to be the interim information technology managed services provider for one year and allocate funds. Item 3B, ordinance amending chapter 12.24 for garbage collection and disposal to address Senate Bill 1383. Item three C adopted resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with PG&E authorizing the use of a portion of the Martin Luther King junior parking lot for public safety power shut off community resource center Item 3D, adopting a resolution, accepting the Southview Improvements Project as complete and directing the city engineer to issue a notice of completion for the Southview Improvements Project. Item three E adopt resolution of city council, the city of South city approving and authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with CSW Stuber Shaw engineering group for preparation of plans, specs and estimates for the 2022 street improvement project. Item 3F, a request by Galilee Harbor for reimbursement and fee waiver for the 2021 Maritime Day event in the amount of $2,899. Item 3G, adopt a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and committing to continue to discuss and develop and implement an action plan to address race discrimination and encourage education in our community. Item 3H, accept, receive, and file the SOSLIO audited basic financial statements for the year ended June 30th, 2021. Item 3, aye, major budget review. and adoption of resolution to adjust the fiscal year 2021, 2022 budget. Item 3J, adoption of a treaty replacement fee. And item 3K, adopt a resolution to continue to conduct the city council and all other city board, commission, and committee members remotely due to health and safety concerns for the public. So before we get started, I'm gonna propose that we remove item 3I with a mid-year budget and we remove item 3C about the use of the MLK, remove them both from the consent calendar. Does anybody else I see, Council Member Sobieski and then we'll go to Council Member for the Knowles and then the city manager. |
| 00:42:47.19 | Councilmember Sobieski | Sorry, I was gonna pull three I off the agenda to have the consent to so. Thank you. |
| 00:42:52.71 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:42:52.84 | Councilmember Sobieski | Good morning. |
| 00:42:53.62 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. Great, thank you. Councilmember Cudenos. |
| 00:42:56.37 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:42:57.70 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:42:57.74 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes, I also wanted to pull that off. And I also just wanted to give a huge shout out. There's so many good things on that consent calendar this week, but a special one, Aaron Deer. My heart is 3D, which is the Southview Improvements Project notice of completion. So that's our fourth and final that's not going to be a and a moment to celebrate a long road. And I'm really proud of all the great work our Department of Public Works have done moving these projects forward despite challenging budget times and other constraints. So big thank you to Public Works. I don't want to take it off consent, but I just wanted to recognize a note. this moment along the same week that the North Street steps opened back up. Big progress. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:43:53.61 | Unknown | Thank you. And Vice Mayor. |
| 00:43:54.86 | Vice Mayor Blasding | I also wanted to pull 3i and then I wanted to acknowledge the work of the sustainability commission and also basically refuse on 3b. I don't want to pull it but just they did a lot of work on getting that to the place where it is now so it's nice to see it getting approved and also appreciate that my colleagues supported the inclusion of the resolution condemning antisemitism and just acknowledge that it's quite unfortunate that that's something that we're seeing in Marin County. And it's really important that we spend the time to work on that and the mayor and I will be working on this as part of our DEI work going forward. So wanted to make sure that wasn't noted. |
| 00:44:28.44 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Vice Mayor. City Manager, you had your hand up to Want to address anything on consent? |
| 00:44:34.31 | Chris Zapata | It was to speak to 3i, but you all pulled it, so thank you. |
| 00:44:39.14 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, let me ask, and before we take public comment on the consent, Are you all leaning towards adding these in front of the other business items or have it towards the end of the meeting. Think about that while we take public comment on the consent calendar. Serge, will you please again, explain how people can give public comments? |
| 00:45:01.84 | Serge Avila | Sir and 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 my phone, press start nine and each speaker will be notified when the time has elapsed. Madam Mayor, it looks like we do have a couple hands raised and we're gonna start with Sandra Bushmaker. Sandra, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:45:33.92 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening, Mayor and City Council members and staff. and everybody else that's on the line. I'm happy to see the mid-year budget being removed from the consent calendar. I was particularly concerned about the items that were in the memorandum of internal controls that need to have some attention. And lastly, I only had two points on the consent calendar. I just am inquiring whether there was an RFP on that $300,000 IT contract. Thank you. Thank you, Sandra. |
| 00:46:07.41 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Ray Withey. Ray, you've been unmuted and has to share your video. |
| 00:46:14.97 | Ray Withey | WELCOME, REG. Yeah, hi. Can you see me? We can. Okay, good. Um, I sent you a memo which I think you've all received. wage. highlights for me Why? This needs to be removed from the pandemic. and become at some point focus to really kick off a robust discussion about Thank you. to solve the budget situation that we face. we need to move with some urgency And that was the message that I wanted to convey and so I maybe rather glibly put at the end of my memo that every week you delay is $40,000. of reserves you're burning. It's a sobering thought. So to my mind, that means that swift action is needed and difficult decisions painful decisions need to be made where there's no perfect solution. but we just need to get on with it. So good luck. Thank you. |
| 00:47:48.19 | Mayor Kelman | Thanks very much. Any other comments, public comments are on the consent calendar. believe have consensus to pull three I I've also asked to pull three C. Okay, so council members, any comments or concerns about pulling those two items? Okay, and how do you all feel about, I'm leaning towards actually addressing both of them before we get to our business items. I'm sure a lot of folks are interested in the major budget. How do folks feel about doing that? |
| 00:48:23.34 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. I think that sounds fine, Mayor. I know there were some revised I think we have some of the items posted that they weren't redlined so it's a little hard to tell what actually changed. I don't know if it's going to be a two I'm just not sure if we'll get through it all tonight. But yes, I agree with you that it's an item of great importance and we should probably start questioning it. |
| 00:48:50.05 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. Great, all right, so with that then said, may I have a motion to approve the consent calendar, acknowledging the two items having been removed? |
| 00:49:01.56 | Vice Mayor Blasding | So moved. |
| 00:49:03.05 | Mayor Kelman | Second? |
| 00:49:04.16 | Serge Avila | Thank you. |
| 00:49:04.28 | Vice Mayor Blasding | CONSULTATION. |
| 00:49:04.47 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:49:05.56 | Serge Avila | Great. |
| 00:49:05.90 | Mayor Kelman | Can you please call the roll? |
| 00:49:08.31 | Serge Avila | Council member Sobieski? Council member Cleveland. |
| 00:49:12.51 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:49:13.51 | Serge Avila | VICE MAYOR BLOVSKI. |
| 00:49:15.25 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:49:16.16 | Serge Avila | Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:49:17.16 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. Passes four zero. Okay, well, thanks everybody. So let's take three C first. I think it's going to be relatively short. Let me ask the city manager who might be the one to respond to that, my comment. is perhaps for the city attorney, and I'm sorry that I did not bring it up prior to the meeting. So I don't know Chris, would that be you or Mary? |
| 00:49:42.43 | Chris Zapata | I think between myself and somebody, we'll figure it out. You can tell us what your question is. |
| 00:49:47.23 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. Thank you very much. So my question is section three of ordinance 1128, says that no part of the mlk property shall be used for purposes other than park and recreation purposes without voter approval The only exception is that property currently devoted to commercial use may continue in such a temporary basis. I was curious how the analysis was made and I'm not opposed to this type of use, but how the analysis was made to include this under 1128. |
| 00:50:18.48 | Chris Zapata | So let me take a stab at that. So what What was proposed seemed to be a pretty standard request. that met other needs besides Sausalito needs. The idea of having a a power shutoff source center. at the community, a memo case center is something that I think you've done in the past. I think the one trick on this one was this is for a longer term. And if there was an application to 1128, I didn't catch it. But that's not to say that it isn't there. So we can certainly look at it. |
| 00:50:54.25 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Chris. And again, my apologies for not raising this prior to the meeting. Does the city attorney have a comment? I think you're very familiar with 1128. And so perhaps you have a perspective on this or a recommendation for next steps. Thank you. |
| 00:51:07.80 | Mary Wagner | Thank you, Mayor Kellman. I concur with the city manager that this was viewed as a temporary use, even though it's for a longer period of time of five years. The actual use for the facility or the use by PG&E would be very limited. And I apologize, Madam Mayor, I don't recall if it's the parking lot or the grass area that's being utilized. Um, But we can certainly dig into it further if you would like us to. We haven't entered into this long a term of these power safety shutoff agreements in the past, I don't believe, but Director McGowan may be able to speak to that. |
| 00:51:46.33 | Mayor Kelman | OK. And before you do, Director McGowan, let's take the other council members. And again, I'm not saying I'm opposed to this. It's just I don't want to run awry at 1128 and have it come back to us later. And so if there was a reason the analysis wasn't conducted, I was curious as to that. So Council Member Sobieski and then the Vice Mayor, please. |
| 00:52:04.88 | Councilmember Sobieski | I think you're right, Mayor. It's good that you caught it and I pointed it out. And if there's not a time urgency, maybe we should do that analysis. just so that we understand if temporary uses like that fit into the ordinance. It strikes me that we do close parking lots from time to time for various things. so it seems like there's a precedent for temporary uh uses just like this the power safety shut off presumably a short period of time, but if we can. you know, get clarity on that, that would be, I think, helpful for this and other issues like |
| 00:52:41.29 | Unknown | Thank you, Councilman. I suppose. |
| 00:52:43.03 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. Yeah, I just think this is a critically important resource that we do have to have in the event of a PSPS. So I think if we can't do it at MLK, do we have, I would ask DPW, a designated alternative location? Because I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity and necessity to provide these resources to our residents in the event of a power outage. |
| 00:53:06.69 | Mayor Kelman | I'll say. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay, well, Director McGowan, your thoughts on this? |
| 00:53:12.55 | Kevin McGowan | I'm sorry, I've got a little bit of cold today. To Mary's comment, I think the intent was to go ahead and use the parking area at MLK. We basically used a previous approval that went to council for this park in the past. So I think that must have slipped our attention, the 1128 ordinance. So I think we probably need to research that a little bit more. There might be other parking lots that we could use, such as parking lot two. I don't think we've explored that in depth at this point in time. And so we might wanna do a little bit more research into it and bring it back to you in the future. |
| 00:53:49.03 | Mayor Kelman | And can you also, Director McGowan, include the Vice Mayor's student observation that we do need this and then if it can't be here, that if there's another location, we're eager to hear it. |
| 00:53:59.19 | Kevin McGowan | Absolutely, you bet. |
| 00:54:00.96 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:54:01.06 | Mary Wagner | All right. and the other. |
| 00:54:01.77 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:54:01.80 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:54:01.85 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:54:01.97 | Mary Wagner | Madam Mayor, if I may, you'd have the same question with Latu. |
| 00:54:07.10 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you, Mary, that's helpful. Councilman, I'm not clear the nose. |
| 00:54:10.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Yeah, if we're going to consider alternatives, I would just wonder about the parking lot at City Hall. It's close to the library, which is also often used .. for that out there. But I agree we should continue this and just bring it back. |
| 00:54:37.31 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. Well, that's great. Thank you, everybody. So someone want to make a motion then to continue? |
| 00:54:43.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We need to take public comment out. |
| 00:54:44.73 | Mayor Kelman | Oh, yes, thank you. We absolutely do. Sorry. |
| 00:54:44.75 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Oh, yes. |
| 00:54:47.18 | Mayor Kelman | Anybody wish to make public comment on this item? |
| 00:54:53.37 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, I don't see any hands. City Clerk, will you confirm? |
| 00:54:57.27 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, you are correct or no hands raised for item three, aye. |
| 00:55:00.90 | Mayor Kelman | OK. |
| 00:55:01.03 | Serge Avila | Thank you. |
| 00:55:02.89 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you for that reminder. Who would like to make the motion? |
| 00:55:05.66 | Councilmember Sobieski | I'll make a motion to continue the item and direct staff to research alternate locations, but also the the applicability of 1128 for temporary uses such as this in Thank you. in the areas that it covers. |
| 00:55:24.24 | Mayor Kelman | Do we have a second? Thank you. OK, City Clerk, please call the roll. |
| 00:55:29.30 | Serge Avila | Councilmember Sobieski? Councilmember Cleveland, no. |
| 00:55:32.99 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:55:33.86 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blomstein. |
| 00:55:35.49 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 00:55:36.35 | Serge Avila | Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:55:37.30 | Mayor Kelman | Yes, motion passes 4-0. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate that. Okay, let's then move on to item 3i, which is the mid-year budget. I'll hand it over to the city manager for an update. |
| 00:55:48.50 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor and council members of the public. And let me begin by saying, I take full responsibility and I apologize for this being put on consent. It should not have been. . I wanted to make sure that you The information that we were preparing was brought to the city council as soon as possible. but it should not be a consent item because this is an urgent and important part of our business here. It's actually the most important thing at this point. So in agreeing with that urgency, I think there's a couple of things I wanna point out. Number one, when we put the information out on Thursday and Friday, We received a number of questions from all of you. request for information and questions as well. So with that and our knowledge base, what I'd like to propose is that, you know, tonight, you know, we figure out, when we will discuss this as a business item, again, because we won't solve it all tonight, and that you know either consider putting that on the docket for the main course on the first meeting in April or we look at some kind of workshop so that the council has an opportunity to you know ask all the questions and we can provide the answers and move forward with this budget So as you know, the budget is worked on. throughout the year, but it's reliant on our audit. We just completed our audit last month. And that informs a lot of the information that we need to build our projections and where we think we're headed to complete the fiscal year. This exercise also is part of building next year's budget. So it is that bridge. So with that, I will say to you that, you know, these are not normal times in Sausalito. They have not been normal times. And I think if we forget about the idea that when this budget was adopted, it was in the middle of a pandemic. So that's important for folks to note. I think that we had a major redo of our finance department that's important to note But the bottom line is we have a timeframe to meet. What I am going to send to you is a revised budget calendar which speaks to some things that we think are important based on some of the input we've gotten based on the conditions that we are in to today. So tonight, we can provide some general information. for the council. We can respond and take down all the questions that you have. And then if we can get some direction from you on, you know, when you wanna bring this back, with answers to these questions if we can't answer them tonight and you know the format that you want to do it on is it you know next council meeting as a business item or is it you know some type of workshop So I want to stop there and then I can go on. But let me see how you all feel about that approach. |
| 00:58:42.82 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Chris. And thank you for being so proactive and coming up with a revised budget calendar for us to consider. uh, Do my colleagues have questions for the city manager? Yes, Vice Mayor. |
| 00:58:56.66 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Yeah, so the action on the agenda this evening was for us to approve the revisions to the budget. And at this point, I'm not comfortable doing that at this stage. So I'm wondering, given that we haven't had that discussion. Is that something we would do at the workshop? because a draft version of the budget calendar did not show when we would approve the revisions and maybe I'm wrong but I just wanted to understand are you hoping that we will approve the revisions without this conversation or is that something you'd see coming out of the workshop Can we move the I guess what I'm asking is can we move the resolution that's included here off of the out of the conversation before we more openly and robustly discuss the questions we all have and I'm happy to go into my extensive list of questions but I'm not sure if that's the direction we're taking this evening or not. |
| 00:59:39.12 | Chris Zapata | Thank you for that. question in that point absolutely not we don't want you to prove anything that you have embedded so so no that's the answer there so hopefully that solves that right now. We do want to know what your questions are tonight and going forward so that we can prepare responses that we know we need to provide And I think, you know, tonight's kind of dipping our toe in the water to provide A LOT OF INFORMATION. I was not intended for you to say take all these actions and motions. So again, I apologize for that budget snafu. Again, that's, or that agenda snafu, that's all my fault. we'll do better in the future but no we don't expect you to adopt the budget or to approve anything tonight we just expect you to give us some direction and ask questions and then we can prepare for that next iteration which should be you know a normal conversation about where we are financially at the midyear. |
| 01:00:37.61 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you. Really appreciate that, Chris. Any other questions sort of preliminary, and then we'll go back around and take. specific questions. So maybe it's just questions about the process. And then I know we'll return to the vice mayor to kick us off on some of the specific questions about the major budget. Council Member Cleven also. |
| 01:00:57.25 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, just on the process. Thank you, Mayor. I think it's a good idea to get the questions on the table or as many as we have tonight and then have a longer discussion. I think we should do it pretty soon. my you know, limited experience. This mid-year budget discussion is having everyone understand where we are at this point is so critical for the next step of being able to talk about our revised budget. So I like the idea of a longer discussion. and getting kind of But I'd like to do it pretty soon. um And, you know, I guess that goes into the calendar, uh, because our budget is coming up and there's going to be a lot of work. that we have with that as well. |
| 01:01:47.55 | Mayor Kelman | Yeah. |
| 01:01:50.96 | Mayor Kelman | Any comments to that, Chris? |
| 01:01:53.19 | Chris Zapata | No, no, that's exactly what I think is the right course. soon is right. asking whatever questions we can take down and get ready and prepare for is right. And again, this budget is, you know, that, That information in this budget information is the information you'll need to build next year's budget. and also to course correct. there are things that we will talk about and show you that are obviously concerning to us. The senator spoke a little bit about You know, in Southern Moran not having the rebound that other parts of California have had. the tourism section and although our revenues have improved in sales tax and property tax, you know, they were done with a very cloudy crystal ball in a very, very conservative way. So even if they've improved, they've improved significantly, I went out out of the woods. So what I'd like to do is talk at the next meeting about some steps that I think we need to start to consider so that this projected deficit that we're looking at. would be less or something different. If we stay the course we are on, then we're going to have a bigger challenge. So this is the right time to not only talk about what you need to understand what you need to us to report to you, but also what we think we need to do to help soften and solve some of this gap that we see at midyear. |
| 01:03:23.64 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's a good context. Thank you. Councilor, so be asking any questions on process before we go into the details. |
| 01:03:29.78 | Councilmember Sobieski | Yeah, I guess I do. City Manager, is it the case that we don't have a staff presentation? We have a very good, we have a very extensive staff report, but not a visual presentation summarizing it. Is that my understanding? |
| 01:03:42.37 | Chris Zapata | We have a presentation. you know, it's a high-level presentation that Vivian can provide. If you'd like to see that, we're happy to do that. I think that in light of all of the questions we've been receiving, Maybe some of them would be answered better. not through the presentation, but at a subsequent meeting very soon. |
| 01:04:06.22 | Councilmember Sobieski | Okay, well, you know, I'm curious what others think but you know, it does seem like I have a whole list of questions that I've already provided to staff that I'm sure they don't have an answer to yet. I imagine that if I were in the public, it would seem scattershot to hear my questions that were seemingly random after reading the document that's posted online. So one process would be, to take all those questions from all of us and actually generate an amendment to this report, but also a presentation that's digestible by the public. And for me, that was one of my big asks is, uh, Budget stuff, finance stuff's complicated enough. it's actually really hard work to translate it into a way that's both accurate but comprehensible by people that can't spend hours reading the reports and looking at all the different numbers To my mind, that's a task to put to staff for our benefit and the benefit of the community. to have a presentation that's really about a narrative that really explains the source of the budget deficit. both acutely in terms of a consequence of COVID but also structurally, as something that's been going on since the pension rates changed in the early 2000s and and is not going to be something that is a mystery, but something that we absolutely have to respond to structurally. Um, really laying that narrative out will, I think, let us see the forest for the trees. And I'm concerned about engaging this topic without that tool. because we'll get lost in the trees. But I'm open to keep going for a journey through the trees if we want right now. |
| 01:05:50.86 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Councilor Sobieski. Yeah, I think with the city manager, what I hear him to say is a recommendation that we get all of our questions over to him and you did it in writing, so thank you for doing that. And others can choose to list them out tonight or also provide them in writing. But the expectation would be that they would in fact, revise the presentation and the materials and then walk us through that, taking into account our questions from this evening as well as any public comment. And so then I think the major question is, when would we potentially want to revisit this? My recommendation is going to be at the next city council meeting, but we can talk about that when it's time to kind of figure out where we wanna go. So I think then If I got that right, city manager, I will invite council member Cleveland Knowles and the vice mayor to either engage with you right now on your questions, or if they prefer to offer them in writing to staff, it's really up to each of them. |
| 01:06:48.47 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you, Mayor. I also had a lot of kind of detailed questions for staff, but I would like to echo and amplify Councilmember Sobieski's comment that well first I'd like to say thank you to our finance director and our city manager for the amount of information that was in the staff report and for all of the hard work on this. It's a huge lift. And so I want to thank them for that. Thank you. but I do want to amplify his comment that I think the high-level themes and public digestibility of sort of how what are the, what are the levers that got us to this place and which ones are which ones are kind of waning as we recover from COVID, which ones are kind of part of the structural problem that we have and kind of put them in some more thematic context, I think would be really helpful for the public, helpful for myself, helpful for our discussion as to how we strategize, not only for this particular budget year, but how we address our structural deficit. So I would just say, and I would really love to see that, that would be kind of one of comments and then I also think revenue issues such as I was very surprised to see our parking revenue Not recovered or not where we budgeted that seems given just anecdotally and how many people are coming to Sausalito that's very surprising so that makes me think we've got a problem with our parking rates. So I would like to have that discussion in a little more detail I also know we have quite a lot of vacancies Um, and salaries that we did not end up paying out this year that should have reflected or we should be seeing more of a savings there And so I'm just kind of, these are high level buckets. I think we need to better understand the police side fund issue. I was reminded by Vivian when she responded to one of my questions that I had thought we had budgeted for that. in our budget, but we didn't. We approved that the council meeting right after the budget approval in July. But we should have seen not only the expenditure of funds, but we should have seen also a $400,000 savings from that, which I couldn't really see. I couldn't figure out how that had worked. So, and we were given on the staff report in that July meeting, we discussed and then we were I was told that we could potentially pay for those that side fund pay out through our Section 115 trust that we've been saving to address our pension, smooth out our pension problems. So I'd like to kind of revisit that discussion and where we landed. Whether that's a part of this general fund deficit that we could alleviate through the use of the Section 115 trust or whether that's not prudent for some reason I'd like to have that discussion. I think those are like my big I have a lot of other kind of smaller questions. But I think I'll leave it there. I'll leave it at the forest level for this evening. And I agree with you, Mayor, that possibly at our next meeting, or I'd also offer, we have a weird fifth, Tuesday in March this year next Tuesday 29th. um could also be a possible just a single subject special meeting but whatever the |
| 01:10:35.03 | Mayor Kelman | response to do is works with. Thank you council member. Vice mayor. |
| 01:10:40.21 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Great, thank you so much, Mayor Kellman. And I want to echo Council Member Cleveland Knowles' thank yous to the Finance Department and to Vivian Chu and our City Manager. This is a massive undertaking, and there was clearly a lot of excellent work done in putting together these figures. I just think I agree so much with Council Member Sobieski that the narrative is missing in terms of why we got to where we are and what possible avenues we might have going forward to reduce our structural deficit. Thinking from a big picture view, the things that I would most like to have an understanding of, and I did submit some of these questions, and Vivian, thank you very much for being responsive and taking the time to talk with me. about some of these, but I think it'd be great for the public to better understand. In looking at the staff report, Our revenues are up 2.5%, but our expenditures are up 10%. There's some clear reasons for that. Obviously, none of us could have anticipated the cost of the encampment when we were first budgeting. Okay. um which has been quite a lot but there are other questions which councilmember cleveland knows brought up around potential decreases in salary costs that we aren't necessarily seeing reflected so in looking at the numbers it appears that we're at a two a deficit of over two million dollars although from my conversations yesterday with vivian i'm aware that there is a 700 000 plus transfer cost that is not necessarily reflected in what looks like the deficit so having a clearer understanding of what our deficit actually truly is and where we stand and why it's at where it's at. And then the other thing I would really like to look at and have a conversation about at a higher level is planning revenues. This was really striking to me that we're at 84% lower than we had anticipated. There's a reason for it that's reflected in the staff report, but a further narrative on that and what it looks like and kind of a pulling out of why that is, how we got to where we are and what options we might have going forward on that would be really critical for me as well and then also taking a bigger picture to look back at what unrestricted funds do we really have left when we look at our 10% and our 5% of required reserves how much do we have at an operating cost it looks like 2.2 million from the report so where does that stand as a percentage of our total general fund and and then also have a deeper dive on some of our other funds that aren't part of our general fund I would love to hear from our sewer fund consultant about our more of a clear presentation of how that fund operates and what money we might have available there for instance as we think about the structural deficit going forward and perhaps a more clear description of each of the funds and thinking about what is really a big bigger picture so again thanks to the staff those i can put some more specific detailed questions into an email but those are some of the bigger picture things that i was thinking about from my first overview as we start this conversation and i would definitely be amenable to a special one session meeting on the 29th if necessary or putting it in front of the next council meeting agenda whatever works for the group |
| 01:13:32.47 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay, very helpful. Let's see if anybody from the public would like to chime in. And I'll just let everybody know we're going to be hearing this sort of at the next possible moment. So if you're not prepared to speak tonight, you will have another opportunity. And we do want your insight and your comments. So Serge, I see a couple of hands raised. |
| 01:13:54.48 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, we do have three hands raised. And the first speaker, it's David Sudo. David, you've been unmuted. And I should share your video. |
| 01:14:02.85 | David Sudo | Good evening. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to go through all these reports, but the staff report, one item that popped up to me as a question is, and hopefully someone can explain it, is why the revised budget revenue from planning activities is so greatly reduced. I don't think anybody's covered that tonight, and I would love to hear an explanation. Thanks. |
| 01:14:28.09 | Unknown | Thank you, David. Nice to see you. Next speaker, please. |
| 01:14:32.18 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Vicki Nichols. You've been unmuted and I should share your video. |
| 01:14:39.95 | Vicki Nichols | Hello, Mayor Kelman. I THINK I'M ON. Yeah, thank you. Sorry. I'm not at home. Thank you. I'd just like to thank you for pulling this item. I think this is obviously a major component for citizens here. And I just wanted to say usually in history, sorry to be historical, but there's been an opportunity to make some adjustments. or suggest some adjustments to the budget. So hopefully I'm hearing you're having a workshop or continued meeting, will that be an opportunity to raise the issues? I'm speaking unofficially now as the chair of the Historical Preservation Committee. but just as an individual about funding on certain programs. that I feel as a prior corporate budget analyst could possibly be shifted without hurting any of the city functions. I am really focused on maintaining employment functions. And in terms of the planning department or planning commission, as a former planning commission serving with the mayor recently, I can't tell you how vital this is. this department is to the community and how much um THEIR OWNERS. and I think that's a good question. I can't even describe the word. There's been a lot of turning and disruption and not continuity that I'm feeling is being addressed to be cured. or helped. This needs to be... fully funded and looked at. It's very important on so many levels I think you can hear my emotion about this. I can't. This has to be funded fully so Um, Let's look at some of these departmental issues that are vital. to our community that also bring in funding And I think that some of the funding that hasn't come in by these projections has been by, we haven't been able to be fully, they have not been able to be fully productive. Sorry for the inarticulateness of this, but I feel pretty strongly about this as a someone that has experienced this as a community member and also someone volunteering in the committee trying to advance these projects, et cetera, for the city. Thank you. Thank you, Becky. |
| 01:17:35.19 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker. Sandra, you're unmuted. |
| 01:17:39.94 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening again. I'm really delighted that you are not proceeding tonight on this important matter. And I recognize the extensive staff report that has been done. And I also applaud the city manager for bringing in and the council for bringing in our finance department in house. But it leaves me with two questions. One, what has happened progress wise and this could be something that could be included in the future report with the deficiencies that were noticed in the memoranda of internal controls that the city has been provided by outside consultants. So, Have we corrected these deficiencies? And are we making progress in these deficiencies? And secondly, once again about the structural deficit, How did we get here? Are we spending too much or is this circumstance? How did we get here and what are we doing about it? So I'd like to hear a plan for getting out of this structural deficit. We can't go on this way. I think that was pointed out by quite a few speakers. And I think it's really important that we WE FOCUS ON CORRECTING the deficiencies and the deficit. That's it. Thank you. GREAT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Sir Jenny, |
| 01:19:03.97 | Mayor Kelman | members of the public. |
| 01:19:05.77 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, there are no further hands where you |
| 01:19:08.34 | Mayor Kelman | OKAY, GREAT. So bring it back up here. I unfortunately I'm going to be on a plane on that Tuesday that is vacant. So if everybody will indulge me, I'd like to suggest the next council meeting in April. TO ADDRESS THIS? Is everybody okay with that? |
| 01:19:28.18 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Is that not until the 12th? I'm just from a timeline perspective, I wonder if we might need to have a, I'm happy to wait until after you return. I just wanna, I'm wondering if we're gonna be okay. FROM A TIMELINE PERSPECTIVE. |
| 01:19:40.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | People still have this Saturday free. I had it blocked off on my calendar forever. |
| 01:19:43.67 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. |
| 01:19:43.72 | Councilmember Sobieski | All right. My only... thought is that to do this there to write is not a small task. |
| 01:19:51.52 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:19:51.53 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:19:52.40 | Councilmember Sobieski | I know it's the time allotted, so I'm certainly not one to delay. I almost would get the set in near term and near term deadline and then move it just to make sure the work gets done. But, if it's to be done right, this narrative piece and the piece that Senator Bushmaker talked about explaining the changes to our finance department and the response to the deficiencies in procedures found in the audit and, really being able to put together a narrative, I think needs to be done right. So, I almost would like staff to tell us when they are sure they can get it done. rather than being arbitrary about it. to the level that we're describing here. Thank you. |
| 01:20:32.03 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:20:32.09 | Councilmember Sobieski | So good thoughts. |
| 01:20:32.10 | Mayor Kelman | So, Thank you. |
| 01:20:33.89 | Councilmember Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:20:33.93 | Mayor Kelman | Let's refer to the city manager here. What would be an appropriate timeframe to be able to be responsive to the various questions? |
| 01:20:33.99 | Councilmember Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:20:41.33 | Chris Zapata | So depending on all the good questions and requests that have been made by yourselves and the public, are being noted. And so in order to provide a comprehensive response to all of that, We would need some kind of window of, when that would come. Stop. He stopped sending those questions on. album so we can get the work done for next Tuesday kind of thing. So to me, I think if you want to do something sooner, You know, it's not like you can't meet again. Thank you. So if you want to meet on a Saturday to talk about this on the 26th, is this coming Saturday? If you can give your questions to us soon, we can provide responses. But if you want to wait till the following Friday or, uh... you know, the first Tuesday in April. I'm not so sure why that's sacred. but that might be a time to do it as opposed to waiting until the second Tuesday. But I think what I'm just driving for is we need three days in advance of that meeting to compile something that we can get out. post so everybody has a chance to look at it. |
| 01:21:52.65 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you for that. So how about April 5th? It seems like a good balance. It's not forever from now, but it gives staff enough time to do a comprehensive. Yes, you're maybe not available. Thank you. |
| 01:22:04.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So those, the alternate Tuesdays are the Tuesdays that I will present a commission in San Francisco and it often has been going quite late. I am available the Wednesday or the Thursday of that week. The 6th and the 7th, I know some staff have conflicts with Planning Commission and other things, so I apologize. But the 5th, I would be unlikely to attend until much later in the evening. |
| 01:22:26.87 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:22:26.89 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:22:27.39 | Mayor Kelman | No problem. I'm fine on the 6th. We can certainly resolve this offline as well, but it sounds like there is a willingness to do it that week. So maybe if everybody can look at their calendars and surge, if you could send a due to pull out for us, Aim, just for the public's sake, to have it someday that week, unless somebody says, absolutely not that week. Okay. |
| 01:22:52.59 | Councilmember Sobieski | So I just have a question on process, which is form and format. You know you have your concerns answered when you see it. And so I appreciate, City Manager, very much your request to put a deadline of any additional questions. But is there a possibility? TO DO, UM, one-way communication of a draft that we can ask additional questions of. So we have two bites at the apple instead of just one, since of this is basically new ask to create this narrative. and It would be great to be able to that that's addressed without delaying the public presentation any further. |
| 01:23:39.95 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. here, let's not take up too much of the time this evening to develop the actual process or procedure. Let's register the remarks and the comments to staff. I appreciate the chat is here as well. So you're hearing it firsthand. It sounds like they're, Some of that needs to be developed. And I think the city manager is probably taking very copious notes here. So vice mayor, I saw you had your hand up. I don't know if you want to. |
| 01:24:07.68 | Vice Mayor Blasding | I was just going to suggest that maybe going forward until we do confirm our next year's budget, we just always have the budget as a as a agenda item in addition to having this special workshop meeting because it seems like there is a lot that needs to continue to be addressed and i imagine that from our workshop further questions will come up |
| 01:24:26.53 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, yeah, all excellent points. And it sounds like we wanna be more rigorous all around on this. So our firm next steps are to get everything in, I think to the staff, probably within the next week. So by next Tuesday, sounds reasonable for us and for members of the public. We will then endeavor through our city clerk to find a date that all works for all of us the week of the fourth. And then we'll have a special city council meeting just on this topic that week. Does that sound good, everybody? Okay, so this was a consent item and you had asked to take an action. Mary, do we need to continue this? What's the right motion to be made here? |
| 01:25:12.24 | Mary Wagner | It's not a public hearing item, Madam Mayor, so you don't technically have to continue the item, but you can just give the direction to staff as to when you want it to return to future council meeting. If you have dates that you want to include in that, you can certainly include them. |
| 01:25:26.57 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. I think I've done that. So we're set them on this item. Thank you everybody. That was a much needed conversation and we will revisit this at length. So I look forward to that. Okay. Well then I believe we are now onto our business items. Item 4A. So this is a providing direction to staff Moving forward, the development of construction level plan, specifications and estimates for the Saucena Ferry landslide improvement project phase one. And we'll turn it over to Kevin Mayallan. |
| 01:25:57.47 | Kevin McGowan | Evening mayor and members of city council. Thanks. I mentioned I do have a little cold, so my apologies. This evening we've, I'm Kevin McGowan with department of public works. Item four a before you this evening is a request from staff. to provide direction on moving forward with the development of construction level plans, specifications and estimates for the Sausalito Ferry Land Site Improvement Project, phase one. Becky Dower and Jason Kirchman from BKF are going to be giving a presentation on this. So while they're bringing up their presentation at this point in time, I have a couple other things to talk about very quickly. So I'm hoping Becky can start her presentation at this point. So prior to handing this off to Becky, I wanted to recognize the significant efforts made by the local professionals group who have donated their time to assist the city with not just looking at the first phase of the project, but have initiated significant efforts to develop a long-term vision for the parking lots at one parking lots, one, two, three, and four. The local professionals group is composed of Bill Hines, Jacques Oldman, and Michael Rex, as well as Councilmember or Councilman Sobieski. I'm hoping that we can also a lot a little bit of time for this group to add their comments at the end of the presentation by Becky. So with that, I'll turn this over to Becky, who should be able to share her screen and walk us through a short presentation on the Ferry Landside Phase Phase One. |
| 01:27:31.80 | Becky Dower | All right, thank you for that, Kevin. I'm gonna go ahead and pull up this presentation now. Are you all able to see the presentation on my screen? EXCELLENT. |
| 01:27:41.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Excellent. |
| 01:27:41.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:27:42.11 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:27:43.46 | Becky Dower | All right, so as Kevin noted, my name is Becky Dower and I'm the project manager with BCamp Engineers. BCamp is a partner with the city in helping Sausalito to realize some really wonderful improvements over at the Ferry Plaza. You might recall back in January of 2021, an initial presentation was made to City Council about this project. During that initial presentation, um the need for the project and some of the framework behind the project was perfect was presented to city council With this second presentation, the intent of this presentation is to, you know, recap some of the background information that we covered over a year ago. Share some progress that we've made on developing a site plan for the improvements and most importantly we're hoping to get some feedback and direction from Council on how to move the project forward. |
| 01:28:31.44 | Becky Dower | All right, looks like it's not a dancing person. |
| 01:28:36.84 | Becky Dower | Are you able to see the large share screen that I have? |
| 01:28:40.58 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Yes, we can see the first slide. |
| 01:28:44.08 | Becky Dower | Interesting what's going on here. Sorry about this. I practiced this too right before we got on and it was working just fine. You know, it doesn't seem to be. |
| 01:29:03.13 | Becky Dower | There we go. Okay. Success. So some background on the project. So the city of Sausalito in conjunction with Golden Gate Bridge and Harbor Transportation District has received $2.4 million in funds from the Federal Transit Agency. The city of Sausalito has elected to contribute an additional $100,000 in local match for total project budget of $2.5 million. This money is intended for improvements at the Perry Plaza in parking lot one. So back in July, 2020, the city signed an agreement with BKF engineers to do the planning and design for the ferry plaza improvements As part of the consultant team, BKF has a couple of talented sub consultants. These include Parisi Transportation, who has been and will continue to provide transportation circulation consulting. as well as RHAA, who does the landscape architecture design Again, the project was first presented to the City Council back in January of 2021. Following that presentation in July of 2021, we took the project out for a virtual public outreach. So during that public outreach, we introduced a very conceptual project to the public and we got their initial feedback. We've been taking that feedback over the last several months, and we've been developing our conceptual design. So the project in a nutshell is pretty simple. It's enhanced and enlarged the plaza so that we can better accommodate circulation and curing. Outside of that though, there are some very specific requirements that our FTA grant requires us to follow as we develop these improvements. The idea of having, let's say two projects was first introduced as part of our public outreach in July. AND I THINK THAT'S A LITTLE BIT OF THEM. Project one, as you see up here, This represents the project that we're talking about tonight. This is the fully funded project that involves some enhancements at the Ferry Plaza. The group that we have been working with has identified some opportunities for some future potential improvements at parking lot one to convert the parking lot into more of a park-like feel. So this image down here, this represents this project too. This project is not the project that we're talking about in any detail tonight. This project is not funded at this time. What is really important about this notion of having two projects, though, is that we want to make sure that any improvements that we do with our current project can easily accommodate some future improvements at parking lot one. So here's a lot of text on the screen. I don't necessarily expect to read, but this is an excerpt from our FTA grant. And what's really important about this excerpt is it spells out some actionable items that we need to include in our design. So what you see here in the bold, dark text, these are the actionable items that we are attempting to address with our design. So in general, we're looking for enhancements at the Shoreside Ferry Plaza Promenade. where the future enhance the pedestrian and bicycle access routes for downtown businesses. We need to delineate errors for vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists to use and improve circulation in the plaza. we need to increase area to stage and process ferry passengers and bicycles. We need to optimize vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle flow And we need to add relocate ticket vending machines for easier access. These items are the must haves as part of the project. We must address these items to be in compliance with our $2.4 million plan. So what is the purpose of the presentation today? I love talking about the project, but that is not the purpose. Ultimately, we are looking for direction from council on how to move forward. Um, some potential direction that we might be expecting to get from council could be allow us to move forward the project into design so that we can prepare documents for bid and construction. We might also be directed to continue to develop our site plan by involving interested parties. and then have a follow-up presentation with council. Or perhaps there's some additional feedback or input that's not otherwise described here. So let's start with an overview of what this project looks like. So what I have for you here is a conceptual site plan that shows the improvements at the Ferry Plaza. There's a couple of key things that I want to point out here. First of all, this light blue area that you see here, this is the outline of your existing fairy plaza. Whereas this dark blue area, this represents the expanded area that we intend to construct. So the culmination of the two areas, the light blue and the dark blue, this would be the total size of the future plaza. circulation elements to and from the enhanced plaza are also being contemplated. There's currently a walkway that connects the plaza past the yacht club up to Gableson Park. As part of this project, we were looking at some enhancements to that walkway to widen it so that we can accommodate both bicycles and pedestrians at the same time. A key part of this project is that, These improvements essentially remove Tracy way from being a vehicle way and incorporate Tracy way into the parking lot. So the way that Tracy Way currently functions is traffic would come up without portal, Tracy Way is a one way that heads out north towards Anchor Street. There's this odd intersection here between Anchor and Bridgeway and Tracy where vehicles could then exit out onto Anchor. In order to get, in order to improve the vehicle circulation through lot and enhance pedestrian safety, we're looking at actually constructing improvements on either side of Tracy, concrete hardscape improvements that cut off the through flow of vehicles on Tracy. And instead have this area be available as an access aisle in the parking lot, as well as some additional parking stalls, the preservation of the existing parallel parking stalls on Tracy. There's some other key areas that I want to look at as well. And we'll dial into each of these in some more detail here shortly. But at a high level, we've got an area up here near Gableson Park that we are planning on using for bicycle queuing and for pedestrian walkways. this area here is is currently not constructed out at the plaza with any pedestrian improvements this image over here shows what that area currently looks like Our proposed improvements, the sidewalk that you see here would entail encurching into the vegetation in Wilson Park about 10 feet. So that includes the removal of these vegetations, and some small trees in this area here. To give you some reference on how big that 10 feet might actually be, This white rectangle that I have here, this represents the existing stage out here. And this small rectangle here, this is the existing sculpture. You can see we're well over 15 feet clear of the back of that stage. So it's a relatively small encouragement into Gabrielson Park. And again, it really only encourages into this vegetation here. With this encouragement though, we do plan on increasing some of that loss of vegetation. We have an LAD area for stormwater quality treatment planned here. And we've identified some opportunities for some landscape enhancements in this area. This corner near Anchor and Bridgeway is a unique corner that is also in need of some improvements. |
| 01:36:27.72 | Becky Dower | As I noted earlier, by cutting off Tracy way as a through vehicle route, we're gonna do that by adding some raised concrete in these areas. So what that looks like is it sort of creates this mini plaza or this gateway area at this corner here for pedestrians. This is what it looks like in the existing condition. So if you could imagine, raised concrete sidewalk, again, that's sort of mini plaza in this area here to get some good pedestrian continuity. And again, block the vehicles from being able to use Tracy Way. So that was an overview of the site plan. Again, we'll drill down into some more detail here in a minute, but I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about how it is that we got here over the last 14 months or so since we last met So the project team has been working with a group of volunteer local architects, landscape architects. Kevin nodded to these folks right before the presentation. These, this group of people is referred to as our local professionals group, and they have been phenomenal in giving us input and direction on not only this project one, but also this future vision that they have for that project too. The project team, the local professionals group, we have met nearly 20 times since October of 2020. And the purpose of these meetings has been to gather background data, get ideas and start to develop this conceptual plan for the improvements at the plaza. During the course of our 20 or so meetings, we've talked about numerous topics, but in general, those topics include identifying issues related to traffic, pedestrian and bicycle circulation. We spent time discussing theme and how to appropriate a sense of place in our downtown plaza. So that there's nice continuity between the plaza and adjacent downtown area. We've created a number of different plans and layouts for the purposes of analysis and analyzing queuing and circulation. We've also looked at layouts for how we could use the plaza for passive and active uses in the future. Very importantly too, we've talked about this potential project too, this future project too, that's not part of this current project. with the purpose of ensuring that these improvements don't preclude the future project too from moving forward. So through all this coordination work and through all these concept development, we've developed a site plan for project one that meets the grant requirements It allows for the future expansion of project two and very importantly, it's within the current construction budget that we have for the project. So here's a quick look back at those grant requirements that we must meet with this project. The next few slides, I'm going to step through how we meet each one of these grant requirements by showing you a series of images. So the first grant requirement, this is the enhancement of the shoreside ferry plaza promenade. That's really the project in the nutshell, but it is a specific grant requirement. I think it's best to show how we're making the enhancements by looking at a side by side of the existing and the proposed plaza. So this aerial image over here on the left, this is your existing plaza. I am outlining it here with my red dot right there. It's pretty small. You can see the existing parking lot here and this sort of attempt at like drop off area at the plaza as well. So here's an image of what that plaza looks like. It's a nice plaza, but it suffers from being far too narrow in some areas here, so that when you get people queuing to get on the ferry, they really cut off circulation across the plaza. With our proposed plaza, we are really significantly increasing the size of the plaza. So this is a different hatch here, this area that I'm outlining in red, this is the new additional plaza that we'd be constructing next to the existing plaza. This is all very conceptual in nature. So some of the specifics around, you know, the tree locations or the bench locations, this is stuff that's gonna just develop naturally during design. But this is a rendering that shows a concept of how that area might look. So in addition to increasing the size of the area, we're really providing enhancements with some of the trees to frame the view and providing shade. This enlarged plaza also gives us opportunities for seating, for dining and other uses like that on the plaza. The next point that we have addressed in the grant is enhancing the pedestrian and bicycle access routes for downtown business parks. So this is another look at the existing plaza that we have and the existing queuing process that we have for bicycles. This red line is the bicycle access route that people typically use to get when they enter the city from San Francisco and they intend to get back on the ferry. pump with this route. it directs those on cycles to make a turn on a Tracy way. THE FEDERAL. This is a very awkward, sharp turn. And I've heard often that cyclists don't make this turn and they end up going somewhere where they don't intend and then need to come back. So it's not a real clear. THE END OF you know, path of travel for the cyclist. Once they make the Tracy they start to queue up on Tracy way as well as they queue up in this area that was originally intended to be a beautiful loading area. before they queue up on the doc itself. With our proposed layout, we are removing the bicycle queuing from Tracy Way entirely, and we are moving it to the east over by Giggleson Park. So what this does for the bicycle route is it allows people to make a more natural maneuver straight onto Anchor Street instead of tucking away directly onto Tracy. And this gives cyclists the opportunity to either make a right and come onto the ferry plaza to queue up to get on the ferry. It gives them the opportunity to go east, excuse me, and explore the Wilson Park and beyond. And it also gives them an easy opportunity to turn here on the Humboldt Street where they can get in touch with bike return companies or just further explore the downtown area. |
| 01:42:35.74 | Becky Dower | The next point in the grant that we are addressing is the need to delineate the areas for vehicle, pedestrian and bicyclist uses to improve circulation. The current plaza, just due to its size and its layout and the way that people cyclists and pedestrians are queued. There's a lot of conflict between the two user groups. And that's something that we really need to address with this project. With with this project and a lot of the thought behind moving the bicycles to the east side near Gableson Park is that we get a lot of natural separation between those who are pushing bikes and those who are pedestrians for either lining up for the ferry or just enjoying the plaza. The intent here is to allow bicycles to queue up in this area here, as well as this area here before getting onto the dock. However, we still also want to maintain this route as a viable pedestrian access route so that folks at the plaza can head up to Gabrielston Park or down towards Spinnaker and beyond The way that we intended to delineate the, not the vehicle, excuse me, the way we intended to delineate the pedestrian and bicycle areas is through some creative striping. So I've got some examples over here that shows what that might look like. Thank you. be it pavement markers or even different pavement colors or textures. We intend to indicate on the ground areas that are suitable for those with bicycles to line up on and then areas that are suitable for people to walk into up on. This image down here is not a perfect representation of the concept, but it, I believe it gets the point of cross. What this shows is we have a pedestrian area separated from a bicycle area, um, with, with a row of trees and both users separated from the vehicles by being on a raised curb, um, our queueing here would not be intended for those riding bikes. This is probably pushing bikes. Um, but the theme is similar. |
| 01:44:30.49 | Becky Dower | The next point is addressing the increase in area available to stage and process ferry passengers and bicycles. This is a pretty easy grant requirement for us to meet because we are significantly increasing both the size of the Plaza as well as the circulating walkways into and around the Plaza. um, We've got existing plaza of around 15,000 square feet with a proposed plaza of close to 25,000 square feet. And similar, we're adding around 9,000 square feet of pedestrian circulation routes. We've got a couple images here for fun that show some of the existing queuing that goes on at the plaza now. You can see how tight the plaza becomes when pedestrians are queuing up to get on the ferry. There's really no other space on the plaza to use except for queuing. This image down here, this is a real diagrammatic image of what it could look like with passengers queuing up. These are pedestrians here queuing up to get on the ferry. as well as cyclists queuing up on the opposite side to get on the ferry. And you can really appreciate, I believe, the amount of open space that could still be available around both those queues. So bicycle queuing is of particular importance and concern because there are some peak summer months where there are a large number of people who intend to take rented bicycles on the ferry back to the city. What we've identified here is, this is on an aerial re-existing site right now. What we've identified is the onsite bike queuing area that we're providing. That's shown in this darker blue, this solid blue line here. For when there's a surplus of bicycles and we need additional space to queue those cyclists, we've identified some additional offsite queuing opportunities So these queuing opportunities include potentially lining bikes up along Spinnaker, there's a nice asphalt walkway there under the trees. It makes a nice natural connection to and continuity with this queue on site. There's also opportunities to queue bicycles up on Humboldt Street in this area here where there's currently tour buses parked occasionally. This would be another natural place to queue up bicycles so that they can continue with this queuing or if they choose to no longer queue with their bike, They're in close proximity to an area that we've identified as a good bike pickup area near the Bank of America building. |
| 01:46:56.53 | Becky Dower | The next point is that we need to optimize vehicle pedestrian and bicycle flow. I've got a couple of different lines shown here, again, on your existing site. The red is for the bicycle circulation and the blue is for the pedestrian circulation. So if we start with bicycles, you can see their circulation route is pretty straightforward and pretty limited. With pedestrians, they're currently able to circumvent the entire parking lot one, except there's no direct connection from over near the Yacht Club to Spinnaker. And so to make that connection, you actually have to go up in the Gary Boston Park and back around. that does result in pedestrians sometimes cutting through the parking lot which is not a behavior that we would want to encourage You'll also see that we've got a number of conflicts where pedestrians have to cross that bicycle hill. You know, and you saw a couple images back the bicycle queue is really tight. People like one next to the other, one behind the other. on this red line here of queued bicycles. And so that presents some options for if you are a pedestrian and you want to get past that queue of bicycles. On our proposed plan, we believe we clean up some of the circulation pieces. pedestrians shown in blue they're still allowed to completely circumvent the parking lot This time they have some more direct access from the Ferry Plaza over to Spinnaker and beyond. And they still have access into the Wilson Park Cyclists again would not make this turn on Tracy way anymore. They'd be directed to the east. and to this queuing area up here near Gableson Park We've have a lot more opportunities just for general circulation and keep keep the two users separate, There are still a couple areas where bicycles and pedestrians need to cross paths. Although this occurs at big, you know, I guess I'd say pedestrian intersections where we have multiple walkways all adjoining each other. And so these areas can be easily dealt with with signage or some freedom striking on the ground to indicate that this is not an area where bicycles should be queuing so that this is free for pedestrians to pass through. And the last point that we need to address in the grant is the need to relocate mad ticket vending machines. The current ticket machine is tucked away over here, which is actually obscured by all of the cyclists who'd be queued to get on the ferry. So it's not a real great ticket vending machine location because it's not easy to see. It's not easy to get to. We've proposed a number of ticket vending machine locations that make some thoughtful sense for how the plaza would function This first ticket kiosk over here, this is placed near the end of our primary bike queuing area. So if you were a cyclist coming off of Anchor, you would pass this ticket vending machine, have an opportunity to get your ticket if you didn't have one, and then join the bike queue to get on the plaza. Similar on the pedestrian side, we've identified over near this existing information kiosk is a great place to put a ticket food If you are walking into the plaza, it makes, it's a natural progression. You can get your ticket and then join the queue before you get on the ferry. We've identified a third ticket booth location too. This one is closer to the dock. This gives people an opportunity who perhaps you know walk by the information kiosk another opportunity to get their ticket while they're waiting in line before they get on the ferry. So I hope I was able to illustrate there how we have met all of these various grant requirements with our current design. I believe that we have satisfied the grant requirements with the layout that we have, that we currently have. But in addition to the grant requirements, we also have some city requirements that we seek to comply with. So ordinance 1128 is one that was passed 30 years ago by the city and it requires voter approval of certain changes in the downtown parking lots. One of these changes that requires voter approval is the increase or decrease of the public land area that's available for parking by more than 5%. So with this project, we seek to comply with ordinance 1128. However, it's not very clear on how exactly this 5% increase or decrease should be calculated. It's not clear if this ordinance was written in terms of all of the downtown lots that we've analyzed. cumulatively or each lot should be analyzed independently. So we've taken a very conservative stance at how we're going to comply with this ordinance. And we've assumed that that we need to provide, we need to not remove more than 5% of land area for our parking lot one as a standalone parking lot to accommodate that since we are increasing the plaza area into the parking lot and we are increasing walkways into the parking lot, we've naturally lost some parking lot area. but we plan on recouping that parking lot area by incorporating Tracy way, which is currently a vehicle travel way into that parking lot. With the inclusion of Tracy way into parking lot one, we have not reduced the public land area available to parking by more than 5%. |
| 01:52:10.56 | Becky Dower | Well, thank you for hearing me out during that presentation. I just wanted to recap what we were hoping to get out of cancel following this presentation. We are looking for direction on council on how to proceed forward with our conceptual design, be that move into final design forbidden construction, Perhaps we want to revisit some of the conceptual elements of the project with interested parties, including local professional groups, or perhaps there's some additional input that council would like to give us at this time. |
| 01:52:39.06 | Kevin McGowan | So I have a couple other comments as well. Thank you so much, Becky. Appreciate your presentation. a couple other things to add for the council and that is that the fta grant is more than eight years old and we've been getting some notifications from f from goldfish bridge highway transportation district that any inactive grants may be pulled and so they've had two of those letters and we are currently working with them to submit our invoices through the FDA in order to get reimbursed. So we do want to move this project forward and not lose any of that federal funding. And that's one of the reasons to move this forward as soon as possible. |
| 01:52:59.65 | Summer | Yeah. |
| 01:53:21.79 | Kevin McGowan | Now when I say move this board, I'm not anticipating instructing BKF to develop 100% plans straight off the bat. That's not what we're looking for. We're simply looking at the common elements that you've seen in this plan so far to direction to go ahead and draw those out and get them moving so that we do have a plan set for let's say the plaza we're not going to decide specifically on these smaller elements right away and a good example is that we've received some comments from the public about view corridors I think one of our our members of the public has mentioned that having the trees out there in the plaza area may not be such a good thing I've also received some comments about the benches that are there right now, that a lot of our patrons, a lot of our citizens, likes to go out there on the weekend or during the day to just sit there and look at the bay. So those are the type of comments that we need and we can incorporate into the plan as we move forward. The intent is to move this board in a fashion that we can bring it back to council probably at the 60% level with a few more of these details in hand. and possibly work up a construction drawing set that has alternatives that the council can choose what we should install at what point in time and actually get some various estimates from a contractor to bid it. In addition, one last thing to mention is that the parking lot itself, we're just proposing to put a slurry seal on the parking lot. and then restripe it. are not necessarily suggesting that we need to resurface the entire parking lot at this point. based off of the amount of funding we have. This is a tough project because we don't have a lot of funding to reconstruct everything. but we need to make sure that the parking lot lasts until the phase two work can either begin or be funded. And that's an important key. So with that, I always welcome your direction and welcome your thoughts as well as the thoughts from the public. So thank you very much, Becky and Jason, for your hard work. And I think that concludes our presentation. |
| 01:55:41.38 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you very much, Director McGowan. And Becky, Jason, thank you very thorough. and very easy to follow presentation. So thank you for that. Dr. McGowan, I actually have a process question. So normally the council is here to apply on policy decisions. This is very design detail oriented. When will the planning commission be seeing this? And shouldn't this go to planning commission? I mean, the city is an applicant, but prior to it going to the council for this very detailed design review. |
| 01:56:13.84 | Kevin McGowan | we would be happy to bring it to the Planning Commission At this point, It is a capital project and generally it's my understanding that we wouldn't necessarily bring it to the planning commission. but based off of your comment i think there's no problem with us bringing it to them and obtaining their input |
| 01:56:32.10 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you. Yeah, I mean, we looked at, I mean, Sanitation District did a new pump station by Whiskey Springs. I don't know if that was considered a capital project, looked at all when I was on the commission, all sorts of these types of projects for the city was the applicant. So just curious about that. And then you made a statement about you want to submit invoices to get reimbursed. Is there a risk that we might not get reimbursed? And how much have we spent to date? |
| 01:56:58.97 | Kevin McGowan | I don't have the exact details on the amount we've spent to date. but According to our contact at Golden Gate Bridge Highway Transportation District, they've received two letters of inactive grant of this inactive grant from FTA. And they are worried that if they get a third letter, there may be a possibility for pulling the grant itself since it is over eight years old. |
| 01:57:21.88 | Mayor Kelman | I have a deep appreciation for that. I just wanna make sure that we do get reimbursed. I'm trying to understand the risk that we might not. My last question and I'll turn over to my colleagues, is this sort of a butt to a historic district. And so sort of a similar question to that of the planning commission, at what point are you going to consult with our historic preservation commission and get their insight. I guess I don't see any reason why this doesn't go through the normal planning and design review, that would be expected, I would think. |
| 01:57:53.10 | Kevin McGowan | We can also set something up with the historic preservation committee and bring this to their attention. We've approached the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee several times on this project also. Knowing which committee to reach out to, maybe that's my error. We'll get to the right people. |
| 01:58:11.31 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you, Kevin. Lots of hard work, moving pieces. You've moved this mountain kind of far. So thank you very much for that and all your hard work. Okay, other council members, questions for Project team. |
| 01:58:28.42 | Mayor Kelman | I'm not seeing any. You can see it. There's a very good presentation. That's what happens. |
| 01:58:31.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, I think Kevin answered most of my questions, as did the excellent presentation from BKF. So thank you. |
| 01:58:39.78 | Mayor Kelman | Great. Let's pause and take some feedback and public comment. |
| 01:58:45.75 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, it looks like we do have a few hints raised in our first. speaker it's kevin carroll kevin you've been invited and asked to share your video |
| 01:58:58.32 | Unknown | Welcome, Kevin. |
| 01:59:00.16 | Kevin Carroll | Good evening. A couple things. done quite frankly. at the slides that showed pedestrian and bicycle circulation. I think if you got people out there with counters and counted, 95% of both the bicycle and pedestrian traffic to and from the ferries is on El Portal. It is not off of Anchor Way. and Bridgeway and It does not compute at all. And making any assumptions based on that, Um, is gonna lead to major problems Also, there is no, if you do start calculating on it, one of the things about El Fertel, I believe the change has already been approved and that's cutting the street almost in half with an outdoor dining area for Cafe Tutti. And now that will affect circulation flow. Two, the question is shade. in the area, in the queuing area, I know from personal experience every summer, We'll have six or seven tourists faint in the heat because there is no shade and they're lined up there waiting for half an hour, 40 minutes. There's no nearby water fountain where they can run to and get back into line. And so that's a real issue for some of the tourists I think if you check with the fire department you can probably see the ambulance calls from pre-COVID The other thing I see missing entirely from this presentation is access for people before COVID when town was active in San Francisco, we have a lot of commuters of local buses and the buses coming from Mill Valley to and from the ferry and I don't see any mention of that at all. Also, hopefully at some point, the Marin transit can restore the direct connection Mirwage shuttles. And it would be nice if that was included in the plan of how those people will be accommodated Um. And the other thing is on the commuters, it's nice if maybe over the, some sort of walkway from the ferry to Anchor Street, which I assume is where the buses will be. If there could be a covered walkway with solar panels back to be hooked up to chargers for cars I think would be a good idea. Thank you. |
| 02:01:44.19 | Unknown | Thank you, Kevin. |
| 02:01:46.72 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Jack Zollman. You've been unmuted. and have to share your video. |
| 02:02:00.07 | Mayor Kelman | Welcome, Jacques. You're muted. |
| 02:02:03.71 | Jacques Oldman | Okay, I pushed on mute. |
| 02:02:05.57 | Mayor Kelman | There you are. |
| 02:02:06.58 | Jacques Oldman | All right, so I don't want to, I want to address El Portal. In the plan that you were shown, it does not show El Portal included into the Plaza area because of our limited budget. But I think you should be aware that in our ultimate plan, The idea is to raise the pavement up to sidewalk level over all of El Portal It would still be traffic circulation to serve the businesses, but the feel of El Portal would be pedestrian. And so that that whole plaza would flow much better than it apparently does in the drawings that you saw. Now, we are trying to get funding from some of the local businesses and whatever sources we can find to be able to include that in this first project it would be very cost effective because we have to, right now we are just going to maintain the curb where it is at the end of El Portal. There's a lot of drainage stuff there and so on. So if we could do the El Portal improvements along with this, all of that could be done seamlessly. And I think that the whole project would work much better. So it's one of those unfortunate situations where you have a $2.4 million budget. If you had a couple more, a hundred thousand or whatever it would take. A million, I don't know. to complete the project, you would have a 200% better project. |
| 02:03:48.85 | Unknown | Thank you, Jeff. |
| 02:03:53.72 | Serge Avila | NEXT SPEAKER. is Peter Van Meter. Peter, you've been unmuted. |
| 02:03:58.56 | Mayor Kelman | Welcome Peter. |
| 02:04:02.18 | Peter Van Meter | Okay, good evening. This is just wonderful to see this project moving ahead. I've been following it for many years and I was watching closely the work of the local professionals group over the last 18 months. And it's a very complicated trade-off of many criteria. You've heard that in the presentation. I really like the idea of separating the bicycle queuing from the plaza itself. That's a major improvement in congestion management. The other factor that I'm concerned about, Kevin did mention, I have some comments I provided in writing earlier about opening up the plaza. having it being a wider open space, such as we often see those of us who've been lucky enough to travel to European cities, you see lots of plazas with wide open spaces and open feeling. I'm concerned about some of the permanently located furniture, little bollards I saw in one of the sketches. And also those trees. Now the trees would normally be a nice amenity But in this case, they tighten it up, they kind of provide a you know, a limitation to the open space where you're basically taking full advantage of our views to the bay. So I would like to see as we move ahead with conceptual drawings, at least an option. that does not consider that kind of permanently located furniture. which is different than my support of the mobile furniture or the cafe use. I think that being able to have some food service and so on from nearby restaurant, you could take and sit in a table in the plaza is a great idea. Having benches strategically located for people to sit down there and enjoy this passive view of the area are really important. But I think that the, landscaping should be minimized I do not like the trees in there I'm sorry I'd like to see a more wide open space in the final design. But I think it was great work for the local architects group. Fabulous challenge has been faced here. And I'd love to see the applause even bigger. But let's keep it wide open and clear as it is in this plan and move ahead with it. I fully endorse the concept after many years of trying to get this thing done. I would love to see it going ahead. Thank you. |
| 02:06:20.97 | Unknown | Thank you, Peter. |
| 02:06:23.06 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 02:06:23.08 | Serge Avila | for our next speaker. Karen, Karen, you're being unmuted enough to share your video. |
| 02:06:29.83 | Karen | Other? Good evening. The process question before I make my comment, Vicki Nichols has had her hand up, I think from the beginning, so I hope we get to her comment. Great comments, preceding me, Peter, Kevin, Jacques. Thank you, those are really good ones. Becky, great presentation. I really like the general direction here. Thank you. And I really appreciate you calling out the conservative interpretation on 1128. I've spent more time than I'd like to admit looking at ordinance 1128. And I think that there's a very strong case that the 5% reduction potential is on the cumulative of the addition of all four locks I would love to see city council seek an interpretation on that from the city attorney because it could just provide B.K.F. some opportunity to create a little more wiggle room in the design that could create a little bit more space for the plaza. It could take what is now just like a tiny little business to Vineyard Del Mar and could create enough room There's continuity there, and we can really take advantage the various parks that are so close together. So I think that would be a great development to really maximize what we can do still at this stage, still in accordance with 1128. And in closing, just want to say thanks to everyone for their comments, input, work on this, especially the BKF local professional group, Kevin, et cetera. |
| 02:08:03.17 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker. Sandra, you've been unmuted. |
| 02:08:10.10 | Sandra Bushmaker | I am back again. I'm not gonna get into the merits of this plaza, but I do wanna bring a couple things to your attention. It was only about 20 years ago that we dedicated Tracy Way to Jack Tracy and his family for his contributions to Sausalito and Sausalito history. and we're going to have a creation of the book moments in time, which I'm sure you've all read. So I just wanna bring that little bit of history to our way here. I do agree with the previous speaker that we do need a deep dive by the city attorney on 1128. Tracy Way is not governed by 1128. And if I read the staff report correctly, I don't think the inclusion of Tracy Way into the parking lot, exclu- uh, Yeah. I'm having a brain, you know what, excludes this project from, 1128. In other words, you can't scoop in more property and then have that exclude the requirement of the 5% rule. So I do believe that we do need a legal opinion on the 1128. And then my last point is the bicycle queue that runs directly in front of one of the city's long-term tenants, the Sausalito Yacht Club. That's gonna create a tremendous amount of havoc in and out of the club, and in and out of the club's parking lot. I do believe that the club needs to be consulted on this and some discussion needs to arise. This queuing, especially during the summer of bicycles right across the parking lot of the club will impede ingress and egress from the city's tenant. And, um... I also want to remind the council about the meeting at Angelenos last year with the business owners, the downtown business owners. Council Member Sobieski was there and Mr. Hine was there also. that there was very strong resistance to changing any of the parking availability in the downtown parking lot. I just want to bring that to your attention in case it slipped your mind. All right, that's it for now. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:10:41.66 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker, it's David Sudo. Then unmute it and ask to share your video. |
| 02:10:54.04 | David Sudo | I, uh, I was reviewing the plans and presentation and a couple of things occurred to me. One is it's unclear in the current plans. It's shown, I kind of think it's shown in the schematic plan, but not in the kind of, sketch 3d sketch is whether or not we're intending to keep the Stanford water fountains I can see pluses and minuses. I would kind of hope that if it doesn't work in its current location, that we move it to an alternative location. where it doesn't impact uh, pedestrian bicycle flow. and then I also think we should give thought in if we decide to retain lot one as a parking lot, whether the layout is conducive to adding charging stations for electric vehicles in the future. some of the layout looks a little bit tight to look place charging stations in the future There's not a real corridor to place them. with protective devices and such. But overall, I'm really happy with how this solves a lot of structural issues with circulation and separating cars and pedestrians and bicycles in general. provides a lot of safety improvements over existing layout. |
| 02:12:27.11 | Serge Avila | Our next speaker is Vicki Nichols. Vicki, you've been unmuted and has to share your video. |
| 02:12:45.05 | Vicki Nichols | Peggy, we're not hearing you. Oh, sorry. All right. So what I'd like to say is that this area, this area, area that is being considered for improvement has been under, Discussion for years. So, I think, Susan Cleveland Knowles and I were doing this. Let's please get this done. I would encourage you to look at phase one and realize that we do not wanna lose the ability which was a very good thing frankly, I felt has been patiently preserved for years. I think we need a ferry improvement. If we're trying to encourage bicycle, and walking communicate, converts, to get Places? Why are we not encouraging this? |
| 02:14:00.01 | Unknown | Thank you, Vicky. |
| 02:14:00.46 | Serge Avila | Thank you, Bicky. Thank you. Our next speaker, it's Michael Briggs. Michael, you've been unmuted and has to share your video. |
| 02:14:08.92 | Unknown | I'm going to call you. |
| 02:14:09.66 | Michael Rex | Hi, good evening. Yeah, as you know, I'm among the professional design group with Bill Hayes, landscape architect from SWA, and Jacques Ollman, our local architect. We lost Barbara Brown and Robert Hayes, both architects. We started with five on our group. We're now down to three. Barbara and Robert just couldn't continue to devote all the time. No one thought it would take this much time. but we've gotten excellent help from Kevin McGowan and, and Becky Dower, civil engineer from BKF, and Jason Kirschman from RHAA, Landscape Architects. And Becky, thanks for your great presentation, so clear. Just a couple things I want to point out. In phase one, it's still evolving. We had a good meeting last week. We tend to Zoom together every two weeks for the last two years. And what you're seeing is a progress drawing, but not a final drawing. I agree that when we get the drawing a little bit further along, it should probably first go to the Historic Preservation Commission and then the Planning Commission maybe to speed things up. They can do a joint meeting. But I don't see how we could not have them look at it. uh we value their input uh so i would encourage fitting that in as soon as we can getting it that scheduled on phase one it is evolving uh we've looked at the trees and uh we're going to rearrange them a little bit to make it more open in the middle but we want to keep some trees we think if we can buy some mature trees you can look under the canopy and it won't block views. Peter's comment about the paving in his letter, we definitely are trying to make sure the paving with old and new is consistent. We'll be producing samples to check that. Jacques comment about adding to phase one, converting the paving to the new is consistent. uh el portal to a plaza we got an estimate of about 600 000. we think we can raise about half of that from private individuals maybe the city could close the gap and we can include that in this phase phase two that you saw tonight is not that's a pretty old plan we've developed it much beyond that you'll be seeing that later we expect that to go to a vote in november we're working hard on that now and it's not that it's the park it's going to be both park and and an additional plaza and then as far as bikes the whole idea bike and ped we're trying to push them away from the plaza area and El Patel and keep them over to the east side of lot one we think that'll be a huge improvement and last of all I'd like to support staff's recommendation to proceed with planning because we don't expect significant changes only minor tweaks thank you |
| 02:17:13.16 | Unknown | Thank you, Michael. |
| 02:17:14.09 | Michael Rex | Aha. Thank you. |
| 02:17:15.98 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, we have no other hands raised. |
| 02:17:19.37 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. Thank you, everybody. Really great comments, very helpful. I'll move it back up, close public comment, back up to the council. Yeah, councilman of Cleveland, why don't you start us off. |
| 02:17:31.64 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Kellman. And thank you to everyone, all the public comments. especially to the local architects group and EKF for their presentation and their hard work on this. I remember sitting At a council meeting or two many years ago when we had the bids from our three proposers And kind of really struggling with how we could do this project, this kind of smaller budget project, $2.5 million. and still preserve the options to really think creatively about how to use the space by ferry landing. And we work. really hopeful that it would work out, but very, we were struggling with how we could phase this and how we could make it work. And it seems like it has exceeded those expectations. I think there's still a lot of work to do here, but the main points of the grant have been met and most importantly to me the design allows so much flexibility for moving forward. to potentially to phase two. So I just want to congratulate all the people that have been involved in getting us here. um, and meeting that goal. And I'm very supportive of the staff recommendation to move forward. It has been, as many people mentioned, a very, very long time. I have a couple of comments. I really love the creative use of Tracy Way. And yes, we should still recognize the honor, the namesake for that way. But using that and then expanding the plaza, I think is a wonderful, Um, way to move forward, retain some of the parking and the controversy about removing that right away. Um, And the expansion of the plaza just looks wonderful. Yes, there's some details to work out. Maybe two rows of trees looking out towards the bay. But I definitely agree with comments that were made that we need shade. in that area and we need shade where there's queuing. Hopefully we can find a good compromise there. I did agree with some written public comment I think we got that it would also, if we can make it happen, some screening of the bike queuing area. would avoid kind of that cluttered feel that you see when you come down there and you just bazillion bikes all over the place. I don't know if we've got room, but I would add that to my comments. I loved what Jacques Allman is talking about with El Portal and the raised plaza area there. I know it's not part of this project, but as much as this project can plan for that, and integrate for that improvement. would be amazing. I just do want to emphasize the really importance of transit and the fact that this is a transportation hub and that the public transit buses that are coming in you know, need to be able to connect to the ferry and people need to be able to get from the ferry to public transit. Just on that point, I did agree with one of the commenters that The way people walk was not accurately really depicted. I think that was my one small nitpick with the presentation. If you've ever been at the ferry when it unloads, you know at 6 o'clock people go right through the parking lot to lot 3. IF THERE'S any way to have a walkway, in there and recognizes that that's exactly what happens. I think that would be a lot safer for pedestrians. And same with bikes, they go into El Portal. I thought some of the signage things that you showed, some pavement markings, perhaps green paint, you know, kind of pointing people the way you want them to go would be helpful. But that was my only Thank you. small Thank you. Thank you. I'm really excited. I hope the council along Doris moving forward with this wholeheartedly tonight and as quickly as we can see the next as possible and let's take advantage of that federal grant money and, uh, make the ferry landing a more enjoyable place. the residents and visitors. Thank you. |
| 02:22:11.86 | Mayor Kelman | Oh, Thank you very much for those comments. |
| 02:22:15.96 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. I really want to acknowledge everyone that was involved in and continues to be involved in the hard work on this project. It has been. you know, the local architects group. And obviously, Becky, thank you for your fantastic presentation at DPW, but also people like Peter Van Meter who have been thinking about the downtown area for over a decade It's really interesting and exciting to see this to finally come together. And I think something really critical that Director McGowan mentioned is that we are at risk of potentially uh, maybe losing some of our fta grants if we don't move quickly so in addition to all the hard work and the amount of time spent on this from a fiscal standpoint i think it just really makes sense for us um to move forward with the plan although there will be some minor tweaks um a couple of things that i noticed and wanted to touch on we talked about the historical um importance of tracy way but we didn't talk about the sally stanford fountain which is a have a drink on sally um I found that's a little historic, important little piece of Sausalito that I think we all love, especially the dog. bowl part of the fountain and I just want to make sure that as we go forward with the planning that that is preserved and included in the new plaza. as well. I think I agree very much with the comments about shade and making sure that tourists are safe as they visit, and I appreciate that being brought up. and the ideas of also I would love to have our city attorney look deeper at the 1128 ordinance to see what our possibilities for expanding the plaza might be while still complying with 1128. Because if it is the full parking lots as a whole, then that's something that should absolutely Be taken into consideration i'm also equally excited about El portal and what might go there, so I hope that that continues to be looked at and considered. as we think about funding sources and what is possible. And I love that that's something that our innovative architects group came forward with and are thinking about. And in general, I'm just really excited to see next steps and see what happens for phase two and get an update going forward. So I think this has been a really long time coming. There's a lot of great pieces here. I appreciate the members of the public who submitted comment and also spoke out tonight. And I assume and hope and would direct staff to consider those comments as we make the final tweaks here going forward for the plan itself. And I just really want to thank everybody that's involved. And I'm very excited about a new plaza in front of our Ferry Landing downtown. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. |
| 02:24:41.71 | Mayor Kelman | I'm not sure. |
| 02:24:41.95 | Vice Mayor Blasding | THE PEOPLE THAT ARE IN THE PEO |
| 02:24:42.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:44.43 | Councilmember Sobieski | I might have other comments. I'd like to acknowledge all the people that I've been working on this. many for no compensation at all. There are a lot of people that give of their time. here in Sausalito and all our boards and commissions and as volunteers all our civic organizations, So much is done by volunteers in town that fully makes up a large fraction of the quality of life here in Sausalito. And I'm just really impressed by The professionals have given tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands really of dollars of their time for free to work on this. Plus all the volunteers that you've all mentioned who've working on concepts for making Sausalito better for years. I think it's exciting and the amazing part of this is indeed the opportunity to have a substantial capital improvement to Sausalito with federal funds, not with local taxpayer dollars. The biggest threat to this are letting absolute, someone's idea of the perfect being the enemy of the good meaning that if we do anything that fumbles the ball at the end zone, we're going to regret it. So we're going to the two warning letters that we might lose the grant should make everybody I know I feel sweat on the back of my neck when I think about it, and I think everybody should too and be cautious about anything that cause there's a fumble ball. So congratulations on the progress so far. And I think um, I'm excited to see how this evolves. |
| 02:26:21.29 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Councilmember Sebesky. Okay, I'll wrap up here. And then I think the right next step is to move this to the planning commission and i think michael rex had the right idea with a joint pc historic preservation committee meeting to be able to review this and provide the necessary detailed design review and historic review and I think that will move it quickly. I think part of that staff report should probably include so the minimum necessary to continue to show that the grant is active. And so if there are milestones along the way or actions or certain amount of work that needs to occur, let's make sure that we don't lose that reimbursement. And then I'll just offer, it's really quite remarkable how dedicated our local architects group has been and continues to be and I am eternally grateful for that. I want to throw out an opportunity here that really wasn't covered in the design which is to think about long-term resiliency and sustainability for this location. So a couple of opportunities came up in tonight's conversation. David Sudo made a point about the EV chargers. It's our item on our agenda tonight i want to make sure that those do fit within whatever this new design is um there's a lot of conversation about trees i think carbon sequestration and solar cooling is really important uh native species extremely important and maybe there's a tie-in to the yitak chi park and the efforts underway there for uh creating habitat for monarchs that are migrating and to think about this more holistic ecosystem. I also think we should be looking whenever possible at impervious surface areas so that we are ready to tackle the impacts of sea level rise. So in the next 10 to 15 years, when we start to see some flooding in that area, maybe this becomes what the Dutch would call a water park. which actually absorbs some of the floodwaters that are coming in. I mean, it's designed for long-term utility within our community. So I just urge you to take that into consideration. We have a real opportunity to honor the general plan update and make this a hallmark and not just a plaza that is beautiful, but a plaza that signals our values as well. So, I think we should, again, like I said, move this on to the planning commission and HPC and let them dive into the details. So that would be my recommendation. And councilman Cleveland. |
| 02:28:34.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I wasn't sure there was unanimous agreement about I feel like I think the historic landmarks board should have a hearing at some point, but I don't think that should slow down the progress on the development of the construction level. So if we can do that simultaneously, I think that was, if I had heard correctly, I think that was a good idea. I don't feel like I heard Councilmember saying that maybe I'm reading into their comments, but, um, And I don't think it's design review per se, I think it's just similar to what we're doing, kind of providing some input. |
| 02:29:15.63 | Councilmember Sobieski | Yeah, I think you're right, Susan. That's certainly my sentiment, and it seemed maybe it was a nodding head or not from Becky and Kevin, the thing here that we've been asked to do is whether to approved this 30, the construction of 30% drawings. at a high level. And then it's going to come back to us. And I think, we should definitely take not just the input at HPC and planning commission, but the South Slater Yacht Club and, uh, that Sandra Bushmaker mentioned and everyone else in the community this has been going on for more than a year with with public sessions both in front of city council and and in the public and that should absolutely continue. But I think we're being asked to move this forward, and I'm in favor of moving it forward. |
| 02:30:02.12 | Mayor Kelman | I'M A LITTLE UNCOMFORTABLE, AND HERE'S WHY. members of the public or even the PBAC in the same quasi legislative role as of course the planning commission is. And so I think we want to get to the same place, which is we don't want to have future holdups. We don't want to take a misstep that ends up costing us time down the road, which is why I would urge us to go early. and get through that quasi-legislative process now, so that we don't find ourselves so far down the road and going oh shoot we didn't we didn't talk with the with the right committees and so i think the right course of action is in fact to expeditiously bring it to HPC. and the Planning Commission so that we can move it forward so i i'm in agreement with the end result um i just think that this is the prudent way to proceed before we get too far down the line, because I'll tell you another round of drawings and we'll be at the place where we say oh well we can't back out from this Now what do we do? And so I've seen that before. I suspect it will happen here and I don't want there to be a hold off, which is why I'm urging this direction. Let's hear from the vice mayor. |
| 02:31:11.68 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Yeah, I think that we can approve the move forward with the drawings and then still have the planning commission HPC review it. I really don't want to hold this up given the two letters that we've received about the grant and we need to demonstrate that we're moving forward, which is the request from staff. It doesn't mean we won't get the feedback from planning and HPC, but I think at this stage, granting the request to move forward and then also at the same time expeditiously scheduling out that joint meeting because even just scheduling a joint meeting can take quite a bit of time for them to review it. I think we can kind of have a middle ground and do both things here so that Planning Commission does get a chance to review it and give the feedback that giving so kind of simultaneously, but we also start moving with those construction drawings and the approval. I think it's important for the grant given the letters we've received. Thank you. |
| 02:31:55.38 | Mayor Kelman | I don't disagree with the intention. I am quite uncomfortable with the process. I just put that on the record. I think this should go to the planning commission and HPC. I want to move it forward. I'm willing to take staff's recommendation here. I think it's going to be a problem for us in the future. But I just wanna put that on the record. I respectfully just issue that to you or register that with you. And I'm ready to take a vote on this Keep in mind that that might not be the process you all want to do. I just want to put that on the record. That's what I think the next step is. |
| 02:32:31.09 | Councilmember Sobieski | Mayor, when you say take it to the Planning Commission for review, do you expect them to have a vote on it? |
| 02:32:36.81 | Mayor Kelman | No, it could be a study session or some type of guidance. But they should be weighing in on the detail of a design with the city as an applicant. If not now, I'm interested to hear from staff when, but I am concerned about, oh, we've done construction drawings and now we've done conceptuals, now we have schematics. And then the planning commission sees it and goes, okay, well we have comments and HPCC's and goes, and we have issues, And everyone goes, ah, we can't walk it back now. We've done all this work on it. And I just don't want anything to hold it up. So I'm saying let's streamline it, get the approvals we need, get the right eyes on it that we should have, and then we can move it forward as quickly as possible. So same end result as you all want. I just, I think I'm being very cautious and conservative on it. But if you don't mind, Kevin, it looks like you have a, A comment on that. |
| 02:33:29.56 | Kevin McGowan | I do, and I think the intent is to have BKF move forward with their plan set so that we can provide some more details for the planning commission to review. It'll be able it allow them to dig their teeth into it a little bit more and give us a little more direction. So I think that's what our intent is, is to let's get a little more into the design and then we'll bring it to the planning commission so that we have enough there. that they really can comment on. |
| 02:33:56.27 | Mayor Kelman | That's a fair point. Thank you for that. Vice Mayor and then the Council Member for the Nose. |
| 02:34:01.59 | Vice Mayor Blasding | I have a legacy hand, but I would agree with direction. |
| 02:34:05.10 | Mayor Kelman | You're always getting me with a legacy. I'm sorry, I'll put it down. Okay, well, I think we all want to go to the same place, which is to move this forward. I'm hearing from staff that, The one next step after this will be planning commission and HPC, if that's the case, I'm willing to move this forward if someone wants to make a motion here. |
| 02:34:29.11 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'll make a motion to move forward with the construction level drawings and direct PKF to do so. |
| 02:34:36.98 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 02:34:37.03 | Serge Avila | Thank you. |
| 02:34:39.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 02:34:39.97 | Mayor Kelman | Surgery, please call the roll. |
| 02:34:42.23 | Serge Avila | Council Member Sobieski? COUNCIL MEMBER, Puebla, no? |
| 02:34:47.98 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 02:34:49.21 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blomstein. |
| 02:34:50.65 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 02:34:51.62 | Serge Avila | Mayor Kelman. |
| 02:34:52.72 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. All right, motion passes four zero. Thank you, everybody. A very helpful conversation. Okay, thank you, Kevin, but don't go away because you are still up here. So we're gonna move to item 4B, the 2019 Mudside FEMA reimbursement report. |
| 02:35:09.55 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, thank you very much, Mayor, and thank you for your help. I'm gonna share my screen, I have a short PowerPoint presentation. And let's hope I can get this right. So bear with me. one. There we are. |
| 02:35:28.38 | Kevin McGowan | Nope, that hasn't worked yet. Hold on. |
| 02:35:31.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:35:37.49 | Unknown | you |
| 02:35:37.73 | Kevin McGowan | My screen at this point, you should have a. the, uh, of blue. Thank you. |
| 02:35:45.14 | Mayor Kelman | We saw it for a second, Kevin, and now it's just a, there we go. We got it. |
| 02:35:45.35 | Kevin McGowan | It's on for some. |
| 02:35:49.98 | Kevin McGowan | All right. Sometimes they have computer issues. So thank you so much. you Sorry about the delay here. This evening I have, excuse me, for item 5B before you this evening is a report regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA reimbursement to the city of Sausalito for the 2019 mudslide event. This evening, I have also requested our consultant, Masoud Karmani of Karmani Consulting Group, to assist me with responding to some of your questions this evening. Masoud is an expert in the Federal Disaster Assistance Program and has provided advice to the city on how to proceed with seeking reimbursement for these from these agencies. |
| 02:36:33.62 | Councilmember Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:36:33.91 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Thank you. To refresh everyone's memory, on February 14th, 2019, a mudslide occurred on National Park property and flowed down to Crescent Avenue, damaging several homes. The city responded to the incident by declaring it a disaster. A state and federal disaster were also declared for the event which opened up federal funding to support the cleanup operation. Over the last three years, the city has moved forward with three distinct phases of work, consisting of emergency response, which related to the initial assistance securing the area and cleaning out some of the debris from Sausalito Boulevard and to provide access to residents. The second part is a debris removal, which included utilizing a contractor to remove the debris from Crescent Avenue and on the slope above Crescent, which would fall over the roadway, if not addressed. And then the last part is the, the permanent restoration, which included the reinstallation of a storm drain pipe from Sausalito Boulevard to Crescent Avenue. All of this work has been completed at this point in time. During this work, the city applied for federal disaster funding through Cal OES and FEMA. the city's initial submittal was denied by FEMA. the city did submit the first appeal to Cal OES who procedurally forwards that appeal to FEMA. The first appeal was denied by FEMA stating that it was not received in a timely manner, even though the city submitted its paperwork to Cal OES on time on august 18 2021 the city submitted a second appeal to cal oes who in turn submitted our appeal to FEMA, who denied the second appeal, stating that the first appeal was untimely. On February 23rd, 2021 staff provided a report to the city council, which estimated the amount of funding the city may receive if its appeals were accepted for the debris removal. FEMA noted in the past that they would not process reimbursements for the emergency response or the permanent restoration until the debris removal piece of the work was clarified at their level. After February 23rd, 2021, the staff report of February 23rd, 2021, sorry, it's getting late. With help from Kermani Consulting Group, the exact numbers were modified to represent a total reimbursement request from FEMA in the amount of $449,637 for the debris removal piece. which was denied by FEMA on December 1st 2021. Staff is working with our initial consultant, which is Harrison Associates, To finalize the paperwork, for the permanent restoration and the emergency response paperwork. and we'll be forwarding that to Cal OES for reimbursement. Since FEMA has denied the city's second appeal, staff consulted with Kermani Consulting Group to advise to address the next steps available for seeking reimbursement for the debris removal. jurisdictions that choose to challenge FEMA's appeal process are generally required to submit a legal action against the federal government. This action takes time and resources, which may not be fiscally productive. Another option available to the city is to seek California disaster assistance funding. through the state of California who has approved and supported the appeal to FEMA in the past. the Cromadi Consulting a group believes that we may be able to receive 75% of the original applicable amount of the debris removal costs from the state of California. Lastly, this process is very complex. There is a large amount of paperwork required to send to receive this funding. And there are future audits. If the city does receive this funding, utilizing an expert such as Masood Kramani is very helpful to us to guide us through the process and to seek out the best path for obtaining this type of funding. So that concludes my short presentation on this subject. Masood is here for us this evening to help me answer some of your questions that may come up. So again, I'm not the complete expert on this. So if we don't answer all the questions, we can definitely get back to you on it. So let me stop sharing my screen and turn it back over to you folks. |
| 02:41:52.64 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you, Director McGowan. So I think the council had a threshold question which was to better understand the advice that I thought we had received, to not COORDINATE WITH ELECTIVES ABOUT going towards Cal OES and figuring out how do we get those monies. Can we address that question? |
| 02:42:16.64 | Masoud Karmani | Good evening, this is Masud Karamani from Karamani Consulting Group. So to answer, I mean, understand the question, you're asking about political the local representative involvement with the process, correct? |
| 02:42:29.29 | Unknown | Correct, yes. |
| 02:42:29.95 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:42:30.14 | Masoud Karmani | Yeah, definitely, you know, that's something, you know, I've worked, I've done this for the last three decades, worked actually with Kevin when he was with the county of Moraine. Berlin was the we've actually this is very effective way to do it, but you want to do it the right way. So you don't come across like we're complaining. So this is a very unusual and I'm one of a kind that I've seen the last three decades been in the business. I've worked for the state for seven, eight years as a consultant last 26, 27, 26 years. So normally, There's, you know, as Kevin's alluded, the declaration of disaster starts from your level, goes to the county, goes to the state, goes to the governor, goes to the president. On each level, there's a disaster that is declared. So when the state concurs with the locals and send it to the president, so already there's some disasters that don't go to the president, so they become a state disaster. They're funded through California Disaster Assistance Act. |
| 02:43:12.48 | Summer | Thank you. |
| 02:43:28.29 | Masoud Karmani | So in this situation, normally we go through FEMA and the state is kind of an applicant or a sub-applicant. So they like Kevin mentioned, they're kind of the middle person to go to FEMA. We submitted the first appeal and the state supported 100% because it was The costs were eligible, but initially FEMA misunderstood their own regulations, but they thought it was actually private property not responsible of the city. and then we submitted the appeal within the 60-day deadline the state got confused because of the covet so there were some They thought that were under some extensions that were given between the two federal and state agencies that the first appeal was denied. So we filed a second appeal and which goes to FEMA National in Washington that got denied as well. So, I'll ask you a question in a second, but I just want to let you know where we are at. So normally what we've done in this, at this, when the second appeal is denied, that's pretty much the end of it. You know, it's done deal. It really, it's not worth to put to exhaust any political capital or anything because that's basically a second appeal they've done with it. They never changed their mind or reversed their position. So, you know, I've worked with some project that to the state does not really, you know, they don't, they don't advertise this, like if you, you know, they basically said, this is done, you're finished. So I've personally been involved with some projects. The county, when Kevin was working actually behind Roland Theater, there were some projects that for instance, the local did not go through the federal NEPA requirements. We made the argument with the state that this is not a state requirement. We were able to get the funding through this California Disaster Assistance Act, CDAA. So, and it's not something they know is that people like me who've been involved when their president says, so, you know, I told Kevin, you know, at this point we do have a case. Let's go through the state. Now, when we go start with the state, we submit a request. And that they have also two levels of appeals, which is called request for fair hearing. So as far as the political involvement, we thought, you know, let's just wait. If I was not being involved, because when those requests that I was involved, I knew kind of the three, four levels above David Jillings that Kevin knows all the way to the director. So there's been new people who've come in the middle management that really don't know the history. So the, I've started from, you know, like what five levels of the management's last since we've submitted our request. And because they've already supported our appeal, logically, they would, you know, it was a state disaster before the federal disaster. So, you know, you would have to pony up and pay the money. And that's something to clarify. or not to clarify, but to add to what Kevin stated. |
| 02:46:12.14 | Mayor Kelman | I'm sorry, so many facts coming at us and I'm sure my colleagues will have a lot of questions. I'm very, very curious though on the sort of the punchline, which is, you know, we had Senator McGuire here today. He was here earlier. |
| 02:46:15.94 | Masoud Karmani | Yeah, yeah. |
| 02:46:26.93 | Mayor Kelman | really open to helping us a number of different fronts. Any of us could have a conversation with him. Are you, would you recommend that or not? |
| 02:46:34.84 | Masoud Karmani | Yes, not right now, no. |
| 02:46:36.92 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, what would we be wondering? |
| 02:46:37.51 | Masoud Karmani | So as of last week, It turns out I was going to talk, talking to, I was able to connect to deputy director of Cal OES. They've actually, I was told I forwarded an email this evening to Kevin, because I spoke and I said, send me an email. So apparently according to him, FEMA has agreed the local, the region nine to revisit this and to see if they can fund the money. So he said, let's wait and see what they say. If not, our request still with the state is there. So I actually sent him an email this evening before, and I said, look, thank you for the information. The city wants to apply, you know, they want to kind of put some political pressure. Do you recommend that we apply this to the FEMA reps? So I'm waiting to hear. But at this point, the reason I did answer your question, Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry for the extra explanation. I just think, you know, we can use that. We have time. I just, I think it's just, let's just wait and see. There's a lot of things that are moving daily. And I can report to Kevin, but you know, I think at this point we may want to now go to FEMA that they've actually opened the books according to what I'm hearing from the state and apply that, you know, use that political capital. |
| 02:47:42.91 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, let me pause you here. I'm sure there'll be follow-ups. Let's go to, I think, Council Member Cleveland Knowles and then the Vice Mayor. |
| 02:47:43.32 | Masoud Karmani | Let me... |
| 02:47:49.65 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think we just possibly heard maybe the most important piece of information that we've heard in years on this project that FEMA might actually reconsider. So I think we've just possibly heard maybe the most important piece of information |
| 02:47:58.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:58.41 | Summer | Yeah. |
| 02:48:01.93 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I will take that as a huge positive. But I also just have to say, if you read the staff report about what has happened here, It is absolutely shocking. |
| 02:48:10.27 | Kevin Carroll | It is. |
| 02:48:10.88 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | R Application was not denied for any reason other than it was late and it was submitted on time. And it was denied twice. I mean, I can't, I read the staff report several times. I have gone back to our staff reports from 2021. And this isn't even the whole project. This is one small piece, a third of what the city spent. So I am, you know, just kind of at the end of my rope at this point, we have been denied any funding, even for the small debris, you know, third of the money on debris removal numerous times for no reason. We have spent a lot of money on consultants trying to separate the public from the private to strengthen our case. We went through that entire exercise. We paid to do that, you know, to count the buckets of dirt that came off of private property and public property. I mean, endless, you know, I feel like we have gone through every single boot. |
| 02:49:11.69 | Summer | Thank you. |
| 02:49:11.71 | Unknown | I know. |
| 02:49:11.96 | Summer | I'm like, |
| 02:49:14.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And you look at Kevin's slide, the February 23rd, 2021 staff report about what this tiny town has spent Debris removal cleanup, $1.7 million. We declared a state of emergency. The state declared a state of emergency, and the federal government concurred. And we haven't gotten, if I understand correctly, Kevin, you can correct me if I'm wrong, $1. Fact. And this happened. years ago. So, I mean, it's just a shocking I know. |
| 02:49:44.28 | Unknown | Thank you. I share your thoughts, Rish. |
| 02:49:45.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I share your thoughts really. So, you know, forgive me for getting slightly elevated, but I think we are looking for a path forward and my opinion is we should use all available. like we should be going to the OES and pursuing that path, but why we can't also at least raise this mistake through our elected officials, I just, I don't, It's not a complaint, it's just an abuse of the process. The process was not followed. |
| 02:50:20.88 | Masoud Karmani | So just to, I think you mentioned, but I want to clarify the city did nothing wrong. This is very unusual. The state, which has a responsibility to forward, to support or not support Norman, to forward transmit to FEMA. They were late. So it's between the two agencies. I never seen that happen. Usually FEMA denies the cities or counties request for it. So this is between the two agencies. |
| 02:50:36.34 | Unknown | . |
| 02:50:46.26 | Masoud Karmani | And then of course, you know, I've been making look, you know, what's the city of Sausalito's fault in this process? You two, you know, the two federal and state agencies and the state screws up, sorry, that's me. And then the FEMA makes such a big deal because it was due on a Monday, it was due on a Friday. |
| 02:51:03.14 | Mayor Kelman | Mr. Massad, yeah, I'm sorry. We agree. We're with you on this. We're so frustrated with this. What we're doing for tonight is- |
| 02:51:10.07 | Masoud Karmani | I know. |
| 02:51:10.97 | Unknown | Backfield view. |
| 02:51:11.73 | Mayor Kelman | Yeah, we want to push forward. We want to push hard on any lever that we can push on. And that's what we're looking for guidance on. Let's take some comments from the vice mayor and then we would love some specific but we're gonna take some public comment after the vice mayor as well. |
| 02:51:27.69 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Yeah, thank you and I absolutely echo Councilmember Cleveland Knowles' comments of frustration around this issue in particular because we as the city did everything right. And I think it's really important to point that out so that the public knows that we took the steps that we could from a fiscal standpoint and we're looking for the best path forward at this point. It looks like from the staff report, and I guess the email that you received about FEMA must have been prior to the preparation of the staff report. |
| 02:51:51.43 | Unknown | Yes, it was. |
| 02:51:52.31 | Vice Mayor Blasding | new and exciting information for us. Is it an option for us to pursue all avenues, speak to elected officials, also apply for OES, also... Do we need to pursue legal action with FEMA? From what I understand, your recommendation right now is wait because FEMA might reopen |
| 02:52:06.08 | Masoud Karmani | from what I've heard. |
| 02:52:11.21 | Vice Mayor Blasding | the case is that also. |
| 02:52:11.95 | Masoud Karmani | But I also wanna add that we're really in good position with the state. The lowest level management, David Gillings that Kevin knows, he already has agreed because they've already got a record that supported our appeal to FEMA. Even if this latest development hadn't happened, we have the case with the state. I just want to clarify or add something to Kevin said. So normally when there's a state disaster, there's 75% of the state and they add 10% administrative allowance, but the 75, 25 local. But when we submitted our request, when I consulted with the people that I knew, actually we're asking for a hundred percent because we're making the case that your agency is the one that did not submit. So the city should not be penalized. So we're asking for 100% of the funding, not 75. And then they add 10% on top of it for administrative allowance. So we really, our request right now is in good place with the state. Now that this has happened with FEMA, according to deputy director of Cal OES, we can best wait. It just happened two days ago and I got the email today. but i'm all for you know applying to political pressure i think maybe at this point that's why i sent the email I, I, you know, we can go to FEMA and somebody needs to hear, you're not the only ones I've worked with many, you know, it's very frustrating process to the whole, you know, I don't want to get into that. But I think we're right now, the request with the CDA funding is in good place. It has to go through five levels of approval. And if somehow it gets denied, we can appeal that. And I think, but if I hear any resistance from the state, I will have, you know, The city, you know, pick up the phone and do send the email, do whatever we need to do. And at this point, maybe going to FEMA is not a bad idea for somebody to hear how frustrating it's been and maybe they can correct some of these crazy bureaucracies. It's very frustrating. You know, for us as a local consultant is really frustrating for us because we can't produce what we, you know, when we charge our clients and nothing comes through, it's really frustrating. |
| 02:54:12.31 | Kevin McGowan | Madam Mayor, what I am hearing is that we will, what Masood is saying is let's let the present course of action take, move forward with the interaction with the state. And if we don't get very far in the next week or two, then we move it up to the political aspects. Is that correct, Masood? |
| 02:54:29.77 | Masoud Karmani | I think so yeah and I think we will you know we would do it in a way here we want to kind of somebody from the political representatives to. To talk somebody if you want official to hear from you guys from the frustration, I hear your voices, which I share. |
| 02:54:30.97 | Kevin McGowan | And I'd be like, oh, my God. |
| 02:54:45.28 | Masoud Karmani | that you know, this is just not how this program is supposed to work. They're public assistance and nothing, no assistance being offered here. I share the frustration, I think yes. I think within a week or so, we should, you know, do what, you know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't hurt to start the process. Not a female is actually in the play. |
| 02:55:03.96 | Kevin McGowan | And we also welcome your input, Mayor and Council members as well. So if this is not the course of action you'd like, just let us know. |
| 02:55:11.20 | Mayor Kelman | Great, okay. Let's see if Councilor Sobieski wants to add anything and then we'll open up to public comment. |
| 02:55:16.02 | Councilmember Sobieski | No, I don't have anything to add. I can pile on. that doesn't serve any purpose. I agree with everything that's been said. |
| 02:55:22.15 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. Yeah, I know we're all equally of the same frustration, but it looks like we have some form of momentum. So thank you very much for your efforts. And- Of course. |
| 02:55:28.50 | Councilmember Sobieski | Of course. |
| 02:55:28.97 | Serge Avila | My name is |
| 02:55:30.18 | Mayor Kelman | So let's go ahead and open up to public comment. |
| 02:55:35.68 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, I see no hands raised for this item. |
| 02:55:39.57 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, great. We'll close public comment then. And I think staff's looking for some direction. we've given it. Does anybody want to add on? I mean, I would like to see maybe something just written out that's a timeframe. If we don't hear back in the week or next week, how long of a week? Um, So, you know, we really wanna absolutely fight for this money. And as the vice mayor so eloquently put it, we, you know, we as a city did everything right. So let's come up with the actual game plan. show that we're willing to fight for this and have some timeframes around it. And I think that would be, I think, helpful for us, helpful for the public. And then when it's time to activate our political connections, we can do so. Council member Clemenon, |
| 02:56:22.80 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:56:22.85 | Becky Dower | Thank you. |
| 02:56:23.14 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Yes. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I completely agree with that course of action. And then if other council members are comfortable, I'd be happy to delegate. to you and the vice mayor the ability to reach out as appropriate to any of our state or federal elected officials at the right time. |
| 02:56:43.99 | Mayor Kelman | Great, we stand ready to represent the city on this and we will- |
| 02:56:48.20 | Masoud Karmani | I appreciate it. |
| 02:56:48.52 | Mayor Kelman | to vigorously go after these funds. |
| 02:56:52.04 | Masoud Karmani | With mayor in fact that one of my, the question, the email I send later this afternoon, exactly one. the city wants to apply to create cooperation and also ask them for a timetable. I said, we don't, now that FEMA said, yes, we don't, we can't afford to put it to just sit there. Now the state's gonna say, well, it's FEMA and then weeks and months go by. So we really, now that this happened. And I know, I know, Bob Fenton was the lead, I've worked with him, now that I know FEMA is involved, You know, I've been around more than some of these, you know, the management level at OES, but Kevin knows me, you know, when I get involved with something, I don't give up until I deliver. So I'm not gonna give up. |
| 02:57:27.14 | Mayor Kelman | I'm not going to give up. Yeah, we're glad to have you. We're delighted to have you. So, I'm going to say if you could do just a quick write-up with a, these are the expected timeframes, is what I'm going to do to dog FEMA. And this is the moment in time when I think that the Vice Mayor and I should activate some other political connections. I'd love to share and have that go out to the council as a well-made communication. |
| 02:57:28.66 | Masoud Karmani | We're delighted. |
| 02:57:47.44 | Mayor Kelman | so we know exactly what's next on our calendar on this. |
| 02:57:50.89 | Masoud Karmani | Absolutely. No problem. I'd be happy to. |
| 02:57:53.38 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you. And thank you for all your hard work. And Kevin, thank you for your- |
| 02:57:55.54 | Masoud Karmani | My pleasure. |
| 02:57:57.06 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 02:57:57.75 | Masoud Karmani | Thank you. |
| 02:57:57.97 | Kevin McGowan | Kevin. |
| 02:57:58.99 | Mayor Kelman | Dr. McGowan, do you need anything else from the council on this matter? |
| 02:58:02.18 | Kevin McGowan | No, thank you very much for your attention on this. I appreciate it. |
| 02:58:05.53 | Mayor Kelman | It's top of mind, I think for all of us, particularly given some of the other items to add today. um okay so uh team uh we have one more item but it is to simply hear a report and uh go ahead and and file it as as information um how would you all feel if we actually move that to the consent calendar in our next meeting um there's no action to be taken on it or we could hear the presentation and, take public comment, I leave it to you all. Yes, Vice Mayor. |
| 02:58:37.60 | Vice Mayor Blasding | I'm gonna be fine with moving it to consent. I just wanna acknowledge the hard work of the sustainability commission, and again, on the charging, work especially around getting the grants from TAM and MCE and make sure that that is acknowledged in the public forum and say that I'm very excited about this happening and thank you director McGowan for working so hard on it as well |
| 02:58:56.43 | Mayor Kelman | Likewise. |
| 02:58:58.35 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. |
| 02:58:58.37 | Mayor Kelman | It's simply fantastic. So everyone okay with moving it to consent on the next meeting? |
| 02:59:04.33 | Mayor Kelman | Okay. Yeah, Director McGill. |
| 02:59:06.91 | Kevin McGowan | I would just like to acknowledge Ali Iqbal, who is gonna make the presentation. He stayed up late. I'm sure the kids are already asleep. So acknowledge Ali and say, thank you so much. And we hopefully we'll introduce him next time with another presentation. |
| 02:59:24.98 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you for mentioning his name. I think we should just acknowledge Ali in general, because my understanding that he has stepped into many different projects recently and really just shown some real leadership and some initiatives. Thank you. Sorry we've kept you up so late, but we're glad to have you, and we hear you're doing an awesome job. Thank you. |
| 02:59:47.29 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you so much, council members. Thank you. |
| 02:59:49.67 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Have a good night to you both. Okay, so with that said, we are then on item five. This is communications. This is the time in 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 discussion 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 on the agenda to city staff or direct the subject via agendas for a future meeting. I'll go ahead and ask the city clerk if there are any hands raised. |
| 03:00:28.95 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, I see no hands raised for communications at this moment. |
| 03:00:33.73 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, then we will close public comment on item five. And move on item six council member reports. I just want to thank and acknowledge council member Cleveland Knowles for her in P back report. I enjoyed reading that and I appreciate the effort you took to put that in writing for all of us. And I welcome input from other council members if they'd like to. anything. Yeah, please, Council Member. Thank you. |
| 03:01:00.44 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right. |
| 03:01:00.93 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 03:01:00.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:01:01.30 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 03:01:01.37 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So mayor I was thinking maybe it would be helpful if we both gave the other two council members just a brief update on where things stand with the housing element advisory committee because there's a lot of detailed work going on right now and I know that certain, you know, property owners and residents who have their properties listed on the site's inventory are also starting to get interested in the process. So I'll just start and then maybe you can add on anything that I forget. I did just want to that generally there's a community survey that has gone out asking people about possible sites in our housing for our 700,000 homes. plus sites. So I think if all of us and people we know can encourage members of the community to participate in that survey, I don't remember when it closes. But I think that's helpful. Secondly, the committee members were given a very long list of potential for very low and low income in one category and moderate income units in another category. We broke down the So each consultant evaluated each potential site for whether it was vacant, whether it was used, how it was used. So for example, existing single family residence, existing business with 14% vacancy. and we were asked to And then the consultant recommended Many of those sites as potential housing sites with a yes recommendation and at this point these are preliminary sites that are going into the environmental review process. Um. but they included a number of very prominent city owned sites, private residential, commercial sites, commercial, used commercial sites, occupied commercial sites. So, We broke into subgroups and each group is going through those or I think already has and has evaluated those for constraints suitability to continue to stay on our list. So it's been a lot of work. I think the committee is really diving into it and doing a great job. So I wanna thank them. But I also think there has been some incidental concern, you know, by individual property owners that what does it mean that my house is on the list and it says eight units. next to it. and sort of how does that affect me? Or my favorite restaurant site is on the list. or my park. is on the list with 24 units. And what does that mean? So I think we're having that discussion at the HIAC meetings, but I think these issues will start to bubble up and Anyway, just wanted to kind of check in that that's where we are, Mayor. I don't know if you've got. I think there's more to add. But I do think we should keep the rest of the council until we're able to have a group meeting. kind of apprised of how this is shaping up. |
| 03:04:21.91 | Mayor Kelman | Yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for the prompt and for that excellent summary. I'll just add, if those of you who don't know, we need to plan for 724 new homes in the next eight years. our regional housing needs assessment or our RENA numbers. IS ACTUALLY AN EIGHT HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN PERCENT INCREASE. from the last time we looked at this, the 2014, 2022 arena, which was 79 units. So then from 720 from 79 to 724. And then I often get questions about affordable housing. Some folks have sort of equated that with homelessness that is not. The case, the 2023 RENA is broken down my income group. It's very low of which we have to do 200 units, low income, which is 115 units, moderate income, which is 114 units and above moderate, which is 295 units. And also just share with everybody, the city maintains a website with information about the process and public meetings of the housing element advisory committee, otherwise known as the HEAC. Our next meeting is actually next Monday, the 28th. There's also a survey on that website. I can't recall if that survey is still open, but there was a survey regarding this process. So I thank you for that prompt. And I think that's pretty good update on where we, |
| 03:05:41.02 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 03:05:41.24 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:05:42.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, and then I did post to the agenda summary of the feedback meeting and a very interesting presentation on Safeway on Bridgeway Safety. thinking about my grocery list and safety between, um, on Bridgeway between, um, Napa and, uh, Johnson Street and, um, Definitely an interesting conversation. Thank you. |
| 03:06:03.96 | Mayor Kelman | Yeah, thank you. Any other comments from council members? If not, we'll open up the public comments. Okay, Serge, I see one hand raised. |
| 03:06:15.42 | Serge Avila | Yes, Madam Mayor, we do have one speaker and that's Norton and. |
| 03:06:21.62 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, and again, this is just on council member committee reports is the topic. So if you would like to comment on anything we just discussed for council member committee reports, now is the time. |
| 03:06:22.03 | Serge Avila | Bye. |
| 03:06:35.72 | Serge Avila | I think you're being unmuted. |
| 03:06:37.69 | Jordan Nice | I sorry, I actually wanted to talk about public comment. Um, so I guess. Can I still go right now? |
| 03:06:46.45 | Mayor Kelman | I'm so sorry, we passed that item. So I apologize, we're on now item six, that was item five. |
| 03:06:57.74 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:06:57.92 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Sorry, Jordan. Thank you. Okay, anybody else search? |
| 03:07:04.98 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, I see no other hands raised. |
| 03:07:07.71 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you. Okay, we'll move on item seven, city manager reports, city council appointments and other council business we're going to reopen public comment again this is just as to item seven which is the city manager report or city council appointments. There are no appointments tonight. So if you. Want to chime in on? The city manager report now would be the time. Thank you. |
| 03:07:32.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sorry, Mayor, isn't this also the time for people to count to comment on boards, commissions and future agenda items all at once? Yes, it sure is. And I don't know if Ms. Nines has her item might be towards a future agenda item, but that might give her a chance to express what she wanted to express. |
| 03:07:52.97 | Mayor Kelman | Very well. Jordan, if you would like to turn your video back on, we'll take your public comment on this. |
| 03:08:05.86 | Jordan Nice | My public comment was actually on something else. the smoking free policies that the other that Kanye's and Marin have. |
| 03:08:17.49 | Mayor Kelman | Why don't we accommodate that under item seven? You have three minutes. We'd love to hear from you. |
| 03:08:23.19 | Jordan Nice | Okay. So I was going to introduce myself. My name is Jordan Nice. I'm a senior at Tamizcal High School. and I'm here today to discuss the impact of secondhand smoke in multinease outing multi-unit housing residences, For the past semester, I've been an intern for the tobacco program in Marin. as a member of the youth advisory council and I'm just going to start off some facts about secondhand smoke. So secondhand smoke is smoke or vapor from burning, heating, or aerosolized nicotine products such as cigarettes, vapes, cigars, or pipes. that have been exhaled or breathed out by the person smoking Um, Third hand smoke is the chemical residue left behind by nicotine smoke or vapor. For example, if you move into an apartment that has had a previous smoker, the walls, windows, and carpet can have chemical residue left over. Uh-huh. Both secondhand and thirdhand smoke or vapor can have an impact on your health. And in particular, secondhand spout can travel from other units in common areas, their doorways, windows, ventilation systems, and cracks between units, such as cracks in the floorboards, This poses a threat to adults and children living in the multi-unit housing And the CDC actually reports that about 33 4,000 people each year die in the United States from diseases caused by a second-hand smoke, like heart disease and lung cancer. And those, actually the people who smoke or vape are at a higher risk of acquiring COVID-19, and secondhand smoke exposure can be a risk factor for acquiring COVID-19. |
| 03:09:54.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:09:54.17 | Jordan Nice | So over the past few weeks, I've been calling the different apartment complexes in Sausalito just to get a sense. of, the numbers of buildings in Sausalito that are smoke-free. And actually I've found that most of them are already smoke-free. And the policy that I'm advocating for would help eliminate the ability non-smoking businesses to change become smoking And as you may know, 11 of the 12 communities in Marin County have 100% smoke-free policies in all multi-unit housing. um, Um, but Sausalito is the last jurisdiction in Marin to still allow smoking in a percentage of their multi-unit housing complexes And I ask that you please review the smoking policies in Sausalito and think about implementing a 100% smoke-free multi-use housing policy that the other cities in Marin have. |
| 03:10:46.82 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you for staying on in this late hour. Appreciate the comments. Okay. |
| 03:10:54.90 | Serge Avila | Madam Mayor, I see no other hands raised for this item. |
| 03:11:00.33 | Mayor Kelman | Great, thank you so much, Serge. Okay, then we'll go to item 7B, city manager information for council. |
| 03:11:05.73 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, members of the city council, members of the public, I'll be brief. There are two items I wanna cover, one personnel one that Heidi Scobo will cover with respect to happening in Sausalito. First, I'd like to say that on March 9th, the recently hired community development director submitted his resignation committing, creating a the big vacancy in that department, which is really critical, as was noted earlier with all the things going on related to our housing element and permitting and planning and applications and things of that nature. So to fill this critical position for the last week, we've been looking at different possibilities I settled on. an interim opportunity for LEAF, which is a planning building and community development, full service firm out of Pleasanton. to provide interim services. The person that we are going to bring in over to help us in the short term is currently the planning and building director in Larkesburg and will be available to us on April 4th. to also shore up that department, Heidi Scobo who has been the city clerk |
| 03:12:11.70 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:12:12.02 | Chris Zapata | and assistant to the city manager and our IT person is going over to the planning department on a full-time basis so that, you know, the things that are happening there can continue to be moved forward until we figure out the longer-term solution. So, unfortunate, but we'll get past it. We'll do the work. |
| 03:12:12.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:12:29.84 | Chris Zapata | The team that's there has been highly motivated to keep moving forward. So I thank them very much. for their work and I also thank Debra much more her help in identifying different opportunities that we could look at to fill this position. on an interim basis. Not good, but we'll move on. So I'd like to ask Heidi to speak to the Golden Shovel Challenge briefly so that the community has a sense of what that is and what's going on. Heidi, are you still here? |
| 03:13:02.05 | Heidi Scoble | I am and thank you city manager Zapata for the introduction and good evening Mayor Kelman and Council members. For the past 33 years the National Association for Industrial and Office Parks known as NAIOP And their San Francisco Bay Area chapter sponsors what is known as a real estate challenge project known as the golden shovel. The NAIOP is a commercial real estate development association and the purpose of this event is to give graduate students hands on experience in real estate development. |
| 03:13:33.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:13:33.91 | Heidi Scoble | So the golden shovel is the Bay Area chapter version of the big game, whereby five graduate students from Cal and Stanford are charged with devising and successfully pitching a solution to a complex real world real estate problem. Starting on February 18th, the two teams have been given the challenge of focusing on the City Hall site as a primary site in considerations regarding the police and fire stations as secondary sites. Essentially, we're identifying two publicly owned parcels that create an anchor or bookmarking the Caledonia Street area. This challenge will consider all aspects of real estate development projects, including market trends, demands, design, land use entitlements and financing. The challenge will conclude on April 28th with the teams presenting their projects to the association. So before I conclude my presentation, it's really important to recognize and to give a special thank you to Carlito Burke who is the city's local sponsor to help fund this challenge. It's also important to note that Carlito is a former Golden Shovel alum and winner when he represented the University of Washington up in the Washington region. So with that, I'm available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Heidi. It's really exciting. |
| 03:14:56.50 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 03:14:56.57 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 03:14:56.97 | Mayor Kelman | really, really talented teams. I'm blown away by the resumes. Any questions? All right. |
| 03:15:03.47 | Councilmember Sobieski | Thank you. I'll just say I actually attended half of one of the presentations when I, over at City Hall, it truly was really impressive. We should hire them all for this. |
| 03:15:12.41 | Vice Mayor Blasding | or That's a good idea. |
| 03:15:14.03 | Mayor Kelman | THE FAMILY IS THE FAMILY |
| 03:15:14.27 | Vice Mayor Blasding | Thank you. Go Bears. That's all I have to say. |
| 03:15:17.91 | Mayor Kelman | I represented Stanford. I got it. I got you. Thank you. |
| 03:15:21.64 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:15:21.79 | Mayor Kelman | of the |
| 03:15:21.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Yeah, my only question, I just was, you know, we've got a lot of real estate challenges in Sausalito. How did this one rise to the top. I mean, I think, you know, our fire station, especially, and police station are the subject of a lot of controversy. $16 million of public funding. So I know some folks have asked you know, it doesn't really seem like that's a current real estate development potential, but um |
| 03:15:51.80 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah, I can't speak to this. I'll hand this back over to our city manager. That's okay. |
| 03:15:57.79 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, let me respond to that. So when this was brought to the city by Carlito, and put us in touch with the main person with the challenge. The conversation was around a longer-term partnership where we could look at Sausalito because they were very interested in getting into Marin County. And so to kind of create the scenario where there was some low-hanging fruit, we suggested to them that We look at the Caledonia corridor because that is in fact where the city was the actual property owner. And so to not alarm people that might say, why are these students looking at my property? and We thought that we owned the property, so let's look at these and maybe there's some opportunity there. And you know, thank you Councilmember Cleveland-Nulls for pointing out all the history behind all the investments the city has made and some of the concerns of the community about actually doing something in these areas. So the students are well aware of all that. They've been given that information. The second other sites that were looked at were Bridgeway. as a potential property that you know could be looked at in terms of what's the you know um dream for bridgeway and then ultimately we could look at um at the marineship and and that was the conversation that was had with uh the sponsor uh with uh the uh liaison from the program and myself and felt that that was probably the first step to take and down the road if you want to look at bridgeware you want to look at and we're in ship that could be on the table. if the challenge comes back. |
| 03:17:30.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:30.38 | Mayor Kelman | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:17:31.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:31.43 | Mayor Kelman | I hope it comes back. Great, thank you. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Heidi. Great update. Really appreciate it. THANK YOU. Okay. Anything else? on the city manager report? |
| 03:17:46.78 | Chris Zapata | Mayor. |
| 03:17:47.95 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you. We'll move over to item 7C. I know that we unfortunately have to accept a Parks and Recreation Commission resignation. City Manager, do you want to give a staff report on that or would you like to signal our action here? |
| 03:18:04.11 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, no, I just thank Ruthie for her service. We know that we have vacancies and I think there's some advertisements and currents right now that speak to trying to fill those vacancies. you know the parks and recreation commission is really important they've really uh you know been doing some serious agenda lifts this last couple of months and so they need to be up at full strength and you know again thanking her for her service and then someone on board for that commission is important |
| 03:18:32.99 | Mayor Kelman | Right, yeah. |
| 03:18:34.67 | Councilmember Sobieski | Mr. Mayor, did you see Vicki Nichols' hand is up? I don't know if you took public comment on that. Oh, we have. |
| 03:18:40.24 | Mayor Kelman | Well, we have closed public comment for item seven. Okay, apologies. |
| 03:18:43.72 | Mary Wagner | I'm sorry. |
| 03:18:45.53 | Mayor Kelman | My apologies, Vicki, thank you. I'm going to turn to Councillor of Cleveland also. |
| 03:18:50.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:18:51.91 | Mayor Kelman | Thank you. |
| 03:18:51.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm happy to make a motion to accept the resignation and thank the Rec Park Commissioner, but I also just wanted to make sure that everyone saw the correspondence from the pedestrian bike advisory committee. It really has been just an extraordinarily long time since we have had community interviews. And I know we were supposed to have them this weekend, um, They were barely able to have a forum yesterday. I think they're pretty frustrated. They've had a number of people, one in particular, who's been very interested for about six months. and joining the committee. And You know, just throwing out there, we used to do very short interviews before city council meetings. They went really quickly. They were easy. We filled the slots quickly. um, I'd be... perfectly happy to go back to more of a rolling or quarterly or I just feel like the annually puts people in a kind of a hard, hard position. But anyway, just wanted to make sure everyone saw that correspondence and kind of this is both a commission and future agenda item. comment and with that I'd make a motion on the rec park uh, commissioner resignation. Thank you. |
| 03:20:12.09 | Mayor Kelman | SECOND. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Sergei, will you please call the roll? |
| 03:20:15.92 | Serge Avila | Councilmember Sobieski. Yes. Councilmember Lula-Knoll. |
| 03:20:20.06 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 03:20:21.34 | Serge Avila | Vice Mayor Blavsky. |
| 03:20:23.10 | Mayor Kelman | Yes. |
| 03:20:24.16 | Serge Avila | Mayor Kilman. |
| 03:20:25.16 | Mayor Kelman | Yes, motion passes 4-0. Thank you again, Ruthie, for your service and volunteerism. And we will roll right into 70 future agenda items. And I'll just respond to Councilman Cleveland-Knowles to say that the next agenda setting the vice mayor and I will work on scheduling some time before the April Saturday to do some interviews, especially for PBAC given the correspondence. So thank you for that. Other future agenda items? Yes, Kelsey Barber-Sovski. |
| 03:20:54.59 | Councilmember Sobieski | Well, we saw a letter from Clint Wilder asking Where's the ban on leaf blowers that we talked about last time. I didn't see it on the future agenda items for the next three meetings. given that I think there's a draft. but, already exists. At least that's good. our colleague Jill Hoffman mentioned that she wrote one two or three years ago. uh, I was hoping that could be brought forward. It seemed like we had consensus on it and it could be dispatched quickly. |
| 03:21:28.34 | Mayor Kelman | Yep. Add it to the list for sure. Bye, Vice Mayor. |
| 03:21:33.38 | Vice Mayor Blasding | I've given our budget challenge and needing a better understanding of funds I would really like to hear about the sewer consolidation and where we stand with the sewer consolidation plan whether or not that's moving forward and I'd also like to hear from our sewer consultant about the sewer fund specifically and how the ins and outs of it how much money it brings in with regards to the consolidation and in general. |
| 03:21:55.12 | Unknown | GREAT IDEA. |
| 03:21:56.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:21:56.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:56.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. I would just like to thank the public speaker who spoke tonight about smoke-free multi-unit apartment buildings. And if we really are the last jurisdiction in Marin to ban smoking in multi-unit buildings, then there's an easy draft available. I would be in favor of the legislative committee moving that forward. you know if other council members have any interest feel like. It's time to make that move. I'll defer to the legislative committee about whether they want to agenda. |
| 03:22:37.90 | Mayor Kelman | Okay, thank you. Thank you for bringing that back up. Okay, anything else for future agenda items? All right, we'll then move on to item 70, which is other reports of significance. I don't have any. Does anybody else? |
| 03:22:53.60 | Vice Mayor Blasding | I want to thank the Sausalito Women's Club for their creative ideas for the Bank of America lease in their jinx performance. Unfortunately, we've already heard about the Bank of America lease, but it was nice to be included in their performance and to know that they're paying attention to what we're doing at City Council. |
| 03:23:11.81 | Mayor Kelman | Yes, thank you for that. I did see some photos of that. a fun event. Okay, if nothing else on that topic, We are, our next item is to adjourn, but I do just wanna take a moment and we've been asked to, and it's my pleasure to adjourn in honor of Flora Rogers. So Flora Rogers, also known as Flora Majorie, was born in Italy in 1931 during the Great Depression. She traveled with her mother by boat across the Atlantic and then across the US by train in 1932 to join her father in Sausalito. They moved into 519 Spring Street in 1932. In 1952, Flora moved from 519 to 526 Spring Street when she married Ed Rogers. In 1967, Flora moved from 526 Spring to 112 Pearl Street, the home that Ed built for her. She lived all but the first months of her life within a one block areas that is defined by the neighborhood that her family, the Majora's and the Rogers created. Flora was the last of her generation and the matriarch of the spring neighborhood. They I was told that she was loved dearly and I have heard many wonderful stories and she has missed more than she could ever have imagined. So if anybody's interested in seeing what 1932 Sausalito looked like, I was sent some photos and I'm happy to share those with council. So in honor of Flora Majora Rogers, we adjourn. Thank you everybody. Good night. Thank you. |
| 03:24:39.02 | Unknown | Right. you |
| 03:24:45.05 | Unknown | you |
Ray Withey — Neutral: Urged swift action on the budget, stating every week of delay burns $40,000 in reserves, and emphasized the need for difficult decisions to address the budget situation. ▶ 📄