| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:03.14 | Walfred Solorzano | Good afternoon, Madam Mayor and council members. We do have Karen and Jay? in the room, let me co-host them. So they're able to mute and unmute themselves. Just a moment, please. |
| 00:00:22.85 | Jake Byers | I'm actually all good. I can unmute. |
| 00:00:25.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Great, thank you, Mayor. Your turn. |
| 00:00:31.43 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, great. This is an open session, so good. want to explain how this is being streamed and such. |
| 00:00:40.99 | Walfred Solorzano | Sure. Good afternoon, Mayor Kelman and council members. This meeting has been held pursuant to government code section 54953E. And in light of the declared state of emergency, the regular meeting of the City Council for April 12, 2022 will be conducted telephonically through Zoom and broadcast live on the city's website and cable TV channel 27. |
| 00:01:06.05 | Mayor Kellman | Great, thank you. So we're gonna get started today with interviews for sustainability commission and pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee, otherwise known as PBAC. So I wanna welcome William, I believe Jake Byers, you go by Jake and Karen Wiener, do I have that correct? Okay, well, welcome. Oh, you're on mute, Karen. |
| 00:01:27.56 | Karin Wiener | Sorry. I pronounce my name Karin, but I take Karen very happily. Thank you. |
| 00:01:32.98 | Mayor Kellman | Karin it is, no problem. Thank you for that correction. I appreciate that. Well, thank you also both of you for volunteering to at least be interviewed and join our public service here in town. So I think what we're going to do is just the three of us tonight, myself, Council Member Sobieski and the Vice Mayor. What we'd love to have you do is each of you, for three minutes, sorry to put you on the spot, but we'd like to know a little bit about you, why you decided to volunteer for something in Sausalito and why specifically this committee. And so if the city clerk will get the timer ready, We'll each have three minutes and then we'll leave a little bit of around for a Q&A. And then as you know, we'll be voting later or making the appointments later during the meeting. So right now, this is just the interview period. So let me just see, do my fellow council members have any comments or suggestions on that? procedure. IT'S GREAT. Okay, great. Well then, Colonel, why don't we start with you? |
| 00:02:29.97 | Karin Wiener | I'm not going to talk about it. Thank you so much and thank you for the opportunity. I, my family has lived in Sausalito since 1945 up here on San Carlos Avenue. I'm inside our... very old barn, which I think is 100 years old, up here on the hill as well, shooting a video for my bike shop. Um, So I, uh, grew up on these streets. I grew up walking on these streets and not actually riding on them very much because we live on the hill and it was way too steep to ride up the hill usually. So I didn't do too much of that, but I moved back during the pandemic with my young daughter and husband and now live in my family's house and I really wanted to be directly involved in the community since I live here and saw the email about this committee and had heard some of the good work that they've been doing over the last years. And so, became interested in joining. I... I grew up on the stairs down to the ferry. this town and I use the streets as a bicyclist pedestrian and driver every day. So I'd be I don't even know if I have a full one and a half or three minutes of things to say, but, um, And I don't really want to waste your time. But, you know, I would really love to be a part of helping to make Sausalito a better and better place to live. And for the people who come visit us, who are an important part of our town, even though they're a transient part of our town. And I mean, it's just, it's such an interesting thoroughfare between San Francisco and THE WHOLE the North. And so I, the more I think about it, the more interested I am in the issues that, are fundamental to our geography. So. Thank you. |
| 00:04:51.14 | Mayor Kellman | yeah no need the spoiler alert we have two openings we have two people applying so we just want to get to know a little bit about you um you know i want to you know give it away uh so let me pause you there uh uh search please pause the um |
| 00:04:51.63 | Karin Wiener | Yeah. |
| 00:04:57.81 | Karin Wiener | about you. |
| 00:05:06.09 | Mayor Kellman | The clock great let's hand it over to Jake and then we'll just see if the. The council members have questions. |
| 00:05:11.95 | Jake Byers | Oh yeah, thank you all. And I probably don't have three minutes of talking points either, but I'll I'll try my best. I do go by Jake, I apologize, first name's William, but, um, I live here with my family. I have two kids. We live on Pine Street, so we're right on Bonita and Pine. and I work in tech. And I spend a lot of time both on my bike and in the car and crossing Caledonia, crossing Bridgeway. My primary mode of transportation is is an e-bike. And I do bike recreationally, but I do bike to go to the grocery store and uh, I spend because we spend a lot of time on the surface streets here in this this old town neighborhood we see cars get frustrated and we see bikes get frustrated and kind of intimately aware of I'm not sure. kind of the dynamics at play here. And I think there's certainly areas that we can improve, like we're never gonna get rid of all the cars and we're never gonna get rid of the bikes. And I think there's opportunities for us to coexist a little bit better and ideally safer, right? You know, I think there's, a wide range of demographics from children to Um, to elder folks who want to feel like they can cross streets safely and we've seen a lot of confusion and near misses at intersections that we'd, we'd love to, um, approve on and yeah that's that's about it you know we're here we own a house and |
| 00:06:45.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:06:48.56 | Jake Byers | Um, probably going to make Sausalito home for for a very long time, if not forever. and we're involved you know, in the schools and a lot of clubs. and definitely have a vested interest in not just making this better for our family, but for everyone who lives here. |
| 00:07:08.67 | Mayor Kellman | Thanks Jake. I just want to say for both of you, thank you again. And also it's great to see young families moving to town and, of those young families wanting to get engaged. So we're really honored to have you really, really grateful. And also thank you both for sort of pointing both to bicycle and pedestrian, hence the name. So that's a really meaningful. I don't actually have any questions, but let me see if the vice mayor, the council member does. Thank you. |
| 00:07:34.27 | Ian Blaustein | I'll ask a question just because we have the time and I'm excited to get to know both of you. I'm really happy that you have applied to volunteer for this really important committee. I would love to know since you're both clearly bike enthusiasts, which thoroughfare or road you would most like to see improve for the experience of a bicyclist. |
| 00:07:59.37 | Jake Byers | Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at the you know, hopefully there's some data out there. I know there's a couple, at least a business, perhaps that rents bikes that I know counts the number of bikes that come over the bridge so maybe there's some things we can tap into to identify where we should start THE FEDERAL. But certainly as you come down from the bridge and into Sausalito to the ferry and then bridgeway and beyond, It's great that we have dedicated bike lanes. But I think reinforcement, I'm a biker myself, so, you know, but great to have reinforcement for bikes to stay in the bike lanes when they're there, both for the biker safety and for the cars that are passing in traffic. But yeah, I think focus on the areas with the most traffic and start from there, but Bridgeway, coming down from Golden Gate Bridge is probably a likely candidate. Thank you. |
| 00:09:01.06 | Karin Wiener | Karin, what do you think? So... Alexander, even though most of it falls outside of our jurisdiction, is the biggest problem, I think, for a bicyclist. I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE I'm not sure, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot. If you walk up on the Hill, actually, there's a lot of just, um, there's no pedestrian, infrastructure on most of these streets. And a lot of the streets are now being used by walkers more than ever. And that's a huge, huge change just after the, or since the pandemic started. So the question is a really important one, and I'm not sure it's very easily answered. Obviously, the highest level of traffic is just down on Bridgeway and all the way through town. And I think that the PBAC is already pretty focused on that. My question is, what are we not seeing, right? Like what are the, Like it. the road, the the route off to Marin City and the way that that connects Sausalito to the headlands. And there are a lot of little details that I think we're just not looking at yet. I don't know, there's bottomless projects. Pretty much. |
| 00:10:26.20 | Council Member Sobieski | Karen, I had a question for you. Since you're on top of the hill and you have a bike behind you, an e-bike, Uh, you have expertise that they answer the question I've wondered about. Do you think that it's plausible. ever to imagine bike transportation up and down. in Sausalito? Or is it simply too steep, even though with electric bikes you might be able to go up The down is just too windy and too steep and too full of cars. is, What do you think? |
| 00:10:55.20 | Karin Wiener | Yeah. Thanks for the question. I, so I didn't really expand on this in my intro, but I own an electric bike store called the new wheel. And so I own, it's a store in San Francisco and Larkspur landing and Oakland. And honestly, the, motivating factor for me to become involved in this 11 years ago was a ride up San Carlos Avenue. It's a it's completely it will change our town. Electric bikes will completely change our town because people who live in Sausalito are not going to, more and more people will not have kind of a singular choice for how to get to Caledonia or how to get to Molly stones or how to get to the post office. It's always been either you drive or it takes you 15 or 25 minutes, or it's not possible to walk on an e-bike. You can easily run errands. You can easily ride up and down the Hills. It totally changes the geography of our town. So it's trans, it's potentially transformative, but we're not thinking about it as transformative for our local populace yet. But I think more and more like Jake mentioned, he's an e-biker. My mom is 78. She rides downtown almost every day. And that literally never would have been possible. She's not in shape. She's not a person who would ever do that otherwise. So it's really the technology will change our town, undoubtedly. |
| 00:12:38.02 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you very much. |
| 00:12:39.17 | Mayor Kellman | THANK YOU. Well, you know what, now that we've started this, I have so many questions, but unfortunately we only have 15 minutes left and we have a whole other committee to interview for before our closed session at 5.30. So I'll just offer this to you. I think as we move forward with our boards and commissions, we're looking for more, I think, focus around things you guys want to work on and a desire to execute on projects that we can have milestones and outcomes that are measurable. So it's exciting to hear some of these initial ideas. Thank you guys. Thank you both. Thank you very much. |
| 00:13:11.33 | Robbie Owlson | Thank you. Cheers. |
| 00:13:12.95 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Have a good night. Serge, we're gonna move over to sustainability now. |
| 00:13:18.32 | Walfred Solorzano | And Madam Mayor, it looks like we do have, our applicants, if you could please start your cameras and your microphones. |
| 00:13:29.05 | Ian Blaustein | Did we clear with Mary whether or not we need to? Yes, I did. Okay, great, fantastic. |
| 00:13:35.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 00:13:36.04 | Mayor Kellman | I'm sorry. Thank you. |
| 00:13:36.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:13:37.07 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:13:37.09 | Mayor Kellman | Yes, go ahead, you search. |
| 00:13:38.52 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, and I do have two resedulalis, and my apologies for renaming up front. Do I have, you guys have the ability to rename yourself. So if you need to do that, please do so. And Madam Mayor, we do have Kimmery Wiltshire, which is calling in from a telephone. |
| 00:13:58.31 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, great. So I see we're supposed to have on our schedule Kimmery Riza. Kimberly. and Nicholas and you told me Meg is no longer on the list, right? Meg is on the way. |
| 00:14:12.03 | Ian Blaustein | I HAD THOUGHT. And Lauren was no, someone else was no longer on the list. |
| 00:14:17.10 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:14:17.13 | Ian Blaustein | was that |
| 00:14:17.57 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. That is correct, Madam Mayor. Allison Lee and Meg Haywood, we drew their applications. |
| 00:14:25.82 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:14:25.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:14:25.87 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. So vice versa, that leaves us with Kimmeri, Reza, Kimberly, and Nicholas. Just four. Okay, well, let's give everybody two minutes. I'm only, okay, so the second RZA, Let's assume you're not. RZA! And I don't see, Also Nicholas, I don't say Kimberly or Nicholas is I guess what I'm trying to get at. |
| 00:14:49.66 | Walfred Solorzano | If Kimberly McClure or Nicholas are in the room, can you guys please raise your hands or let us know? |
| 00:14:59.96 | Mayor Kellman | Kimmery Wiltshire is in the room. Thank you, Kim Marie. We see you. but we're missing two people. |
| 00:15:08.65 | Kimmery Wiltshire | Ah. I don't think you |
| 00:15:09.97 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:15:10.32 | Kimmery Wiltshire | You can see me, you can hear me. |
| 00:15:11.37 | Mayor Kellman | Well, no, but I'm aware I see that you're your icon and the name associated with it. Okay. |
| 00:15:12.09 | Kimmery Wiltshire | But I... |
| 00:15:16.97 | Kimmery Wiltshire | There we go. |
| 00:15:18.82 | Mayor Kellman | Searchers the unknown. |
| 00:15:21.56 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:15:21.58 | Mayor Kellman | I'm sorry. |
| 00:15:21.64 | Walfred Solorzano | It's a very good question. |
| 00:15:26.81 | Walfred Solorzano | I just renamed someone with unknown name. Can you let us know who you are? If you can start your mic and camera. |
| 00:15:35.02 | Reza Jalali | Yeah. I don't know if that could have been me because I saw two of myself on the screen for some reason. That's Reza, by the way. I don't know if you renamed me. |
| 00:15:47.04 | Nick Stevenson | I don't know. |
| 00:15:50.97 | Reza Jalali | to unknown. Thank you. |
| 00:15:53.01 | Walfred Solorzano | But potentially I did. Did you try to log in through two separate devices or? No. |
| 00:16:00.98 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, let's do this search. It looks like that other individual just logged off a comeback. Let's get started with Reza and Kimmery. And what we'll do is we'll set the timer for two minutes. You don't have to take the whole time, but we'd love the opportunity if you would just introduce yourself a little bit about your background, your interest in sustainability committee. And then if there's also something specific that you are wanting to work on, I'd be interested to hear that as well. So why don't we start with Reza? |
| 00:16:33.61 | Reza Jalali | Yes, I'm Reza Jalali. I have been living in San Salido for the past four years. I come from the finance background. I spent 15 years in corporate finance in the United States. commercial banking as well as investment banking as well as asset management. Um, I am a risk manager by training. and a problem solver by traits. interest about the sustainability committee. You know, frankly, I've been in Sausalito for the past four years, and I can say with confidence that this is like the best place I've lived in, you know, in comparison with what I have. where I have lived in the past. In general, the quality of life, like access to national resources, good weather, and the ability to maintain, to be able to maintain a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. And I do want this to maintain, I do want this to sustain. you know, like, the sustainability, the definition that meeting our needs without like compromising future generations ability to be able to meet their needs. I do want this to happen. Recently, I was looking at a global survey looking at people's interest in changing their life habits to be more sustainable. A few numbers caught my mind. my eyes and one of them was that like 75% of people actually believe climate change and they do, they are willing to make changes in their quality of life and their life habits. But only 31% of them have actually made effort to do so. And I do want that number to be 100, 100 for Sausalito. And the fact that they don't do it is because they believe or they perceive those as difficult. So implementing simple solutions, to combat climate change. |
| 00:18:41.02 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. And let me ask you this because you're time right now, but I'm interested. Is there something specific that the sustainability community is currently working on that you are very interested in, or maybe something new that you would want to pursue? |
| 00:18:56.11 | Reza Jalali | I do like the idea of like analyzing the impact of, for example, climate change. Let the sea level rise, for example, on our you know, lifestyle and, you know, property values and economy in general. And I think that's something that we can do that we can, um, And then also like some simple solutions I've been looking at, you know, there are like a lot of resources within commission website that are there, but, you know, being, living in Salazarido, I wasn't aware of them. So I think like we could do a better job in marketing some of the efforts that have, we have been doing within this commission. And I think that's another area that we could, I would like to help with. |
| 00:19:25.16 | Karin Wiener | Thank you. |
| 00:19:46.53 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you very, very much. I'm sure the vice mayor will have questions for you. but continuing indulging me. Let's turn over to Kimmery. for your brief intro and then we'll have a little Q&A and then we'll go into our closed session. Kim Marie, it's all yours. Thank you. |
| 00:20:02.39 | Kimmery Wiltshire | Thank you. |
| 00:20:02.61 | Kimmery Wiltshire | Now. |
| 00:20:02.90 | Mayor Kellman | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:20:02.96 | Kimmery Wiltshire | Mayor. So I did a resident. of Sausalito since 1988. for a good number of those years I've been getting on planes as the head of a nonprofit organization. working on Western Water and Climate Change. So I've been getting on airplanes and I've been going to all kinds of other places. working on these issues. water supply. sea level rise, source water protection, And you know, when I heard about this opening on the State Ability Commission, you know, I thought, time to bring it home. time to I spend some time and attention in my own backyard I love so much. There's a couple of things that I'd like to do on the sustainability commission. Thank you. The first, of course, is the sea level rise. And what does that mean for sustainable Sausalito? The second is Can we become more efficient or, excuse me, more, um, Can we do a better job with water supply? Is there some way? that we could look at having our own water supply, not only in times of emergency, but for maybe more long-term. We've got this. sewage treatment plant down the street and there's Lots of purple pipes can come out of that. And then the third thing, and I'm sure this is not a new idea, For emergencies, we have a big earthquake. So what do we do for water? The water pipes have been knocked out. We have Will. And we have streams that need to be daylighted in Sausalito. I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE Obviously that would require some treatment. but I think that that's also something to look into. So these three things, uh, time to work in my backyard. |
| 00:22:03.37 | Mayor Kellman | Wonderful, thank you Kimmery. And thank you both really for taking the time tonight and for wanting to serve. Let's turn it over to our sustainability committee, former committee member, currently council liaison, current vice mayor. I'm sure we'll have lots of questions. |
| 00:22:17.21 | Ian Blaustein | Great, and I'm so thrilled to see such a big applicant pool, and it's nice to see two people with different backgrounds And I think you could both bring a lot to the commission. Lately, we've been working on, you may have heard if you're following our city council meetings, a gas leaf blower ordinance, getting EV chargers into our community. The mayor is the chair of a really impressive sea level rise task force that we have a liaison for. What is an issue area that you would like to see the Sustainability Commission take action on? Or what is one idea or topic you would like to pursue should you be appointed? |
| 00:22:55.04 | Mayor Kellman | Do you want to go, Reza? |
| 00:23:02.30 | Reza Jalali | Yeah, sorry. The EV charging stations, that's something that I would definitely like to see, especially in Sausalito. And we have a lot of places that we could potentially like Thank you. have those stations. as well as like there are areas, I think in South Slido, I don't know if you have ever thought about like, um, um, you know, entertaining the idea of wind energy solutions, but that's something that I know here we get a lot of wind, but I don't know if that's something like, I don't have the background, but that's something that we could |
| 00:23:36.16 | Unknown | I know here we get a lot of |
| 00:23:42.66 | Reza Jalali | potentially look into it. |
| 00:23:47.15 | Mayor Kellman | Kimmery, I know you gave us some ideas, but what would be out of the gate? |
| 00:23:50.64 | Kimmery Wiltshire | Yeah. Out of the gate. So Madam Vice Chair, and I think I'm addressing Madam Vice Chair. What I was saying earlier, my expertise is in water. I'd like to see more So yes, there's great work on sea level rides going on in Sausalito. How do we start incorporating that into... the other, the sustainability commission and the other commissions, their work. I'm not sure. The second, as I was saying, is water supply and more of the guaranteed water supply. I'm not sure. and that gets back to those purple pipes coming out of the sewage treatment plant. And then the third is, What do we do in emergency? How do we sustain ourselves in the time of a Horrible earthquake or horrible wildfire. Where did we get our water from? |
| 00:24:44.20 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah, all really, really important issues. Yeah, Rev, I'm really, or Raza, I'm really excited and interested in your background of risk management because climate risk and disaster risk is becoming increasingly relevant, both for capital markets and insurance companies and for communities. Did you encounter any of that work when you were at BlackRock or some of your other past life work, |
| 00:25:09.03 | Reza Jalali | I have, I have a background in, Yeah. quantifying the impact of climate change, and specifically . temperature. and global warming on property values. being commercial real estate as well as residential. Thank you. And what is the impact on different scenarios and different Um, |
| 00:25:39.25 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah, that's amazing. You know, once again, I'm blown away by the talent we have living in Sausalito, that our own group of experts. I am cognizant of the time. So let me just see if the, Vice Mayor has any other questions? I don't, |
| 00:25:55.03 | Ian Blaustein | So I see that one of our other applicants joined. Ah. |
| 00:25:58.39 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:25:58.69 | Ian Blaustein | Nick, welcome. |
| 00:25:59.55 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:26:00.98 | Unknown | Um, Thank you. |
| 00:26:01.85 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah, happy to have you here. Great. Well, let's do this. Well, we went around the other applicants and gave everybody two minutes, which we're going to give to you, to tell us a little bit about your background, why you're interested in applying for this committee, and then if there's a specific program or policy associated with this committee that you are most passionate about, or even something new that you would want to spearhead, we'd love to hear it. |
| 00:26:25.86 | Nick Stevenson | Great. Hey, everyone. I'm Nick Stevenson. I've been living in Sausalito now for about two years. I guess I'll just start like in my early 20s, I was working for Keurig, the coffee company, which is a major manufacturer. I started doing finance for them. actually pivoted into doing compliance, environmental compliance and environmental sustainability programs for their manufacturing plants across the US. So setting things like greenhouse gas reduction targets, solid waste diversion programs, energy reduction programs, and actually doing the boots on the ground, moving compost, moving burlap bags, reselling, finding places to send all those resources, but also writing the sustainability report for the company for the operational aspects of it. So I love that world. and but I had this lifelong dream when I was in my 20s to actually going on a sailing trip. So when I was 27, I actually quit that job, even though it was like a dream job. It was like, I loved it. We had some like really huge impact with the company and I took off from Berkeley in a 36 foot sailboat. end up sailing all the way to Indonesia. So a lot of interesting things along the way. A lot of actually like what you can notice in the ocean when you're traveling around and it's amazing how much waste that you see as you're going around. And it's like this been this passion project. of mine. But I met my wife along the way. We moved to Sausalito. We've had a daughter. Um, my The reason why I really wanted to apply is like one, this is where I'm extremely passionate about. I don't know if that was a timer. and My grandfather, who's my hero, he was civically minded. And I think like for me to take on this type of activity. It's like where I could take my skill set and my passion and for like the city that I adore and apply it in real life and I love that the committee is focused on kind of real world applications of sustainability for the town and making it like a better place to live. Thank you. |
| 00:28:34.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:28:35.05 | Nick Stevenson | THAT'S WHY I DECIDED TO I THINK I'M GOING TO BE ABLE TO IN A RECENT I'm a qualified industrial stormwater practitioner, so Another thing I love to focus on is. How do we keep stuff out of the bay and stormwater practices? super passionate about that as well. which is, actually just regular compliance more so than sustainability but you can't have sustainability without compliance in line so. |
| 00:29:05.18 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you, thank you, Nick. Let me turn over to the vice mayor who is the liaison to the committee. Any questions for Nick? |
| 00:29:11.22 | Ian Blaustein | I would just probably ask you the same question that I asked the two other applicants. So as to be fair, we were just, I was discussing some of the initiatives that the sustainability commission has taken on in the past 12 months. One is around, an ordinance that would eliminate gas powered leaf blowers and others around EV charging. We also had a focus on sea level rise with the mayor leading the task force on sea level rise in Sausalito. Are any of those particularly interesting to you or is there another topic? Sounds like you have a lot of experience in compliance that you might want to take up should you be appointed to the commission. |
| 00:29:41.04 | Nick Stevenson | I do have a couple of thoughts around like stormwater prevention and like I've seen some instances of like trash flowing down. And, you know, it's like that's some easy stuff that could be fixed. But maybe that would be a longer term thing. I typically like to think about projects where people that we have influence over have direct control over. And that's why I think the leaf floor program is so cool because it's constituents of the town. They have direct control of the technology that they use and it has real world benefit both on like the sustainability stuff like greenhouse gases and what the emissions are, but also the environmental compliance part of like, you know? air quality and those types of things that that impact people in the area so I think that's such a cool example of an initiative that I'm passionate about because we're kind of empowering the community to do things that they have direct control over. |
| 00:30:35.98 | Mayor Kellman | Great answer. Thank you, Nick. I'm sorry. |
| 00:30:38.11 | Vicki Nichols | BABY. |
| 00:30:39.36 | Mayor Kellman | And you know, I'm kind of in a time and unfortunately we have a long closed session here. So I'm gonna pause this here, thank our three applicants. Again, we're just so fortunate to have such talent in Sausalito. I hope you all stay involved in some way or the other, but we do have multiple openings, so I'm sure we will see you all again. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Kimmery. Thank you very much, Raza. Thank you, Nick. Rizzo. Okay, so we are now going to, oh, we have council members to ask you back. we now do have to move into closed session so if you just give me a moment the following items we'll be discussing closed session items d1 through d3 d1 conference with labor negotiators d2 conference with legal counsel on real proper negotiations pursuant to california government code section 54956.8 Property concerns the Bank of America building at 750 Bridgeway. And then item D3, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation pursuant to California government code section 54956.9 D1, Sausalito-Yot Harbor versus city of Sausalito. So we're gonna open it up for public comment on the closed session items. And I'll ask the city clerk, if anybody's here for public comment. |
| 00:32:05.57 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, I do see a few members of the public. Would you like me to read how to provide public comment? |
| 00:32:10.62 | Mayor Kellman | Yes, that would be great. Thank you. |
| 00:32:12.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Great. Video or audio public comments participation is limited to three minutes per speaker. If you would like to make a comment, please raise your hand in the Zoom application. and you will be called upon when it's your time to speak. to raise your hand from a phone, press start nine, and each speaker will be notified when the time has elapsed. Madam Mayor, I see no hands raised at the moment. |
| 00:32:36.42 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, thanks very much, Serge. We will close public comment and we will adjourn to closed session. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. |
| 00:32:43.52 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. you |
| 00:32:43.71 | Mayor Kellman | you |
| 00:32:43.98 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:32:44.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, so we'll initiate our audio sequence. audio sequence is up. And I will be at meeting everyone in the room. |
| 00:33:03.82 | Mayor Kellman | Let me know when to get started. |
| 00:33:06.47 | Walfred Solorzano | Meta mayor, all participants are in the room now. |
| 00:33:10.57 | Mayor Kellman | Great. |
| 00:33:11.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Well, thank you. you |
| 00:33:11.72 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Great, thank you everybody. Welcome to the city council meeting for city of Sausalito. It is April 12th. I'm gonna ask the clerk to please call the roll. |
| 00:33:23.75 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Sylvia Eske. |
| 00:33:25.13 | Mayor Kellman | Sure. |
| 00:33:27.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Council Member, Vice Mayor Blaustein. |
| 00:33:32.34 | Ian Blaustein | here. |
| 00:33:32.75 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:33:33.54 | Walfred Solorzano | And Mayor Hoffman. Mayor Kilman. |
| 00:33:37.22 | Mayor Kellman | Also here, I will note that council member Huffman and council member Cleveland Mills are not able to join us tonight. We are returning from a closed session. We have already asked for comments on closed session and we have nothing to report. So I'm gonna go ahead and request a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Thank you. |
| 00:34:00.81 | Kevin McGowan | Don't move. |
| 00:34:00.84 | Mayor Kellman | So much. |
| 00:34:01.77 | Kevin McGowan | in the second picture. |
| 00:34:02.87 | Mayor Kellman | Please call the roll, sir. |
| 00:34:10.70 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Sobieski? VICE MAYOR BLOBSTEIN. |
| 00:34:14.66 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. |
| 00:34:15.78 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor Kelman. |
| 00:34:16.79 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. Passes three zero. Thank you. Item one, special presentations, mayor's announcements. I will only have one announcement, which is that the city council will be sponsoring a Cinco de Mayo lunch for our city hall staff, in fact our entire city staff on Cinco de Mayo. So we are pleased to do that. And we just wanna express appreciation for our hardworking employees and bring everybody together. So thank you to my fellow council members for joining me in that. Okay, item number two, the action minutes of the previous meeting. Any changes or? comments on that? ON THE MINUTES. |
| 00:34:59.08 | Ian Blaustein | Motion to approve the minutes from |
| 00:35:00.97 | Mayor Kellman | meeting. |
| 00:35:01.53 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. Second. |
| 00:35:03.06 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, we do need to open for public comments. So let me just ask the city clerk, do we have any public comment on that? |
| 00:35:09.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, would you like me to read how to provide public comment? Yes, please. Video or audio public comment participation is limited to three minutes per speaker. If you would like to make a comment, please raise your hand in the Zoom application. and you will be called upon when it's your time to speak. To raise your hand from a phone, press start 9, and each speaker will be notified when the time has elapsed. Madam Mayor, it looks like we do have a hand raised. That's for Robbie Owlson. Robbie, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:35:42.24 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, and I'll just remind Mr. Powelson, this is a public comment on the meeting minutes only. So if you have a comment on the meeting minutes, now would be your time. |
| 00:35:51.86 | Robbie Owlson | I'm meeting me. I just wanted to make a record. In terms of the meeting minutes, I just wanted to make a record about. the current status of Thank you. things at Marineship Park. Was there anything on these minutes about Marineship Park? |
| 00:36:11.95 | Mayor Kellman | So you'd have to read them and conclude for yourself. I don't want to characterize. |
| 00:36:15.88 | Robbie Owlson | Okay, okay, well, I just want to say, because I've been hearing about how the city's claiming that somehow the encampment is causing this undue financial hardship on the city. And I just would make a record that It's not that people. you know, trying to survive. has created undue hardship on the city. The vast amount of expenses has been basically the incredible legal costs um, And, terroristic policies against those people. against all of us. And there's no reason why the city is waging this war of attrition. you know there's been what I think there's been five new lawsuits just in the last month because The city's trying to destroy the encampment without actually providing people with housing. It's not professional. It's not called for. These are your constituencies. There's due process to law, there's equal protection under the law. There's no reason why this should be happening. |
| 00:37:19.36 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 00:37:20.86 | Robbie Owlson | Thank you. |
| 00:37:20.90 | Mayor Kellman | No, sir. |
| 00:37:20.93 | Robbie Owlson | I'm just making that record. |
| 00:37:22.63 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you, sir. Thank you. |
| 00:37:22.95 | Robbie Owlson | Thank you, sir. blaming us for this war of attrition that doesn't need to happen. |
| 00:37:29.92 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you, sir. We very much appreciate that. Just try to keep the, the meeting was so people who are attending to be able to comment on the particular items i appreciate your comments um right now though we are only taking comments on the meeting minutes so if you do have a comment on the meeting specifically we we welcome your comment if not we will ask you to return to another time when your comment is on the agenda |
| 00:37:54.71 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, it looks like we do have another hand raised and that's for Jacob. |
| 00:37:59.02 | Mayor Kellman | GREAT, THANK YOU SO MUCH. |
| 00:38:02.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Jacob, you're being unmuted and has to share your video. |
| 00:38:13.39 | Jacob | Ahoy! Can you hear me? |
| 00:38:15.61 | Mayor Kellman | We can insert again, these are only comments on the meeting minutes, so please. |
| 00:38:20.03 | Jacob | Thank you. |
| 00:38:20.04 | Mayor Kellman | All right. |
| 00:38:20.82 | Jacob | Is this a consent calendar? No, sir, it is not. This is the beauty minutes from the last meeting. Yes, it is. Okay, well, I'm going to comment on those. I do. This is on the meeting minutes specifically. not having a public meeting once again. that are now full crowds. for the San Francisco Giants. The mask mandate has ended the idea that courts and political meetings are still closed and only available on Zoom, and that the public comments have been pushed back until 9 p.m. is absolutely undemocratic and tyrannical. So I would suggest highly that you open up your chambers to full participation. for participation in the election, for participation in the meetings. But right now you do not have it, and there is no reason not to have it. Thank you. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. |
| 00:39:22.68 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Okay, any other comments on the meeting minutes themselves? I don't see any other hands. Take a pause. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Can you please call the roll search? |
| 00:39:37.84 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Sobieski? Vice Mayor Blaustein. |
| 00:39:43.36 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. |
| 00:39:44.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:39:46.41 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. THANK YOU, EVERYBODY. We're gonna move on to the consent calendar. So matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and uncontroversial. require no discussion or expected to have unanimous council support it may be enacted by the council in one motion there'll be no separate discussion of consent calendar items however before this council votes on a motion to adopt the consent calendar items council members city staff or members of the public may request that the specific items be removed from the consent calendar for separate action items removed from the consent calendar will be discussed later on the agenda and public comment will be heard on any item that was removed from consent We have seven items on consent. Item 3A, authorize the city manager to execute an agreement for real estate management services with Michael Wagner, not to exceed $43,000. Item 3B, receive and file the staff report regarding electrical vehicle charging stations at city municipal lot two. Item 3C, adopt a resolution of the city council, proving and authorizing city manager to execute a professional services agreement with Parisi Transportation Consulting for the bridgeway safety study between Napa and Johnson in amount not to exceed $84,880. and 3D adopt a resolution of the city council of the city of Sausalito approving and authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with Parisi. Um, Consulting for the development of plans, specifications, and estimates for the Bridgeway signal improvements at Easterby, Spring, and Marinship in an amount not to exceed $94,189. I am 3E. Adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Sausalito, authorizing the City Manager to execute a professional services agreement with BKF engineers for preparation of plans, specifications, and estimates for the Coloma Street Safe Pathways to School Project in an amount not to exceed $120,766. Item 3F, adopt a resolution to continue to conduct the city's council on all of the city board commission and committee meetings remotely due to health and safety concerns for the public. Item 3G, renewal of emergency declaration. We'll open this to public comment on the consent items. We're going to have, yeah. And two minutes for consent items today and for the remaining public comment, please. Thank you. |
| 00:41:49.39 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:41:49.43 | Walfred Solorzano | We're going to have to |
| 00:41:57.07 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, it looks like we do have three henchries Speaker, it's civil. Sybil, you've been unmuted. Share your video. |
| 00:42:11.38 | Unknown | I'm not. All right. So... Thank you, sir. Thank you, council members, mayor, comment. I just wanted to speak for a moment about the Coloma Street project. The Safe Streets to School, Safe Pathways to School project. We have met with, um, Mr. McGowan, about the Excuse me. Public Works Director McHallin. about the Coloma Street corridor. In addition to it being a very, very active route to school, route to the park, it is also the route to the senior housing at the end of Coloma street. That's that block that is going to be redesigned Um, ends with it right at the senior housing at OLEMA. Um, This has been a issue. The safety issue on that street has been a big concern. regarding the seniors. living here at Rotary Village. THE CASE. A lot of the seniors are on walkers. and they go to the grocery store. And we're so grateful and happy that a sidewalk is going to be built there, that a crossing walk is going to be built from the, parking up from the park to the to tamale street for the kids to be crossing but we also have to look at the crossing from from Olima Street uh, into Coloma street. Um, that intersection there has been quite dangerous with cars swooping around from Lincoln, even though there's a stop sign. the accelerate ratio on that corner. We've discussed that at great length. with Mr. McGowan and also we got |
| 00:44:23.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you, your three minutes have a lap. |
| 00:44:25.03 | Unknown | I want to. Okay, and we're going to do a placemaking. |
| 00:44:28.44 | Walfred Solorzano | THEIR OWNERS. |
| 00:44:31.78 | Unknown | you |
| 00:44:31.83 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you, Ms. Wong. |
| 00:44:32.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:44:33.00 | Mayor Kellman | I think we heard you mention discussing this with Director McGowan, and we will follow up. And I do see another hand up that I think is going to comment on some of those same items. So thank you for that comment. Well taken. |
| 00:44:47.63 | Walfred Solorzano | And Madam Mayor, our next speaker, it's Jacob. Jacob, you're being unmuted and asked to share your video. for two minutes. |
| 00:44:57.21 | Jacob | I'm sorry. Hello, Madam Mayor. Hello, City Council. Hello, citizens. of Sausalito and those interested in what this town is doing and not doing. I will be talking about item 3A, $33,000. Item 3C, $84,000, $880. Item 3D, $94,189. Item 3E, $128,766. None of these items are for doing any work. They are for planning. It says... In Article 11, Section 11 of the California Constitution is this. The legislature, and that includes you, may not delegate to a private person or body power or body the power to make, control, appropriate, supervise or interfere with county or municipal corporate improvements, money or property. Costa Mesa in 2012 We'll see that. for using corporations instead of using their people. for things that the city could easily do. That includes $600,000. for a law firm that has now lost three hearings in a row. The record is two and five. We are charging $600,000. What you have on your list today in the consent calendar is over $350,000 for planning. Urban Alchemy is another $500,000. None of these, according to Article 11, Section 11, and the Costa Mesa... decision ratifies this even though the california league of cities said they did not want this this decision to be published You cannot. |
| 00:47:01.23 | Walfred Solorzano | Jacob, your three minutes have a laugh. Thank you. |
| 00:47:03.54 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you very much. |
| 00:47:04.52 | Walfred Solorzano | So. |
| 00:47:04.79 | Mayor Kellman | Amen. Mr. Jigal. |
| 00:47:09.50 | Walfred Solorzano | And our next speaker, it's Liz. Liz, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 00:47:18.00 | Lisa Chilino | Hello, thank you, Mayor Kelman and council members. My name is Lisa Chilino, and I'm on the board of Sausalito Beautiful. And I wanted to positively comment on item 3E, the Oklahoma Street Safe Routes to School project. We are very happy to see that the BKF contract includes a request to explore adding 8 to 12 street trees on the north side of Coloma, edging MLK Park. So it's later beautiful. the Whiskey Springs community and surrounding neighbors really hoping that BKF finds a way to include these trees I don't think I need to remind you of all the health, environmental, aesthetic, and even economic benefits of trees. There are some challenges in the area. there's utilities, but I'm confident that the smart BKF engineers can find a workaround. And this might involve losing a few parking spaces, but we think it's a very reasonable price to pay. You may not know that the north side of Columbus Street historically has been lined with trees, photographs from 2004. show that there are nine healthy trees inside the park in that area, although spacing suggests that there's room for 12. Over the years, a few have died and they weren't replaced. And when the MLK park was renovated, The rest of the trees lining Coloma were taken out. to make room for the walking path. So currently between the large evergreen stand at the entrance to the park and the new trees that were planted with the help of the city manager and several city council members in February there's a stretch of over 300 feet of the street that is devoid of trees. THE FAMILY IS GOING TO BE There are many longtime neighbors in the area who fondly remember the pleasant, tree-lined, shady street that used to be. I'm not sure. And Salisbury-Dibutiful has been working very successfully with the Department of Public on this stretch of Coloma. We really hope trees can be part of the project. And if so, the city can expect the full support of Sausalito Beautiful in making it a reality. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Thank you, Lisa. |
| 00:49:17.44 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:49:17.63 | Lisa Chilino | Much appreciated. |
| 00:49:18.34 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 00:49:20.34 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, and- |
| 00:49:20.39 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, Alison. |
| 00:49:22.94 | Walfred Solorzano | There are no other after race. |
| 00:49:23.25 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah, go ahead. Okay, we'll bring it back up to the council. Ask my fellow council members, any comments or further direction on consent or do we have a motion? Thank you. |
| 00:49:34.60 | Ian Blaustein | make a motion to approve the consent calendar. |
| 00:49:37.30 | Walfred Solorzano | I can do that. |
| 00:49:38.60 | Mayor Kellman | Great, thank you. Could you please call the roll? |
| 00:49:41.56 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Sobieski? Vice Mayor Blaustein. |
| 00:49:46.52 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. |
| 00:49:47.83 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor Kellman. |
| 00:49:48.83 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. Okay, well, thank you very much. Now we put three business items tonight. The first item item 4A is an update from our portfolio manager, Mike Wagner. So I will hand it over to Mike for presentation. |
| 00:50:08.02 | Mike Wagner | Give me one moment, please. Hello, everyone. Amen. I'm in a little trouble here. One second. |
| 00:50:18.34 | Mayor Kellman | And Mike, as you, I know we've introduced you before when we welcomed you to town, but will you just give a couple remarks, just your background and your expertise to frame this? Thank you. |
| 00:50:29.68 | Mike Wagner | Yes, thank you Mayor Kellman. My name is Mike Wagner. I am the principal consultant of MKW Real Estate Advisors. I've been in the commercial and governmental... real estate business for almost 40 years now. Uh, Past projects include working for a real estate syndicator. I worked for the county of Sonoma as its real estate director for 25 years. I've worked for local developers and many different types of clients. Although my favorite type of work is government work. And I still have enjoyed getting to know this council, the city staff, members of the community. And I think we have a lot of opportunity in Saucyote. With that, I'll go ahead and share my screen and start my presentation. |
| 00:51:19.43 | Mayor Kellman | THANK YOU. |
| 00:51:20.80 | Mike Wagner | Thank you, where are my notes? Sorry. I'm going to have you some difficulty here. One second. with me, please. |
| 00:51:30.62 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:51:30.84 | Mike Wagner | I have a mind. |
| 00:51:31.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:51:34.28 | Mike Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:51:34.30 | Unknown | Press... I don't know why it's not. |
| 00:51:39.97 | Mike Wagner | Yes. There it goes. Okay. Can you see my screen? |
| 00:51:45.25 | Mayor Kellman | Not yet, Mike. Okay, give me one second. |
| 00:51:48.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:51:51.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:51:56.14 | Mike Wagner | There we go. Forgive me for that. Uh... Good evening, I'm here tonight to present part one of the comprehensive real estate report requested by the city In this report, I will present highlights of my progress in my role with the city today. details regarding city owned and city laced real estate. certain observations and some basic analytics about our portfolio. A number of recommendations based on my work so far. My next step is to continue this work in order to reach specific recommendations with respect to underutilized properties. And I will present these at a later date through part two of this report. I'd also ask for any specific feedback and direction the council may have so I can better realize the city's goals. When I was first engaged in December of 2021, I was handed a list of assessor parcel numbers and some basic polygon type maps of city owned property. This information basically told me what the city owns, but it did not correlate any specific information such as what kind of real estate it is, what it can be used for, how big it is, what zoning applies, or other important information needed to identify opportunities. information did not allow for any kind of analytics from which to draw any kind of conclusions or observations of the approximately 117 city owned properties based on this list, there was no way of knowing which properties to look at first. Since that time, I put together a database of city-owned property. where this kind of information is correlated with the parcel numbers. I continued to add data to the list as I learned more about our portfolio. And based on my work to date, I will present some basic information about the state of the city's real estate portfolio. Similarly, I was also handed a list of all the rents billable in the city. This information told me what the finance department was billing but it did not correlate any specific information such as lease expiration dates, option deadlines, CPI increases, other lease terms or even property addresses for that matter. it quickly became clear to me that the rents billable list was also out of date. And by that, I mean the rents had not been checked against the lease terms to see if any escalation should be built. Moreover, the city's paper lease files while there, were missing amendments. They contained a lot of unsigned amendments. And it was pretty unclear what the terms of our leases really were. Since that time, however, I put together a database called the rent role in the industry. of city leases where all the key lease terms are included The rents have been audited and the rent adjustments are now in process of being built. I continue to add data to this list as I learn more about our leases. This rent rule can be used by anybody in my rule going forward and it's a dynamic document which requires monthly review. Based on the work that I've done to date in this area, I will also present some basic information about the state of city's leases as well. First, I'd like to go over quickly some accomplishments I've made. I've been working on a number of other property management leasing projects. The new village school preschool edition lease amendment was finalized and it is now nearing permit issuance. and the preschool will hopefully be open by the end, by the beginning of this fall. I've been working with I've listed a number of city vacancies on LoopNet. This is the online marketplace for commercial real estate. And I've received a number of inquiries and conducted a number of tours. I've also negotiated two non-binding letters of intent for the former Bank of America building, which we discussed earlier. And working with tenants regarding past due rentals, has resulted in at least one account brought fully current. This was a cabinet maker who owned owed over $6,000. And I'm actively working on the other past due rental accounts. |
| 00:56:13.97 | Mike Wagner | Overall, the city owns approximately 5.8 million square feet of real estate. or approximately 134 acres. contained in approximately 115 parcels of land. This slide shows how this real estate breaks down by general category. Civic and public use properties include things like city hall, fire and police, parks, corporation yards and the like. Note about 20 of the 31 parcels in this category are dedicated to parks purposes. Improved properties include parking lots, the Spinnaker, the Dorothy Gibson House, some roadways and similar uses. MLK of course is a single parcel approved for the former school leased by about 20 tenants, including two private schools, and a number of artists, makers and similar tenants. Tidelands properties include the 50 or so water parcels located in the bay. And approximately 10 tenants rent this type of property And finally, there are approximately 18 unimproved parcels that I've been able to find. which I'm in the process of researching for potential new uses. These properties contain some road right of way remainders and some small obvi-shaped parcels, which may or may not be marketable, but I think I can find one or two that we may be able to find a higher and better use for. And I will discuss my recommendations regarding this in a later slide. Now for some basic analytics based on the number of properties in each category. Tidelands represents the greatest number of city properties at 44%. civic and public use properties including parks come in second at about 27 percent The number of unimproved parcels is significant comprising 16% of city parcels, and improved properties like parking lots fall at 13%. Finally MLK being a single parcel represents just 1% of the number of city parcels of property. It is interesting to note that over 70% of the city's property on a square foot basis is in a flood zone. This information is important to know because it helps determine which unimproved properties are potentially available for higher better uses. You'll recall this type of data is now correlated with the personal information in our database. Making the next step, identifying properties for higher and better uses faster and easier to accomplish. For example, it doesn't make a lot of sense to research a given parcel for housing, commercial improvement, et cetera. if it's in a wave of VE type flood zone. Comparing unimproved city parcels by their size in terms of whether or not they are improved and whether or not they are water parcels One can see that the city has a large number large vacant unimproved water parcels, 27 of them in fact. Whether these vacant water parcels can be leased or not will be part of the highest and best use analysis to be performed and presented in part two of this report. It is also interesting to note that the city has eight non-water, that is land parcels, over 10,000 square feet in size. Thank you. which may be available for higher and better uses assuming it on the flood zone. Or if they are, they could be constructed to mitigate flood and sea level rise risk. My part two research will focus on narrowing down the short list of parcels for in-depth research towards realizing towards utilizing, excuse me, city real estate and in a More revenue creating way. And I will discuss this process later. I thought it would be interesting to see how the city's property breaks down by zone. I did not find any parcels that were specifically zoned for residential uses, although many zones do permit limited residential use. By far the open area zone is prevalent at 58%. Public institutional zoning affects about 20% of our city meal estate. The five to third are public parks and open space, and the remaining property is on commercial waterfront and waterfront. Remember these are city owned properties, not privately held properties. THE CHARGE. does not represent zoning all across property in Sausalito. This is just city. Based on my work so far, and considering that I now have a general sense of what real estate in Sausalito looks like, They're my recommendations to move this project forward. Number one, using the city-owned property database, create a subset of parcels for highest and best use analysis. the goal of identifying specific properties that may be candidates for new uses generating potential new revenues. We can call this the low-hanging fruit if you like. Number two, highest and best use. uh, means just by definition. The use of a property that is legal physically possible, supported by necessary accessing utilities, and it makes economic sense in the market and generates the most revenue. So this will be the type of analysis I will do on these properties. Research involved would include finding out all the information I can about the properties, reviewing the zoning code, visiting and walking the sites, locating nearby utilities, and taking into account existing surrounding uses to ensure compatibility. The outcome would be a short list of properties with recommendations regarding potential new uses and economic analysis of those uses. Once this shortlist is reviewed and considered by this council, the city could do any number of things to realize higher and better uses, including auctioning surplus properties, if they're determined to be surplus by the council, The city could sell small parcels to adjacent property owners as permitted by law. Uh, Properties of a certain size do not need to be RFP'd or auctioned. issuing RFPs for leases of property including duties to construct improvements they're on, In addition, And the former public fishing pier is a great example we could include public benefit use requirements in some of these leases. In this case, the former peer could be reconstructed to include multiple uses. public fishing pier. is during this public benefit. food service, maybe a water taxi or charter service. sports fishing or kayak rental. and business. and any other possible other uses to be determined. Now regarding the city's portfolio of leases, here are some metrics. There are 13 general and telecom leases. generating $73,000 per year in rent revenue 10 Tidelands leases, which generate about $66,000 per year. And the majority of city visas being 20 at MLK generate approximately $118,000 per year. Based on my work with the city leases today, here are some findings and recommendations. I am already working with finance to bill. approximately $40,000. and underbilled rent. We are going to send out letters to the affected tenants, including our calculations. and allow them an opportunity to understand the increases. the new rents will go into effect after 30 days. I continue to work on finding all the amendments and other documents that are in fact our leases, especially where file copies are unsigned or missing. I also recommend that we proceed with an audit of percentage rents. These are payable by many Tidelands tenants. Not all tenants are properly reporting their gross sales based on my initial review It may also be advisable to have an independent audit obtained for some of the Thailand's tenants. The rents these tenants pay are based on self-reported gross sales. And based on my review of the files, it does not look like this has ever been audited. although our leases do permit such odds. There's a cost to do this. So it's advisable to do not more than one per year. And with a different tenant each year. such audits help insure all growth sales are being reported. and does that. maximum rents being paid. Given the size and complexity of Sausalito Real Estate, I recommend we continue to fund the real estate manager role whether it's with my firm or another, I also recommend that we continue to market our vacant space and I think that's a great question. Again, the former public peer is a significant revenue opportunity. That's how I recommend we form a team to develop objectives for a lease of this vacant property. And this recommendation also extends to the old firehouse, an underutilized asset for whatever use the council deems appropriate. With that all said, I would like to personally thank this council for its trust in me. and my company. I enjoy working with this council and the city staff. I find my work here challenging and rewarding. and I hope to continue on my role and help the city not only get his portfolio and property management systems organized, but also realize new opportunities to leverage and leverage as real estate portfolio. Thank you. And this concludes my presentation. |
| 01:05:46.69 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you so much, Mike, really phenomenal job. We're so pleased to have you and consistently really helpful and thorough work product. Very, very much appreciated. Let me see if the vice mayor has any questions for you. Thank you. |
| 01:06:03.83 | Ian Blaustein | I have a couple of questions. Also, Mike, thank you so much. It's really exciting to have you on board and also a little bit astonishing to consider that we didn't have a rent roll. And I'm really thrilled to see that we have that put together and we have a lot of opportunities for revenue streams. I'm glad to see that you're making a $40,000 adjustment to our rents at MLK, but based on your assessment of our overall property portfolio, do you think there are other places where we're operating at below market value where we should be making changes? |
| 01:06:08.34 | Karin Wiener | you |
| 01:06:08.37 | Mayor Kellman | on. |
| 01:06:08.64 | Karin Wiener | Thank you. |
| 01:06:32.59 | Mike Wagner | Um, You know, there may be a few leases at MLK where were enough below market, it might be worth taking another look at. You know, the schools, for example, they, they pay a pretty decent rent as compared to market. Part of my next steps are going to be for each lease in each space to develop a market rental and to come up with what's called a gross potential rent for all of our properties. I'm not sure. you know, if a tenant is, is on a month-to-month lease, for example, and they've been paying as agreed, and they're within 15% of market. A lot of times it's advisable to do nothing there. But if it's much more than that, I think it might be worth taking a look at. Yes. |
| 01:07:23.86 | Ian Blaustein | And then another question is, it's really interesting to see, look at and consider higher and better uses of all of our properties. In your opinion, would that require rezoning of those properties or would you be looking for highest and best use in the existing zoning that they have now? |
| 01:07:36.88 | Mike Wagner | Well, I think first I'd look at the existing zoning. And if it looked like we, with the change in zoning, that was appropriate, you know, I think it'd be worthwhile looking at that as well. You know, again, taking into account the surrounding uses and zoning, getting some help from CDD in that department, certainly. |
| 01:07:57.77 | Ian Blaustein | And then my last question is in your work, you mentioned you were the head of real estate portfolio at Sonoma County for almost 20 years. So we're very lucky to have you with us in South Lido. I was wondering if you had recommendations for the Tidelands real estate, since it is essentially in flooded area and you made the point about much of our portfolio being within the flood line area. Do you have recommendations for what might be done to |
| 01:08:15.58 | Mayor Kellman | MAKING A LITTLE BIT. |
| 01:08:15.97 | Karin Wiener | Thank you. |
| 01:08:19.07 | Ian Blaustein | with those properties? Is there no opportunity for them? I know I'm assuming you have encountered this since Noma as well. |
| 01:08:26.11 | Mike Wagner | Yeah, we did. We had some of those. Not quite like Sausalito, but I think there's some research involved in figuring out some of these vacant parcels are out, you know, out in the bay and they don't necessarily have land access. You know, I think maybe with some, if we put our creative thingy hats on we we might be able to come up with some uses that could work i mean we could always put it out in RFP and see what comes in. We don't necessarily have to have the idea. |
| 01:08:56.89 | Ian Blaustein | Great. Thanks again, Mike. |
| 01:08:57.97 | Mayor Kellman | I really appreciate it. Great presentation. |
| 01:09:00.08 | Mike Wagner | THANK YOU. |
| 01:09:00.70 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:09:01.22 | Mayor Kellman | Great questions Vice Mayor, thank you. Let's see, Council Member Sobieski, one of our OMIT team members, |
| 01:09:06.12 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you, Mayor. And thanks again, Mike. That was a great summary of the work you've been doing. And I know it's a journey and you're really only just beginning it, but kudos and glad to have you. I know your work as the vice mayor said, it's amazing it wasn't being done before. And I know everyone, council members here, talked about this when we ran for office more than a year ago. you're being here and the work you're doing is a real sign of doing things differently. And it's great to have you. One of those differences is that financially, and we're going to hear a lot about finance later in today's meeting, The city has a good grip on its cash flow and has a good grip on its income statement. It has a cash flow statement and an income statement. but our balance sheet actually is really effective It could be profoundly effective. by real estate holdings that are currently not reflected on the city's balance sheet. |
| 01:10:02.33 | Unknown | Hmm? |
| 01:10:02.83 | Council Member Sobieski | So that could be I can't overstate how dramatic it could potentially be, or not. We just don't know. And that's what you really allow us to unlock. So I was intrigued. by the mention that the vice mayor picked up on about understanding the value of city owned property with current zoning and with change zoning. And I'm just wondering whether you have the resources you need to, in a timely fashion, help us come up with at least a first order approximation of the genuine balance sheet of the city. that's reflected by the value of its real estate goals. |
| 01:10:42.90 | Mike Wagner | I think... with It depends on how accurate you want to be. But if we want to assign market values to all of our real estate parcels for the purposes of coming up with a valuation for the balance sheet, I can come up with a couple of questions you know, my own opinions of value, bearing in mind I'm not an appraiser, I'm not sure. if we want a real accurate value for any given property, that takes more time. And it may require an outside opinion from someone like a real estate appraiser. I think we could select which properties you know, would have the greatest impact on the balance sheet and maybe target a few of those for an independent analysis. and maybe the rest, you know, we could do in-house. |
| 01:11:40.34 | Council Member Sobieski | if you think you and your firm within the scope of your experience could at least take a first swag that's reasonably accurate. Yeah, absolutely. And would you be able to do that with various zoning classification changes as well as the vice mayor asked? |
| 01:11:52.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:11:52.77 | Mike Wagner | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:11:53.64 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:11:53.67 | Mike Wagner | Yeah, to an extent. Yeah, absolutely. So, |
| 01:11:57.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:11:57.87 | Mike Wagner | Sure. It's just that's just a matter of looking at what the allowed uses are and coming up with values for those types of pieces, you know, those types of properties. thing. |
| 01:12:10.04 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:12:10.10 | Mike Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:12:10.16 | Council Member Sobieski | And then in your report, you talked intriguingly about the fact that some mechanisms in our leases that allow us to audit tenants. for the revenue split that they owe the city. |
| 01:12:21.11 | Karin Wiener | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:12:24.23 | Council Member Sobieski | have actually never been done. It seemed like. And I want to know whether you need city council approval to authorize such an audit, or if you feel like you have the authority on your own to or with through the city manager of course to do what you proposed which is to do a spot check audit on a rotating basis of various of these leases Thank you. |
| 01:12:48.19 | Mike Wagner | I think to have a proper audit done you know, we need, we need someone who, who has that skill. you know, like a CPA. Uh-huh. who's familiar with doing tenant audits. And like I said, I don't think we need to use them all. sometimes just doing one puts the writing on the wall know, we, we want to make sure we're being accurately reported to because. you know, Once in a while, it's good to check. Right. Do I have the authority? I think to the extent we have to contract with someone, you know, I would defer to the city manager on what we would actually need to do on that. |
| 01:13:32.49 | Council Member Sobieski | or maybe that's my question for Mary or for Chris, just for later when we talk about action items, Is that any kind of authorization to empower Mike to do what he proposed on the audit? |
| 01:13:53.52 | Mayor Kellman | Mayor, you wanna tackle that or Ms. Levin? |
| 01:13:57.09 | Chris Zapata | I can take a stab at that. I don't mind doing that. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Sobieski for that question. Yeah, I think it's a good business practice for us to obviously look at who's paying, what the rates are, and you know, that's this whole scenario that's been set up and restarted again. In the past, the city has had... property management in house added contracted And when I got here, I wanted to make sure that it was something that we started to walk before we run and setting up the database and figuring out where things are, doing actual audits, just finding out if in fact, people or his contracts are expiring They're paying what they need to pay. Now that's just an ongoing task that I don't believe we need council authority to do. We just need to do it. |
| 01:14:43.23 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. taking your city managers upon us. No more questions, Mayor. Thank you. |
| 01:14:49.74 | Mayor Kellman | Great, really excellent questions. Let me follow up here quick. Mike, but just some. So in your experience, in other communities, what are some average lease year terms that cities normally engage in? And are we commensurate with, those lease terms that you would expect to see from a municipality. |
| 01:15:14.62 | Mike Wagner | Mm-hmm. on Well, I think where someone's taking, like, let's talk about office or maker space like MLK for example right now. So if someone's just leasing a space Uh, and the city's not spending any money on improvements, right? Those are typically short-term leases, like maybe year to year. or one year and then month to month thereafter. For leases where the tenant makes an investment to get in there, like an office lease or something like that, those are typically three or five years. If someone's making a significant tenant improvement to the premises, As you can see up to seven to 10 years. And, you know, things like Tidelands leases, where someone is spending a great deal of money to set up a business. Those are typically 30 years or more. |
| 01:16:06.83 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, that's helpful. is part of your analysis. So we talked about the rent roll and the analysis of a market rate. Are you able to also look at I guess missed opportunities or additional opportunities if you will. So, you know, we have very little water access. And we have, you know, Cass Gidley has a lease. You know, it's a community voting center, which is wonderful, but maybe there's some additional opportunities for the city to participate from a revenue perspective. Are you able to include that in your analysis or have you, is that a, secondary level. |
| 01:16:47.60 | Mike Wagner | It wasn't included in the initial analysis, but I think what I'm hearing is you know, can we, can we look for new access points? Can we, work with tenants to try to generate more revenues. And did I hear you correctly, Mayor? |
| 01:17:02.89 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah, right. So both of those things, right? Because I'll share this later under announcements, but I've been looking at the old fishing pier And could we reinvent that as you know, I've talked about this with you as a municipal, it's also a municipal peer. And what would that mean? And so if that's an opportunity, |
| 01:17:18.09 | Karin Wiener | All right. |
| 01:17:18.11 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:17:18.14 | Karin Wiener | Thank you. |
| 01:17:21.06 | Mayor Kellman | Is that included in your analysis, these new opportunities as well as looking at existing? |
| 01:17:27.90 | Mike Wagner | Definitely, it just happens that public fishing, former public fishing career, it seems to me like a no brainer to move forward on establishing some objectives. and getting an RFP out or maybe having it be mixed use like public benefit and some private use as well to generate revenue. You know, that Absolutely. |
| 01:17:50.71 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. And then just one more question. In your analysis and your sort of your new record keeping bookkeeping, there are some leases for which we don't have accurate meets and bounds. Maybe the property description is not included in the lease or is somewhat uncertain How are you going about remedying that? |
| 01:18:11.84 | Mike Wagner | So we've engaged BKF engineers to take the meets and bounds descriptions we do have for things like Thailand's leases. and plot them accurately on an aerial photo This is going to be super helpful to know exactly where the boundaries are and maybe identify some. places where we can get public access that we're not aware of right now. There are a couple leases where they're either missing or they were intentionally not included. And the missing ones we can keep trying to track down. The ones where it's just a verbal description, it's a little more difficult, I'm hoping some opportunities will pop out of that work. to map the leasehold boundaries. |
| 01:19:00.29 | Vicki Nichols | Yeah. |
| 01:19:00.99 | Mike Wagner | Yeah, for sure. We should have that met very shortly. |
| 01:19:01.05 | Vicki Nichols | PERFECT. |
| 01:19:04.93 | Mike Wagner | you |
| 01:19:05.10 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. |
| 01:19:05.11 | Mike Wagner | Okay. |
| 01:19:06.24 | Mayor Kellman | That's great. You know, we've been, you know why we want it. So then my last question is, I think this comes within your purview. So, downtown parking leases from by hotels and other businesses have traditionally been included in conditional use permits. How do you include that in your process? Are you looking at the condition use permits? Are you looking at parking at all? What's your purview? |
| 01:19:35.12 | Mike Wagner | So I have looked at the conditional use permits that I can find. I think ideally, you know, it would be better to have a separate agreement for the actual rental of the parking spaces with more control. over which spaces, how they're accounted for, and an opportunity to adjust the rates for those spaces. I think, Thank you. We as a city need to reevaluate our parking parking lots, our parking rates, how people we've given conveyed parking rights to, are they paying the correct amounts or the mechanisms to maybe update those? and mechanisms to ensure they're not cheating. You know, these are things that, I think are worthy of taking a strong look at. Yes. |
| 01:20:29.96 | Mayor Kellman | Great, this is fantastic. Thank you. That's all I had. |
| 01:20:34.11 | Council Member Sobieski | I thought that was intriguing what you just said Mike. So is that part of your... |
| 01:20:35.49 | Mayor Kellman | I'm sorry. Thank you. |
| 01:20:41.25 | Council Member Sobieski | your task here you're going to be reporting on that what you just answered the mayor about |
| 01:20:45.53 | Mike Wagner | Well, I, um, investigating and I like I said I reviewed the agreements that we have I'd like to work with the city manager and you know depending on how work is allocated in the in the parking division I think there's some work we could do there and I have some ideas on how to help. I haven't specifically even tasked for it with it as yet. Thank you. |
| 01:21:09.38 | Council Member Sobieski | So we shouldn't expect to report unless we expand your remit to conclude what you just talked with the mayor about. |
| 01:21:17.51 | Mike Wagner | Right, and while I'm not a parking expert, I have experience with parking and I believe I could I could add something to that discussion. |
| 01:21:27.55 | Mayor Kellman | In my understanding, Councilman Sabecki and the city manager is that there is an effort around parking I don't know if it's anything we can I have enough information on to discuss right now Do you have anything to comment on that, Chris? |
| 01:21:50.18 | Chris Zapata | but thank you for the opportunity to say something, Mayor. Yes, we have a mini contract right now that we're working on to analyze parking. It's part of the look-see that the council directed us to do. in December where we started talking about a potential project that the council and the community could see. that would not impact parking. And so how do you do that? So you have to have someone come in and take a look at your parking scenario And so that is in fact underway right now. in a very direct and small approach. It's not a comprehensive parking analysis. It's a parking analysis to get us started to a real parking analysis. But yeah, we do have some work to get started on that, Mayor. Thank you for bringing that up. |
| 01:22:32.37 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you for taking the lead on that. Great question and thank you Mike for jumping in. Okay, so let's turn it over to public comment. Again, this is public comment. |
| 01:22:38.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:22:38.65 | Karin Wiener | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:22:42.44 | Mayor Kellman | on this particular presentation around city owned property. |
| 01:22:49.99 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, it looks like we do have two hands raised and the first one is Jacob. Jacob, you're being unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 01:23:01.19 | Chad Hess | They just asked me to check if you're a mail review. |
| 01:23:04.87 | Jacob | Ah, there we go. I'm in front of Molly Stones right now, and I will... I read this decision from Costa Mesa. December 18th. It says cash-strapped California cities will think twice. about outsourcing work to companies to cut costs after a state court brought one city's ambitious plan to hand several services to the private sector. Your identity? Council members. And, uh, and City workers in Sausalito. In Marin County, there are many people who work for the government. Instead, what we have is Mike Wagner, congratulations on your wedding anniversary with Mary. but Ten slides. $4,300 per slide. On city-owned property. What it says here in Costa Mesa is that the League of California Cities After this decision was laid down, that they could not really, really decide to outsource Government work to private contractors. The League of California Cities attempted to remove that. from the Supreme Court decisions to delist it, and they failed. I have no lawsuits presently against the city of Sausalito. I have tried to negotiate. I have tried to work as a candidate in uncontested elections here in Sausalito. But the milking of the Sausalito cash cow continues. $43,000 for Mr. Wagner, $350,000 tonight, $600,000 for a law firm who pro se litigants have kicked the talkies of five times. We're not on a winning streak. When you open up this political system, we'll have what we call a democracies. |
| 01:25:06.73 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Jacob. Appreciate the comments. |
| 01:25:13.38 | Walfred Solorzano | And next speaker? |
| 01:25:13.58 | Mayor Kellman | THE NEXT WEEK. |
| 01:25:14.64 | Walfred Solorzano | is Kevin Carroll. Kevin, you've been unmuted and as you share your video. |
| 01:25:29.74 | Mayor Kellman | Looks like we might have lost Kevin. |
| 01:25:32.12 | Walfred Solorzano | It appears as we did, we're gonna move on to |
| 01:25:35.03 | Kevin Carroll | I got it. |
| 01:25:35.26 | Walfred Solorzano | I got it. |
| 01:25:36.06 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 01:25:36.07 | Kevin Carroll | OKAY. |
| 01:25:36.60 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 01:25:37.25 | Kevin Carroll | I got it now. Just a little slow on the fingertips here. I submitted some written comments and I know it's not Mr. Wagner's purview to answer on that question. So Chris could at some point, or the council members just about, the use of city property and arena numbers. Particularly I bring up in my letter about the possibility of developing low-income co-op. communities like Galilee Harbor. some of the city tideland properties But two other issues that we'd like to bring up is one, I've been looking for I'm not sure. and an opportunity in Marin Irene Tosolito. housing thing and it's come to my attention in the course of it that there's a person leasing city property who's selling stuff that might be not reporting all of his gross sales. And so I think people in the community will know if they can see a list of who is operating on leases with that include, the city getting income from gross sales or things like that their neighbors are going to be the ones who see these things. It's a little hard to see from City Hall, but if you're next door to it and you know the person is on that kind of a lease, I would suggest there be some way on the city website for people to report what they think might be abuses. And then last, just that as someone who currently gets a free parking space from the city, I'm very interested in that parking study and hope to be kept informed. I don't mind paying for my fair share of what I'm using, but I think I'm an example somebody who's getting something for free that really shouldn't be doing that. So thank you. |
| 01:27:30.59 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you so much, Mr. Carroll. |
| 01:27:34.53 | Walfred Solorzano | Our next speaker is... Vicki Nichols. Vicki, you've been unmuted and then to share your video. |
| 01:27:41.44 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Kalman and council members. I applaud your efforts to undertake this exercise to make sure that we're doing everything we can to make sure our finances are stable. I just have a couple of comments. And my first would be, I heard the reference at the MLK tenants. made that perhaps when this review is done there might be consideration that if the rents are say, I believe, Mr. Wagner said below 15%. THE FAMILY. fair market or yeah, fair market that, that might be, um, you know, something you consider. As a point of reference, those artists were given, favorable terms there at a time in the early 2000s when many leases many were people were being our artists artists were being displaced in the marine ship because people were coming in with office uses, et cetera, that weren't necessarily meeting the letter of the law on zoning. So to encourage them and help them out as a heritage community that values our artists, they were given favorable terms. So I hope we can make sure that we keep that in mind when we're looking at things. I'm not sure. And my comment on the Thailand's properties that we received from the state, and I believe in about 1957, were given to us with the condition that we keep them for the public benefit. So I hope that's also being looked at. Any fill obviously has to go through BCDC, but that might be a condition that would, um, contribute to some constraints. If the Tidelands funds are increasing, |
| 01:29:48.59 | Walfred Solorzano | increase. If you're three minutes have left. |
| 01:29:51.15 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 01:29:51.17 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:29:52.13 | Walfred Solorzano | THANK YOU. |
| 01:29:52.66 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you, Vicki. Appreciate the comments on the Thailand's Funds. Okay, Serge, any other questions Pull the comment. |
| 01:30:00.44 | Walfred Solorzano | Metamayor, there are no further handsprings. |
| 01:30:03.25 | Mayor Kellman | I bring back up to the council. Council members have additional comments or questions for staff? |
| 01:30:11.89 | Mayor Kellman | I will only just pick up that last comment. and the submerged lands and the state lands commission leases are their own unique beast. And I'm sure you have experience with that, Mike. So I would hope to see in the future in this phase two, an inclusion of an analysis of that, those obligations and |
| 01:30:22.10 | Karin Wiener | Yeah. |
| 01:30:28.55 | Mayor Kellman | what we're both entitled and obligated to do with the Thailand's and especially as it relates to the Thailand's fund and our finances, which we'll be looking at. So I would include that. Ian, yeah. |
| 01:30:41.54 | Council Member Sobieski | Yeah, I just want to crow a little more. because we always move on to the next problem. and I think it's worth underlining the city council that you're leading mayor was really enthusiastic about this project of getting our real estate under control because it felt like It was a win-win-win all across the board and exemplar of doing differently, doing things differently. And. Kudos to city manager Zapata, who's another consequences. this change of new city manager who of course hired I'll talk about my question. in front of the So, I just think growing a little bit about the progress here is worthwhile. It's getting a grip on things for the benefit of everyone. And I think it ought to be underscored. |
| 01:31:35.78 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you for that councilor Sobieski. I would turn that and thank both you and the vice mayor for collaborating with me on this and this direction. It was something we all spoke about when we ran for city council and now it's happening. So you're right. I am quite pleased that this is moving forward and huge thanks also to the city manager for executing on this. Thank you for that. Vice Mayor. |
| 01:32:00.43 | Ian Blaustein | Yeah, just another big thank you to Mike and for this great work and pulling together this rent roll and also to the city manager for finding Mike and moving this forward. I'm really proud of what we were able to achieve here. I just wanted to see if the next steps were that we give direction to move to phase two or if we don't have to, if we have to take a vote on that. If we do, I'm absolutely in favor of authorizing Mr. Wagner to move ahead with phase two. I'm sure that it will just bring more exciting answers and potential revenue streams for the city. So I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next. |
| 01:32:33.24 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think we're all in agreement here, Mike. Nice job. So you need direction to move to phase two. I don't think we need a vote. I'll let the city attorney proper head up if that's not the case, but if, but I think we're all ready to move forward on phase two, and I think you have our full support on that. |
| 01:32:52.63 | Mike Wagner | Thank you very much. |
| 01:32:53.22 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:32:54.11 | Mike Wagner | that you just said. |
| 01:32:55.19 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Thank you to my colleagues for their excellent questions as well. Okay. Well, then we're gonna move on to item 4B. Equally interested to hear from Director McGowan, our Public Works Director, on the Capital Improvement Program methodology and the fiscal year 2022-23 budget approach to capital projects. Believe it or not, we're all really excited to hear this. And we've been waiting a while. So thank you, Director McGillan. |
| 01:33:22.63 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you, Mayor and good evening council members. I'm gonna share my screen here. I have a short PowerPoint presentation for us all. Give me one sec here. Can everyone see my screen? It has a blue background and says this city of Sausalito draft fiscal year 2022, 23 capital improvement program. |
| 01:33:43.39 | Ian Blaustein | Yes, super. We can see your screen director McGowan. |
| 01:33:44.38 | Kevin McGowan | We can fierce |
| 01:33:47.35 | Ian Blaustein | OK, so. |
| 01:33:48.35 | Kevin McGowan | and that's what we're going to do. Item 4B before you this evening is a preliminary review of the city's 2022-23 capital improvement program. And I've got a few slides, as I mentioned before, and it all has to do with developing the capital program for the city of Sausalito. The Capital Improvement Program or CIP is a planning document. A CIP is utilized to address the needs of the city to address improvements to our public infrastructure. Similar to other cities in the county, we have a need for many improvements to our roads, buildings, parks, infrastructure, and systems, but we have a limited amount of funding to facilitate that work. The CIP is utilized to develop a list of possible improvement projects and the funding needed to support those projects. The CFP also prioritizes the improvements with the intent of providing recommendations of which project to execute in the next fiscal year. Council is always welcome to add projects or change staff recommendations just at the preliminary phases right now. Staff is recommending utilizing a five-year CIP, which is updated annually with the city's annual budget. the budget and approval, which occurs prior to June 30th, each fiscal year. The five-year CIP approach is a standard timeframe utilized by other cities and counties throughout the state. Tonight's staff would like to cover several topics. The documentation and the attachments provided to the council with the staff report are rather large, as you can probably tell, and they have a lot of data, which can be a little bit difficult to navigate. So I'm gonna give you a little bit of a, of a training on how to do that. We'll go over how to review the documents provided with the intent of facilitating easier access to the data. Public Works has managed more than 36 active projects in the current fiscal year. These projects are in various stages of development. Some of the projects take multiple years to complete and as such will require fiscal commitments in the next fiscal year to allow the projects or program to proceed as intended. Staff has examined the list of more than 62 potential capital projects and developed a priority list of projects to consider for the next fiscal year. And it has also developed a secondary list of projects to consider in case we need to add more projects. This allows the council the opportunity to pick and choose some of the projects of both the priority and secondary priority list for inclusion in next year's fiscal budget. A couple slides for you on how to read some of the charts I've provided. Now I apologize for the lengthy staff report. But there are a lot of there is a lot of information and data to consider when developing the next year's budget. To assist you with this effort, we have included five attachments. Most of the attachments follow the same format. On the upper left-hand corner, where I'm going to move my cursor right here, on some of the summaries is a summary of the project name. While on the left-hand side, are all the funding that goes into support that specific project. Now, when we take all of the projects together and we try to figure out how much total funding we need for the entire budget, that's generally at the bottom of the screen where it adds up all the funding centers. Staff anticipates that several refinements to these numbers will be needed prior to the finalization of next year's budget. So we're still gonna continue to work on this. These are not finalized at this point. Attachment five, which is a big document to your staff report, the largest one there, is the entire capital improvement program. Projects in the five-year CAP are broken out into categories such as drainage projects, street projects, traffic, facilities, and other categories. |
| 01:38:08.21 | Karin Wiener | you |
| 01:38:23.65 | Kevin McGowan | DETAILS. you on each individual project can be found in this document, such as the project description, the revenue, the expenses. for active projects we can also find a summary of the current status and possibly a reference to previous council actions that relate to the project itself so we have a similar sheet under active projects which shows basically the current status and it can also show where my cursor is here where you can find other council documents or staff reports that were brought from staff to council on this specific project. Public Works is hoping to utilize these sheets on our website in the future to provide updates on updates to the public on each one of these projects. So also on attachment five, which is like I mentioned, pretty big 124 pages and is a little difficult to navigate. We have added a table of contents, thank goodness, huh? On the first few sheets of the document to assist with finding each project. Each category of projects such as traffic, streets, sewers have also have a summary sheet as well in case folks are interested on how much we are allocated to each one of those type of categories. The development of the annual CIP is needed to prioritize and plan for capital improvement projects. Numbers, especially future projects, not initiated at this time are rough estimates. Projects that were not funded last year remain on the list or not funded even this year will remain on the list and are reevaluated annually. Staff presents a draft CIP to Council. with a list of recommended projects with the intent to conform to the Council's priorities. Public Works and finance staff then work together to refine the numbers |
| 01:40:34.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:40:35.04 | Kevin McGowan | include this information in the next year's budget. It's staff understanding that there is a very limited amount of local funding sources to support projects in the next fiscal year. That's fiscal year 2022-23. This will limit the number of projects selected for the CIP. Based on this staff is anticipating and buying for grant funding for several of our more expensive projects in order to keep these moving forward. Public Works has managed 36 capital projects and programs over the last year. These are listed in the staff report as attachment one, with some of them being completed and while others are in various stages of development. Some projects which may have been completed for several years continue to require staff time allocation to address things such as claims or seeking out federal funding associated, for instance, with the slide repair. Last year, the city also initiated several programs within the CIP, such as the Storm Drain Repair Program and the Roadway Repair Program. The funds set aside for these programs have been used to hire outside contractors for relatively small projects, which our maintenance departments cannot address with the current staff or the current equipment we have on hand. Some of the projects listed in previous fiscal years will continue to need fiscal support and need fiscal support for next year. has provided attachment one, which is a list of active projects and indicates possible funding needs for the next fiscal year for some of those projects. |
| 01:42:30.01 | Kevin McGowan | Staff also reviewed the list of projects from last year's CIP and added several projects to the list to be evaluated. This updated list was then re-evaluated and staff has developed a short list of projects we recommend including a next year CIP. These are listed on attachment two and noted as priority projects. Staff has concentrated on projects we have or are pursuing grant funding for the larger construction phase of the work. Most state and federal grants require local funding, a local funding match. And most of the projects on the list address this local match. Keep in mind that this is an estimate and we have not identified the grants or received grant funding for some of these projects at this point in time. Our intent by starting the design in previous fiscal years is to have these projects, what is called shovel ready. In other words, the design's ready to go, we just need money to fund the construction. Also staff is recommending funding several projects, several programs, excuse me, As noted earlier, these programs are necessary to address small construction repairs to our infrastructure that cannot be performed by our maintenance staff. and a contractor with special equipment is needed to address this work. Thank you. All right, oops, I think I went too fast. Here we go. Staff is also recommending moving forward with several new projects in the next fiscal year. These projects, which may not have been the highest rating, may also be eligible for grant funding. And I'm hoping that you kind of see this underlying theme that we're trying to find projects that can be funded with grant funding and reaching out to get that type of funding. For instance, some of these projects such as Napa Street Roundabout, which is just a concept at this point in time, may be a good project to receive grant funding from outside agencies. Thank you. |
| 01:44:42.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:44:44.16 | Kevin McGowan | The intent of the CIP is to develop a plan that shows how much funding is needed to support these projects. We have done this by adding up all the different funding sources, funding source requirements. This is noted in the last table of attachment two. It's also included in attachment five in different places, but that's a really big document. Note that there is a need for over $3 million in grant funding These funds have not been secured at this point in time. If we do not receive grant funding for these projects, staff is not anticipating that they will be moved forward to the construction phase until enough funding is identified to support the construction. Thank you. Staff has also identified a secondary list of projects that could be considered for implementation in fiscal year 2223. These are included in attachment three in your staff report. And they are also highlighted on most of these attachments in blue. Well, the priority projects are noted in red. So when you look at these forms or these tables, you can kind of identify which ones are first priority and second priority. For example, we may want to proceed with the Coloma Street sidewalk construction in fiscal year 2223. This project is only partially funded by Safe Routes to School Grant. Significant repairs to the roadway are needed and the replacement of a sanitary line is also required for the project. based on these additional fiscal needs and the limited budget for fiscal year 2223, staff is suggesting that the construction of this project occur in the next fiscal year. If we push this out for our next fiscal year, we will not lose the funding that's allocated for it. It just, it's a little bit more time where we could construct this in the fall or late summer of 2023. Regardless, staff wanted to provide a list of these projects in case council wanted to add or delete projects to the list. |
| 01:46:59.96 | Kevin McGowan | If the secondary projects are added to the capital program, attachment four covers all of those together. This is the last table in attachment four and denotes that an overall need of 8.7 million is needed, which includes the grant allocations of approximately 3.4 million. We have also noted some other large projects within the staff report, which may need additional capital outlay. The Ferry Landside Improvement Project Phase One is moving forward. This project has a fixed budget And staff is concerned that the cost of the construction may come in higher than expected. Based on this staff is recommending at the allocation of a minimum of an additional 200,000 for the construction phase of the project. Staff is anticipating finalizing the plans for this particular project in the next six months with construction to follow. In addition, Right. Another project noted in the staff report is the Corporation Yard Shared Services Building. If the city moves forward with a shared corporation yard with Mill Valley or considers utilizing the machine shop and the Marin ship, significant capital outlay will need, will be necessary as well. We simply wanted to note it on the capital improvement program and keep that on the list so that council is aware we're keeping track of it. Okay. Public works has addressed more than 36 projects in the last year. These are in various states of development with some of these needing funding in the next fiscal year. Staff has developed a draft five-year capital improvement program, which addresses the limited funding available to the city and recommends proceeding with the priority projects. Sausalito has very limited staffing to execute projects. As noted in our DPW update in the fall, executing capital projects is just one of our duties. And as such, we have less than two FTE dedicated to that task. We welcome your input related to the list of projects and are ready to make changes and work with our finance department to incorporate these changes in next year's budget. Lastly, with this, this is a very dynamic process. Things do change throughout the year and you probably have seen that yourselves when we had a CIP last year and we have more projects that were added during the year. Even as we were developing these documents and staff report, we were made aware of another active project at donated city properties and possible new projects at the library. Even in developing these, reaching out to our director of the library, we may want to add another project there just for them specifically if they have funding for it. So this, let's see, significant changes to the project list are needed. Excuse me. If significant changes to the project list are needed, staff would be happy to revisit this issue with council or work independently with the finance director and our city manager. So this concludes my presentation. And I just want you to know I have a new tie this evening. So it's too bad Susan and Jill are not here. But maybe they can watch it later. So thank you so much. And I appreciate your feedback. |
| 01:50:48.86 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you, Director McGowan. My first bit of feedback is I like the new tie. so thank you i thought something was different appreciate that Thank you. Really, really excellent for her presentation. And he did a really nice job of placing this into context for us within the broader budget discussion we'll be having the next agenda item. So let me see if vice mayor has any questions for you at this time. |
| 01:51:11.71 | Ian Blaustein | Yeah, I have a couple of questions. Thank you for a really robust presentation, Director McGowan, that was really helpful. And it's always good for us to consider and better understand the CIP process, which kind of brings me to my first question. I think that many of us on the council often hear from constituents asking questions like, you know, when are you going to pave my respective road? Why do I have a pothole? And why was this street done first? And I know you have a clear scoring system that you touched on, but could you maybe just a little bit for members of the public explain how that works and how you prioritize and make those decisions? |
| 01:51:43.90 | Kevin McGowan | I would be happy to. That's a great question. So our roadways throughout the city, as well as the county, are rated through a program called PTAP. Don't ask me what that really means, but I'll look into it. But what it means for us is that Metropolitan Transportation Commission hires a company to come out and survey our roadways. And what they do is they give a numerical reading to each one of our roadways and its condition. For us, we take that information and we take a look at it and we basically start our process of looking at all the roads and rate the ones that need repair initially based on their low rating. And that starts our process for staff to go look at each roadway to see what is needed for its repair. now that visualization of going out to each road site and taking a look at it is really important because sometimes the numbers don't really a look at it is really important because sometimes the numbers don't really show how bad it is or how good it is Now we take that information and we try to strategize on how best to use the money available to repair a roadway. We're trying to shy away from letting roadways go to a point that they are completely falling apart. We would like to move towards doing things called micro seals or slurry seals to improve the general condition of the overall roadway itself. So we're looking at different strategies to look at all of the roadways. For now, we have a list of roadways that we want to resurface and to make improvements. for this fiscal year. We're looking at... For now, we have a list of roadways that we want to resurface and to make improvements. For this fiscal year, we're looking at Joe Ward. We're also looking at Edwards. And I know I'm missing one, but there's a couple others on the list as well. So I welcome the public to give me a call or an email, and I will try to give them more information on this than I can provide right now. |
| 01:53:43.99 | Ian Blaustein | That's really helpful, Director McGowan. Thanks. And then with regards to things like deciding where to put in a crosswalk or where to change a bike path. Is that the same process? Is there a PTAP equivalent for those two? |
| 01:53:59.47 | Kevin McGowan | Those can be a little bit more complex in that putting in crosswalks in certain areas or putting in, let's say a signal, that requires meeting some of the state standards related to warrants of whether a signal is warranted or not. I would still welcome the public to give me a call, give me an email. I'll be glad to talk more about it because it can get complex. fairly quickly and I wouldn't want to bore everybody tonight. |
| 01:54:28.61 | Ian Blaustein | Thanks director. And I had a specific question and looking at the priority two projects, something stood out to me just because we have many of us on the council have set as a goal, you know, improving our use of technology to streamline processes of the city is a priority. And I noticed that one of the priority projects on here was digital document management system. Could you, is that with regards to streamlining DPW's documentation or requests for projects? Could you just maybe explain that a little further? |
| 01:54:58.65 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, I can. The intent when this first came on the list, which was a couple of years ago, was to develop a document scanning system for all the city departments, not just DPW, even though ours looks pretty bad at this point. |
| 01:55:11.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:11.10 | Karin Wiener | Thank you. |
| 01:55:15.62 | Kevin McGowan | But I know that the planning department has already moved forward with scanning some of their documents. I think this particular project was intended to look at all departments, not just CDD, but look at the rest of us as well. That includes finance and looking at some of the storage facilities that we have for older documents as well. We'd like to get those scanned in a system so we can move the paper away from its storage locations. |
| 01:55:43.13 | Ian Blaustein | I really love that idea, especially just given how critical it is for us to get up to speed and have a streamlined technological processes. So that would come out of the CIP funding for across all of the departments. So that's why it's okay. Even though it's under, so it's under DPW, but it would apply for CDD. and others. |
| 01:56:01.29 | Kevin McGowan | That's the intent, yes. |
| 01:56:01.49 | Ian Blaustein | Okay. Okay, great. I might ask for that one to be moved, but we'll wait until we get to discussion. I really appreciate it, Director McGowan. That's the end of my questions. |
| 01:56:11.68 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 01:56:11.73 | Council Member Sobieski | THE END OF |
| 01:56:11.99 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Thank you for that, Vice Mayor. KELSEBRUARY SOBIESKI. |
| 01:56:15.95 | Council Member Sobieski | Kevin, just since the Vice Mayor mentioned crosswalks, I, in a previous, CIP, the crosswalk near Golden Gate Market was, I thought, a priority project. It was on there, but I didn't see it. Thank you. It again dropped on. |
| 01:56:28.95 | Kevin McGowan | No, we're actually trying to include that in one of the active projects, which is to put the bike lanes in going from princess to richardson it's part of that project |
| 01:56:41.98 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you, I didn't know that. It got some zoomed in there. Just generally, we've talked about this before about maintenance on these CIP projects. It's very clear what the upfront cost is when you're building something new or doing something different. Is there a way of getting a grip on what the long tail maintenance expenses than would be And how do any of us, the public, the city council and yourself, get a grip on when you do a project what the ongoing expense should be budgeted up to for |
| 01:57:16.06 | Kevin McGowan | That's an interesting question. And I haven't thought about that too far down the road, so to speak. Sorry, CIP pun. But for us, we have a built-out city already. And so when we add new parks, for instance, such as Dunphy or any others, then yes, we do have to consider some of the maintenance implications. So I don't have a good answer for you yet, council member, but let me think about it a little bit and see if we can get back to it. Thank you. |
| 01:57:49.80 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you, yeah, that would be great. I think that'd be important for budgeting. And just another just detailed question on that point, you know, the North Street steps are done, but there's a bench about halfway up that is now used to have a commanding view of the bay. And now you have a commanding view of foliage and hinges that have grown up. It's an example of a maintenance detail where you know, the real hard, heavy construction work's done, you know, Great job. It is a great job. uh, and yet it's stolen. that integrated aspect of the project seems like it's in a different budget because that'd be in the maintenance |
| 01:58:26.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:26.62 | Council Member Sobieski | landscaping budget. So how do we How do we make sure that those two things are wedded together? somehow. |
| 01:58:33.77 | Kevin McGowan | Good question. I think that we need to take a more holistic approach to the area in which we're doing work to make sure that when we walk away from it and give it back to the public for use that we cover everything. So in this particular case, I have talked to our parks maintenance manager and they were working on it today. So if you get a chance to walk the stairs, let's go take a look and see if it has been done to everybody's liking. Excellent. Thank you, Kevin. |
| 01:59:02.90 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, great question. Director McGowan, what's your perspective on how we embed road vegetation management into the capital improvement program? |
| 01:59:13.75 | Kevin McGowan | Um... So we have a couple projects on here about vegetation management. And right now that's a little difficult to answer in that we are working with the Southern Marin Fire to take care of some vegetation management, as you know. And then as far as our maintenance ability, we have our maintenance staff who works on regular vegetation management as well. But we do have more and more issues coming up about trees and fire and other issues in which we might, as this develops, we might want to work a little bit more closely with our fire department and to address some of the issues associated with vegetation and fire prevention. I'm not sure if I'm addressing the question directly. |
| 02:00:09.49 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah, I'm curious. I left it open because I wanted to see what direction you would take it in. I think perhaps I would maybe take it in in the direction of a sustainability angle. And, you know, all the wonderful work that Sosley the Beautiful has provided for this community and how we might continue that, right? When people first drive into town, they see the quality of the roads and they see the beauty of the median and that really impacts people. And I'm wondering how you think the council should consider that within the context of roads needing to be repaired as well. |
| 02:00:42.73 | Kevin McGowan | It's a very good point. So you're absolutely right. When I first got here to the city in 2019, I did comment that, The medians here in Sausalito are one of the prettiest within the county itself. And I know that our maintenance staff works very hard on those. However, we do have some other Um, kind of conflicting ideas of moving forward in the future i know that our pedestrian bicycle advisory committee has been discussing for the last couple meetings of how do we incorporate better bicycle movement throughout the city on bridgeway itself And in looking at that, you know, there are discussions happening of, okay, what do you do with the medians? Do you keep them? Do you take them out? You know, there's a lot of these discussions that need to be brought back to you as a council to help direct this particular question. For right now, as you mentioned, the medians are very well maintained. We like working with Sausalito Beautiful, and they help support us with a lot of these plants and their ideas as well. |
| 02:01:49.39 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you for that. Yeah, that's an interesting, Interesting thing for us to be considering. And I just have one more question. Councilmember Sobieski often reminds me to evaluate the sunk cost in something now versus later, meaning do we want to spend money on something that we might have to dig up in a year or two and how do we evaluate that you and I have talked extensively about climate change and vulnerability infrastructure saltwater intrusion exfiltration just pure flooding and the damage to our infrastructure It's... And I know that you've given us kind of some constraints that you have. How should we as a council be thinking about this direction so that we are not doing something today that we're just going to have to fix in three years and five years. Is there a lens that we can apply or should apply based on your experience? And I know you're active in the local hazard mitigation planning. So I'm thinking both climate change and disaster preparedness. But I would welcome your thoughts to help us shape our thinking from a policy perspective. |
| 02:02:55.57 | Kevin McGowan | I would suggest we work together with our partners in other communities as well. Let's work with Mill Valley. Let's work with our other partners at Marin County to help guide us in this fashion. I believe even this is the Sea Level Rise Task Force. We're going to meet with Kathy Schaefer in the future to help us guide our policymakers on how do we address this. My original approach was to try to identify some low-hanging fruit. So let's say, what can we address right now? But Sausalito and MarinShip and these lower areas that not only are impacted by sea level rise, they're also impacted by settlement, which is a big issue. And how you address these things is quite complex. And how do we address them with the property owners there as well? So unfortunately I don't have great answers other than we need to work together to identify solutions that we can address throughout the county. |
| 02:03:54.82 | Mayor Kellman | AGREED. probably the best Holistic approach. Okay. Well, thank you for that. Let's pause and see if we have any members of the public who'd like to comment. And let me pause also city manager Zapata, I see your camera's on, do you have a comment? |
| 02:04:06.07 | Nick Stevenson | Oh, |
| 02:04:11.37 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. All right, so Serge, I see three hands up. |
| 02:04:15.31 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, we're first gonna call Vicki Nichols. Vicki, you've been unmuted. I'd like to share your video for two minutes. |
| 02:04:27.40 | Vicki Nichols | Yes, thank you. I had a question about our sidewalk repairs. I know that I don't remember when 10 years ago or longer, the city adopted the policy as many municipalities that the sidewalks adjacent to a private property were their responsibility to maintain if they were cracked, et cetera, there was talk at that time about maybe being able to work with the city, the private property owners and through, you know, as economy of scale, working with a contractor or a program that might give some relief or partnership to the owners to encourage them to make these improvements. you know, where the sidewalks are or, damaged in a lot of ways because we haven't been able to address this so is there any thought about Money's being either put towards that in a program or exploration of grants to do so. Thank you. Thanks, Vicki, great comment. |
| 02:05:35.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Our next speaker. Ms. Carolyn Revell. Carolyn, you've been unmuted and asked to share your video. |
| 02:05:43.10 | Carolyn Revell | CAROLYN. Hi. Thank you very much, Kevin, for that comprehensive look at the CIP and Those of us in Sausalito beautiful, of course, are very aware of the budget constraints. But we also believe strongly that landscape is a part of our infrastructure. You noted the medians and the work that we had done there. And we were hoping actually to do some refurbishment of the medians. A specific question I have is that in last year's budget, It's my understanding that 30,000 of city funds was budgeted for new trees on Caledonia and Bridgeway with a match by Sausalito Beautiful. And I wonder if that project could somehow find its way into this year's budget. THANK YOU. Thank you. |
| 02:06:26.93 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you, Carolyn. |
| 02:06:31.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Our next speaker is David Sudo. David, you've been unmuted. I ask you share your video. |
| 02:06:37.97 | David Sudo | Good evening city council and thanks to Kevin for such a good report and all the the spreadsheets that there's a lot of documentation there on projects that Um, I would note that some of these, some of the bicycle and pedestrian related improvements that are on the CIP list |
| 02:06:56.68 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:06:57.19 | David Sudo | our projects that have been on the general plan since about 1995 that have been unrealized for the last 30 years. And it's important that But places like Bridgeway, we may only do a major repayment every 25 or 30 years. It's important that we, whether we have grant money identified or not, that we are continuously planning for the best uh, best streets that we can have when we do these generational improvements to our streets. So, something to remember and And you know the UN report that just came out about what we need to do to stop climate change. Mode shift to transit walking and bicycling was an important part of that solution. So we need to concentrate on on how we can Thank you. that work on our end of the climate change solution. Thank you. |
| 02:07:55.02 | Mayor Kellman | Thanks, Senator. Okay, any other members of the public? |
| 02:07:59.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, there are no further hands raised. |
| 02:08:02.26 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment. Any other comments from council members? |
| 02:08:07.10 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. I would. just like to ask that maybe as I mentioned in my questions given how much emphasis we put on trying to improve services especially at CDD and other parts of the city and streamline things that we consider making the digital document management system part of this year's CIP just because I think it might be critical for the fast ease of use for things like getting a permit and looking at past information that you might need about a property or a zoning So I just wanted to add that to discussion. |
| 02:08:39.90 | Mayor Kellman | Right, yeah, I like that idea and I would, I think add a complimentary comment that I guess also frame later as a future agenda item, but for now, I'd like to see us look at some type of city app that allows an instant reporting of things that we see that we can help geolocate with photos. That also is a little bit more of a, |
| 02:08:53.98 | Karin Wiener | and I'm not sure. |
| 02:09:00.73 | Mayor Kellman | you know, the way to share Sausalito with, with visitors to our town, but some type of city app, I think, really help us synthesize a lot of the information that's out there. So I'll bring that up later, but that I wanted to share that with Director McGowan as part of this conversation. We've talked about it, but I mentioned it again. Okay, so there is no vote tonight just to accept the report. So with that, I'll just thank Director McGowan, and I look forward to supporting you on this and talking through some of these issues again on the April 30th special city council meeting will be have on Saturday. Okay. Great, well then I will turn it over to our major budget update with our city manager. |
| 02:09:52.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:09:53.12 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council, members of the public. Before I get started, I just want to say thank you to Our finance team of Vivian, Chad and Deborah much more who helped put this presentation together Abbott. who is actually the slideshow guru for me. So it's not going to be 10 minutes. It may be a little bit longer. I just wanna forewarn you. And there are no specific actions by the council requested tonight. On April 26th, when we get to the full council back. That's when we'll be looking to see you take votes on some of the mid-year adjustments that need to be made to make sure we end the year the way we need to end the year. So in tonight's presentation, I don't think we can talk about our budgets in individual years anymore. There are so many things that are uncertain. And I think there's so many things that are misunderstood in Sausalito that I didn't understand when I got here eight months ago. And so I wanna go back 20 years. I wanna go forward 20 years and I wanna talk about Thank you. President. So I hope that this information helps us finish the budget we're in, helps us build the budget for next year, and do some real long-term thinking on what it is that we really want to do going forward with an understanding of what our landscape is. |
| 02:11:16.40 | Chris Zapata | So to talk about today, you know, there's a mid-year financial snapshot that I'm gonna go over. And I'm gonna talk about some spending and some revenue categories and some things we've done to make sure that, you know, we're not just sitting on our hands. We're actually trying to deal with the changing circumstances that we find ourselves in today. And then I also wanna build off the October 30th presentation that I made to the city council and the public. where I talked about a few things, especially our pension challenges. I want to look at us long term and I want to talk about some of the decisions made by different councils, different staffs to really improve Sausalito, but to also impact our budget because no decision made. It's a major decision in Sausalito has actually been something that hasn't impacted us today or won't impact us tomorrow. So I wanna then talk about some recommendations that I have. And again, going back to what I said earlier, no action tonight, all the budget adjustments we wanna do on April the 26th. We certainly we've contracted with your authority, bringing Bartell and the associates to talk about pensions In the past, Sausalito has worked through a two-year budget cycle And I'm recommending that because of some of the uncertainty, and some of the newness of our team. we should do a one-year budget and then work toward a longer term or a two year cycle as you used to in the past. And then, you know, some city councils and social have done wonderful work. City management have done wonderful work. Finance teams have done wonderful work to save money in Sausalito. to do creative things to attack some of these problems. And so I wanna make sure that we have a review of those reserves that have been saved. And I'm gonna ask Chad Hess, who's helping me with some of the specific details to bring that up at the end of my presentation And then, you know, I cannot stress how important measure O has been to this community, how important it will be in the future And so I wanna have a talk about what that looks like and why I believe you ought to think about the extension of it and potentially the expansion of it. That's going to be the... Big, big overview. We all know that we've been in a pandemic and it's impacted our businesses. And certainly that impacts other sectors such as tourism. And I think the, The idea that we are out of it and the impacts are over maybe we don't know that yet. So we continue to monitor different things that are happening with our health, our directives from our county and state officials, our federal officials. And we wanna make sure that, you know, before we start doing things differently with the idea that we're out of the pandemic, that we really are. And I don't know that that time is anytime soon. This year's budget, what we showed you was our expenditures exceeded our revenues. I want to talk about. you know, why that is and how that is. because essentially what you did in building our budget this year, you adopted a budget that used significant one-time monies. And then last month, we did some things that affected it as well. a Measure O transfer. And then we patched some of the gap with some general fund reserves. So all of that is gonna be talked about in a little more detail and I think that's important. And then also to say that even if our We've been in a pandemic. Our revenues are recovering. We see increase in property taxes, we see increase in sales tax, and we see increases in TOT, but we've continued to spend. And so as we have some of these spends and some of them are unbudgeted, you know, we spent significant dollars on homelessness and that's no secret. And some speakers mentioned it, but we spent money on other areas. And there are other reasons that we're out of whack. And I want to talk about those, but because I believe we don't have a structural stability we've had to start curbing our expenditures and I'll talk about specific steps that we've taken there. So let's start at the beginning. Sausalito's overall budget, you have a $40 million overall budget. And I'm going to focus on the big slice of that pie, which is the general fund. The general fund is about $20 million and the rest of it is, you cut it in half, is different places. One of the things I want to point out, because it's germane to this presentation, is you see where it says debt service, that little yellow slide that's about, I can't see that. 800 and $895,000 that we're paying this year. In the enterprise side, the blue fund, the blue slice Thank you. There's also some debt service in there too, which is how we pay for the certificates of participations that were undertaken a few years back. So your debt service is not just that, there's other debt service, and I'm gonna talk about that in detail. You always wanna know in your general fund, which is where your basic services are provided, where you're spending your money. And in most cities, it's usually public safety. In Asosito's case, that's no different. You spend the largest chunk of your general fund on your police department here, and that's very normal. So there are other departments that see expenses and revenues and allocations of resources by the council. And they're all part of this slide, which people can read when they want to and ask questions later if you'd like to. |
| 02:16:44.84 | Chris Zapata | So at the beginning of the year, you know, we talked about, you know, how we were going to see revenue And we budgeted about $20.7 million And the preponderance of that comes from property taxes and sales taxes. And so when we looked at our budget and we said adopting it, we were gonna have revenues of 20 million, 20.7 million, with expenditures of 21.6 million, we needed some reserve assistance. And so the general fund reserve was slated to provide $930,000 in one-time money So as the year went on, we had what I call changes and these changes are typical. And I wanna walk through them because there's some real importance in this particular slide. We budgeted revenues of 20.6 million, 20.7 million. We actually got more. It looks like we're gonna get 21.2 million. And that speaks to the improving sales tax, improving property tax, improving TOT. our expenditures, 23 million. And all of a sudden we have a gap of $2 million The question one would ask is why is that gap there? And there are two reasons for it. And one of them is, You took a million dollars out of the general fund this year in your budget to pay off a side fund. You prepaid three years worth of that fund and that cost you a million dollars in change. And then last month on March the 8th, you took about $1.2 million and you applied that to measure O to restore that this year, which is really important given the needs in our city, whether it's roads, buildings, other facilities that we have. Really, really important. So that's about $2 million. So one could look at that and say, well, That's where the answer is, $2 million have been applied from paying off the pension and side funds. and restoring Measure O, otherwise we'd be in balance. Well, the answer is not quite that simple. And I'll tell you why. In that $21 million revenue stream is about $1.6 million in change from the federal government, which is a one-time shot in the arm that the city of Slaasli Lugat, which is now Not going to happen this year is my understanding. In addition, when we looked at balancing the budget this year, Typically you're taking about $2 million out of your parking enterprise fund. This year we took three. So, you know, there's $2 million, two and a half million dollars right there, that if you didn't have those, then you followed normal course of action. you would have a gap. And that's the point I'm trying to make. There is a problem last year in March, City staff did their analysis and they talked about You know, what bureaucrats call a structural deficit, which means, you know, we aren't bringing in the amount of money we need to bring in to pay our bills on a reoccurring basis. And so Sausalito has a challenge and I wanna make sure that's clear. |
| 02:19:47.19 | Chris Zapata | So because we have a challenge, the question is what do you do about it? And you mentioned the prepayment of the CalPERS side fund, the transfer to side fund, we prepaid CalPERS, which results in a savings of about 3% overall to our overall bill, which is a smart thing that all cities do. We had a contract that I thought was unsustainable in terms of the cost. The service was excellent, but the cost was too much. And so we shortened that from 12 months to five months. We rebuilt our finance department. We've reorganized positions so that all the things and all the people that we used to have, we may not have in the future because we may not have the wherewithal financially to keep finding funding those. So last month when I learned that we were looking at what I call, you know, challenge, I asked that all the departments stop hiring unless there's clearance from me and there's a real business case to be made for that position. And essentially, if it's gonna create an expense that we can hold off on for a little bit, we not hire positions. All purchasing, anything over $2,500, I gotta see now because to me, I gotta slow the spigot on spending so that we don't end up the year worse than we're talking about right now. You heard the presentation on property management. You know, that portfolio is valuable. It needs to be managed. If it's managed properly, it can be a real asset. And so you spend the penny to get a dime is my saying. You know, we hired Michael Wagner's firm and he's gonna go out and look at our leases and all the properties and, you know, hopefully we'll pay for himself 10 times. So that's important. And then the city council in October directed that we hire some folks to go out and chase other people's money. So we've hired three grant writers I think that's important. And then the city council in October directed that we hire some folks to go out and chase other people's money. So we've hired three grant writers. One in particular is a full service Turn Creek grant writing firm called California Consulting. And they're already starting to develop strategies and applications for us to start putting into in this budget year. There are three or four grants that we wanna apply for before June. We'll be bringing some of those to the city council so you can see what they are and why they make sense. Cause they do align with some of the priorities you have and that the staff has laid out for them. And I think there's opportunity for some success there and to help. our financial situation with other people's money. |
| 02:22:13.33 | Chris Zapata | So I wanna talk about what I always hear in government. And let me just say this, I've been a city manager for 30 years. And every time I come to a city, people wonder where their tax dollars going. And I think it's really important to kind of get to the basics of that. And so I want to do that tonight. I want to talk about property tax, I want to talk about sales tax, and then I'll get into the long term obligations that we have and what the long term forecast might look like. So let's talk about our property tax. So if you look at your property tax in the good old days, usually you would see a property tax break down, which was 20% city, 20% schools, 20% state, and then the rest divided amongst the number of special districts. In Sausalito's case, you see that again. You see the state. You see the score. and you see the city and you see the city at about 11 and a half cents percent on the dollar but when you absorb or annexed into the Southern Marin fire, you agreed to take a portion of your property tax, which is about 44% and apply it to that service and begin a new relationship with the fire district rather than the city fire department. So if you add those two, that 9.86, which is almost a dime, in the 11th sense that or is being paid, that's about 20 cents. So that 20 cents is local. That stays local. The general fund, the amount we get in that is about $5 million staying local. And, you know, I'm not sure what the amount is with the county, but I'd guess it's north of $4 million. And so there's about $9 million in property tax that you have and you keep local. The other portions of it go to your schools, go to the county, go to the state. I wanna talk about your sales tax now. This is a good one because Anytime there's a city with a district tax or a special add-on, which you have on Sausalito, I seem to land in these cities. In National City, it was a measure. In San Leandro, it was a measure that was expiring and expiring And the whole idea of coming to Sausalito was, Is there a district tax here? Is there an add-on here? And there is. and is expiring as well. It's called Measure O. So if you are a city in California, you get a 1% cut. of all sales tax. And then you can look to add to that. And so there is a constitutional cap on sales tax Thank you. We're not there, but Let me tell you how it breaks down. Somebody comes on a bike. A bus. A vote. A car spends $10. On that $10, there's an 8.5% tax rate. So they paid $10 and 85 cents. The city gets 15 cents on that $10. The county gets 30 cents on that dollar And the state gets 40 cents on that dollar. That's how your sales tax is broken down. And the reason it's 15 cents in Sausalito is because the 1% plus the half percent measure O add-on. So important to keep that in the back of your mind, because I'm gonna point back to it as we go down this presentation. |
| 02:25:33.01 | Chris Zapata | So let's talk about, some of the challenges and long-term obligations that Sausalito has and has made. And let's start with pensions and we'll get into the public safety obligation as well as the park obligation that we have and the citizens you're voted on. and approved. So let me talk about pensions. Uh, 20 years ago, I was in Arizona and two years later, I moved into California and I moved into a city where they had recently undergone a decision that cities all across the state of California made. A lot of counties made and certainly the state made it to enhance benefits for employees in their organizations. |
| 02:26:22.32 | Chris Zapata | So in 2000, 2001, before this decision was made, you can see that the contribution for retirement by the city of Sausalito was about. 2% of your general fund budget. after the decision was made for a variety of factors. And some of them the city controlled and some of them the city didn't. You get to 2021 and you see that number's over $3 million and it's about 17% of your budget. |
| 02:26:54.40 | Chris Zapata | So I'll give you an example for that I can understand that makes sense to me that I actually saw and lived in national city before the enhanced benefit package went into play. It was 2% at 60 for general employees and 2% at 50 for public safety. And one night, the city council took a vote based on some information they got from staff in CalPERS and said, we wanna enhance our benefit package to 3% at 50, and 3% at 60. So what's the net impact of that to someone that isn't a public safety employee To make it simple, we had one employee there making $100,000, had 20 years of service. And so I used to like to use her for my example. I won't use her name. But so if you have 20 years of service and you're at a 2%, benefit 20 times two is 40% of your high salary, which was a hundred thousand dollars, which she was making at the time. So her pension, is $40,000 a year. with one vote. When they took it to 3% at 60, her pension increased to $60,000 per year. and that was retroactive. Those 20 years of service already granted it wasn't prospective, it was retroactive. So all of a sudden you have an obligation to significantly more. So why would cities do that? Why would counties do that? And the answer was at the time you had, The CalPERS, system who manages all pensions, except for some of the larger cities and some counties and so forth that aren't part of CalPERS, come in and say, you know, for the last 30 years, our interest returns have been 8% or better. And that's our peg target. We get 8%. you know, every year or an average of 8% over 30 years, We can meet obligations, and we've been doing better than that. And so we are what we call super funded our investment returns are exceeding that 8%. And so what that means is, Maybe you as a city could grant some enhanced benefits and all of a sudden you wouldn't have to pay for them. That was part of the narrative, and that was 2001, 2002 in National City. And in 2002, 2003, the council adopted their 3% at 60 and 3% at 50. And then things happened. |
| 02:29:23.20 | Chris Zapata | What happened was the great recession What happened was CalPERS took a number of steps to walk back their aggressive projections on interest returns and did a number of other things that have created stress on city pension payments. I'll give you some examples. When Thank you. The old way was 8%, we'll take it down to 7% because we're not gonna get 8% anymore. So the 7% became the new discount rate as they call it. And cities would have to make up the difference. And so that was a cost. Since then that 7% has gone down to 6.8%. And some people are saying it'll eventually get down to 6%. And as it goes down, the cities have to make up that difference. And so that's what is increasing costs. The other thing that happened is it used to be amortized over 30 years and that got shrunk to 20 years. Some other things happening is people are living longer So a lot of folks in the system, you know, they're paying for them longer mortality rates are changing, people are living longer, and that's a good thing. And then finally, some cities over time, as they grant increases to employees, through good faith labor negotiations THEY ADD TO THE BURDEN AS WELL. So that's not unusual and that's happening. And it's also gonna do some, I think some wise things. Number one, they make employees pick up their share of the CalPERS cost. you haven't grown your staff to any numbers. You've actually cut your staff. You've paid off your side funds and you set up 2115 trust funds. One in particular for pensions and one for post-employment benefits. |
| 02:31:10.16 | Chris Zapata | So as I look at the pension landscape, it's really important to understand what is actually being paid out to city employees, because somebody could say, not everybody makes $100,000 a year, or makes what a city manager makes $200,000 plus a year. And so, you know, the reality is, is our, are the pension cost or the pension out goes the pension payments to retirees reasonable. So CalPERS will tell you three years ago that that average payment to a retiree in the CalPERS system was a little under $40,000 a year. So when you read headlines and say, you know, this pension is 150,000, 120,000, Yeah, that happens, but the average is about $40,000 a year as of two or three years ago. And then what CalPERS will also tell you is Cities don't pay that full boat. 55 cents of that obligation on the dollar is made by their investments. And that's huge. They've done a great job, 55 cents, but they're less aggressive now than they were 15 years ago. Um, employers pay 32 cents and the employees pay 13 cents on the dollar. So it's not like every bit of that pension and that retiree on that $38,000 is paid for by the city. It's paid for by the employees, it's paid for by the investment earnings. Thank you. So one of the things that I think is really important is when we looked at this in October of last year, our obligation, meaning we were funded at 75%, 70% of the cost, but we still owed about 29, $30 million over time. The last time I looked at that, that changed. It was now $31 million. And so if you look at that graph, I don't know if you can see it, but it's what I call, it's like, Whenever you see the nature show and you see the, the Python eating something that it can't swallow, it kind of stuck. And we're in that stuck stage right now. And we will be in that stuck stage for a little while. And that's something important to, be aware of as you talk about your budgeting this year and in the future, because those costs are numb. and they could change, and they could change slightly good or slightly bad, but those are the costs, and the reason those costs are so is because what you have in that peak And that high cliff is a lot of what we call classic CalPERS members, people that are beneficiaries of the enhanced benefit or after PEPRA. And so until, you know, as I say, us guys kick the bucket, you know, you're going to be paying those high pensions. But because the state took action on this in, late 2013, 14, and instituted some pension reform where now pensions aren't. what they've been. they're much more manageable and reasonable, that cost will start coming down. But we're stuck with that until about 2036. And going back to some of the wise things that Sasslilo did is they started putting money aside in higher interest earning accounts. These trust balances, which are as of last February, this past February, about $4.6 million. And the reason you put them in these trusts is because you can only use them for those two things. Post-employment benefits, right now we have about a $6 million obligation. And post-employment benefits are now You can deduct about $1.5 million from that. And so we really don't owe $6 million. We owe about $4.5 million. And you put money aside for that, which is wise. And then you have another $2.5 million, which you can only use for pension relief as you put aside and you continue to do that every year and grow these funds. And these funds are, that we keep in our savings account, this is our general fund reserve and others, we put into what we call the Local Agency Investment Fund of California. And that's been getting less than 1% interest. Whereas these PARs and 115 trust balances are generating about 5% over five years. So that's good. So when we talked on October 30th, we looked at what the future looked like then, and it's still pretty relevant now. And it's part and parcel to, you know, how you build budgets, you gotta understand what out years look like. Understandably, Any out year is a little cloudier because conditions change and the crystal ball gets a little bit cloudier. But here's our outlook based on some assumptions that were made in October. And we suggested that in 2023 fiscal year, we'd be looking at a million and a half dollar budget deficit. In 2024, we'd be looking at about a million, 1.1 million dollar deficit. In 2025, we'd be looking at about a million, one $1.1 million deficit. In 2025, we'd be looking at about a $687,000 deficit because our revenues are climbing down. And then if you look at 2026, it's starting to get a little bit better in 2027, it starts to turn to like we're in the black again. But the one thing I will say is, you know, you need to moderate that with This anticipates no labor costs increases. And I don't think that's realistic. So this is just to give you a snapshot of why, you know, we need to plan long-term. We need to be aware of all the obligations we have and what the long-term outlook looks like. I kind of, I don't wanna walk through all those expenses and revenue assumptions, but they were done and that's part of that slide. And you can look at that at your leisure. If you have questions, you can ask me later, next slide. So how much debt does Sausselittle have besides its pension debt. And the answer is about 65, $64 million. And so the question is, okay, is that normal? Well, let's talk about that. Let's walk through this. WHEN YOU GET A lived in a local street with your police department and you had poor fire facilities and, As I talked to Chief Rohrabacher a couple of days ago, and he told me, 17 years in trailers was a story It was obvious you had to do something, and so you did. |
| 02:37:36.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:37:40.66 | Chris Zapata | The voters here in South Florida passed measure S. And they got $15 million of money And they're, you know, got great facilities. The police station is wonderful. The fire facility is wonderful. They're best in class for a small city. So kudos to you all for doing that. The flip side of that is we got to pay that. We got to pay that $15 million note. And the way that note is structured is it's bifurcated into two different types of bonds. Let me do the next one. Let me do the next one. Next one. So if you look at the green light, the green arrow, you can see that's one of the bonds and you can see what our payment is in this fiscal year. And you know, it's serious money that we're paying this fiscal year. and you will continue to pay that until you spend about $38 million. That's the price tag on that borrow. you borrowed $15 million, but you're gonna pay back $38 million over time. And the kicker is, is that once you get into the next series of bonds, those payments jump up to over a million bucks a year and even get as high as 2 million. And so when you add those two columns, one series and the other series, you get the $38 million I'm talking about. And so that's an obligation that you have to consider because that's part of your budgeting. Every year, you're gonna have to budget that money. With parks, you made a community decision to upgrade your city parks. Kudos to you for that. You did it through certificates of participation. And so you borrowed about $7 million and you're gonna pay back about $9 million. and the payments every year are pretty constant. They're between six and $700,000 a year, and they expire in 2030. So the net effect is you got public safety facilities and you got park system improvements that are major and probably long overdue in this community, but you're paying for them and you will pay for them for a bit of time. |
| 02:39:55.12 | Chris Zapata | I really wanna say this, Sausalito is amazing in how you have community groups like Sausalito Beautiful that help and you have special campaigns to raise funds as you did with Southview Park, facilities where people give to their libraries, give to their parks here. Community giving is really, really impressive in Sausalito. So that government, source of funding which comes from you all and other revenues is really been supplemented in a meaningful way by people in this community. And that's a tribute to those that really care about Sausalito. But again, I go back to the debt schedule and when you pay that off, that shouldn't be a secret. But again, it impacts future year's budgets. |
| 02:40:43.60 | Chris Zapata | So let's get to measure O, which I think really impacts future years budgets because Um... It's about to expire. And so when you put that on the ballot in 2014, and you had an approval of about 61%, you generate between 1.2 and one and a half million dollars a year. So for 10 years, that was probably a $15 million Revenue add on to the city. And so if you lose that in 2024, 2025, then you're losing about a million and a half dollars in your general fund. And that's part of your sales tax mix. And so that's a significant portion And one of the things that I'm really proud of this city council is is, They did a redo on why we need Measure O in this year's budget And we had money in our savings account. So they took that money at $1.2 million on March the 8th. and restored that funding for this fiscal year. So we never had a gap. We've never not used Measure O in a way to spend money in ways that we think makes sense for this community. And the direction from the city council was to take that $1.2 million and apply it to roads. and things that are transportation related, administration and grant securement. So that $1.2 million is part of that earlier gap that I told you when we had a $23 million expense side 1.2 million of that is this measure O transfer. |
| 02:42:17.53 | Chris Zapata | So, you know, if you're in Sausalito in 2035 and hope all of us are, you'll see some things. And let me just say this, measure O expires. And that to me is really, really important to note. And I'll say it again at the end of this slide, but you pay off measure F. And so that money's freed up and back in the general fund. your pension costs will start to crest when You know, the classic folks are not part of the system. And that will help your budget. And measure S you'll pay off in 2041. And so that will free up you know? Two and a half, three and a half, 4 million, 6 million, $8 million a year that the city can use for what it needs to use it for. So all of these things though, will continue to stress our budgets, our general fund for the next 10 to 15 years. That's obvious when you start to see these schedules of payments and the years that they end in. I also wanna talk about Measure D. So when that decision was made, to consolidate into the Southern Marine Fire District you took 44%, 44.5%, 45%. of your property tax, which is stable, and you applied it to that service and you get a great service for that money, but you also made yourself more reliant on sales tax. Because in the past, when you had 100% property tax and 100% sales tax that you kept, you could count on property tax being pretty stable. Now, 65% of that is stable. And the other property tax portion is volatile. Sales tax is always volatile, and especially in tourism type cities. So what I need to say again is you lose measure O, It's going to set us back significantly in Sausalito. A lot of the things you want to do, can do, should do. won't get done and it will be because You know, you didn't have that one and a half million dollars in addition to that, you know, 19 million or so that you currently get. Next slide again. So, A couple of things that I want to put out there for the council's consideration and also the public is, you know, our pension obligations. You know, when Mr. Francis said we need to look at pension obligation bonds, he was right. I was wrong. I'm okay to admit that. And the reason he was right is because interest rates were at historically low rates. And they're climbing up so rapidly that maybe we've missed that window. but maybe not, we can maybe see some savings. And so city council a couple of months ago authorized the hiring of a financial and legal team to begin looking at, some debt instruments, including pension obligation bonds. And so we're gonna bring that forward pretty, pretty quickly and see if it makes sense to refinance those, some of that debt or all of that debt. We need to have a serious measure O discussion. Council member Cleveland Knowles mentioned it a couple of months ago or a meeting ago about, having a conversation about what we're gonna do about measure O and I couldn't agree more. And then to work on this year's budget and to build next year's budget, we really need to have a talk about our reserve funds. And so I'd like Chad has to pull up or reserve funds to kind of show the community. and the council. what we know, about these funds. and then talk about how we could potentially use these funds. So Chad, are you on? Yep. Yes, sir. Can you pull that slide up we talked about this morning? |
| 02:45:59.84 | Chad Hess | I think it's a good thing. |
| 02:46:00.11 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:46:00.35 | Chad Hess | Certainly can. Yep, if you've got your screen... Let me share mine. So Chris and I met this morning and discussed based on our mid-year projections. So this is the general fund that we're looking at here. We're projected the end fiscal year 22 with about 11.9 or 11.6 million. in total fund balance. So that's for the general fund and that includes our pension trust. assets. So that's our total projected ending fund balance. And then we're gonna restrict or designate several of these items. The first item that we're going to restrict is there's an inter-fund advance between the general fund and the MLK fund. That advance is being paid back. The payback has been accelerated this year. So that loan or that Interfund Advance will have a balance of about 650,000. Since those dollars aren't available to the general fund, we're going to back them out as a non-spendable fund balance. Next, we're gonna show a restriction for our pension trust funds. So this is the asset in the section 115 trust. Those assets are pledged only for pensions, so we cannot spend them on any and all So that will be a restriction of that original total fund balance. Next, it has been kind of city policy to restrict 5% of the general fund's operating expenditures. So we're excluding transfers in this. for budget stabilization. And then also 10% for emergency shortfall reserves. Um, So those are based upon fiscal year 22's expected expenditures or budget expenditures. So that shows a total designation of 6.7 million. And then we have an undesignated or unassigned fund balance of 49 or 4.9 million. Combined when we compare this unassigned, this is, let me switch to another slide real quick. just a slightly different view of the same graph. I'm not sure. THAT IS 22% OF fiscal year 22's budgeted expenditures. So when we combine the 22 and the 15% above, we've got about 37% of expenditures in kind of available fund balance, if you will, when we count those emergency. and budgetary reserves. So that's kind of a high level overview of our expected or projected fund balance. for the general fund. |
| 02:48:33.25 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. So, okay, I wanna conclude by saying, I thank you for your attention to this. Happy to hear questions or comments. Again, don't expect any action tonight. Just wanted to make sure that The council and the public had a good sense of what I'm seeing in Sausalito. And I think again, you know, haven't been here eight months. A lot of this is really, really important to me. It's important to our future. And it's certainly as important as we look at developing our budgets and our strategies going forward, because Without people and money, there's not a whole lot you can do, even if you have a good plan and a great vision. That concludes my report, Mayor and Council. |
| 02:49:15.19 | Mayor Kellman | Chris, I just want to thank you. That was great. Absolutely tremendous. I've lived here for 20 years and I don't think I have ever seen as thorough an articulation in layman's terms. of the course and direction A BIRTHDAY. you know, looking back somewhat, but also looking forward. So you should be extremely proud of that work. I know Chad, you were a huge help and Vivian and the finance department. So thank you all. But that was, that was truly outstanding. And I think my fellow council members would agree with me. Okay, so we did see this beforehand. We do have an opportunity to send questions in and we're not taking any action tonight. So I don't know if council members want to ask any clarification questions or wait until the 26th, But I'll give you guys the opportunity right now if you're interested. Thank you. |
| 02:50:10.64 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:50:10.92 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. |
| 02:50:10.98 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:50:10.99 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah. |
| 02:50:11.03 | Ian Blaustein | I just wanted to ask One question more, just so the public is aware, because we talked so much about pensions on this. Chris, could you just clarify for the public that we have a separate report on pensions and that's coming out as well? |
| 02:50:23.77 | Chris Zapata | And that's correct Vice Mayor Blaustein. The council authorized us to contract with Bartell and Associates, the gold standard of pension firm analysis firms. And part of their scope of work is to look at our existing pension scenario and what the pension obligation bond landscape is. And so we're scheduled for the 26th. We're trying to make that happen. It may slide to the first meeting in May, and that's not what we're trying to do, but it may happen that way. But yes, we do have that. on the front burner, Vice Mayor. |
| 02:50:55.71 | Ian Blaustein | Yeah, I don't have any questions on the presentation itself, except to say I second what the mayor said. This is just so vast and really appreciate the amount of time you and staff put into this and also want to acknowledge the work of past councils and past finance teams to get us to the place where we are now in terms of our forward thinking about section 115 trusts and pensions and all of the work that's been done there so thank you for Laying that out and thinking about not just this year, but the next five and 20 and even 30 years for Sausalito. |
| 02:51:26.10 | Mayor Kellman | Council Member Sobieski, any comments? |
| 02:51:28.50 | Council Member Sobieski | Yeah, I guess I would love this second what you said, Mayor, and what you said, Vice Mayor, in terms of commending Chris Zabonik. pulling this together again I'd like to curl a little bit because not only did we hire him of course but also I know this was something that we talked about over the intervening time and it's worth, given that there are plenty of challenges and places where we're going to try to squint and figure out the path forward through the uncertainty in the future. to acknowledge the great work that has been done. Chris, in particular, you summarized that on our slide where you talked about financial actions taken and you listed a variety of things that were done, including shortening the virtual gov contract, rebuilding the entire finance department reorganizing a bunch of positions that people may not even know the bottom line savings that have come from not filling some positions while still actually up leveling the work that's being done by those departments. uh, And so I want to highlight those again by saying it out loud, that those changes are really significant. And the community should know those things are being done. So talking about things from many years ago that may or may not have been uh, Who knows what was going on with it? You know, we're talking about what's going on now. And I think the progress is tremendous. You know, we're talking about a what I loved about your presentation |
| 02:52:55.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:52:56.33 | Council Member Sobieski | In engineering, you always want to look at what's the most important factor affecting anything, the biggest variables affecting stuff. And so, you can really make big mistakes by paying attention to trivia instead of the biggest affecting thing and you really highlight How much? the- The thing that's changed in Sausalito for over the past 20 years, the reason why with the same Thanks. the same basic infrastructure of the town, we go from surplus to deficit is the pensions. Just bottom line. That's the situation. And you can see that we're not getting relief anytime soon. And so we have to make adjustments in the face of that if we wanna continue to invest in the community like we used to do. So I love that you hired a property manager so that we don't leave money on the table. and manage our property better. I think the initiatives we're beginning to take to improve our parking could also literally gather millions of additional dollars. Um, do you know, definitely? And I hear you loud and clear that you are thinking we need to take a serious look at measure O. And I guess this is all being up to a question Is there a process for considering any other sorts of fees? I know you've talked about Measure L being special. because it's actually predominantly paid by um, people who aren't necessarily residents of Sausalito, that it's a that we as a community and social leader, They challenged a room. hilly town with a small population and our economies of scale are great. We have the advantages that a lot of people want to come here and spend money. And it would be great if we could figure out how to compensate for some of our challenges by taking advantage of some of our and if we're going to extend or enhance Measure O Are there any other kinds of things like measure that we should think about? What's the right way of considering that. Is there a study? Is there a working group? some kind of white boarding session we should do. where we consider how to respond to what you presented here today. |
| 02:54:59.84 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, council member Sobieski for that question. I think my approach has always been what are you spending that you don't have to spend? Where can you become more efficient? Where can technology be your friend and help you with things? Where can you control costs? And how do you do that in a way that values the employees and the programs and the services that you have in this community? So start with how you do that efficiently How do you collect, as you said, you know, money that you might be leaving on the table? And then, what do you look like at that point? And to me, you know, I haven't been in government as many years The T word has always been a bad word, a district tax, a property tax, a sales tax. but I think a lot of people forget that The burden of services is most heavy on local government And yet local government, as you can see, doesn't get all the revenue. And so to me, if you look at some of the things that I would You have a finance committee, you have a city council, But at some point, you can't do this all with cuts and grants. You're going to have to look at your savings account, which is what I'm recommending. And thank everybody in the past. Councils have done a wonderful job of saving money. You saw that number that Chad laid out. but you don't wanna spend all of that because that's not prudent either. So it's gotta be a combination of a lot of things and to have the revenue discussion I think it's time. If you don't, you'll get to 2025, you'll lose a million and a half dollars and things will get worse. And you see what your ongoing obligations are with some of these commitments you've made for public safety and parks and pensions. And so if you don't do something now, you probably will have a, what I call A survival mode, not a thriving mode. And so the real decision is yours in the community's. You can survive or you can thrive. And that's, you know, that's what I'm telling you. And if revenue is, you know, a part of that equation, and I believe it should be, then I think you can start with your finance committee with some idea generation and maybe some type of blue ribbon task force that can analyze this and tell me I'm wrong or tell you different ideas that are out there to kind of, you know, create, you know, more predictable and ongoing revenue streams for the city. Cause you know, staff won't have all the answers. And so, yeah, but just the idea that the city council is willing to start talking about this holistically and long-term is really important. And I'm glad to hear your enthusiasm for and now it's time to act on some of the steps you've taken, we've taken, and that we'll need to take in the future so that we can continue to do what government's supposed to do, provide for the people that live here, the businesses are here. the folks that invest in property here, all those things matter and that's what we do every day. but we need some help. And I think that it's not gonna all happen again with cuts or efficiency or technology, and it shouldn't all happen with your savings. And there's gotta be a revenue discussion going forward. |
| 02:58:13.18 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah. Agreed. Thank you. |
| 02:58:15.54 | Council Member Sobieski | Thanks, Chris. Thank you. And Mayor, I mean, you and I are the finance committee. the or do you want to like consider taking that charge up? |
| 02:58:25.83 | Mayor Kellman | I sure do. I'm glad you offered. I'd love to. Absolutely. So thank you for that idea, City Manager Zapata. The only thing I'll ask is that when you come back to us on the 26th, I want to have a little more insight on whether some of these bonds can be refinanced, whether they're callable. You know, we talked about that. I think your articulation of We paid nine million to borrow seven million. when put up against some of the other long-term expenses is really quite helpful to understand. And with the geo bonds, You know, we're making payments on the first tranche of the bonds, the Series A. why we deferred payment on the Series B for 20 years to 2026. And now it's on a 15 year amortization schedule. and the original I think it's 7.3 million has grown to 13. million and it'll be 17 before we start to pay it. and understanding that within the context of the long-term debt obligations seen up against the pensions, like you said it's a combination of factors so it's very helpful to try to understand so for the 26 if you unless you have it now, but if you could maybe look at the callable nature of some of this, that would be quite helpful. |
| 02:59:48.49 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, so I don't know if you want to respond. We haven't taken public comment yet. And let's see, I'll ask the city clerk if anyone has their handouts. |
| 02:59:59.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, I see no hands raised at the moment. No. |
| 03:00:05.06 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, great. Well, we have no action tonight other than to accept this report, which I think we all gladly do anything else from council members before we move on to the next item |
| 03:00:18.51 | Jacob | I can't see myself anymore. |
| 03:00:20.06 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, we can see you. Okay, well, with that said, a huge thank you again. And we will then move on now to communications. So this is item five. 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 does preclude us from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. If you would like to provide a public comment, please raise your hand in the zoom application and the city clerk will call on you. So with that said, this is items not on the agenda, public comment time. |
| 03:01:00.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam mayor, there are no hands raised. |
| 03:01:03.73 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment. Council member committee reports item number six. Any council member committee reports to share? |
| 03:01:18.43 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. We will open that up for public comment. I'm sorry, did you have a comment? |
| 03:01:24.05 | Chris Zapata | I thank you and the vice mayor, I thought you asked me to remind you about the the diversity, race and equity meeting we just had. |
| 03:01:35.61 | Mayor Kellman | Yes, thank you for that. Vice mayor, do you want to? Describe some of the efforts we have coming forward. Go ahead, Mayor. I'm happy for you to do it. Okay, well, great. Yeah, so we are putting together a calendar of events to honor this task force and to honor the diversity in our community and push forward with what we're calling a culture change around equity and inclusion and belonging. And so we are going to be scheduling trainings for city hall for city council and of course, opening up to members of the public who would like to join us to receive some training on DEIB. Diversity equity inclusion and belonging Right now Abbott Chambers, our director of communications is leading the charge in developing programming for Juneteenth. He has a very exciting project underway. a play, representation of play of Brown v Board of Education, which I hear is excellent and I'm very much looking forward to. But we're also looking for other opportunities. We're looking to do something around Cinco de Mayo. We're thinking about something for gay pride. We are open to ideas and suggestions, and then we want to try to make this as inclusive as possible. So for the members of the public, your contacts, on this topic or myself and the vice mayor, and please feel free to reach out and we welcome your input. Anything to add? right now? |
| 03:02:59.77 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. We're also undergoing a review of our procurement processes to see how we might do more to offer economic opportunity and priority to businesses in Marin City and also doing an assessment of how much of our city contracts are given to minority-owned businesses or women-owned businesses and how we might do a better job of that going forward as part of this work as well. So we'll be hearing about that in the coming months too. And I would encourage all members of the public who are interested in this issue to reach out to myself and the mayor. to be a part of the conversation. |
| 03:03:36.05 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah. said thank you for the reminder city manager So again, with that, I'm open for public comment. And this is public comment on council member committee reports. |
| 03:03:48.70 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, there are no hands raised for this particular item. |
| 03:03:52.97 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment. Okay, so item seven, city manager report, city council appointments and other council business. We will take public comment on this before we move forward to... item 17. |
| 03:04:11.99 | Walfred Solorzano | And Madam Mayor, I see no hands raised for item 7A. |
| 03:04:16.18 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, then I will hand it over to item 7B, the city manager report. |
| 03:04:25.15 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor and Council. A couple of things I wanna update the Council on. In your packet is a memo that I promised to write in October about our board and commission and committee and special task forces and what that looks like in Sausalito. If you recall on October 30th, we showed you information that showed there's significant obligation and responses that staff has, that council has in terms of, all of the committees, commissions, and task forces have been set up here. And as I do my recollection, it's over 30, 30 that are, you know, in various stages of activation. And, you know, there are five or six of them that are required that you have but you also have and a smorgasbord of other activities COMMITTEE'S AND COMMISSIONS really tap into the talent in Sausalito. But the one thing that I am really, really cognizant of you know. this staff has been downsized significantly. And as we look at the requirements to staff some of these, I ask that you consider staff's bandwidth. And so I heard recommendations from various council members, which I incorporated into my memo, which is attached. And essentially, you know, there have been some good suggestions made about frequency of meetings or consent collapsing of various committees and commissions. But, you know, I'll give you an example. No. Serge, you know, on, I think it was Monday, he had like three different meetings he had to, you know, organize, you know, help be a participant in, and it went into the night for him. And that's constant based on all of the things that we do. And that is very transparent, but it's very staff intensive. So that memo is essentially a cry for understanding that you all look at your staff and how much staff you do have and don't have and all the committees that you do have and all the good work that they do, but there are things that they do that become frustrating to folks when they feel like they're not being listened to because we're not getting to it. And that's not a function of wanting to, It's just a function of 24 hours in a day. So, so please take a look at that. That... memorandum again, give me your thoughts in terms of how you wanna approach this or not. If you wanna continue to do things where we've done things here, I think that's going to be, something that I'd like to prepare for and I'd like to make sure that the folks in the community understand when they feel like there's not a level of responsiveness. I think if you look at all the committees, commissions and boards, Council meetings included in the outside obligations. You can see that it's very difficult to get work done sometimes because you're always in a meeting. And so I hope that I made that pretty clear to each of you individually. I think the report lays it out kind of diplomatically, but essentially I'll cut to the chase and say, you know, there needs to be this consideration given to the staff that's here, that's staffing all of these different boards, commissions, and committees. And so maybe it is a collapsing of committees and commissions. Maybe it is less frequent meetings. And I understand the work that's done by some of these individual volunteers. And I think we counted 61 of them in October. is phenomenal. You know, I've seen some work that I would call 50 to $100,000 studies done by volunteers because that's the level of talent you have in Sausalito. but it goes into this fire hose into a garden hose scenario where you don't have enough folks to take that great work and transfer it into action or programming or for policy. That's what that report says. I'm happy to talk to anybody about that. Um, Speaking of Serge Avila, I'm really, really pleased to announce that Heidi Scoble and Serge Avila were the two people that I relied on when I came here in June of this past year. And Heidi, I've kind of used like a Swiss Army knife to go work in community development to help me on special projects. And in that role, Serge has stepped up from day one as the acting city clerk and essentially the person I go to on a continuous basis and have for the last eight months. And so we did an internal recruitment. Serge has been your acting city clerk for the last six or so months, and now he's your city clerk. And so I'd like to applaud him congratulate you on having such a talented individual in the organization. I think he will do good work here for a long, long time. Join me in that. Congratulations. I also want to ask Kevin McGowan We received some communications from residents about some buildup of fuel and shrubbery that was concerning. And so there was some attention paid to it. And I'd like Kevin to give the council and the community a little update on that cleanup work. |
| 03:09:56.87 | Chris Zapata | Kevin's still on. |
| 03:10:00.51 | Mayor Kellman | let me fill this space by just saying not only I'm a very talented city clerk in search but literally the calmest, nicest city clerk as well. So we're very fortunate to have that type of staff supporting our efforts and really being a team player. So Serge, thank you. Always with a smile, genuinely always with a smile. Thank you. |
| 03:10:23.50 | Chris Zapata | I see Kevin on, but I don't see him talking. |
| 03:10:24.61 | Mayor Kellman | I think They're just smiling. Do you wanna cover that? Did you see measures of thought out or? |
| 03:10:35.12 | Chris Zapata | but only to say that it was raised as a serious concern various folks in the neighborhood, in the community, and I know that Public Works had a project and actually got work done, and we can report with pictures and things on it at a later date. And I'm sure Director McGowan and his team will do that. But yeah, no, I just wanted to let folks know, because it was something that I thought was pretty concerning, given we're susceptible to certain things in Sausalito, and that one was something that was brought to our attention, and we dealt with it. |
| 03:11:10.44 | Mayor Kellman | Great, well, great work. And thank you for sharing that with us and letting everybody know. And just really appreciate the communication that I think we're enjoying. as a council. |
| 03:11:19.67 | Chris Zapata | And that concludes my reports, Mayor and Council. |
| 03:11:22.96 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. Any questions for city manager before we turn over to boards and commissions? Okay. Well, we do actually have some appointments this evening, pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee, as well as the sustainability commission. So item 7C will turn first to the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee. with Sanes except the resignation of liaison Sandra Caballero. and will approve the second term and make appointments to the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee. So I don't know if staff feels like we need a staff report, but we did. but I think that's a good question. GO AHEAD AND PERFORM OUR Chris, would you like us to just make a motion here? |
| 03:12:08.98 | Chris Zapata | I think that's for good, Mayor. |
| 03:12:11.46 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. Thank you. |
| 03:12:12.25 | Ian Blaustein | Yes, Vice Mayor. Can I make a motion to appoint Jake Beyer and Karin Wiener to the pedestrian bike advisory committee? |
| 03:12:22.19 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:12:22.21 | Ian Blaustein | Second. |
| 03:12:24.94 | Mayor Kellman | Great. And also may we make an amendment to accept the resignation and to extend the term? |
| 03:12:33.09 | Ian Blaustein | Don't move. |
| 03:12:34.34 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, city clerk, will you call the roll? |
| 03:12:37.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Sobieski? Yes. VICE MAYOR BLOVSTEIN? |
| 03:12:42.92 | Mayor Kellman | Yeah. |
| 03:12:44.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor, tell me. |
| 03:12:45.04 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. |
| 03:12:46.00 | Walfred Solorzano | Marshall passes. |
| 03:12:47.56 | Mayor Kellman | Great. Okay, then we will move on to the next, which is the sustainability commission. So we have to appoint two voting members, one alternate member, and if available, one 94965 liaison member. So we did interview three people today, which means we'll give two of them, the full-time role and one individual will be the alternate. So I will make the suggestion that Raza Jalali and Kimri Wiltshire assume the full-time roles and that Nick Stevenson be brought on as an alternate. So I will make that motion and do I have a second? |
| 03:13:31.82 | Council Member Sobieski | I'll second that. I'll second that. |
| 03:13:34.50 | Mayor Kellman | Okay, great. City Clerk, will you please call roll? |
| 03:13:38.23 | Walfred Solorzano | Council members of ESPN? Mayor Blomstein. |
| 03:13:42.72 | Mayor Kellman | Yes. |
| 03:13:44.34 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor Kelman. Yes. |
| 03:13:45.76 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Great, it passes 3-0. Okay, thank you. Well, welcome. Welcome to a volunteer life. And we look forward to hearing your thoughts. And I know everybody looks forward to having forums at these really wonderful committees. Okay, onto item 7D, future agenda items. Anybody have any future agenda items? I have two, yeah, Vice Mayor. |
| 03:14:10.48 | Ian Blaustein | Yeah, I wanted to note the passing of a very renowned and appreciated and neighbor and Sausalito artist Jenny Wasser, who worked on the mermaid sculpture, which many of us now see at the Sausalito gas station. And I would like to add the future agenda items considering moving the mermaid sculpture to somewhere in town so that we might honor Jenny's legacy and I would also ask that we could potentially adjourn tonight's meeting in her honor and I'd be happy to read something about her when we do that. |
| 03:14:43.07 | Mayor Kellman | Great. Thank you very much. And yes, certainly we'll hand over to you to adjourn, Her Honor. Councilmember Sobieski. |
| 03:14:49.80 | Council Member Sobieski | Yeah, thank you. |
| 03:14:49.85 | Mayor Kellman | Bye. |
| 03:14:51.10 | Council Member Sobieski | I would love to adjourn in her honor as well. uh, It'd be great to dust off Joel Hoffman's draft leaf blower ban if it's not being done yet and get it on an agenda. We already jumped through all the hoops on that. So let's get that done. I want to really emphasize what Chris Zapata just said in his report. I think it might, it certainly came as news to me about the impact that our organizational structure is having on our staff and that's a learning. for me and I think it can't be overlooked we've been talking a lot about the progress made here tonight and crowing about how we're doing things differently. It's really time where I think we really need to respond to Chris Zapatas thoughtful and extensive memo on the boards and commissions and I hope that it will be agendized urgently. And and that we if necessary can even include a closed session topic on a city manager review so that we can really talk about how that impacts his ability to succeed. So I think it's a critical subject and the owing to him to respond. by having it on an agenda. for June. That's all. |
| 03:16:05.11 | Mayor Kellman | I am happy to report that it's so urgent that they're both already on agendas. The floor ban, I believe is on April 26th. And then at April 30th, our special city council meeting on a Saturday, we will be digging in and really, working through this memo on boards and commissions. So thank you, thank you for that. It's good to hear your concerns on this. |
| 03:16:24.81 | Council Member Sobieski | just so my proposal is just to include a potential closed session item on that 30th then that's the day of it just because I think there's a component of this that obviously has to do with you know, the city manager will be functioning appropriately. |
| 03:16:40.72 | Mayor Kellman | OKAY, GREAT. THANK YOU FOR THAT. I have two that I wanna bring up. One is I had a very interesting conversation with the representative of the Rotary about the fishing pier I alluded to earlier. downtown and the opportunity to maybe turn this into South City Municipal Pier. And so I would welcome the opportunity to review that. There are plans already drawn up. It is as shovel ready, I think, as it could be. And we would need some guidance towards receiving funding and kind of moving forward with that. So that would be one of my suggestions and requests. And then the other one is one I mentioned earlier about reviewing the mobile app and how that might play into some of the work that EDEC is doing, some of what DPW is doing, Could that be a way to you know, both satisfy resident quality of life concerns as well as serve visitors to our town. So I'd like to look at both of those items. |
| 03:17:40.10 | Mayor Kellman | Okay. So item 7E, other reports of significance. I just want to share with you all that I think it was last Thursday, I was invited to do a tour of areas that flood in Southern Marin. Thank you. And present at the tour was Senator McGuire, Supervisor Roland Peters, representatives from her office, his office, as well as Marin City and Tam Valley. And we went and looked at the retention bond and basin over by the target. We had a pretty robust staff from Caltrans who articulated a couple of options for how they might address that. We talked about Marin City's ingress and egress and concerns around that when it floods. And then we went over to the Manzanita parking lot and we heard from Caltrans about some of the engineering studies they're doing. That area suffers both from sea level rise and from subsidence and you can actually see that in the park and ride that the supports of the are kind of eroding not the supports themselves but the area around them because of subsidence. And so I was able to have a good conversation with the senator about Sausalito and how we might want to play a role and some opportunities to work together with him and with the county. And so I just wanted to let everybody know that that this concern is being looked at and I'm sure if you've ever seen that area in a flood you're probably kind of relieved to hear that we're at least taking a look at it so just wanted to share that with you well Okay, well, with that said, 11 minutes early. I think we should adjourn. |
| 03:19:17.27 | Council Member Sobieski | I'm going to do it. |
| 03:19:17.66 | Mayor Kellman | I'm just... |
| 03:19:18.36 | Ian Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 03:19:18.38 | Mayor Kellman | Oh, pardon me, yes, thank you. |
| 03:19:19.17 | Ian Blaustein | you. THANK YOU. |
| 03:19:20.46 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. No. |
| 03:19:20.88 | Ian Blaustein | Yes, please. Vice Mayor, over to you. That's okay, no problem. |
| 03:19:21.54 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. Mayor. |
| 03:19:22.57 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:19:22.58 | Mayor Kellman | Thank you. PROBABLY. |
| 03:19:24.37 | Ian Blaustein | I wanted to take a moment to honor Jenny Wasser, who was a beloved neighbor for many of us, especially those in Hurricane Bulge who probably remember her as walking her little dogs along the boardwalk to the Cafe of Rome. or just frequently saying hi or engaging in conversation, But what she was often humble about was her great experience as an incredibly renowned and very talented sculptor. So I just wanted to read a little bit about her from her artist website to honor some of her work. Jenny Wasser was a longtime sauce leader, sculptor and painter, strongly influenced by her medical family. She has always drawn and sculpted anatomically from live models. She loved sculpting and painting people with character, quote, those with the sense of the deep experiences of life. She loves to project the mystery of life in the face and body and to reveal the deep emotions as well as the beauty and forms of the body itself. Jenny is well known for creating the local Sausalito, California landmarks the Saucelito mermaid. monument, which welcomes visitors to Sausalito. Photographs do not adequately convey the statue's magical monumentality. It is six feet by five feet by seven feet in bronze. With her head held high looking confidently upward, she is truly a liberated 21st century modern woman and mermaid sitting on a barnacled rock. I hope we can all remember her and honor her art and And I appreciate you allowing me to close Meaning and Honest. |
| 03:20:45.68 | Mayor Kellman | It was beautiful. Thank you so much. Any last comments? Okay, with that, I will recommend that we adjourn. Thank you everybody. And thank you, City Manager Zapata. Good night, everybody. |
| 03:20:59.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
Jacob — Against: Criticized continued remote meetings as undemocratic and tyrannical, urging full in-person participation and earlier public comment times. ▶ 📄