| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:05.82 | Mayor Blasdine | Yeah, we're going to start. |
| 00:00:13.35 | Unknown | Recording in progress. Yeah. |
| 00:00:23.07 | Walfred Solorzano | I'll call it at 6 p.m. if that's okay. you |
| 00:00:52.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:56.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Good evening Mayor Blasin and council members this regular meeting of March 7 2023 is being held in council chambers located at 420 little street. Staff and members of the public are also participating through Zoom. This meeting is being broadcast live. on the city's website and on cable TV channel 27. |
| 00:01:14.42 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you city clerk good evening i'm now calling this regular city council meeting march 7 to order at 6pm city clerk would you please call roll. |
| 00:01:22.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:01:24.19 | Mayor Blasdine | present. |
| 00:01:25.13 | Walfred Solorzano | Donaldson, remember Hoffman? |
| 00:01:26.65 | Mayor Blasdine | Here. |
| 00:01:27.11 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:01:27.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Kelman. He has not arrived yet. Vice Mayor Sobieski. here. And Mayor Blasdine. |
| 00:01:34.28 | Mayor Blasdine | here. So the first item on the agenda this evening is closed session 1b. Conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, government code section 549596, Sausalito Yacht Harbor versus City of Sausalito. conference with legal counsel real property negotiations pursuant to California government code section 5495 6.8 property MLK school site Conference with labor negotiators pursuant to section 54957.6. AGENT DESIGNATED WITH REPRESENTATIVES, SEIU Local 1021 and Associated Police Association conference with labor negotiator Government Code Section 54957.6. Negotiator, Denver Muchmore, unrepresented employee city manager. So at this time, I will take public comment on the closed session items. City Clerk, could you please inform the public of how they might make public comment at this time? |
| 00:02:21.71 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, video or audio public comment participation is limited to two minutes per speaker. If you're in person, please fill out the speaker slip and hand it to the city clerk. or raise your hand in the Zoom application and you'll be called upon when it is your time to speak. To raise your hand from a phone, press star nine. Each speaker will be notified when the time is elapsed. And right now I do not see any public comment. And for the record, we don't have any members of the public in the council chamber. |
| 00:02:49.74 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you, city clerk. I will close public comment at this time, and we will adjourn to closed session and return to regular session at 7 p.m. |
| 00:03:01.99 | Unknown | Recording in progress. |
| 00:03:10.89 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, welcome back we're returning from closed session to the regularly scheduled March 7 City Council meeting, and I would like to note that Council Member Kellman is present and entered the meeting at 615pm so we are all present this evening. Bye. Okay. There's a little bit of an echo. |
| 00:03:33.45 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, so the first item on the agenda this evening is the approval of the agenda. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda this evening? So moved. |
| 00:03:47.64 | Mayor Blasdine | City Clerk, would you please call vote? Did you just say all of it? time. Because we're all here. |
| 00:03:54.22 | Walfred Solorzano | Bye. |
| 00:03:54.24 | Mayor Blasdine | Oh. |
| 00:03:54.44 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:03:54.46 | Mayor Blasdine | to. |
| 00:03:54.73 | Walfred Solorzano | That's it. |
| 00:03:55.10 | Walfred Solorzano | That's true, yeah. |
| 00:03:55.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:03:56.03 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 00:03:56.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:03:56.06 | Mayor Blasdine | Oh. |
| 00:03:56.48 | Walfred Solorzano | You know... |
| 00:03:57.14 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. This is the first time we're all in person. So this is a very thrilling moment for this council. It's been a while. So welcome back, everybody. Great to have you here. Okay, so we can just all in favor say aye. Aye. Fantastic. So moved. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is the mayor's announcements. And I have a couple of announcements this evening. First, Sergio Rudin will not be with us as city attorney this evening, but we do have Eli Flushman, acting city attorney for Burke Williams this evening. He has experience with the city of Vallejo, the city of Redwood City, the city of Berkeley, and the League of California Cities. So welcome, Eli. Thank you for stepping in in a pinch for us. He's not physically here if you're in the room looking for him. He's joining us on Zoom, but I'm sure you'll get to hear from him at some point this evening. The next announcement is that we are limiting public comment to two minutes. In looking at other communities in Marin, we've noticed that the public comment period is two minutes rather than three. So in order to be more efficient in our agendas, the public comment period will be two minutes. But we encourage you, if you have additional comments, to continue to send letters and correspondence as well. So with that, we do have a special presentation this evening. We are hearing from MCE, and I believe we have Sebastian here from MCE. Welcome. Hi, thanks for being with us. |
| 00:05:16.29 | Unknown | as a theme for City College. We're getting back to the meeting for Celeste, so right behind the assignment around that. |
| 00:05:35.10 | Unknown | I'm sorry, it's hard to hear on the Zoom. I think the microphone might be off or you might have to move a little closer. |
| 00:05:46.75 | Mayor Blasdine | The mic might not be on yet. |
| 00:05:52.42 | Sebastian | Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Perfect. Thank you. Just as a quick refresher, MCE is a community choice aggregation program. The city of Sausalito has been a member of our joint powers authority since 2010. And the intent of the presentation tonight is really just a brief overview of who we are as an agency and just highlighting different programs that are available to you all as the city of Sausalito. So with that, I think we can dive in. |
| 00:06:21.85 | Sebastian | Next slide, please. Thank you. So the reason that we do the work that we do at MCE is because we recognize that climate change is the biggest threat facing us today. From an increase in the number of extreme weather events, heat waves, sea level rise, you name it, we're seeing the impacts of climate change in real time in our communities. Next slide. And confronting the climate crisis is really at the core of the work that we do at MCE. Our mission is to eliminate fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions, produce renewable energy, and create equitable community benefits. Next slide, please. And we enable 37 jurisdictions in four counties across the Bay Area to purchase clean, renewable energy on behalf of their communities. And as you know, all electric customers' bills include a generation and a delivery component. MCE takes over the generation component of customers' bills, providing more renewable energy resources and really giving customers a choice over where their energy comes from. Next slide, please. So really quick background on community choice aggregation. This is a program that was enabled by Assembly Bill 117 in 2002. And it was really passed to enable cities and counties to aggregate the electric load of their customers and give customers a choice of where their energy is coming from. So as you can see here in California, there are 24 active CCAs throughout the state from Humboldt to San Diego County. Next slide. We were the first CCA in the state of California here in Marin. We started in 2010, serving at that time about 7,000 customers. And we've grown pretty exponentially since then. We now serve about 580,000 customer accounts across four different counties, which equates to 1.5 million customers. So really thrilled to have started here in Marin and seeing how this movement has expanded across the state of California. Next slide, please. So one thing that all community choice aggregation programs have in common is our governance structure. We are required to report to the same state agencies as PG&E, but the added benefit of MCE is that we have a locally controlled board of elected officials who make decisions about rates, policy, customer programs to best serve our community. So here's just a quick snapshot of our board. And do you want to call out that Councilmember Kelman serves on our board of directors as well. So thank you for your leadership there. Next slide, please. And just to call out the clean energy leadership that MCE provides to our communities, our standard service for new accounts is 100% renewable compared to 49% to the traditional service. Our light green service option has consisted of about 60% renewable energy since 2017, meeting state goals 13 years ahead of schedule. And our power portfolio was expected to be 95% greenhouse gas free this year. Next slide, please. And just a quick breakdown of where the power is actually coming from. As you can see, a majority is solar and wind, depending on the customer choice that Folks will enroll in. You will see here that in the middle, our light green service option does have a good amount of large hydroelectric, which is Carbon. It doesn't emit any carbon, but it's not considered renewable by the state of California. So that's why that's not counted in the renewable portion. Next slide. And I know that this is a topic that your sustainability commission here in Sausalito has talked quite a bit about, but creating a clean and reliable grid. As we continue to plan for increased electrical load across our service area, one of the things that MCE is doing is investing really heavily in battery storage. all new Solar projects within our service area are required to have a battery storage component. And we have contracted about 325 megawatts of energy storage across the state of California. So really helping to meet that demand when customers need it most. And last but not least, one innovative program that we're working on right now in the city of Richmond is our virtual power plant, which is set to launch in 2025. So just to show kind of where the energy industry is moving, typically you would have a traditional power plant, you know, a solar facility, a wind facility, a geothermal facility, whatever it is. The thought with the virtual power plant is that we're actually interconnecting a series of smart homes with one another that have things like batteries, they have things like smart thermostats so that we can provide customer savings to those homes, but also use that energy in real time when it's needed to the grid. Really always just looking for innovative new technologies to work with. Next slide, please. And one thing that I want to highlight tonight is MCE in the city of Sausalito and just some of the customer programs and offerings that we offer to your residents. Next slide. So just some quick highlights about the city of Sausalito. Roughly 86%, 85% of your customers are enrolled in MCE, which is great. your city has reduced over 9,000 metric tons of carbon simply by having MCE as its generation provider. And just for scale here, when we talk about that number, it ends up being the equivalent of taking about 2,000 cars, gas powered cars off the roads for an entire year. So a really laudable stat that is great for the city. All of your municipal facilities, including this building, have opted up to our Deep Green program, which is 100% renewable. So great to know where that energy is coming from. And I do have to give a shout out to your public works department. They have really been... ahead of the curve, I think in the past year with submitting EV rebate reservations. So to date in a number of your public lots, Staff have submitted 14 different rebate reservations for new EV charging. And then I also wanted to give a shout out to some of the the school district folks that are in the audience tonight, we are partnering with Bayside MLK to do a carport and battery storage project at that facility to really provide critical resiliency needs to the school in the event of power outages. Next slide. This is just a suite of the different programs that are offered to our member communities. So again, the city of Sausalito is a member of our joint powers authority and really the intent of the presentation tonight is to let you all know and to let staff know about the number of different resources that are available to you in your community. Um, Yeah, next slide, please. And one of the programs that I've talked a little bit tonight is electric vehicle charging. This is actually a new reference point that the California Energy Commission has put out just detailing where electric vehicles charging stations are located throughout the four counties that we serve. Next slide, please. And there's about 3,200 EV chargers throughout our four counties and MCEs accounted for direct support for about 1,100 of those. So when you hear me talking about rebate reservations that staff have submitted, it's this program here. So the city of Sausalito is eligible for $3,500 in rebates for each charging port that they want to install. That includes technical assistance as well, which the city has taken advantage of and participated in. So if there's an interest in installing more EV charging and identifying more sites, this is something that's always available to you all. Next slide. And I did wanna highlight our green workforce pathways program. We know that greening our economy and providing access to workforce development is really core to our mission at MCE. We have two different programs, one of which is for contractors. And with that program, we match contractors with pre-qualified job seekers for 160 hours of no-cost project assistance and labor. And on the job seeker side of things, one thing that we do is pre-qualify workers by partnering with local workforce development programs and matching these folks to contractors that need staff. So we know as new energy efficiency measures are coming down the pipeline, there's going to need to be a workforce to meet that need. So we are aiming to do that with our Green Workforce Pathways Program. Next slide, please. And this is actually the last slide this evening, just to highlight some of the numbers that we've been able to accomplish over the past 13 years. Really, the power of MCE is that it's a model that works, you know, partnering with local government as a joint powers authority. We have eliminated 700,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. We've invested $214 million directly back into our communities through innovative programs. And we've supported over 2.5, 2.4 million labor hours buying and building cleaner energy throughout the state. Next slide. Again, this is just an opportunity to highlight MCE and to let you all know about some of the programs that are available to you as the city of Sausalito. Um, Thank you for your partnership and happy to answer any questions. |
| 00:15:58.16 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you so much, Sebastian. It's really exciting. that MCE was the first CCA in the state and that we're able to be such a leader in renewable and clean energy. So thank you for all of the fabulous work that you do at MCE. I have a couple of questions and then I'll open it up to other council members. So I personally subscribe to Deep Green at my home. And I was wondering if you could explain to folks how you can opt in to Deep Green versus Light Green and whether Light Green is just automatic on your utility bill. |
| 00:16:25.43 | Sebastian | Yeah, thank you for that question. And thank you for being a Deep Green customer. So for members of the council and the public, Deep Green is our 100% renewable service option. Folks can opt into that service at any time just by visiting our website. There's a pretty straightforward form that folks can follow. And with that, you're ensuring that 100% of the energy that you're purchasing is put onto the grid as clean, renewable power from 50% solar and wind. So in the city of Sausalito, there's about 6% of customers that are enrolled in Deep Green. Light green, our 60% renewable option is that standard service, but folks are always welcome and encouraged to opt up to deep green. So yeah, thank you. |
| 00:17:09.24 | Mayor Blasdine | Do you have any communities that have an opt out from deep green versus an opt in? |
| 00:17:13.59 | Sebastian | So I will say that our board of directors last August authorized a new policy at MCE that says any new account that's starting with MCE will automatically be enrolled with Deep Green, which is great. We don't have an opt-in-law. and automatic opt out into light green as you're putting it, but for new accounts, they're automatically enrolled in deep green. |
| 00:17:38.45 | Mayor Blasdine | Great, thanks for, and if a community that currently has automatic enrollment into light green wanted to shift into deep green. Is that something that MCU would help foster? |
| 00:17:46.90 | Sebastian | We could explore it, definitely. There's been a couple different communities that have done that throughout the Bay Area. I know Berkeley did something similar. So happy to explore that with the council and staff. |
| 00:17:55.71 | Mayor Blasdine | Great, thank you. Do we have any questions? Council member Cox? |
| 00:18:01.18 | Councilmember Cox | I'm going to show my lack of knowledge here. You said that you have more than 325 megawatts of battery storage under contract. What does that mean in practical terms, in terms of how many households and for how long you could back up our residents. |
| 00:18:21.33 | Sebastian | Yeah, great question. I think I... If you want a quick rule of thumb, a megawatt can power about 400 homes, right? And so these are When we're talking about batteries, a number that's only going to continue to grow throughout the state of California and with MCE specifically. So you can expect that number to go up in the years to come. But yeah, just as a quick rule of thumb, what I would use. |
| 00:18:49.26 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. power 400 homes for how long? |
| 00:18:51.80 | Sebastian | Um, well, not to get too in the weeds, but there's two different measurements, right? So the megawatt is one thing. The megawatt hour is what you would want to look for over the course of time. I'd have to look into that for you and follow up exactly like what that would look like, but happy to. |
| 00:19:06.59 | Councilmember Cox | On my RV, I'm constantly considering amp hours. So I understand the analogy. Definitely. So thank you. |
| 00:19:09.81 | Sebastian | They understand. |
| 00:19:14.03 | Kelman | Councilmember Kelman, you had a question. Yeah. Hi, Sebastian. Great to see you. Honored to have been on the board and worked with you for the last two and a half years. So questions around rebates. So I'm aware of the robust rebate program MCA has. We got a presentation at one of the Climate Action Committee meetings about different electrification efforts ongoing in Marin County. Can you speak to MCA's engagement with Marin County generally in sort of the new electr new electrification reach codes and then some of the rebate programs that they have? I know Bay REN and Electrify Marin have all sorts of rebates that are out there. Maybe just step everybody through that so they know where to go if they want to electrify aspects of their home. |
| 00:19:53.46 | Sebastian | Definitely. Yeah, I would say first to the reach code piece, we MCE staff served on a steering committee with the county. last year as the county was figuring out what that model ordinance would look like for new electric reach codes. So happy to support our region engagement there. In terms of the rebates, there is a thousand dollar rebate available through the county through their BayRen program, which is available only to MCE customers. So if folks want to install a new heat pump water heater, that's one of the ways that folks can engage. Um, Another thing that we're doing right now at MCE is developing a page on our website that shows not only the different MCE rebates, but the different |
| 00:20:34.47 | Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:20:35.97 | Sebastian | local government rebates from across our service area. So it'll be kind of a one stop shop where folks can go and reference that material. |
| 00:20:42.45 | Kelman | So let me ask this, what does our staff need to do to take advantage of the municipal electrification program for hot water heaters, which I believe is a partnership between PG and MCE to offer tricky, no cost heat pump water heater replacements for municipalities? We're eligible, right? Yes. And then how do we take advantage of those monies? |
| 00:20:56.75 | Sebastian | Yes. The best way to engage, I would say, is through the Marin Climate and Energy Partnership, which is a meeting of all of the different sustainability staffers throughout the county. There's a rep from each member community at that forum. So I would say that's the best way to engage as a next step. |
| 00:21:14.89 | Kelman | Okay, because we're one of the only, unfortunately, that haven't taken advantage of this money yet. And I'd love to find grants. Last thing is, do you maybe just want to talk a little bit about the MCF, the Marine Community Foundation grant $750,000 partnership with MCE to develop resilience hubs for our vulnerable communities? |
| 00:21:33.52 | Sebastian | Sure, yeah. So this was part of a program that MCE launched in 2020. About $6 million were set aside by our board of directors in addition to the grant that you referenced through the Marin Community Foundation. to install battery storage at critical facilities across our service area. Um, There's a number of different sites taking advantage of that program, one of which is Bayside MLK. So installing some backup battery storage there. There's a facility in West Marin that we're working with, and there's a couple other throughout our service area as well. We, that was a pilot program and we're expecting to relaunch it at a later point this year. So more details to come. |
| 00:22:18.03 | Mayor Blasdine | Any other questions from council members for Sebastian? Okay, I'm going to go ahead and open it up to public. Yes, Deborah. |
| 00:22:25.14 | Unknown | I just wanted to use this so you can stay there. There might be questions. |
| 00:22:31.55 | Deborah Muchmore | I just wanted to come up and say, thank the council because they've authorized a position for resiliency and sustainability. showing that resiliency matters and this is one area that that position will be engaging in and working in and she will be in person with us on the 28th of this month it's katie thoe garcia so thank you council |
| 00:22:54.77 | Mayor Blasdine | right now. We're excited to welcome Katie. So with no further questions from the council, Can we city clerk, can you remind members of the public how they can make comment at this time and I will open up the special presentation to public comment? |
| 00:23:08.12 | Walfred Solorzano | So members of the public that are in attendance, you can fill out a speaker form over by the television on the desk. And those that are watching through Zoom, you can use the raise hand function. Or if you're on the phone through Zoom, you can press star nine. And at this moment, we see no public comment. |
| 00:23:25.14 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:23:25.65 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, thank you very much. I'll go ahead and close public comment at this time. And just again, Thanks Sebastian and MCE for your pioneering efforts in clean energy and Marin County and beyond, and we really appreciate it. |
| 00:23:35.69 | Sebastian | Thank you. |
| 00:23:36.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:23:37.23 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay next item on the agenda is action minutes from the previous meeting and we have none to approve at this time, so I will move on to item three. Which is the consent calendar matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non controversial require no discussion are expected to have unanimous counsel support and may be enacted by the Council in one motion, there will be no separate discussion of consent calendar items, however. Before the Council votes on a motion to adopt the consent calendar items Council members city staff or members of the public may request that specific items be removed from the consent calendar for separate action. Items removed from the consent calendar will be discussed later on the agenda and public comment will be heard on any item that was removed from the consent calendar and consent calendar this evening we have item 3 a. Adopting a resolution requesting the Sausalito Marin City School District to include daylighting of Willow Creek at the Nevada Street Campus and Item 3B adopt resolution opposing initiative number 21-0042A1 the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act. Does the Council have any? Yes, Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:24:41.08 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:24:41.18 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 00:24:41.20 | Councilmember Cox | I would like to Sadly, to remove both of these from the consent. calendar. So for item three, A, I see that we have members of the Sausalito Marin City School District with us in person this evening. I'd like to give them an opportunity to speak to that item. Thank you. With respect to item 3B, we received correspondence from community members and heard at our last city council about the importance of this decision and I would just like the opportunity to briefly comment on the reason for my vote on that matter, which I can't do when it's on consent so please pardon. My request to remove both of these items from consent. |
| 00:25:22.66 | Mayor Blasdine | if the members of the council have any. and support. |
| 00:25:26.83 | Kelman | from a coxswain. |
| 00:25:30.14 | Mayor Blasdine | That's right. Okay, well then we'll go ahead and we'll start with item 3A. which is adopting a resolution requesting the Sausalito Marin City |
| 00:25:37.21 | Unknown | Bye. I'm sorry, I didn't hear. We should take a vote on whether or not to remove them from the consent calendar. And I might have missed that. |
| 00:25:46.52 | Councilmember Cox | We have a policy of removing at the request of any council member. |
| 00:25:50.52 | Unknown | Understood. |
| 00:25:50.56 | Councilmember Cox | Understood motion that |
| 00:25:51.03 | Vice Mayor | Happy to make you. Thank you. Consent is consent. If it's not consent, then it's off consent. |
| 00:25:59.52 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay. |
| 00:25:59.55 | Vice Mayor | Okay. Thank you. |
| 00:26:00.39 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, so with that we'll start with item three a which is adopting resolution requesting the sauce later in city school district to include daylighting of willow creek do we have staff prepared to present on this item, or will we just discuss amongst ourselves. Let's see if we have a question. |
| 00:26:14.21 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:26:14.25 | Mayor Blasdine | Well, I'm sure that we have public comment, but for the members of the public who are watching at home, does someone from staff want to give a brief overview of the topic? |
| 00:26:22.48 | Kelman | Thank you. Maybe Vice Maria would you like to? |
| 00:26:27.75 | Vice Mayor | I'm not staffed, so. |
| 00:26:28.96 | Kelman | It's okay. |
| 00:26:29.32 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Exactly. Janelle and I have worked on this. You heard from Dr. Garcia two weeks ago. And you heard the presentation from Friends of Willow Creek last meeting. This resolution is an outgrowth of both of those events. The measure P outlined the lighting of the creek as an intrinsic aspect of the design for the school campus. Dr. Garcia presented the plans that were outlined. We heard last time from Friends of Willow Creek outlining deficiencies in the collaboration around details of the design. This resolution calls on the our neighboring district to take another look at that project. In particular, we all know what happened here in Sausalito when we dug up a lot of soil in Dumphy Park. AND THE UNEXPECTED COST AND HUGE DELAY THAT ALMOST DESTROYED THE BUDGET ON THAT PROJECT. And so there's little echoes of that in the substantial earth moving that is planned in the Willow Creek current design. it's also notable that the The resolution doesn't say water runs downhill, but water does run downhill. And the current Creek proposal from the school district has the Creek routed in along topographic lines, parallel to those lines, not perpendicular to them. more like a canal than a creek. So these are all details that are certainly not to be resolved by us here. It's simply calling on the school district to work with PCI, an engineering firm that has expertise in this field that was actually partnering with the district in their application to the EPA for daylighting the creek. but was... not incorporated in the design process with the primary architects and we certainly defer to the process the detailed process but feel like the there there seems to be an evident deficiency and. in not having PCI at the table with the architects to make sure doubly sure that the best possible design that can be built within budget and that also fulfills the promise of measure P to Daylight the Creek is achieved. Obviously this district is a separate entity and they have control of that property, but it's in the middle of Sausalito and it is literally our namesake. Little Willows. this opportunity to do something remarkable with the lighting of this creek as part of a new school campus, could set a new tone for generations to come about environmental justice. and about forward-looking civic infrastructure planning. So. For lack of a stat report, those are my comments. |
| 00:29:14.91 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you very much, Vice Mayor. Yeah. |
| 00:29:17.04 | Kelman | You want to add to that, Councilman? I do. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'll just add, just in terms of ex-party communications, the Vice Mayor and I did meet with the Friends of Willow Creek We did meet with Dr. Atoko Garcia. CCD on communications with the trustees for the school district, and I just want to make sure everybody knew that. We also had the opportunity to meet with the Army Corps of Engineers on site to discuss some of the opportunities and the engineering potential funding for that. And then we received additional information about a $3 million grant that I believe the others are pursuing and looking around for related to infrastructure and climate change. So we're pursuing all of that in coordination and just trying to get as many facts as possible. |
| 00:30:05.52 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Okay. |
| 00:30:07.41 | Vice Mayor | I guess I would just add, sorry, but you know, just, circled back around, you know, the real thought only is that, THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS, BUT THE ENGINEERING FIRMS THAT THE DISTRICT EMPLOYED, THE SIMPLE ASKING THE RESOLUTION IS THE PCI well known to the district. Thank you. be incorporated and taking a hard look in sharing their expertise. on the daylighting options. and take a second look at the earth moving, the substantial earth moving, which has real risks to the stated goal that we all share to open a campus as quickly as possible. within the budget allowed. |
| 00:30:42.71 | Councilmember Cox | Can I ask a question? Sure. Is the participation of PCI voluntary or would they have to be compensated? |
| 00:30:52.32 | Vice Mayor | PCI is voluntary. They've already been, they're already engaged in this. They've been wanting to be at the table. Thanks. |
| 00:30:59.03 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, given that we have representatives from the school district with us this evening in the audience prepared to make public comment i'm going to go ahead and open it up to public comment, where we can hear from them. |
| 00:31:11.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, superintendent Itoko García. |
| 00:31:18.32 | Mayor Blasdine | Hi, Toga. |
| 00:31:19.01 | Itoko García | Good evening, everyone. Great to see you again. Thanks for the opportunity. to address you. Um, I'll keep it brief since we're down to two minutes. I think that there are a lot of... different pieces of information flying around on this issue. many of which are not quite accurate. And we've all been down this road in this community for years of not being aligned And being divisive. And when we do that, the most vulnerable members of our community suffer the most vulnerable aspects of our community suffer. whether that's the environment, or the children. The reality is that The campus on Nevada Street is in desperate need of a rebuild. When it rains, there's a creek that runs through the library. There's mold. There's mildew. There's a ton of reasons to rebuild this school, which is why we passed a school bond. It's critically important. We actually just closed our bond sale today. that all bond funds be expended within a three year period If they're not, they become non-tax-exempt bonds So, What I'd like to invite the council to consider is a joint study session. with the Sausalito Marin City School District Board. The Friends of the Creek. PCI. really whoever else we want to invite to inform us. so that we can all agree on what the facts are. of this case. and figure out how to work together in the best interest of the children of the environment. of the community. And so I'd like to invite you to consider tabling. this resolution until we can have a joint study session together. And if after you want to pass the resolution, it's obviously at your will. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to speak tonight. |
| 00:33:21.25 | Kelman | Thank you, Dr. Garcia. Can I ask a question, Dr. Curcio? |
| 00:33:23.92 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Dr. Garcia, can you... |
| 00:33:26.43 | Kelman | Sorry. |
| 00:33:26.64 | Mayor Blasdine | Is that a |
| 00:33:27.14 | Kelman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:33:27.21 | Mayor Blasdine | Yeah. |
| 00:33:27.63 | Kelman | Thank you. |
| 00:33:27.65 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 00:33:27.77 | Kelman | So quick question for you. Part of this is I think a response to the |
| 00:33:27.97 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 00:33:33.29 | Kelman | the language associated with the ballot measure that had an affirmative that the creek shall be daylighted as part of Measure P, which the voters passed. Can you, do you have any information on the allocation of funds from that ballot measure towards the daylighting? |
| 00:33:49.22 | Itoko García | Well, yes, and I think that's one of the facts that needs to be very closely examined. There's nothing in our bond resolution that says what you just stated. And so we want to be good partners with the city. We want to be good partners with the Friends of the Creek. And so I think we should all take a close look at what is legally required and what isn't. What is in our bond resolution is language around indoor and outdoor learning and environmental justice and climate justice. And we're really committed to those things and we want to partner with the city council and the Friends of the Creek to build really a world-class school and a daylighted creek. And I think if we can work together to do those things, anything is possible. When we're not working together, things get really hard. |
| 00:34:43.55 | Kelman | Sure, sorry, and just for clarity's sake, was pulling from the fact sheet that I got off the district's website. um, which I'm sure you're familiar with. |
| 00:34:52.53 | Itoko García | I am. The fact sheet and the resolution that the board passed, which is a legally binding document, |
| 00:34:52.60 | Kelman | Yeah. |
| 00:34:58.45 | Itoko García | are two separate things. |
| 00:35:00.31 | Kelman | Sure. Do you, I mean, since we have the benefit of your insight and sounds like you have all the facts at hand, do you want to articulate anything from your perspective about Uh, you know, Thank you. things we can do to enhance this process, opportunities that maybe we can revisit, anything that can help us inform the dialogue. |
| 00:35:20.36 | Itoko García | Yeah, I mean, that's why I'm inviting us to have a joint study session really is, you know, so we're not under a time pressure. We can get all the questions that the city council may want answered, all the questions that the Friends of the Creek may want answered, all the questions that my board may want answered in advance. And then all of our staffs can work together to bring in the right folks to answer those questions, whether that's our bond council or the city attorney or the PCI folks. There's a few other rules around governing school district contracts that don't just allow us to grant a contract to a firm without going through a process. It's just simply not legal. And I was really excited to hear Vice Mayor Sobieski's offering that PCI was going to work for free because I have no indication of that being the case. |
| 00:36:13.77 | Mayor Blasdine | Does anyone else have further questions for Dr. Garcia? |
| 00:36:15.81 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:36:16.53 | Mayor Blasdine | Absolutely. |
| 00:36:17.02 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Garcia. Thank you. Nice to see you, by the way. Likewise. But I do want to follow up on this creek issue because I did bring it up at the last meeting when we heard about this issue. And as Councilmember Kelman just referenced, you will agree that the fact sheet that was issued by The district clearly says, I'm reading from it right now, Measure P would help the district improve outdoor environmental education, period. For example, the Underground Creek at the Nevada Street campus would be daylighted. would be daylighted. would be daylighted to provide outdoor science education opportunities to students. |
| 00:36:53.20 | Itoko García | That is what our fact sheet says, yes. |
| 00:36:55.74 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:37:00.01 | Mayor Blasdine | Thanks, Dr. Garcia. I think we had some further public comment as well. Looks like we have a member, the president of the Southwood Marin City School District Board here. |
| 00:37:07.18 | Itoko García | Thank you, everyone. Good evening. |
| 00:37:07.89 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you very much, Dr. Garcia. |
| 00:37:11.46 | Bonnie Huff | Hi, I'm Bonnie Huff. I'm president of the Sausalito Marin City School District, and I'm a 17 year resident of Sausalito. And I do really want to encourage us to be in discussion and dialogue. The figure I heard this afternoon about the cost of the PCI was $200,000. So while I would be delighted, if that makes all the difference in the world to me, in terms of having continuing discussion and working through these issues, I think that it would be just incredibly valuable. We're also getting information about potential housing opportunities at that campus. And I know that's a tremendous issue for this board. And so it seems like it would be really valuable to have both of those discussions and really look at what does this project look like, right? Where will, you know, if we daylight the creek outside of the perimeter of the school? What would that look like? What would housing look like? How would this all fit together? Because I think the issue is not. I you know whether we're day lighting I think the issue is where it's it's going to be daylighted and and how are we going to get the money is Dr Garcia explained last time our circumstances the law. changed dramatically after the bond measure passed and our it has impacted many of our plans and that has made things extremely difficult. But I do want to invite you to consider again, with certainly with the uncertainty in my mind about the cost of this resolution that we that you postpone this decision and that we work together and really talk about it and kind of work through these issues and get the good guidance from all the professionals to think through how we can make this work. Thanks, Bonnie. Thank you. |
| 00:39:02.65 | Mayor Blasdine | I think that council member Kelman has a quick question for you, Bonnie, if you'd come back to the podium. Thank you so much. |
| 00:39:09.37 | Kelman | Yeah, forgive me. I just want to, I mean, we have you here. You took the time and I want to be really respectful of that. And so thank you for doing that. I want to make sure that we take make good use of the time. You mentioned housing. I was on the housing element advisory committee for Sausalito. We did not have feedback from the school district about housing units. Can you shed some light on what you're thinking regarding housing, how we might think about that tonight as we make our or have our conversation up here. Anything you could share about that would be helpful. |
| 00:39:39.96 | Bonnie Huff | May I defer to Dr. García? Sure, of course. |
| 00:39:41.11 | Kelman | Sure. Thank you. |
| 00:39:42.80 | Itoko García | Thank you. Yeah, my understanding that there's 40... units included in the housing element plan on the Nevada Street campus. Um, part of what we've been doing with the schematic design of that campus is making sure that we have space to develop housing. Um, we did put out an RFP, RFQ, uh, to develop housing. Unfortunately, we didn't get any respondents. I do believe, um, by the time that we can have a joint study session, if you all are interested in that, we will have a proposal from a developer to build workforce housing, um, on the part of the parcel that we currently don't plan to build any school buildings on. I believe we can actually probably exceed the 40 units that are in the housing element plan, which I hope would be beneficial to the city. And I really want to encourage us to look at least a conceptual design of the whole parcel that includes a creek, that includes housing, that includes a new school. The vision to have the creek run around the perimeter of the campus not only doubles the linear feet of Daylighted Creek, With the grading plan of the campus, I can assure you that there won't be any water running uphill And it would create a beautiful, natural creek park that would separate the school from the housing and be accessible to the entire community 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The reason that we haven't been presenting it that way thus far is currently we don't have the budget to do all of the housing and the school. And so we felt like it would be improper to represent to the community a whole vision that we can't afford to execute on. Um, and so, um, There's also some other sort of obscure rules around building schools in California. We have to go through the Department of State Architecture, as I think you do for the city government. But most folks in the public don't understand what a DSA review process is and the rigorousness of that process and what it requires. And we feel like we are much more likely to be able to deliver projects on time and on budget by submitting them to DSA as three separate projects instead of a singular package. And so that's. the why of our approach thus far, it's clear to me that it would be wonderful to get us all in the same room and at least have a conceptual design of the entire project. And I believe when we accomplish that, I think we all want the same thing. I think we're all working in the same direction. I don't think it's the what, it's the how that we need to work out. And so I really do hope the council will consider tabling this resolution and joining us in a joint study session so we can get all these things worked out. you know, maybe have a nice conceptual rendering at that meeting as well. |
| 00:42:45.37 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Appreciate it. I had a question, Dr. Garcia. I had the opportunity to speak to one of the SMCSD board members. And one question that came up, which I think hasn't been brought up here, but is very significant with regards to cost is just safety for children around an open creek. Could you maybe speak to that in terms of how you're looking at the design and how that might impact the cost? |
| 00:43:05.16 | Itoko García | Yeah, so that's a great question. And that's obviously a big concern of ours. And I think of a lot of the parents that have kids that are actually attending the school or will attend school. essentially the original path of Creek Daylighting that the Friends of the Creek spent so much time and so much money on, frankly, designing. didn't account for any new school construction. It was designed around the existing buildings And so while we designed our current design to accommodate for phase A, We didn't design it to accommodate for phase B. And phase B essentially... When we say running a creek through the middle of the campus, we're really talking about phase B. And the proposed phase B crake daylighting would actually separate the kindergarten wing and the kindergarten playground from the rest of the campus. And you'd have a water feature in the middle. Obviously, with small children that have yet to learn how to swim. Um, even inches of water can be really, really hazardous. And so that's one of the reasons why we are thinking about running the creek around the perimeter of the campus. That way, we can make sure that it's beautiful and it's accessible for student learning, but that we don't have to, you know, expand additional staff time on supervision or build a fence around a creek in the middle of a school. none of those outcomes I think really get to what we all want to see here, which is a really natural, accessible feature for, for kids, for the community, something they can learn from, something that honors the history of, of the city and the community. And, and so, you know, safe, safety is definitely a concern. You know, there are, there are daylighted creeks at other schools that, that also bisect the campus. One of the, unique features of daylighting this creek on this school campus is actually the elevation change. Most of the other schools that have creeks on or around them are very flat parcels, right? And so you're going to have |
| 00:45:26.03 | Unknown | Right? |
| 00:45:29.75 | Itoko García | running water, essentially 365 days a year, somewhere between two and four feet. Those of you out here in the world that have raised young children will know that many children are not taller than four feet until they're easily six or seven years old if they're of a more diminutive stature. Thank you. We want to make sure that we do something that is beautiful and is safe |
| 00:45:58.03 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Thanks for that. Okay, do we have any further public comment at this time? |
| 00:46:03.77 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. Oh, let me see. No. |
| 00:46:06.53 | Mayor Blasdine | I believe I saw Sybil, but to be a camera race. |
| 00:46:07.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, sorry. So, okay, yeah, this is right there. So, Boutlier? |
| 00:46:18.58 | Unknown | Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm always in favor of Daylighted Creeks and Plating Creeks, Around Creeks. Growing up, I love the natural element and I think it's important to allow it to be in the open air. However, I'd be very curious as to how daylighting the creek might affect the potential opportunity site at the corporation yard. which we've discussed many times in the housing element and to possibly have as an ideal site for senior housing. And I would just want that to be a consideration in any plans or designs that are created around this potential project. So thank you very much for the opportunity to mention that. Thank you. |
| 00:47:21.55 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 00:47:21.58 | Unknown | Thank you, Sybil. |
| 00:47:22.19 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Do we have any further public comment at this time? |
| 00:47:26.41 | Walfred Solorzano | We do not. |
| 00:47:27.37 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, so seeing none, I'll go ahead and close public comment and we'll bring it back up to the Council for consideration and discussion. I'm happy to get started if some someone else wants to go ahead and welcome that as well. |
| 00:47:40.12 | Jill Hoffman | I'll start. |
| 00:47:40.90 | Mayor Blasdine | . |
| 00:47:41.03 | Jill Hoffman | Absolutely, please. Well, I'm looking at the resolution right now. |
| 00:47:41.46 | Mayor Blasdine | Please. |
| 00:47:45.66 | Jill Hoffman | I'm reading through, is my microphone on? Okay, good. Thank you. Bye. This has been a problem. So I'm reading through the resolution right now, and it seems to me to be a recitation of facts. And then... then some flowery language about how much we like Creeks, and then an ask, right? So I don't, I mean... I don't see that, you know, that this puts us at odds with anybody or that it puts us on different sides of any sort of defense. I mean, the fact sheet for the Measure P clearly included the fact that there would be a creek. We have a recitation and understand that there may be a difference in the language and the bonds, which is interesting, but... I mean, you know, as I read through here, you know, I don't want, I'm not going to read the whole thing because we may read it in a minute. But it's mainly, like I said, it's just a, it's a recitation of facts. And then it's some, you know, like I said, flower language and then a couple of asks, you know, and that's it. So I don't, I don't see principally how this puts us at odds with the school district. I don't see, you know, so that's sort of my initial take on this. And, you know, it was on our consent calendar. I'm fine that we took it and now having a discussion about it, but I didn't see this as a particularly controversial thing. resolution. So that's my thought. |
| 00:49:11.57 | Vice Mayor | Yeah, just to be just let's indeed focus just on what the asks are, The city of Sausalito hereby asks the board of the SMCSD to direct their architect or alternate to take another look to take another look. at the design and honor the will of the voters for measure P, by making daylighting of Willow Creek a central feature. of the design of the new school. I can ask. Is that the word of SM? CSD ensure that the architect, PCI, is invited. to collaborate with the architect designated designing the school campus to help discover if there is a cheaper less risky. designed for building the school and daylighting the creek that involves less earth moving and retaining well construction. So those are asks, they seem modest. I would stand by those asks and at the same time, enthusiastically accept the invitation to participate in a future study session. with our colleagues. I would say yes and not either or. |
| 00:50:14.33 | Mayor Blasdine | Go ahead, Councilman. |
| 00:50:15.76 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. I completely endorse the latter, which is I would absolutely welcome the opportunity to have a study session that embodied both. examination of how best to address the creek as well as how to accommodate 40 units of housing on that site, which is very important for The residents. of Sausalito, as well as the impacts of both projects to the neighboring corporation yard, which we've identified as a possible housing opportunity site. Regarding the resolution, I would like to remove the language that says honor the will of the voters since the measure Since the language regarding Daylighting Willow Creek was not actually in the voter the language of Measure P. It was on the fact sheet. I'd like to just remove that dig about honoring the will of the voters and simply ask that the board take another look at the design by making to take a I'm not sure what that is. |
| 00:51:26.94 | Mayor Blasdine | And... |
| 00:51:26.99 | Councilmember Cox | Is that the point? |
| 00:51:27.03 | Mayor Blasdine | Is that the... |
| 00:51:27.50 | Unknown | Thank you. You know. |
| 00:51:27.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:51:27.97 | Mayor Blasdine | Just... |
| 00:51:28.32 | Unknown | you |
| 00:51:29.15 | Mayor Blasdine | That's your time. You won. |
| 00:51:29.22 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. Bye. |
| 00:51:30.97 | Mayor Blasdine | There you go. |
| 00:51:33.64 | Unknown | time guys. Thank you. |
| 00:51:34.65 | Mayor Blasdine | Is that? |
| 00:51:35.02 | Councilmember Cox | And then I'd like to clarify that the involvement of PCI would be at no cost to the district because I would be... |
| 00:51:35.45 | Mayor Blasdine | then- |
| 00:51:35.93 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:51:45.74 | Councilmember Cox | reluctant to urge them to spend $200,000 for that opinion from PCI. Thank you. |
| 00:51:59.21 | Kelman | I think the vice mayor and I have an indication that that would be a PCI, would be able to participate without cost. I'll also just clarify for the last question from Sybil. So if you go to the Friends of Willow Creek website, excellent website, you can actually see the many phasings of the project. And what that suggests is that you can address this particular section without any impact further down the runway. So just something to consider. But I'm echoing my colleagues. I wholeheartedly welcome, accept, vociferously and excitedly would like to participate in a study session. I don't think anything here is contrary to any of that. In fact, it says, number one, that we want to take another look at the design. And so that's what we're willing to do. I'm not a bond attorney. So this is not legal advice. But I do want to note that as my fellow Councilman Hoffman read out loud, that was a fact sheet that was circulated to voters as part of the ballot measure. And so I'm sure there are attorneys who have opinions on that. I'll just say, we, we also relied on that in understanding our, um, participation here. So thank you for pulling that back out. That's it. |
| 00:53:18.38 | Mayor Blasdine | Thanks Councilman Kellman. I just want to say I really appreciate the school district being here and engaging with us in a conversation Daylighting the Creek and understanding the challenges that you have in your role on the school board, President Hove. I know what that's like. We're also trying to balance the budget. There are a lot of questions of what that looks like and doing the right thing for all of your students as well and really trying to put the students first and We appreciate that you showed up tonight to really make that case. would absolutely wholeheartedly welcome a study session with all of the players or perhaps to make it more convenient with representatives at the Council have worked on daylighting Willow Creek so that it's easier to schedule within the confines of the Brown Act and we can have representatives from the school board and from the City Council and hopefully from PCI, I think what I'm hearing here is that a yes and from from pretty much everyone on the council but very much saying we respect the challenges of the school district and i would make a motion to pass the resolution with council member cox's amended language because we do want to be real allies and colleagues of the school district and demonstrate their you know, that we are supportive and we want to engage in that dialogue and the last thing we want is for this to come off as the opposite of that, and so I would make that motion and perhaps ask for a second. |
| 00:54:30.44 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. I will happily second that motion. |
| 00:54:33.05 | Vice Mayor | So just to be clear, we're removing, we're striking the language in the first resolve starting with the word and honor the will of the voters for measure P. making Oh, no, Measure P. So starting with Anne. Measure P. |
| 00:54:48.78 | Councilmember Cox | Measure P, buy. |
| 00:54:49.95 | Vice Mayor | honor, you know, leave the word by, because it, and by, yeah. Yeah, that's correct. So starting to go ahead and. honor the will of the voters for Measure P by And the strike. So just removing that one phrase. But we are leaving intact the whereas, which is just a statement of fact earlier in the resolution. Whereas the, Measure P. that explicitly stated that the underground at the Nevada Street campus would be daylighted. |
| 00:55:19.53 | Councilmember Cox | I would be happier if it said the measure P fact sheet. Thank you. |
| 00:55:22.90 | Mayor Blasdine | Me as well. Yeah. So the |
| 00:55:24.22 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. |
| 00:55:24.30 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:55:24.34 | Councilmember Cox | So, |
| 00:55:24.56 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:55:24.57 | Councilmember Cox | measure P factor. |
| 00:55:25.42 | Vice Mayor | So inserting in the whereas measure P fact sheet instead of measure P. |
| 00:55:30.09 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 00:55:30.13 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Vice Mayor. So those are the changes, and with those changes, |
| 00:55:33.97 | Mayor Blasdine | Great, so I think we have a motion and a second on the floor, so city clerk, If all in favor say, oh, say aye. Oh, aye. |
| 00:55:41.62 | Kelman | All right. |
| 00:55:43.20 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, sorry, President, I just missed you. Do you want to add something before we |
| 00:55:48.17 | Bonnie Huff | Thank you for also proposing indicating that it would not be at plus. Oh, on PCI. Yes, exactly. |
| 00:55:52.67 | Mayor Blasdine | And... |
| 00:55:52.69 | Unknown | Oh, on PCI. Yes, exactly. |
| 00:55:55.47 | Vice Mayor | Well, the whereas, we just took a vote, is we're a procedural question, but I guess we're following casual here. |
| 00:55:55.51 | Bonnie Huff | Thank you. |
| 00:55:55.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:03.00 | Vice Mayor | PCI is invited to collaborate. That's what I'm asking. |
| 00:56:05.73 | Unknown | He's invited, yeah. Right. |
| 00:56:07.24 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. I think that's fine. And you guys can not open the door when they ring the doorbell, I guess. |
| 00:56:07.71 | Unknown | I think that's fine. |
| 00:56:13.93 | Vice Mayor | It's just that they're invited to collaborate. It's the only ask. Do with it what you will. It's just, hey, you collaborated with them on the EPA grant. Why are they not in the room with the architect that designed the school? |
| 00:56:26.00 | Mayor Blasdine | Great. Well, thank you again for representatives of the school district for being here. And I would just invite the representatives who've been working with the Friends of Willow Creek and the school district to engage in that dialogue on behalf of the council so that we can move forward in an expeditious manner to get this completed. I see the city manager approaching the microphone. So by all means, Chris. I don't. |
| 00:56:41.90 | Chris Zapata | I don't do that unless it's important. I know. Speaking of ringing the doorbell, that sound you're hearing is the fire alarms being worked on. And they will be worked on, so it may happen throughout the night. So I apologize, but don't be alarmed. It's them working on it. Thank you. |
| 00:56:43.75 | Mayor Blasdine | I know. |
| 00:56:54.87 | Mayor Blasdine | It's a great first meeting back. That's wonderful news. Okay. Great. Thank you, City Manager Zapata. And we have a second item that was removed from consent. that we will now go to, which is item 3B, The resolution opposing initiative number 210042 A1. And I would invite Councilmember Kelman to speak to this as the Oh, or Councilmember Cox, just as the Vice President of the League of Cities, you were quite informed on this conversation, so I thought you might. Thank you. |
| 00:57:22.36 | Kelman | Oh, sure. Happy to. This was a measure brought to us by the Taxpayer Protection, under the Taxpayer Protection Government Accountability Act. It is being put on to the next ballot as an initiative, and it will have some significant restrictions around local taxes, how you might assess them, their duration, and the vote needed to pass additional taxation. This was discussed. I am one of the VPs for the Northern Division of the League of California Cities. We discussed this in one of our steering committee meetings. And the league had some concerns and shared that information with us, which is how this got onto this resolution. We were asked, I think the last time, at the last meeting to pull it off for a number of reasons. One of which was some questions around the consent calendar. As you know, we take things off consent. We talk about them. It's a public process, but there was a date that was incorrect. So we pulled it off and are revisiting it tonight. So I think that's just the high level. I'm trying not to editorialize, just give a quick staff report if you will. |
| 00:58:25.36 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you very much. Councilmember Cox, would you like to add? in. |
| 00:58:28.34 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah, if I might address why I asked to have it pulled from consent. I sit on... the city with the mayor on the city's |
| 00:58:38.92 | Mayor Blasdine | MCC MC. |
| 00:58:38.97 | Councilmember Cox | MCC, MCC, Legislative Committee. Legislative Committee, where this was discussed at length at our last meeting. And there is concern that... This not only affects taxes, but also fees charged by local governments for the use of municipal property. or for contract services. such as waste haulers, cable companies, utilities, every Future tax slash fee would require a two thirds vote rather than a majority vote, which is currently the law. And this bill would apply retroactively, which would mean that our previously enacted taxes and fees, including our measure L, which was just passed, could be in jeopardy. And the reasonableness standard imposed upon taxes and fees by this bill is not defined. And so it's ambiguous and could lead to expensive litigation for cities seeking simply to enforce their fees and taxes. And finally, it removes the process by which some cities now vet taxes. Thank you. potential. increases in sales and use taxes would eliminate non-binding measures, which would allow voters to weigh in. And so for these reasons, there's concern that I share by the MCC MC members and other the Association of Counties, the League of California Cities and various other groups concerned with protecting the ability of municipalities to raise monies through reasonable taxes and fees. Thank you. |
| 01:00:29.68 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you, Councilmember Cox. Vice Mayor, did you want to weigh in? |
| 01:00:31.72 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:00:32.12 | Vice Mayor | do you think we shouldn't pass it then? |
| 01:00:35.14 | Councilmember Cox | I believe we should pass the consent item, which is a, an opposition to this. Thank you. Build. |
| 01:00:44.02 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, is there any further comment from council members or should we open it up for public comment at this time. Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment. |
| 01:00:54.46 | Walfred Solorzano | WE HAVE NO PUBLIC COMMENT. |
| 01:00:56.68 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, I'll close public comment at this time and we can have council members weigh in. I think we've heard from Councilmember Kelman and Councilmember Cox. My perspective is given our serious structural deficit and the challenges with balancing the budget right now, it makes sense to do what we can to maintain local control to be able to control our sources of income and revenue in the best way possible. So I'm in favor of the resolution. |
| 01:01:21.84 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, are you making it? |
| 01:01:22.43 | Mayor Blasdine | Yeah, we'll make a motion. Yes, thank you, Council Member Hoffman. |
| 01:01:22.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:01:25.94 | Mayor Blasdine | Great, yeah, you make it and I'll second it. |
| 01:01:29.97 | Unknown | you |
| 01:01:32.57 | Unknown | I'm sorry, we can't hear you speaking. |
| 01:01:35.50 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, I make motion that we... I'm going to pass the consent item. make a motion to pass the consent item 3B. seconds. |
| 01:01:46.10 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, so there's a motion on the table and all in favor say aye. I'm going to go ahead and get a little bit. |
| 01:01:49.98 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:01:50.00 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:01:50.00 | Mayor Blasdine | Bye. |
| 01:01:50.03 | Unknown | Hi. |
| 01:01:50.81 | Unknown | . |
| 01:01:51.96 | Mayor Blasdine | Great. It's really fun to do the all in favor thing in person. I'm enjoying that. Fantastic. Okay, thanks. So now we will move on to item four, which is public hearing items. And there are none. So we'll move on to item five. business items and the first item this evening item five a which is going to be presented by our city manager authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement with the dowie and associates. For professional auditing services for fiscal year 2022 2023 and optional renewal for fiscal year 2023 2024 and 2024 2025 in an amount not to exceed hundred and $59,905. City Manager? |
| 01:02:30.53 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor and council members of the public. I'll be brief. First of all, I wanna begin by apologizing to Badawi and associates. They were on the agenda last meeting and stayed on till about 10 o'clock when we punted the item. So apologies to them. I want to give you some background. The city auditor for six years prior to last year has been Mays and Associates. Last year with all the changes in the finance department, we asked the city council to consider a one year extension of the Mays contract. You graciously agreed to that. So Mays has been our auditor for seven years. At that time, we promised to request proposals for auditing services the next year. We're honoring that. That's what you see in front of you tonight. Um, uh, Maze has done a fine job. Uh, they bid, uh, we received bids from two other, uh, uh, companies. So a total of three proposals were received. Um, Our finance director and myself, Vivian Chu, looked at them. We checked on some of the work they've done with cities around the Bay Area, including the city of Albany, where our finance director used to work, and satisfactory responses. The three bids that you have in your packet from Chavon and Associates, Mason Associates and Bedowin Associates are fairly different in respects of the hours they believe that it would take to do the audit ranging from 400 to 700 hours and then the pricing for uh the cost for principles ranging from 92 dollars to 126 141 dollars so uh we believe the most responsible bid uh is bedawi and associates would recommend that the city council authorize the city manager to Execute agreement with them for professional service for the 2022 2023 audit and then optional renewal for two more years. Again, trying to take and bring on these professional services. which are required. You know, every city has to have an audit and has to be an independent group. It takes time to get to know our systems. It takes time to get to know our staff. And so to do a one year deal always is a little dicey. So that's why these are typically structured with one year and plus two year additional options for renewal. So the total of a three year contract would not exceed $159,905. We recommend approval of that. Happy to take questions. |
| 01:04:56.15 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you very much city manager. Okay, I'll open it up to the Council for questions on this item. Yes, Councilmember Kellman. |
| 01:05:02.73 | Kelman | Thank you, city manager. I remember Councilman Hoffman and I talked about this when we were on finance. Um, And one of the topics that came up, and the reason for this was that the auditor had not been rotated in quite some time in best-in-counting practices, suggest that that is a practice too. follow. You've worked in other cities. What have you seen in terms of auditor rotation? |
| 01:05:23.30 | Chris Zapata | So if you have someone that's on a three-year auditing contract and you change them, |
| 01:05:23.49 | Kelman | in |
| 01:05:27.97 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. That's not common. and then they are becoming a little comfortable. And I always like to see changes and reviews of constant, contracts and consultants that are three years or four years or two years at periodic intervals. And so the best practice in my experience has been one year or one cycle, which is a three-year cycle. Thank you. A second cycle, which is we know each other, we do each other know each other well and know the systems well, but, to go three more years with the same firm is probably not advisable. So there's not been problems with Mays. They've been responsive and do their work. But I think just a new set of eyes, looking at our finances, looking at our systems, making sure we're doing things in a way that protects the public's interest, our fiduciary responsibilities as far as city finances, is really important to change from now on, now and again. So this is the right time to change it in my estimation. It would be a good question. public's interest, our fiduciary responsibilities, as far as city finances is really important to change from now, now, now and again. So this is the right time to change it in my estimation. It would have been last year, but given we had a new finance director, significant findings in the last audit that Mays uncovered. It felt right to keep with them and finish the audit that they'll complete this year in the coming month. So we're presenting that audit for the 20. 122, 22, 23, I think it's, let me get this right, this last fiscal year will be done by Mays, but this year will be done by the auditor we recommend if you select them tonight by vote, and that would be Badawi and Associates. |
| 01:07:01.48 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Do we have further questions for the city manager on this item, vice mayor? |
| 01:07:05.17 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:07:05.19 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Yeah, just City Manager Zapata, I probably should have brought this up when we were issuing the RFP itself, but in response to whoever we hire. a request. that they include in the report. A simple statement. that on the basis of their audit, they do or do not recommend some area for a forensic audit. That's been a distinction that members of the community uh, highlighted the difference between the different kinds of audits that exist. And something I noted in our previous audits is that we did not ask our auditors to actually opine and make an affirmative statement about whether they felt there was evidence that required a forensic audit or not. My understanding is they would do so if There was. and yet the language was never in the document. So would it be possible to include that just as a scope of work item? |
| 01:07:57.39 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:07:57.76 | Vice Mayor | you |
| 01:07:57.88 | Chris Zapata | Yes. |
| 01:07:57.94 | Vice Mayor | Yes. |
| 01:07:58.75 | Chris Zapata | I hear you, Vice Mayor Sobieski. A forensic audit may or may not be in the wheelhouse of Bedowery and Associates. We'd have to ask them. I think there's no harm in asking them. And if the council, in fact, feels that upon receipt of the audit that's complete, there's a need for a forensic audit, then that scope of work and whoever can do that is set up to do that. It may be the same auditor. It may be somebody with expertise in forensic auditing. Municipal auditing and forensic auditing sometimes are different things. And some firms have it within their expertise to do both. Some don't. And I have not asked that question, nor did our request for proposals reflect the need for a forensic audit. So I think the fair thing to do would be to adopt it tonight. Let us pose the question to them. that if there is something that they see that they find that they believe that bears are real looking into, that if they cannot do it, they would recommend that something happened or not. Thank you. |
| 01:08:57.38 | Mayor Blasdine | Sure. |
| 01:08:58.47 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. As a follow on to that city manager, is it your understanding that a financial audit is a, more extensive and more time consuming than an audit in the regular course. |
| 01:09:11.64 | Chris Zapata | A forensic audit more extensive can be. It depends on the scope. More time consuming. They would certainly add more time. The audit is time consuming in and of itself. You know, I think the finance director indicated to me she had 20 pages of responding to do within the next week. And there's lots of work that goes into and all the sampling they do. So the audit itself, which you would approve tonight, which Mays has conducted for you for the past seven years, is quite extensive. and adding more work to that audit. That's a question that I think it would be wise to see what you get in the ordinary audit by this independent third party professional accounting firm, and then see if you want to do more because you could say we have problems in one department, we have problems in one account, and we want a forensic audit in that account. If you want something much broader than that, that's a different question. And that's why I'm hesitant to tell you one is more than the other. |
| 01:10:08.37 | Councilmember Cox | So may I ask that in the event that we do ask for an opinion or seek, uh, a forensic audit on some issue that we obviously seek aid. proposal for the time and expense of that further work. |
| 01:10:28.21 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, we could do that at a later date, Councilmember Cox. Thank you. |
| 01:10:30.61 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:10:31.00 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:10:31.98 | Vice Mayor | Just to be clear again, city manager, right? my request for interest was, that We asked the auditors to do something that's a little practical in the mindset of who reads the audit, the citizens of the town. often, In almost every audit, there's discovery of weaknesses and processes. emissions of this or that. And when you read that as a lay person or even not as a lay person, just any time that can be disturbing. And the question then is, well, is there something more there that needs to be looked at? And that's what I felt has been missing in the previous audit reports is, an affirmative statement on the part of the auditor saying, And I think that this does not rise to the level a forensic audit, which is a particular... term of art, kind of work. And I was just wondering if we could ask them to make an opinion about the things that they find, which inevitably they'll find things, about the level of seriousness that they regard those findings to be and whether they require or direct us to further investigation, or if they're simply guideposts on having a running a tighter ship. |
| 01:11:35.56 | Chris Zapata | you So when auditors finish their work, they always have a series of findings and recommendations where they believe that systems could be improved or they give you a clean audit. And so typically they're built upon year by year. You improve, you improve, they test, they find, you improve, you improve. In 30 years as a city manager, there's never been a request for a forensic audit in any city I've been in that has been audited in a local government format. If there was something that serious and you wanted to do that, it would be a first in my experience. But I know that this community has bandied that term about. We need a forensic audit because our books are askew. Our books are not askew. Our systems are not askew. What has been askew has been the staffing and the lack of continuity in the staffing and the changes in staffing. And that's been one of the highlights. And so the auditor can note all that, but it's up to the city staff, the city manager, the city council to fix that. So if they find something that is egregious enough to say we need to do a deeper, deeper dive into it, then, you know, we would come to you and tell you we would need to do a deeper dive and maybe outside of their expertise. But as it stands right now, they do a pretty deep dive into our systems. And that's how they find what they find and write what they write and make the recommendations that we have to respond to. so that the public is confident that the funding that we receive and we expense and we spend is accurately accounted for. So I think if you look at the audit reports from the past few years and the findings in those reports, they're pretty pointed, you know, what you should do better Sausalito, what you should do better city finance department. And we every year try to address those findings and do better. But I am really... I'm hesitant to say a forensic audit is the panacea for what ails Sausalito. I don't think that's the panacea. I think stability in that department and record keeping that is enhanced by trained professional staff in concert with people that are not of the city, that are independent of the city that audit our numbers, our bank statements, our savings accounts, all those things are done in a way that I think is helped by stable staff, professional staff, which is what we've been having a challenge with. And that's what the auditors have been pointing to in the last two audits. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Great summary. |
| 01:14:00.64 | Jill Hoffman | Councilmember Hoffman, do you have a question? I do. I have a follow-up with regard to the forensic audit versus just the regular audit. And so I think what Councilmember, perhaps Vice Mayor, was getting to was that there have been questions in the past from the community about whether or not a forensic audit was warranted. A forensic audit is a term of art in the auditing world that indicates that there may be fraud involved in the audit. And the people that do the regular audit aren't necessarily trained to do an investigative type audit that's required for a forensic audit when you suspect there's been some sort of fraud or other criminal behavior with regards to the bookkeeping. So I think what Councilmember Sobieski is asking is as part of the review from our auditors, if we could have a representation in their findings. that there's no indication that a forensic audit is warranted. And so that would be their indication that in their professional expertise and review of our books, they didn't see anything irregular to the level of fraud or other criminal activity. And I think that the auditors will probably understand that ask because it's a term of art. And so I don't think it's unreasonable. And I think that it's something that they're probably an evaluation they're making anyway. And so I don't think it's unreasonable. And I think that it's something that they're probably an evaluation they're making anyway. And so if sort of maybe by definition, I mean, if they're seeing indications that they should be reporting back to the city manager, that, you know, there's some real irregularities that then the city manager would be required to inform us as a city council. But I think that might, you know, that might add a level of comfort from our community if we can have that statement. And if the, if it's, the auditors are fine with it, and they understand that it's a term of art and that they're willing to include it, I think we should ask that. And, you know, further discussion, I suppose, if there's a problem with it. But yeah, I doubt it. |
| 01:16:06.76 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, we can certainly pose the question and take this conversation to the selected audit firm and get their response. I don't see any problem with that. And I just want to make sure that People understand that audits occur and they look at all the things that we do. And if something rises to the level of concern, the auditor reports that. Management has to address that. So you're asking for insurance on top of insurance is what I'm hearing. And so we're happy to ask him that question. |
| 01:16:38.74 | Mayor Blasdine | So if I might just weigh in on page 23 of their technical proposal, they talk about their audit approach and they say it'll be conducted in accordance with the standards, the GAO, etc. But on the number five notably says other requirements as required. which feels acceptably vague in the sense that we might embrace that number five and suggest that they would lean into it a bit further to assess specifically. And I apologize to Badawi for staying on until 10 p.m. waiting for us last week. And I don't necessarily blame them for not being here this evening, given what happened last time. But is that perhaps you can ask them if that's a correct interpretation of of their proposal. And notably also in their proposal. They go deep into their technical approach, which I really appreciated. And they have a specific section on risk-based customized testing, and maybe we could |
| 01:17:29.85 | Unknown | you |
| 01:17:31.25 | Mayor Blasdine | Hone in on that with regards to looking at it from the perspective of how was our with and knowing that it is a term of art as Councilmember Hoffman mentioned, but I think it's in a way called for in the proposal itself. |
| 01:17:39.19 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:17:42.76 | Chris Zapata | I applaud your push to take this to the nth degree that is possible. If there is something that they find, we'll talk to them about that. The important thing is get them on board and see if their thoughts, and we're happy to bring them back at a future point where we can have this discussion again and you can get a professional response. from an auditor firm about what they believe that is and what it would take and how they go about their business. |
| 01:18:08.85 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, do we have any further questions from the council before we open it up to public comment here? Okay, seeing none, we're gonna go ahead and open this up for public comment. City Clerk. |
| 01:18:19.77 | Walfred Solorzano | And at this time, there is no public comment. |
| 01:18:22.74 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment and bring it back up to the Council for discussion who would like to get us started this evening. |
| 01:18:28.14 | Kelman | I'd like to make the motion, unless there is additional discussion, of course. |
| 01:18:31.23 | Mayor Blasdine | discussion, of course. |
| 01:18:32.97 | Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:18:33.03 | Jill Hoffman | and it's... |
| 01:18:33.20 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, great. Okay, so all in favor, say aye. Aye. Fantastic. Motion passes 5-0. So thank you very much for a very efficient presentation city manager. And we'll move on to item 5B, which is to authorize an agreement for planning and building services with four leaf for 588,000 from January 1st, 2023 through June 30th, 2023, and I believe we'll be hearing from both our city manager and our community development director and we have a representative with us from four leaf as well as that who's on zoom there. |
| 01:19:06.46 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:19:06.48 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 01:19:06.51 | Chris Zapata | Right. |
| 01:19:06.53 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, fantastic. |
| 01:19:07.61 | Chris Zapata | Correct, thank you, Mayor, members of the council, members of the public. We all have a three part approach and we also have Four Leaf available to answer questions. Let me begin by saying, I acknowledge that this is a big, big ask. I want to say that that's because there's big, big need in that area. And I want to say again, what I want you to take away from everything I'm going to tell you, is, you know, although this is a big ask, It's temporary. It's a temporary ask. It's not something that we see going on into the future. And we're going to show you the necessity of why we believe you should fund up to this amount. I want to give you a little backdrop. on the Community Development Department. and how things have evolved there so that we got to this point. I was hired about 21 months ago, And one of the things that was couched to me immediately from various places, including the city council, was there was a lot of backlog and a lot of system improvement needed in the Community Development Department. And as a result, I took a very keen interest in that to the point where I realized the work that needed to be done was quite a bit. There were things pending that were quite large. And so I took a person in our office, the assistant to the city manager, city clerk, Heidi Scoble, who had been the planning director in Ross and had planning experience in Truckee. And I assigned her to the, to assist the community development director to try to move things along in a way that I thought would move the needle while I worked on other things like the finance department. the Parks and Recreation Department, the homeless challenge, And so while that was going on, Flash forward to a couple of months later, the director of department who had been with the city 14 years, Lily Whelan, resigned to take a job in another city. So... I appointed Heidi Scoble as the acting Community Development Director, And she did a good job. trying to hold things together, prepare for things that were important, respond to some things that were happening in the community as well as the business community. Um, I asked her to take the job on a full-time basis She declined. So we did a recruitment. We went out and got a recruitment. We hired a gentleman named Jim Moore. After two months, Jim Moore resigned. So we're back to Heidi Scoble again. And so Heidi Scoble is the acting director She is, you know, doing what she can to hold things together. We had a principal planner out on leave. We had other vacancies. So offered her the permanent position again. She resigned, she took the job in San Anselmo to be the community development director in San Anselmo. So at that point, um, I reached out to our HR consultant, Debra, much more and asked her to give me some options on who could hold things together. in the face of the work that needed to be done, as well as the big initiatives like the housing element that was coming. or in play, and so she reached out to not one, not two, not three, but four retired community development directors who declined. And so Larkspur's acting community development director, Dan Hortort, was with FourLeaf. So given the idea that I couldn't bring anyone but a contract consultant, I brought in Dan Hortort. while we recruited for a full-time community development director. There was quite a bit of consternation about that because 4leaf was also contracted to do work for the city in terms of code enforcement, some building official functions. And so some of the ideas that we had a consultant directing work of the consulting firm, I get, I got. And I told people that this would be temporary. We needed to hire a permanent director. So flash forward to four months ago, we hired Brandon Phipps and Dan Hortort moved on. to another assignment and that directorship that was a function of the four leaf contract is now over. So that's kind of the history of how we got to Brandon Phipps. But I want to go back to the beginning. One of the things that Brandon came in and we spoke about was I told him I really needed him to focus on one thing first, and that's to rebuild permanent staff And the second thing is to work on the backlog. There's a backlog of projects and permits that's extensive that goes back to 2017. Four Leaf was assigned to do a lot of that work, so they jumped on that with Brandon. And then I said, okay, Brandon, that's one thing, but now in terms of getting positions and working with our team, that includes Deborah much more. I need you to work on the housing element. Okay. I need you to staff the planning commission. I need you to staff the historic preservation commission. I need you to serve as a zoning administrator. I need you to process administrative permits with our staff. I need you to look at this backlog and give me some movement on it. So he proceeded to do that and he'll speak to that, which is why I tell you there's been progress made and this is a big ass and I keep saying it's temporary, but necessary because some of these permits and applications involve your neighbors. involve businesses and, you know, to hold them in abeyance, to have them wait that long And to start all over again with the new Director. and a new consulting agency to do the work while we wait to hire full-time people is not fair to them, So it's important that we keep that in our minds that, you know, there is a community aspect to it and it's neighbors that are trying to improve their homes. It's people trying to develop property in Sausage, businesses looking for permits that are being moved forward but have been put in limbo. So I want to go back to the beginning. You know, the idea that we hire a community development director to lead that department. We added an economic development function to it. And we said rebuild a department and make sure that you do it in a way that gets us out of this commitment to consultants. Because I totally agree with people in the community. Consultants sometimes are necessary and there are reasons for that. I can go through them and I'd like to. but they're expensive at times. And because they're expensive, you start to weigh the cost benefit of a full-time employee versus a consultant or contracting. So some things that consultants help with is obviously they provide services and that's part of what the department should do. You know, some of these things that are complicated, like a state housing element requirement and mandate is far more technical than the staff we have so we need as a consultant for that. Some of the works in the permitting and application process, some of the things that are needed by the planning commission historic preservation Commission. all the things that are part of what is the backlog Sometimes you have consultants to deal with those spikes in work. And you have had serious spikes in work. And one thing that I've found and I've heard and it's anecdotally, is that some departments didn't do a whole lot during COVID. But planning and development departments saw increases in work because people are home now. And they're saying, I'll do this remodel, or I'll do this, I'll do that, and all of a sudden, There's work that's required by your planning and, community development department in those functions. And so I think that's the case in Sausalito. On top of that, Sausalito is a very complex little city. You not only have topography, You have history. You have natural features. that most cities or some cities don't have. You know, they're flat cities that don't have hills that you gotta figure out. You know, Newer cities that aren't. They are bunched together like Sausse. distance between developments. So you have neighbor-to-neighbor issues to deal with. You have people that want to make sure their views are protected, the history is protected, that, you know, properties don't slide downhill. So there's got to be, a lot of permitting review and so forth. So all that to say, Saucyutu is a complicated little place for a community and economic development department to navigate. So as part of the review that we do, and Deborah's gonna speak to this, We hire people. We always like to get the best person we can. and hiring people has been difficult in Sausalito in particular, the community and planning and economic development functions. We've made job offers, they've been declined. We've lost people. We've had people working from as far away as Sacramento. And so all these things lead to a situation where You know, we needed help to help our community, to help our businesses, to move the needle on some of this backlog, to deal with the housing element, to deal with some of the things that the planning commission saw as extremely important or the historic preservation commission saw as important. So all that to say, it's been very, very busy. Brandon. Um, after four months has made significant progress. But without people, that progress stops. And so some of the progress has been made with the help of our HR department and some of the positions we brought on board. So it's not all consultants as it was before. six months ago, eight months ago, it's actually gotten better. So I like Deborah much more to come up and talk about where we are staffing wise, what she's encountered with some of the positions we've tried to fill. I think, you know, from the director level, I talked about five different changes in the space of 20 months. I can tell you that the net result of Brandon coming to Sausalito is, you know, we're going to save about $50,000. between what we were paying for Leif and what we're paying him. That's a start. You know, we're hiring certain people as we speak. We have some part-time annuitants on board that were brought in to help move the needle on these things, but we still need Ford Leaf to finish what they started. And that's why I'm saying this is temporary. Maybe expensive, but necessary. Wanna come and talk about that Deborah? |
| 01:29:32.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:29:35.17 | Deborah Muchmore | Before I do, I first want to just make one little clarification, and that is that we didn't single source to Fourleaf by reaching out to Larkspur. We actually looked at several other M group, CS3, and they were engaged and unable to help us at that time. And Fourleaf was local and had someone here and ending a contract. And so that's how we got there. Um, But planning, ever since our longest term community development director, Lily Whalen has been a difficult animal to fill. Even that time we would put out planning recruitments for planners and we, they would fail and we'd have to reopen them two times, three times. And, and we were only getting assistance and not the, the higher level. And a lot of that has to do with things that we've talked about and we'll talk about in the, in the, budget hearings coming forward about, you know, where we're placed in the market. But recently, so we struggled with that. Brandon's been a breath of fresh air, and we really appreciate him being here. And he's really worked hard not only to meet the deadlines in the department, but also to help fill the position. So his flexibility to. We get applications in and the moment that the job closes, we have interviews scheduled within two or three days right now. He interviewed this afternoon before this meeting and actually we made, he interviewed, texted me, I called, we made an offer, verbal acceptance. So this is how we're doing hiring today. A little bit different than we did before. The other thing that's happened is the market has opened up a little bit and we have some, am I stealing your thunder? Sign up. We have some significant quality in the associate planner and the senior planner recruitments they both close tonight and we'll be already working to schedule those interviews either the end of this week or next week so I optimistically super optimistically because it has been difficult to keep people and I'll tell you that story in a moment or I try get them once they once we interview them and like them. Optimist. optimistically because it has been difficult to keep people. And I'll tell you that story in a moment, or get them once we interview them and like them. Optimistically, we could fill many of these positions within the next three to four weeks. However, one of the things that we run into, we had a permit tax. We really liked them. They'd been here before working as a temp. They applied. We interviewed them. We made an offer. And they're currently temping in a city that's closer to their home. in a city that pays more money because it's Palo Alto. And so that we actually made the offer a little bit better. And we still couldn't convince them to come over. So those are the types of things that we struggle with. But we're making progress. And I think it will be great. I'm going to turn it over to Brandon so that he can talk to you a little bit about what he's doing. |
| 01:32:55.02 | Brandon Phipps | Good evening, Mayor. Vice Mayor. members of city council, members of staff, and members of the public. And before I start, Yes. I want to say you guys look very good in city council chamber. Happy to be here with you this evening. And thanks to Chris and Deborah. for the helpful background you've provided on the site so far. So to complement what you have heard thus far, counsel, I'd like to touch on a few items as related to changes that have occurred in CDD since I began in October 2022, as well as summarize the department's ongoing recruitment for personnel. So regarding new CDD personnel. Um, since I began working in the department, changes have occurred in two primary buckets. One is related to new personnel. Then another bucket, which I'll touch on after this, related to increasing efficiencies within the department. the level of scrutiny of review. in connection with invoices that we receive and establishing core processes within the department. personnel on CDD. Since I began working first and foremost My hiring has represented progress forward, as mentioned, from the perspective of reducing reliance on third-party consultants, significant cost savings, as mentioned, and increasing institutional knowledge within the department. And I certainly look forward to sticking around if you'll have me. Additionally, we brought on two new part-time in-house planners. That's Kristen Teichy and Neil Toft, who are both retired annuitants from the city of Larkspur. Um, They have also... you know, increased efficiencies is related to permit review and processing for CDD. as well as contributed to additional reductions that are needed to rely on third-party consultants. So they've taken on some of the planning roles, tasks that were formerly farmed out to Fourleaf. Finally, and most recently, We recently welcomed our new code enforcement officer, that is Paul Van Hook, who is full-time in-house and, again, transitions us away from reliance on third-party consultants and builds our strong in-house staff foundations. So these new hires represent meaningful progress, not relying on third-party consultants, and helps us build that in-office, in-house culture that is both accountable and efficient. We'll continue to solicit these applications and interview qualified candidates in connection with open positions until staff members have been identified. um, With respect to changes apart from personnel since I started in the department, We've made a number of positive changes in CDD in general that I'd like to touch on so specifically we have made significant progress in the last few months in reducing our outstanding planning project permit list. And this is something that Chris touched on just a few moments ago. When I started with the department in October, we were facing a backlog of around 100 planning project permits, which certainly was a little bit intimidating to start until we really started chipping away at it with our new planning staff in conjunction with four leaf staff. So today that number has been reduced by 50% stands at right around 50. and that is the percentage reduction in a four-month period. So we see that as a significant win for CDD as well as indicative of the value that our four-leaf consultants provide to the department in helping us address our current planning needs. Similar project and case lists also exist within code enforcement and building. So I think that it's necessary to touch on that, which altogether adds up to over 150 active work items and projects that our staff are required to address. which can only be done with a full set of staffing, including four leaf staff for the positions that are that we are requesting this evening. And just to go through them, we have building official, PERMATECH Senior Planner. and building inspector as needed based on some anticipated medical leave. In addition to current planning requirements and workload CDD has also made progress on large scale future planning items, such as the housing element, which was successfully adopted, as we all know. Similarly, four leaf staff played a role in this process and assisted in preparing the element for final council adoption. Other changes that have occurred Relate to increasing the rigorousness of review of consultant contract. I feel that close oversight of these contracts and billings of individual workers is a necessary element of preserving accountability within the department, while ensuring that we're using our human capital in the most effective manner possible, because there's not a lot of surplus time to go around. And I'll continue to conduct detailed reviews of all these invoices as we receive them moving forward. Finally, we've made multiple changes to the core processes, which underlie many of the actions taken by departmental staff in planning and building. Um... For example, we have updated our file-saving protocols, our permit tracking protocols, permit intake, information routing, and have made a number of updates to our publicly available forms and informational documents online. So these changes would not have been possible without our contracted 4Leaf staff. Our colleagues at 4Leaf have assisted us in improving CDD's internal functioning and efficiencies, as well as assisted in ensuring that new processes and procedures are being implemented Bye, staff. Um... Regarding the department's ongoing recruitment for personnel, We currently have five open solicitations, and Deborah touched on this just a few moments ago. Assistant planner, associate planner, senior planner, community development technician. That's just a fancy way of saying permit tech. and building official. successful filling of each of these roles with full-time in-house staff will transition CDD away from four leaf as each of these roles are currently filled in whole or in part by a four leaf staff member and just to clarify that statement. the planning staff that we use from Forleaf to provide planning services, is augmented by additional in-house in-house planning staff. So that's an example of a position in part. Thank you. that is filled. So I can... confidently say that we've made good progress this far in connection with all five solicitations. Thank you, Deborah. We conducted interviews for Assistant Planner this afternoon, and we've already communicated regarding our preferred candidate, Deborah followed up with the verbal acceptance, and we will work together to close the loop on that. I will also be conducting interviews for the position of associate planner on Thursday of this week. And we are in the process of scheduling interviews for both the senior planner, in the community development technician roles following upcoming closure of our application acceptance window. And that is occurring this evening. So lots of progress being made. and Unlike some of the previous solicitations that we have undergone for planning positions, we have actually received some very qualified candidates. And I really look forward to digging into that further. The position of building official, you know, notably, maybe the most difficult to fill, I think, relatively, but we're actively working to fill that role as well. There's an open solicitation for that role online, and Deborah and myself are reviewing incoming applications as we receive them. So, But with all that said, The not to exceed amount, requested in connection with this item and the associated agreement is meant to be temporary, as Chris mentioned, as we continue to transition away from four leaf, we do not intend to bring this kind of agreement back to Council, certainly from a fiscal scope perspective. as we are optimistic that we'll make near-term progress with personnel hiring and continue to reduce our reliance on our third-party consultants. In the staff report, yeah, you may have noted we mentioned we anticipate having new hires in two months. I think based on the progress that we've made related to open solicitations, recently closed solicitations, we could see new staff in-house in as short as one month. And I look forward to sharing that progress with you as we make it. So with all that in mind, The amount that we're requesting this evening gives CDD enough of a buffer for us to continue receiving consulting services from Four Leaf, assuming a kind of worst case scenario. And that worst case scenario being that we don't make any additional hires in the department. Optimistically though, I'm hopeful that the reality will be very different from that worst case and that will not need even close to the amount requested in this agreement based on successful hiring of new personnel. But of course, there are a number of items outside of our control associated with hiring that require us to plan for contingencies. Thank you. And, um... You know what I am able to commit to today and what I'm certainly sure of is that I will continue to solicit for all open positions and CDD in collaboration with HR staff and Chris until permanent staff members have been identified and higher. So that's something I'm very happy to commit to this evening. Just to repeat the recommendation, My recommendation staff recommendation this evening is the city council authorized city management. City manager to execute an agreement with four leaf to continue provision of the services already in place to support the Community Development Department. in connection with building and planning services during active solicitation of full-time in-house, In office. stuff. thank you for your time this evening, for your consideration of this item, and I'm available to answer any questions from council. We also have Chris Zapata, Deborah Muchmore, and Craig Toll of Four Leaf in attendance to answer questions as needed. Thank you. |
| 01:42:35.12 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you very much director Phipps and thank you for all of the great work that you've done in a four month period, I think it should be noted that many of the issues with vacancies and CDD. Were a problem that you inherited in the role and are doing quite a bit of work as you've outlined this evening to start to tackle similarly I would give the same kudos to city manager Zapata for. his work in filling the, CDD position and bringing you on board so with that i'll just open it up to the city council, I know there are a lot of questions on this item and Councilmember Cox had her hand raised first. Thank you. |
| 01:43:08.03 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you, Mayor. Um, We received a significant amount of public comment on this last night and today. One area I was particularly interested in is the supervision of four leaf by you and your staff. I won. letter that we received is actually from a former council member who had a nightmare project next door where the contract staff, I can't confirm it was for leaf, but I assume it was for leaf. Yeah. granted a permit request that contained a falsified survey built a sidewalk and wall on property that failed to comply with setback requirements, drained effluent onto property, threatened to cut down their fence, built a structure without proper permits and still approved that after the fact or issued an after the fact permit approving the request. So that is certainly not how our planning commission would address that. Thank you. such a project. Certainly not how I, as a former planning commissioner, would have addressed such a project. And the only reason I can think that that was allowed to happen is that there wasn't supervision. of our contract planner. by our city staff who really, in my view, take seriously our residents' concerns and wanna make sure everything is investigated and resolved appropriately. So my long-winded way of asking you what safeguards, do you have in mind to supervise the work of four leaf if we approve this contract? |
| 01:45:02.99 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you, Council Member Cox. Very reasonable question to ask. And, you know, this is really the core of what we're working towards in the department is eliminating these kinds of errors through transitioning away from third-party consultants to in-house staff. And I think that part of the reason that errors like that occur is, well, first and foremost, because people are human and humans make errors, but that's not the most important point that I'd like to make. I think that much of this error or the error that you mentioned in particular has been caused by a lack of departmental leadership, for one, a lack of sufficient and appropriate review in connection with projects, permits as they move through the process, the approval review process. In addition to, likely and potentially some, you know, And I'll just say, frankly, some potential bad apples. I mean, with hiring for consultants... in addition to personnel outside of third party consultants. Sometimes you get Sometimes you don't. And this is something that I intend to work with Craig on in ensuring that the staff that we do have in-house from Fourleaf are of quality. And if they are not, you know, I'd like to have a discussion with Mr. Toll and request that we transition. from one personnel member from 4Leaf to another, who we feel is, able to provide the kind of quality of service that we expect in CDD. But as mentioned, you know, I do really... plan on and have already increased the rigorousness with which we review contracts hearing comments from members of the community and and Council similar to the one that you just made Council Member so again you know close oversight of these contracts. and billing of individual workers is really necessary as far as preserving accountability within the department while ensuring that we're using our human capital in the most efficient manner possible. I think we want to make sure that we're doing rigorous review, not only so we avoid error and so we are not. being billed for something inappropriately, but also because we don't have a whole, you know, we don't have a surplus of resources to go around. So the resources that we do have need to be extremely efficiently allocated. So those are promises that I'm able to make to council this evening. And again, that I intend to keep up. as we move through. Hopefully this agreement with four leaf and ultimately medium-term, away from Fort Lafayette. |
| 01:47:44.98 | Mayor Blasdine | Do you have further questions, Councilman McCaukstein? Other questions from the council? Councilman Hoffman. |
| 01:47:53.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Director Phipps, and well done on your... tremendous amount of work that you've done since you've gotten here. And I certainly appreciate all your hard work and then Debra much more work trying to get us plussed up in that department, because we know that that's been a stress point for everybody, frankly. So I have some specific questions and our city manager may need to weigh in on some of this too. But my first question is just to clarify, there was a lot of consternation about the amount of the contract. It was in the staff report and I also traded emails with our city manager today that the contract price is within the current projected mid-year budget. So and it's specifically encapsulated in CDD budget. So it's not like this is an it's it is a spend that was unanticipated, I suppose, but it's still from the same pot of money for the same department. So it doesn't affect our the status of the mid-year budget that we just heard or push us further into deficit. Do I have that right? |
| 01:48:55.84 | Brandon Phipps | That's correct. Councilmember Hoffman. Yeah. The presentations, the numbers that you heard from, um, City Manager Zapata at the recent City Council meeting regarding budget are consistent and unchanged based on this request today. My understanding is that Council made some very generous financial allocations to CDD to give us a buffer, utilize these funds to address some of the deficiencies within the department, and this is part of that bucket. So thank you for the approval. |
| 01:49:24.57 | Jill Hoffman | You're welcome. And so my next question then is, if we are able to plus our staff up, and it looks like you guys are doing a great job with that, do we have the flexibility to then either scale back or terminate the remainder of the contract? |
| 01:49:41.03 | Brandon Phipps | Yes. |
| 01:49:41.42 | Craig Toll | Thank you. |
| 01:49:42.04 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, excellent. And so you talked a little bit about your ability to monitor the performance of the four leaf contractors because I will say that I have had information from people who've worked with some of the four-leaf contract employees in the past and were concerned about the performance level. And so this is, again, a question that our city manager may have to answer. Either one is fine. Have we been successful in negotiating any offsets with regard to poor performance from four-leaf? from their last contract period. |
| 01:50:23.01 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you, Councilmember Hoffman. Since I have joined the department, I have not engaged in any activities like that. |
| 01:50:30.89 | Jill Hoffman | So then I guess my question is to city manager. based on information with regard to poor performance that I received from Four Leaf, have we been able to negotiate any offsets for their fees related to that? |
| 01:50:48.12 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. So there have been problems raised to me that involve personnel in Four Leaf that I've directly addressed with, at that time, the acting community development director, Dan Hortort. And one of the things that he suggested to me is that there are two sides to every story. And so when those problems came up They were not major problems. there were smaller problems. that to me didn't rise to the level of, we need some money back from you, Four Leaf. It's, you know, do better. Tell me what you're gonna do to fix this. One of the things that was discussed and was important to note, is that, you know, the amount that we paid the acting community development director Dan Hortert was I think 190 bucks an hour. My concern was the amount of meetings she was attending whether it was planning commission or otherwise in city council, and the work that needed to be done that he was going to create a big, big demand on our budget with that rate. So what he told me he would do, and he did, was he would never charge us more than eight hours a day, even if he worked 10, 11, 12. So that was one consideration that I received from Fort Lee, but that was the only one. |
| 01:52:05.39 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. based on that, then I would just invite people that have, have, uh, indicated to me, um, with regard to performance issues with Ford Leaf, if they could, um, forward to the city manager specific instances for his review, um, that he perhaps I, for whatever reason became aware of, um, but he hasn't been aware of, and certainly probably director Phipps since he got here. So, um, and I, I do see that Craig Toll's on the line. Craig is with Four Leaf, is that right? |
| 01:52:37.56 | Craig Toll | Correct. Correct. |
| 01:52:38.44 | Jill Hoffman | Correct. And Craig, what would be our process then if we had an issue with past performance of four-leaf what would the process then be to engage with you on an offset for, Thank you. whatever we felt was warranted. |
| 01:52:58.72 | Craig Toll | Well, we certainly have to have a meeting whatever the topic is and be able to sit down and discuss it and figure out what the financial impacts were to the city. But as you know, there are two sides to all stories. some facts on each individual circumstance. Do a deep dive on that anytime you'd like. I'm always available for meetings to meet with staff. |
| 01:53:19.71 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks, Craig, I appreciate that. |
| 01:53:21.30 | Brandon Phipps | And if I may, council member, just dovetail off of Mr. Toll's comments. I understand that there is language and I made sure that the language was included in the draft agreement that we provided in connection with the staff report, that there is space for that to occur fairly easily. In that language, I think we have one of our planning commissioners to thank for, which states any errors made by four leaf staff in completing planning and building related actions. will be free to correct. So in other words, any work that is meant to correct an error made will not be charged to the city. So that's an opening that we have perhaps, Craig, to start the discussion and some language that we have that allows us to do that. |
| 01:54:11.18 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks very much. I don't have any further questions. And at this point, based on the responses that I've gotten, I support the contract. Thank you. Thanks for all your hard work. |
| 01:54:22.10 | Mayor Blasdine | Do we have further questions from Council? Council member Kelman. |
| 01:54:26.27 | Kelman | Great. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon, for that. Thank you, city manager for the information. So one of the hardships I think of having new people come to CDD is a lack of knowledge of our zoning and our building. One of the complaints of following Council Member Hoffman's line of inquiry, one of the issues became up against in our prior contract with Porta Leap was around repeat work And I'm just wondering for that specific use case, how do you intend to bring for the more up to speed or is your feeling that, because some of the questions are why not look at other consultants, is it feeling that they actually are ready to start more quickly and therefore can get more accurate information out the door. What's your thought on that? |
| 01:55:13.03 | Brandon Phipps | Yeah, so thank you very much, Council Member Kelman for that question. One of the things that we've done to address that concern is having some of the in-house planning staff, who, by the way, are also both former City of Sausalito employees, work with our four-leaf planners to ensure that everybody's on the same page. You know, this is not a micromanaging process. This is a process of starting from the 10,000-foot level and making sure that we are on the same page, making sure that we are not putting our four leaf consultants in the wrong direction and spinning their wheels in an unreasonable way. And of course, an overly costly way. So that is a change that I want to make selfishly, because again, it also allows us to allocate staff most efficiently. We don't have time to, frankly, to have some of our consultants, you know, produce work product that isn't helpful to us. So we need to make sure that Any step that a consultant is going to take is going to be in the right direction. Um, The reality there is that it does take time and it takes my time to oversee those processes, but the importance of those processes is, invaluable to the department. So it's something that I'm that I'm willing to assist in coordinating |
| 01:56:31.88 | Kelman | Right. And let me follow up. So one thing that is not present in the agreement are milestones. And so I want to throw an idea out to you. Sorry, I didn't share it with you prior to the meeting, but it's not that controversial. So you gave us a stat that over the course of four months, we saw a 50 percent decline in the backlog. This... This agreement is for six months. Is it possible that within three months we would see a 25% decline in the backlog and include that as a milestone in the agreement? |
| 01:57:01.72 | Brandon Phipps | I would love to say yes, council member. And I love the optimism. I think that much of the progress that we made is related to that 50 outstanding planning project permit list was based on. |
| 01:57:03.57 | Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:57:04.45 | Craig Toll | Thank you. |
| 01:57:04.49 | Kelman | Yeah, it was good. |
| 01:57:19.56 | Unknown | Mmm. |
| 01:57:20.72 | Brandon Phipps | Some... sheer increase in organization within the department and an integration of core processes, core processes into the department, which allowed us to identify low hanging fruit and get the low hanging fruit off of our desk. So the 50 projects, some of them were a little bit naughtier than others, um, hairier, if you will. Um, but for the most part, I think that, you know, much of those reductions was again, low hanging fruit and us getting that off of our desk. Um, Some of the projects that remain on that list are extremely sticky and hairy and, you know, politically charged and are going to take more time and effort to... address. What I can commit to is that with additional staff, I have no question in my mind that we will contribute towards additional reduction to that outstanding project list, not only in planning, but building and code enforcement as well. Um, it's going to be difficult for me to back into an exact number. But as far as milestones are concerned, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not opposed to the idea. |
| 01:58:28.27 | Kelman | Okay, and so one more question. I don't know if this is for you, Brandon, or maybe Deborah. Somebody, one of the members of the public had asked that the impact of the 4Leaf Agreement on the city's budget anticipated to be $406,447. Did the math and it's had some questions around what 4Leaf might cost us versus if we had hired staff. And I'm sure you have that, your fingertips. |
| 01:58:56.08 | Unknown | Actually, we have it at Maria's fingertips or call for something. |
| 01:59:00.42 | Deborah Muchmore | Thank you. |
| 01:59:00.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:59:00.59 | Deborah Muchmore | Thank you. They're going to help us with a little chart. Great. So we did get that question early enough before the meeting. Thank you very much to be able to create a chart that does show at top step fully benefited the difference between the hourly rate that we're paying for leaf and the Sausalito employee cost for those positions. Um, over 12 months, if we stayed with four leaf versus filling our positions, it would cost us $400,000 more. Um, it's, uh, but, but in the short one to two months that we're going, or three, ideally, optimistically, I mean, if it's a full six months without filling, every time we fill a position, we're going to drop one of those off. So we won't see that cost in the long run, but it is more expensive. I think we can have Greg talk about what goes into that consultant's hourly rate and why it is higher. I... I do know that one of the differences we have is that we don't have loss of productivity due to holidays, vacations, things like that. When we're using a consultant, the hours we're paying or the actual hours work. Did you want to say anything? |
| 02:00:18.97 | Vice Mayor | Can I just ask you a question on that chart? Yes. Really glad you pulled that together. |
| 02:00:19.22 | Deborah Muchmore | Thank you. |
| 02:00:23.29 | Vice Mayor | the column C Sausalito employee, Is that the fully loaded cost? Yes. That's with the pension as well? Okay. |
| 02:00:27.17 | Deborah Muchmore | Yes. Yes. Yes. |
| 02:00:31.27 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:00:32.34 | Deborah Muchmore | So these are you. And that's next year's cost, not this year's. Anyway, I'm sorry. |
| 02:00:37.09 | Kelman | Which of these positions have you already interviewed for? |
| 02:00:40.30 | Deborah Muchmore | We have interviewed for, actually, we are going to interview for the planner, which is... We're doing associate planner and senior planner, but we have one position, the senior planner that we're pulling from. So we'll have a planner position. We hope coming out of the interviews and we have we're closing on permit technician tonight. We're closing on senior planner tonight. We'll be scheduling those interviews next week. Thank you. |
| 02:01:11.55 | Kelman | So three of the five. |
| 02:01:12.68 | Deborah Muchmore | Yes, and we are engaging as actively as possible. I just had a conversation with the... A chief building official in another city, the other day i'm introducing him to brandon so who knows, we could do others. |
| 02:01:27.33 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Could you just one more, a couple more questions, Deborah, and also thank you so much. I realize I didn't thank you when I thanked Brandon and Chris and you're also doing great work to help us up the staffing. Sorry, city manager, |
| 02:01:42.67 | Deborah Muchmore | Yes. Oh, yes. Yes, we had interviews. Oh, he wanted to, I'm sorry. Do you want to ask your questions first or would you like me to share that? |
| 02:01:51.66 | Mayor Blasdine | So, |
| 02:01:51.83 | Deborah Muchmore | THE END OF |
| 02:01:51.97 | Mayor Blasdine | at. |
| 02:01:52.20 | Deborah Muchmore | Thank you. |
| 02:01:52.22 | Mayor Blasdine | Maybe it'll answer the question. |
| 02:01:52.24 | Deborah Muchmore | . So we had interviews for chief building official in January, and we did make an offer. And we made two offers, actually. The first offer was not accepted right away. The second offer, the person just couldn't make the move. It was someone from Oregon, and the cost factor and difference just didn't work out. |
| 02:02:20.13 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, great. Thanks for that. And then on here, I also see that you have building inspector. Is this to fill in for potential medical leave Okay, but you're not excuse me there's not an open active search for that and then could you just for the public to understand. I mean the chief building official position is probably much more challenging to fill than many of the others because they have specific requirements. |
| 02:02:40.10 | Deborah Muchmore | Yes, it's a state certification and there's a lot of responsibility that they take and liability personally for decisions that are made. |
| 02:02:40.89 | Mayor Blasdine | Yes. |
| 02:02:51.79 | Mayor Blasdine | So it's not the type of position where another planner could fill in or help. It very much requires an in-house. Okay. And then these questions might be more for the city manager, but perhaps also a little bit for Brandon. I'm just looking at the cost of the agreement from the initial engagement with four leaf March 22nd of 2022 and then from May 15 through December 31st, the cost was around 487,000 and then this proposed cost for a shorter period is 588,000, which I understand is for um filling in space and community development which of course we really want to be able to do in support but as council member kelman pointed out we've received and actually all of the council members have pointed out we've received quite a bit of public comment and concern and asks asks for milestones if a key milestone like within three months 25 percent isn't feasible Perhaps is there an opportunity for a three month engagement at a lesser cost where there's then an assessment of performance with regards to this? |
| 02:03:52.39 | Chris Zapata | There are two answers to that question, Mayor, if I may. So I think, The idea of a 25% reduction is something that we can have a conversation with FourLeaf about. And if they believe that's a valid goal, it's a target that we can meet and we can have that conversation. I think that's really important that that you know, The idea, they want to be efficient too. And so we want them to be efficient. And if there is a provision in the contract that says 25%. I think the language and the detail would be important for us to agree on but I don't think it's impossible. So Craig, you wanna weigh in on that? |
| 02:04:29.70 | Craig Toll | Yeah, these are time and material agreements. if we fall short of that. budget number. those savings go right back to the city. So we're just here to provide services in the interim until you're able to get the exact staff that you need to fulfill all your department requirements. So the. The number is just kind of a benchmark number. It's a number we could get to if, if, Sounds like with all the progress that we're making and the hiring of the city's making, You know, we might not see that entire number anyway. So, but. What could happen is if you do reduce that and then it's needed, we're gonna have to come back for additional funds, which would just be Thank you. |
| 02:05:15.46 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:17.93 | Mayor Blasdine | But you would be amenable to, if not the 25% milestone, then perhaps a review at the three month period with lesser authorization so that we can. check back when we have restaffed up for instance. |
| 02:05:28.83 | Chris Zapata | I believe that's a very fair ask, an appropriate ask. See, yeah, we should absolutely do that. |
| 02:05:37.35 | Craig Toll | our goal is to support the city and whatever we can do to help. So we're, We know our job, we have an on-call contract. Our job is to answer the call when you ask us to provide whatever the tasks are when We initially got there, you know, it wasn't anticipated we provide this, amount of service. Under the circumstances, we were asked to provide more and more This is one of the benefits of hiring a firm like us. We're a full service firm in community development. Like I said, however we can support the city is what we're here to do. And if we can work on a budget together, that's gonna work out for everybody. That's our goal as well. So the amount isn't as important to Forle if it's more in the service. So we want to make sure we're providing the adequate amount of service and we can and rely on Mr. Phipps and Mr. Zapata to help us and this much more to help us identify what the exact budget is that we can help with. that will just. It might scale back some of the services that we're providing. Thank you. No. going to exceed that number if we reduce it. but, Um, Yeah. we don't get to keep that money if we're short of that anyway. I think we can always keep the number where it is with the goal of, not ever hitting that number. and that would you know, at least allow you to have the flexibility in case The hires don't come through like they're supposed to. an increase of work, which typically happens in the spring and summer. Um, things like that. |
| 02:07:02.08 | Mayor Blasdine | So with respect to that city manager, just so I, it seems like four leaf is amenable to an agreement that might be an addition of two months rather than the full six months though, knowing that we've already begun the period in January and the ask is 588,000. How much have we put towards two leaf, four leaf at this stage so that we might determine what a number and the period of time would be to have that assessment so that, you know, we're, we're accountable to the community members who have expressed concern, but we're also providing the support necessary to community development. |
| 02:07:22.15 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:07:28.07 | Chris Zapata | you Thank you. |
| 02:07:31.97 | Chris Zapata | Sure, thank you, Mayor, for that clarification. I think I know where you're headed. So two things. You can do it this way. One, you could We obviously have to pay for the amount that we owe, which we are, I believe, in arrears on. Yeah, like $130,000. We owe them that. They've done the work we owe them. And then I think we can come back every month with the council item requesting additional money. Tell them where you are, if that's what you wanna do to watch it closer. I think that's something that we can work on rather than an all ask of four months, we could come back every month and say, this is what we progressed to. And you'd have an opportunity to weigh in. And 4leaf would have an opportunity to show their work. And the community would know that you're watching this very closely as we are. |
| 02:08:18.22 | Mayor Blasdine | Yeah, I would appreciate that opportunity given our fiscal situation and the concerns of the community and also the strong efforts of Debra much more to get us fully staffed. So just putting that out there, but the other members of the council have questions or, Go ahead. |
| 02:08:32.29 | Kelman | No, it's a question for you. Are you embracing the opportunity to hear an update every month or to have an agreement that is only 30 days? |
| 02:08:41.85 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. I think I'd be open to whatever the council thinks is the best. I'm just trying to create some accountability around whatever agreement we might engage in with Fort leaf. |
| 02:08:53.54 | Mayor Blasdine | further questions from the council before we open it up for public comment. |
| 02:08:56.29 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, and before you do that, Mayor, if I have a comment to make, I'd like to make it. |
| 02:08:59.83 | Mayor Blasdine | I think Vice Mayor had one question as well. |
| 02:09:02.25 | Vice Mayor | I wouldn't necessarily oppose that, but I guess we really want to underline that our new, Community Development Director is committed to rebuilding the department. The City Manager is committed to rebuilding the department. uh, There is no misalignment of interests here. I think. getting an update, certainly wouldn't hurt. perhaps on consent, I don't know that it needs to be a business item. We have a lot of business items and, uh, you know, just regular updates on how we're doing against our hiring plan. I think it's appropriate. I think, reauthorizing everything every month is a bit of a stretch. We can always pull it off and stop authorizing it. But leaving it uncertain to stop, I just feel like we should endorse the work. of our professionals here and their commitment, which I think is clear and everyone acknowledges. |
| 02:09:55.13 | Mayor Blasdine | City manager? |
| 02:09:55.86 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, just before you take action, I think it's really important to... to thank you again for the flexibility and the budget that you provided. You provided money for consultants and money for employees. And so to Council Member Hoffman's point, we're not gonna blow that budget. We're actually gonna spend less even with this ask. But that's you acknowledging and recognizing that there's some attention needed and some resources needed for that department. So thank you. I'd like to thank the people that worked for the last year year and a half in the city of Sausalito whether it's the commissioners that put their time in and also our staff you know some who are sitting in this room besides Mr. Phipps like Maria who's really been a helpful person as she's been kind of like a Jack of all trades for our departments and certainly in the planning and community development department and people like Kenneth Henry, who have been here for a long time. So there are a lot of people to thank, but you know, the stability of that department has been in such flux, that, you know, I'm hopeful that, you know, what we do in the next and what we've done in the next two to three months under Brandon's leadership will stabilize that department so that, you know, we will need consultants at some point. but not to the extent that we have, because I think the point's been made tonight and thank you for your questions and those of the community that, at this point consultants are more expensive than city employees. At some point, the city employees are more expensive than consultants, but there's that review that has to be done. Thank you for prodding us to do that. But also, I want to really thank the team that's there that's doing the work every day to help us succeed as a community in terms of the residences, the businesses, and also to point out that one of the things that I've charged Brandon with doing besides rebuilding that department is working on economic development. So that's kind of a twist in Sausalito that I was a little bit, puzzled by when I got here is that, you know, the department was pretty much focused on planning and building and community development. inspections as opposed to business recruitment, retention, development. And so now with Brandon's background on that, I think he's got a lot of things to offer us. The department is flourishing as I see it under his leadership, but he needs a little more time as we do. And that's why 4leaf is essential to us. |
| 02:12:28.24 | Vice Mayor | Can I ask one question? Of course you can. |
| 02:12:30.50 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:12:30.65 | Vice Mayor | Just to level set for the community, I had a question for you, Deborah. just when I looked at the hourly rate for the consultant versus the the Saucedo City employee for let's say building official. I think it was $122 an hour. |
| 02:12:46.15 | Deborah Muchmore | versus 170, yeah. |
| 02:12:47.44 | Vice Mayor | Yeah, but Just $122 an hour for the city building official. out of 30. Six hour work week. Is that right? Um, That's what we got, right? 52 weeks a year, that's $228,000. Does that sound roughly right? This is... |
| 02:13:02.29 | Deborah Muchmore | This is, yeah, the chief building official is at the full right. That's the hourly rate. So yeah, so I did the calculation on a full year. On 40 hours a week or 30? |
| 02:13:14.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:14.19 | Vice Mayor | on 40 hours a week or 30. Thank you. |
| 02:13:16.11 | Deborah Muchmore | So the 400,000 is based on a 40-hour week. |
| 02:13:19.62 | Vice Mayor | So just the level set for the community and me, the fully loaded cost to the city of Sausalito for the chief building official is $253,000. |
| 02:13:29.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:30.07 | Vice Mayor | fully loaded. That's all the benefits, pension, whatnot. That's not what they make. That's not their salary. |
| 02:13:34.54 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:13:35.08 | Vice Mayor | with a fully loaded cost, There is some discussion about how we're paying people, whether the issue about attracting folks is around salary and I just think it's important Level set, the real challenge that we faced A lot of my little businesses are facing the same thing and hiring people. when we have an open rec for a quarter million dollars, quarter million dollars and yet we lost the candidate. |
| 02:13:59.13 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:13:59.35 | Vice Mayor | at that rate. So it's not a trivial Yeah. about getting good people. |
| 02:14:06.79 | Deborah Muchmore | No, it's not. And we will be bringing back some more information around that as we move into our budget hearings and discussions around salaries and things like that. |
| 02:14:17.07 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 02:14:17.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:14:17.39 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Do we have any further questions from Council before we open it up for public comment? Did you want to add anything, Director Phibbs, as you approach the podium? |
| 02:14:27.51 | Brandon Phipps | I'd just like to thank my staff as well. I think we wouldn't be here where we are today without the input and work that Forleaf has provided us. But certainly the staff that we have in-house that have stuck around through all this transition have been absolutely invaluable to me getting to a point where I feel as though I'm able to provide positive value. So big kudos to Maria. Thank you so much. And big kudos to the rest of our in-house staff who have stuck around. I think I would be doing my department a disservice if I didn't make that comment. So thank you for the opportunity. |
| 02:14:58.41 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you, Director of Phibs. And thank you to all of the staff. Yes? Thank you. |
| 02:15:02.01 | Unknown | longer. |
| 02:15:02.85 | Mayor Blasdine | Bye. |
| 02:15:02.97 | Unknown | that's right. |
| 02:15:03.03 | Mayor Blasdine | OK. |
| 02:15:03.57 | Deborah Muchmore | Brandon made a little muse about the fact that we changed one of the titles to community development technician instead of permit technician. And the reason we did that was we had two recruitments for permit techs and attracted no qualified candidates. So I thought, let's call it something else. |
| 02:15:24.28 | Mayor Blasdine | So innovative. Thank you, Deborah. I appreciate it. Thank you so much to all of the hard work that everyone on staff is doing. I echo those comments. Really appreciate it. Okay. So with that, we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment. I see that our planning commissioner has her hand raised. WALFORD, WALFORD, WALFORD |
| 02:15:47.40 | Nastassia Saad | I don't have a card. Hi, my name is Nastassia Saad. I'm a resident and I started on historic Circle Landmarks Board. and ultimately I'm on the Planning Commission Thank you to the council. and city manager and director Phipps. Um, I just wanted to say I completely understand the need for consultants at this time, I think There was some resistance from the public and from the commissions. I think it makes a lot of sense from where we are currently. I do want to... I think there's been a huge positive change since he's come on board. It was a big departure to lose Heidi Scoble and ultimately Danny Castro many years ago, I'm sure we remember. You've gone through a lot of change. I do think we're in a great place with our current leadership. I just want to echo some of what Um, Joan Cox and Jill Hoffman have mentioned in terms of oversight. I think for labor, is a fine firm. I think there were some hiccups with a lot of the service that was provided. unfortunately under Dan Hortet, I think he was a solid community development director for certain aspects, I think he really excelled and then there were some gaps that I did personally mention as a commissioner about recouping some funds. Instead of looking backwards at this time, it's great to look forward and just to make sure that we do have some level of oversight on the work that we're receiving is a lot of spend, it's a lot of and we just wanna make sure that we are getting the return for the work that we're being provided for. I just want to really, you know, thank our new director, I think it's been a huge um, move in the right direction. I would just like to I personally say that I think that the community development department really should be focused on community development. Mr. Phipps has an excellent background in that economic development that we can ultimately leverage. But I think where we are currently, we do have a lot of work So I'm hoping that we can stay focused on that before moving into utilizing his other skills. But ultimately I think we can leverage that. But I think we can leverage that. I think I'm out of time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. |
| 02:18:13.10 | Mayor Blasdine | Do we have any further public comment at this time, city clerk? |
| 02:18:16.00 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment. |
| 02:18:17.47 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, I'll bring it back up to the council for discussion action. Who would like to get us started? |
| 02:18:24.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:27.59 | Vice Mayor | I'll second it. |
| 02:18:28.35 | Jill Hoffman | So I make motion that we adopt a resolution to issue the contract to Fourleaf in the context of our discussion here this evening. So thank you very much for everybody. |
| 02:18:40.28 | Mayor Blasdine | Can I ask that we leave on consent a monthly update on hiring from CDD just so that the community is aware of the status and how things are moving along? |
| 02:18:48.91 | Unknown | That's it. |
| 02:18:49.57 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 02:18:49.58 | Jill Hoffman | I think that's fine. I don't think we need to add it to the resolution. We can add it as a direction to staff, just to, as a matter of course. And I would say too, if perhaps there's a motion on the table, there's a second, so maybe we should vote, but I'll just say this, that, that we, you know, don't spend a lot of time on it. Right. Like I don't want to create work. We're trying to help these guys get to work. So like a monthly accounting, like this is, you know, or an update, Thank you. a lot of time on it, right? Like, I don't want to create work. We're trying to help these guys get to work. So, like a monthly accounting, like this is, you know, or an update, I would say an easy update. Absolutely. |
| 02:19:23.52 | Brandon Phipps | If I may, just confirming, is this intended as a consent item? |
| 02:19:28.46 | Mayor Blasdine | Yes. |
| 02:19:30.08 | Vice Mayor | you |
| 02:19:30.13 | Brandon Phipps | It's really an update again. |
| 02:19:30.98 | Vice Mayor | your hiring plan. |
| 02:19:31.94 | Mayor Blasdine | Exactly. |
| 02:19:32.60 | Vice Mayor | maybe a percentage chance that you're going to hire someone within 30 days in each category. That's it. Five numbers. Very good. Thank you. I mean, zero and 100%. |
| 02:19:40.33 | Mayor Blasdine | Great. Okay, so given that we have a motion on the table and a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, motion passes five zero. Thank you very much. And now I will move on to our next agenda item that closes out our business items for the evening. So moving on to item six, which is the time for communications. This is the time on the agenda for members of the public to provide any public comment for items that are not on the agenda. If you would like to provide a public comment, |
| 02:19:47.40 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 02:19:47.45 | Vice Mayor | Bye. |
| 02:19:47.53 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:19:48.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:20:09.91 | Mayor Blasdine | Fill out a speaker slip or raise your hand in the zoom application, the city clerk will call on individuals who have raised their hands in the order they were raised. After you are called on you will be unmuted to allow you to share your comments. Remember public comments are each allowed two minutes to speak so at this time I will now open it up to public comment for items that are not on the agenda. |
| 02:20:29.95 | Walfred Solorzano | seen none. |
| 02:20:31.44 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you city clerk okay i'll close public comment at this time and I will move on to item seven which is Councilmember committee reports. |
| 02:20:40.13 | Kelman | I'll go. I'll go. Okay, great. So I mentioned it during the MC presentation. I sat in the MCC Climate Action Committee. Excuse me while I pull up my notes. We had a wonderful presentation from Dana Armonino from the County Sustainability Director. We talked about the Reusable Foodware Ordinance. The County has an updated foodware ordinance that they would like us to look at. We looked at municipal electrification program for hot water heaters, which I mentioned earlier, which is free money for us to make an upgrade. The Center of Programs for Residents, so Bayran, home plus more information at electrified marin which is marinecounty.org forward slash electrify and then we talked a little bit about the reach code adoption in different marine jurisdictions so that was the mccmc climate action committee the sea level rise task force also met with director phipps to basically make a handover so we can conclude our our efforts and support for the city so advise a director Fripps of the work that we had done and how the planning department can be involved. And we offered as a last a source of support to develop the RFP. So he doesn't have to put the resources into it. The Marine Transportation Authority actually has an RFP that we're looking at right now. for sea level rise adaptation and vulnerability assessment planning. What else? Oh, Councilman Hoffman and I are working on Bridgeway Marina. We have seen some changes happening, and so we're trying to nail those down. And we're hoping to meet with the property owner in the next week or so. And I think that might be it. Oh, Blue Economy Task Force. Again, limited duration task force, but moving along, we have a second meeting with Braid Theory. They run an accelerator out of Altice at the Port of Los Angeles. And that meeting is this week, and we're hoping to have a roadmapping game plan for moving forward. We also. |
| 02:22:31.98 | Mayor Blasdine | had a visitor from Portugal who is in charge of many of the blue economy initiatives for the European Commission and Councilmember Kelman and I gave him along with other members of the blue economy task force a walking tour of the marine ship and spoke about some of the potential for blue economy innovations there and also heard much about his experience. So that was really great. And also Councilmember Kelman and I had a meeting with The representative from PG&E who spearheaded the initiative to electrify the Angel Island Ferry to explore what it might take to electrify the Golden Gate Ferry and what steps might look like there. So there are a lot of things moving on in the more specific in the Blue Economy Task Force as well. I had a meeting with a representative from the coastal Miwok tribe today to speak specifically. about potentially having some public art, a sculpture honoring the Miwok tribe. I also had conversations with Mayor Kate Collin from San Rafael about their public art process because here in Sausalito, those of you who are familiar know that it's quite a test to approve a public art sculpture or otherwise. So that was a fruitful conversation as well, and I think that's it for me. I just wanted to. on what you had shared. |
| 02:23:39.97 | Kelman | Oh, can I share one more thing, Mayor? The Vice Mayor and I, we're working on identifying a professional property manager to help us with some of our leases that are coming due for renegotiation. So we have identified, can I say who it is? Cause we, I don't know if we have, it's signed, but we've identified a professional real estate group out of San Francisco. They're gonna help us. Our first negotiation is Elyse. And this way, you know, council members doing the negotiation and support for our staff. So let everybody know. |
| 02:24:08.49 | Mayor Blasdine | Thanks. OTHER COMMITTEE REPORTS? Okay, all right, great. I'll move on to item eight, which is city manager reports, city council appointments, and other council business. And we'll start with public comment on these items before we begin the discussion. Do we have any public comment on items 8B through 8E? |
| 02:24:28.72 | Walfred Solorzano | See none. |
| 02:24:29.88 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay, I'll close public comment and I will open it up for the city manager on the human resources staffing update on which we sort of had a sneak preview conversation. So I will leave it to him to continue that. |
| 02:24:46.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.01 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.42 | Chris Zapata | I believe, am I, my mic on? Thank you. Mayor and Council, I believe consultants have a role And I wanna just say the situations that we find ourselves in, require sometimes that we bring in consultants to meet needs that we can't meet at the present. I'm talking in circles because I'm thinking about the wall outside. that the, Mr. Ferber. and to see it all nice and neat with your pictures up there, your titles correct, and our staff up there. And then to know that our finance director, Vivian Chu, has been recruited and accepted a job with the city of Los Altos as their finance manager. That job is similar in that it's a four day work week with some remote working, but it's also a $50,000 pay increase for her. So she is leaving us effective, I believe in two weeks in terms of work. She's committed to doing the completing the audit. She's also committed to working with us on the major budget adjustments that need to happen on the 28th of March, but she will be leaving us. Our HR consultant, Deborah Muchmore, has released a recruitment for a finance director So we will be looking for a finance director. That is a critical position. This is a critical time. So as an interim measure, what I'm going to try to do under city manager authority is negotiate with Ide Bailey. to bring them and Chad Hess on. Chad has worked with us last year under the I'd Bailey contract. He knows our city systems, worked with a finance committee, is very competent in terms of his ability to take accounting and make it and put it into layman's terms. The partner of the firm will help with the budget process. So we're going to need to bring someone on a temporary basis. And we'll see what the contract agreement is. It may come a point in time over the next two months. If we bring someone on board, we won't need their services. I may come back and say, I need to extend their contract for another month. But that position update is something that is painful. We invested time. And Vivian, we brought her on so that she could work and work on our audits, which is her expertise. And so she did a lot of that. She learned our systems and she worked with our people. And then she found an opportunity or an opportunity found her that requires her to leave our city. So. with that. That's not good news, but I wanted the community to hear it and you to hear it as well. I want Deborah to come in and give you an update on other personnel matters. we'll send that consultant home. Bye. |
| 02:27:29.50 | Vice Mayor | City Manager Zapata, can I just ask you a question about Vivian? It is real loss, and thanks to her for all her good work. really helping you get the finance system straight. And the good news on the budget that you presented last I know it came from her analysis, the reduction in the projected deficit from $3 million to $1 million is good news, not out of the woods by any means, but really positive, um, and only resulting from good work. But just to, again, level set the challenging, employee environment we're in. You say she was recruited away. by Los Altos with a $50,000 higher salary. What was the salary here in Sausalito? |
| 02:28:09.04 | Chris Zapata | About 130,000, 140. We all took 10% pay cuts. And so she was part of that. there was an offset with the bonus, but that didn't compensate executives for fully. They still lost money. So the range for this position is 140 to $180,000. Yep. And so she was at the beginning of the range. And so taking that 10% PICA took her down to about $150. a little below $130,000. And we lost her to a community |
| 02:28:39.97 | Vice Mayor | and pay just shy of $200,000. Correct. Correct. So it's a tough marketplace out there for good people. |
| 02:28:46.08 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. So we have another consultant here. So she's going to give us an update on where we are with some of our recruitments. |
| 02:28:54.79 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 02:28:54.80 | Deborah Muchmore | Thanks, Debra. |
| 02:28:58.95 | Deborah Muchmore | Thank you, Chris. Thank you. So we've been busy in HR. And as you heard a little bit earlier, so I'm not going to keep you long here, but we also have been... recruiting and or doing some shifting and some promotions in different departments. So in public works, I don't know if you've heard officially or not, but we were able to find a replacement for our public works division manager maintenance, and that's going to be Pat Guasco, and his promotion was uh just this pay period so a couple of weeks ago and um and we delayed that because we wanted pat to be able to choose his successor and that turns out to be eric graham it's just another promotion for us in the city which is wonderful uh the public works staff has been very busy interviewing maintenance worker candidates as well. And so we've been struggling to fill for many of the reasons we've discussed tonight our wastewater collection system worker positions. So we had a good pool of maintenance workers. And I think we're going to underfill one of those with a maintenance worker and we'll move more later and then help them certify. So because we have some that have some experience so we're looking at creative ways to do it. In recreation we have We've had, we have some shifting going around. One of the positions that we may have another promotion happening after a conversation we had today. And these are all going through competitive recruitments. They're applying competitively. And I believe that we should grow our employees to be competitive in the market. And it seems to be working. So that's happening too. And we had some, we expanded their department just a little bit at the budget meeting during last year. And so our recreational supervisor became a community services manager And we did some temporary promotions to be able to do that work, that department, and we'll be doing some internal recruitments to finalize those here in the near future. So thank you. Do you have any questions? |
| 02:31:27.71 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you so much, Deborah. I really appreciate it. And also big congratulations to Pat and Eric. Always exciting when we get in-house promotions. |
| 02:31:35.32 | Unknown | position. |
| 02:31:37.31 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 02:31:37.41 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:31:37.85 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:31:40.72 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. |
| 02:31:40.74 | Unknown | I'm lost. You know. Thank you. |
| 02:31:42.74 | Deborah Muchmore | Oh, wow, wow. How did I forget that? So we also interviewed for, we were interviewing for senior accountant and running recruitments, and we were finding very few people in the pool. And people who applied for senior accountant really wanted to be finance managers and finance directors. And so we were getting demands. If I come on, then within a year, I want you to guarantee I'll be finance manager or director. I'm like, well, we can't do that. So we recruited for an accountant, an accountant one, two, and we got a wonderful candidate. Maggie Wang, she's going to be coming on board on the 15th on Wednesday. And so we're really excited to have her join us in the finance department. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. |
| 02:32:33.08 | Mayor Blasdine | Thanks, Debra. |
| 02:32:33.57 | Deborah Muchmore | you |
| 02:32:33.60 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you. Thank you. Okay, great. So we'll move on to it. |
| 02:32:38.11 | Unknown | We have to pay our top step again. |
| 02:32:41.75 | Mayor Blasdine | Okay. Thanks for the update. I appreciate it. Okay, and we'll move on to item 8C, which is appointments to boards, commissions, and committees. We have none, but I will note that we will be addressing the, we've received some correspondence on this, and it was mentioned at the last meeting, boards and commissions in their future at some point in the March or April meeting. And on that note, I'll go on to item 8D, which is future agenda items. I have a few and so. |
| 02:33:09.02 | Kelman | What is council member Kelman? I only have one, but I also just want to make a request for the city clerk or just go back with them. We normally get the list as a link so that we can see and don't repeat ourselves. But I don't think I'm repeating myself when I request that we have a discussion around a hillside ordinance. We're having our atmospheric river visiting us again on Thursday and Friday. And I know this ground saturation creates a lot of risk for our hillside community. And so I think it's worth this council evaluating the, intelligence and utility of a hillside ordinance. Redwood City has one. Sonoma, many communities in Sonoma County have them. So I think it's long overdue for us. So hillside ordinance, please. |
| 02:33:48.24 | Mayor Blasdine | Thank you and I will add on to that, since the grants for the emergency declaration for the county of Marin from FEMA will close on March 15th i'd like to agenda is that and we may need to have. Special meeting on that topic, so we don't miss out on those monies and also add the reasonable foodware ordinance asked from the county of Marin which we received correspondence on and Councilmember Kellman. heard from at the MCC MC meeting. public art and review of public art in light of the requests that we've received not only from the coastal Miwok, but from other interested parties for putting some sort of statue in various places across the city. And that's it for me. Other future agenda items. |
| 02:34:28.54 | Vice Mayor | I just had a question for my colleague, Janelle Kellman, The Hillside Ordinance, just the timing on that given, I imagine that's a work product that needs to be looked at by CDD. And if so, Just how are you thinking about budgeting? I'm trying to figure out where we should get. |
| 02:34:43.34 | Kelman | Excellent, independent, limited duration, non-Browneck working group topic, which has already been, I think, vetted as a concept and in more detail by the Landside Task Force. |
| 02:34:54.85 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:34:54.86 | Kelman | It's really good. |
| 02:34:54.88 | Vice Mayor | I'm just wondering, do you want it on the agenda sooner as a way of kicking off the effort, or is there groundwork to be done and it's going to live on the future agenda? Great. |
| 02:35:01.77 | Kelman | Great, great question. I think we should, thank you for that. I think we should decide as a council that we want to prioritize that and see if a working group makes sense to try to act on that because between the FEMA monies, the landslide we had in 2019, just trying to lower a risk profile. Plan ahead. |
| 02:35:02.59 | Vice Mayor | I think |
| 02:35:22.10 | Jill Hoffman | So I want to follow up on the, because I don't see the list under AD. Are we gonna put the list back on? Was that an oversight? |
| 02:35:32.28 | Mayor Blasdine | That's an ask, yeah. We want it to be included. |
| 02:35:33.12 | Jill Hoffman | I want it to be. Okay, so then the issue or the item that I had requested that we put on the agenda for whatever, March or April to disband the non-statutory boards and commissions. A number of emails about that and public comment this week. And so I was wondering if you guys had an idea about when it might be on the budget, Not the budget, the agenda. |
| 02:36:00.53 | Mayor Blasdine | Actually, it's good that you say budget because it's in light of what the March 28 budget hearing meeting looks like and if there's space for it, so it will be at the last meeting in March or in April, it is, we are honoring that request and also in the interest of the public correspondence from the community. Okay, thank you. |
| 02:36:15.43 | Vice Mayor | I guess in that same fashion, Library Board of Trustees has some vacancies and a bunch of people interested, so does Historical Preservation Commission. So we need to interview Uh, for our statutory boards, not the non-statutory boards, So we have a lot of interest in various various people have applied for various statutory boards. We should have that as a future agenda item to do those interviews. |
| 02:36:38.68 | Councilmember Cox | Great. And if we're going to do that, can we go ahead and have the currents publish the list of current vacancies in our statutory boards and commissions and encourage any other interested applicants to apply so that we are... interviewing a full complement of qualified volunteers. Yeah. |
| 02:36:57.70 | Jill Hoffman | And I will offer that. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead, by all means. that in 2021, the process that we used was we did all of the interviews on one day and we've staffed it all in one day. And that was super helpful. And we staffed it with at least one alternate so that you had to flex. |
| 02:37:18.24 | Bonnie Huff | Great. |
| 02:37:18.89 | Jill Hoffman | I would add to that as well. |
| 02:37:19.97 | Mayor Blasdine | that we do still have a 94965 alternate, I believe, as well for the statutory commission. So I would encourage folks, no, not for statutory? No. Okay. All right. Thank you. Well then, okay, so that's it for future agenda items. Yes, go ahead. |
| 02:37:33.79 | Councilmember Cox | I wanted to inquire about our priority setting meeting. So there was clarification out of last council meeting that the doodle poll was inaccurate in seeking a two hour dinner followed by a two hour session, but I never received an updated doodle poll. |
| 02:37:51.23 | Vice Mayor | We're still working on it a little bit just because I'm sorry to interrupt, but I know I dialogued just with |
| 02:37:51.24 | Councilmember Cox | City clerk? |
| 02:37:56.81 | Councilmember Cox | Is your mic on? |
| 02:37:57.88 | Vice Mayor | Sorry. there are no dates before the 13th, before the 22nd or so of March, that work for anybody. So we're looking at the end of March. So hopefully that's far enough away that we can send out another one. Not every day. |
| 02:38:11.71 | Councilmember Cox | Not if we delay a lot longer because... |
| 02:38:14.23 | Vice Mayor | So that's the direction, Walford, we should work with the mayor and me. |
| 02:38:16.64 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. |
| 02:38:18.73 | Vice Mayor | get some dates out so we can try to get something set by the end of the month. Yeah. |
| 02:38:24.07 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you all. |
| 02:38:24.28 | Vice Mayor | It's going to be tardy in that last week, basically. Oh, gosh. |
| 02:38:27.76 | Mayor Blasdine | . Okay, any other reports of significance? Okay, then with that, I'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting at 943 PM. Thanks everybody. |