| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.12 | Unknown | Huh? |
| 00:00:01.30 | Chad Hess | you |
| 00:00:01.35 | Chris Zapata | Huh? Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:03.22 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:03.24 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:00:03.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:03.32 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. |
| 00:00:03.69 | Unknown | It's really heavy. |
| 00:00:04.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:04.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:04.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:04.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:04.22 | Unknown | for putting this up for him. It's really amazing. |
| 00:00:07.56 | Stacy Gregory | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:09.65 | Unknown | I'll just turn on the air. Thank you. |
| 00:00:19.10 | Unknown | Thank you. you |
| 00:00:24.30 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:00:25.04 | Unknown | . |
| 00:00:25.29 | Unknown | Ego, ego! Watch your head. I have submitted an element. |
| 00:00:25.36 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:27.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:27.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:28.03 | Jill Hoffman | You go. |
| 00:00:28.25 | Unknown | Thank you. Does that mean? |
| 00:00:29.41 | Jill Hoffman | It's not. |
| 00:00:29.70 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:00:29.92 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:30.00 | Unknown | They do that. |
| 00:00:30.04 | Unknown | do that. |
| 00:00:30.47 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:30.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:30.68 | Jill Hoffman | Amen. |
| 00:00:31.00 | Unknown | Is that Eagle been like that? |
| 00:00:31.05 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:32.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:32.21 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, it's been broken. |
| 00:00:32.28 | Unknown | Yeah, it's broken. Yeah, when we took it out. |
| 00:00:33.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:33.76 | Jill Hoffman | . when we took it out to the... |
| 00:00:36.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:36.11 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:36.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:36.89 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:36.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:36.92 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:36.94 | Unknown | for me. |
| 00:00:37.56 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:00:37.58 | Unknown | Yeah. Mr. City Manager, can we get these? |
| 00:00:39.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:40.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:40.65 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 00:00:40.73 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 00:00:40.87 | Unknown | I'll hand it. |
| 00:00:41.00 | Sergio Rudin | All of them. Thank you. He's like, |
| 00:00:43.03 | Stacy Gregory | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 00:00:44.99 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:00:45.51 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:00:45.86 | Walfred Solorzano | items to get to so we'll just start and Ian's gonna join us in closed session so whenever you're ready Walford |
| 00:00:54.84 | Walfred Solorzano | Good evening City City Council. This regular meeting of May 9 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 on and on cable TV channel 27. |
| 00:01:16.36 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much, City Clerk. And I will now call the meeting to order at 5.01 p.m. Would you please call the roll? |
| 00:01:22.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:01:24.39 | Walfred Solorzano | presently. |
| 00:01:24.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:25.37 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. Yeah. |
| 00:01:26.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Here. |
| 00:01:27.00 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Kelman. |
| 00:01:28.57 | Walfred Solorzano | Here. |
| 00:01:28.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Vice Mayor Sobieski, not present yet, and Mayor Blasdine. |
| 00:01:33.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, so we'll get started with our closed session agenda items. This evening in closed session, conference with labor negotiator. Government Code Section 54957.6, Agency Designated Representative Charles Sakai, Deborah Muchmore, Employee Organization, SEIU Local 1021. Conference with Legal Counsel, existing litigation. Yimby versus City of Sausalito, Conference with Legal Counsel, Real Property Negotiations Pursuant to California Government Code Section 54956.8, Property Site MLK School. Conference of legal counsel, real property negotiations pursuant to California government Section 54956.8, New Village Schools. Conference with Legal Counsel Real Property Negotiations Pursuant to California Government Code, Section 54956.8, Galilee Harbor. I will now open it up for public comment on these closed session items. |
| 00:02:27.37 | Walfred Solorzano | If there are no, yeah, there's nobody attending. There's nobody present in the room. But if you are on Zoom and you want to make public comment, please use the raise hand function. And we don't see any comments. |
| 00:02:39.63 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, we'll now adjourn to closed session. However, Council Member Cox wanted to add one point. |
| 00:02:44.33 | Unknown | Yes, I will be recusing myself from the negotiations in items 3 and 4 due to the proximity of my property to the properties subject to negotiation. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:59.02 | Walfred Solorzano | and will now adjourn to closing. |
| 00:02:59.97 | Unknown | session. |
| 00:03:00.26 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:03:01.94 | Unknown | Recording stopped. |
| 00:03:57.90 | Walfred Solorzano | OK, we're all set. |
| 00:04:03.74 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, welcome back everyone. We're returning from closed session and there are no closed session announcements. So welcome to this regular city council meeting on May the 9th and I'm calling the meeting back into order at 7.01 PM. And I'm really excited to, before we get started. Oh, I guess I have to. um i'll go ahead and ask for a motion to approve the agenda this evening first so moved |
| 00:04:27.40 | Unknown | So moved. |
| 00:04:27.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:04:27.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:28.50 | Walfred Solorzano | Second. Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. |
| 00:04:32.21 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 00:04:33.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, fantastic. Well, now I'm really excited because we have last week got to swear in for last meeting, we swore in four new police officers. And this meeting, we are going to get to see some fantastic police department promotions. So with no further ado, I will hand it over to our chief Stacy Gregory, who can get us started. |
| 00:05:05.94 | Stacy Gregory | No. Okay. So we're excited to be here. We have four promotions that are also long overdue, not as long overdue as the last ones were, but... We have four pretty awesome guys that we want to recognize. And so I'll just start by bringing them up. Come on, guys. |
| 00:05:38.90 | Stacy Gregory | So it's no secret that we have been short staffed and but our service and our commitment to the community hasn't wavered at all. And these guys are the reasons why. These are the leaders of our department Um, A lot of work coming out of these guys from shifting their schedule to cover shifts train new officers, Manage a homeless encampment. I mean, the list goes on and on. And it's been never ending. And it will continue to go on as they promote in their positions. And so I want to take this time to talk about each of them individually. Um, So you know, kind of who they are, what they do for us. And I'm going to do it in no particular order, but, um, Actually, I'll do it in the order that they promoted. So we'll first talk about Brian Mather. And Brian Mather, raise your hands so everybody knows. Brian was hired here in 2008. He was promoted to corporal in 2016. And just in June of 2022, he was promoted to sergeant. Before that, he had been acting sergeant for some time, filling Some long-term injury leaves that we had so you know, he's not um He's very used to supervising our staff, and so now we're finally able to officially promote him to sergeant. He served as our field training officer, training the new officers that come on our department. He coordinates their training plan, so he puts all that together for them. He's one of our defensive tactics instructors. He operates our boat. He rides our motorcycle. He also maintains our fleet, which is a job. It's a hard job, you know, the vehicles and making sure there's maintenance and buying new vehicles. And so, you know, he's been doing that for some time. He was a detective for four years. He was a fantastic detective. In fact, he's one of the ones that when we have something big go down, we shift his schedule so he can come and work it. because we currently do not have a detective He was on the Central Marin hostage negotiation team for about eight years. So if something went down and somebody needed to be negotiated with for one reason or Brian was on the team that was called in. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE So Brian's a guy that keeps everybody informed. If there's new policy procedure or something that he feels we need to be reminded about, he'll send the email. And inform us of that or remind us to do things right if he sees that we're going off to one way or the other. He's got the sense of humor that will make you laugh but also shake your head at the same time. How did he do that? He's got that kind of sense of humor. He has been the PD employee of the year three times. believe it or not, in 2011, 2014... 2019 and he's also been the recipient of our life-saving award so that's brian mather |
| 00:08:57.35 | Stacy Gregory | Okay, Nicholas White. Raise your hand. Nick was hired as a police officer in 2010. He was a parking enforcement officer for us for a year prior to that. And then he was promoted in this June of 2022 to corporal. He serves as another one of our field training officers. He is our pepper spray OC instructor. He's a newly appointed firearms instructor. He's a bicycle instructor. In fact, we went to that school together. It was pretty fun. He's been on our homeless outreach team And he was also a member of the Central Marin hostage negotiation team for about five years and was also a detective for us, so he's also one that We shift his schedule if we need him because he's got the knowledge and the experience. He's known for his quick typing ability, his report writing efficiency, and he has worked to earn the name of Nickopedia. based on his really weird memory capability. He can remember anything and everything. And he does have a cat named Guido. |
| 00:10:10.48 | Stacy Gregory | He received our employee of the year in 2022. He also received the city's city of Sausalito's extreme act of kindness award in 2022 for his work at the homeless encampment. So that's Nick. |
| 00:10:30.84 | Stacy Gregory | All right. Thank you. Sergeant Padilla. Paco. Here's your hand. There's Paco. OK, Paco was hired in 2009 as an officer. He was promoted to corporal in 2017, and then Sergeant in February of this year, 2023. Thank you. He is one of our training officers. He's our traffic officer. So that means that any traffic investigation before it's officially approved goes through Paco to be finalized. He's our VIPs liaison. So he is the officer that works directly with our volunteers in police or public safety. He's another boat operator. He coordinates and calibrates all our alcohol measuring devices. He was also a former member of the Central Marin Special Response Team, the SWAT team, for about three years, and also has served in the role of acting sergeant, filling in for sergeant vacancies. He spends a lot of his free time vacationing with his family, traveling the world. His kids have probably been more places than most of us. And then he is an avid fisherman. Him and his brother have a boat. They go way far into the ocean and catch really, really big fish. So that's Paco. He did receive the Mark Thomas Award in 2011. 2016 the Mark Thomas's award is an award that we give every year That's a character award, so it's a... um, It's an award that people who display the character that we all want to see in a human being kindness kind of award. So Paco has received that. So that's Paco. |
| 00:12:28.01 | Stacy Gregory | And last but not least, Edgar Padilla. He was hired in 2016, promoted to corporal in 2023, February of 23. He also serves as a field training officer. He's our taser instructor. He's a bicycle officer. You might see him riding around on the e-bike. He rides around on the e-bike often. He's one of our boat officers, but he is the only officer that actually has his captain's license. and he has also been assisting with our fleet management team. He's our department. multi-talented fixer kind of guy. If there's something that's broken, he can fix it. If you need things sewed, I bring bags to him that I sewed and he sews them. He puts patches on. I mean, he's got some pretty incredible skills. He is, will often be found having conversations with community members, long conversations about fishing and boats and things like that. So he goes fishing with his brother and their kids often. Um, let's see Edgar in 2018, got the Mark Thomas award. and has also been the recipient of a life-saving award. That's Edgar Padilla |
| 00:13:49.27 | Stacy Gregory | So now we'll have the city clerk come up and give the oath of office. |
| 00:14:05.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, raise your right hand, please. I state your name. do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance the Constitution of the United States. and the Constitution of the State of California. that I take this obligation freely. without any mental reservation, or purpose of evasion. and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. |
| 00:15:29.39 | Stacy Gregory | Okay, so we'll individually have family members come up, pin the badge, we'll take a photo, and then once everybody's pinned, then we can do the, you know, shake hands with City Council and do a photo. So why don't we start with Nick, since you're closest. You want to come out and your mom can come up. Okay. |
| 00:16:09.67 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:16:32.47 | Stacy Gregory | Okay, Brian. |
| 00:17:12.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:17:13.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:17:13.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:17:29.49 | Stacy Gregory | Okay. So that's the end of our ceremony. We're again gonna leave and go have refreshments back at the police department But do you want would you like to get a group photo? We would also like to shake your hands. Okay, let's do it |
| 00:17:39.82 | Walfred Solorzano | AND I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT. THE END OF |
| 00:17:43.34 | Stacy Gregory | Go ahead. |
| 00:17:48.74 | Unknown | Congratulations. |
| 00:17:50.97 | Chad Hess | you Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:17:55.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:18:00.37 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. Well, |
| 00:18:03.04 | Unknown | I'll go over here. |
| 00:18:04.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:18:04.13 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:18:06.87 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:18:09.60 | Unknown | Okay, big cheese. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:18:19.52 | Walfred Solorzano | Let's give one more round of applause to our police department in the promotion. |
| 00:18:25.71 | Walfred Solorzano | Congratulations. Thank you so much for your service to our community. We truly appreciate you. Thanks for being here. Bye guys. Can we just do a meeting |
| 00:18:33.97 | Unknown | that's the only thing. |
| 00:18:34.49 | Walfred Solorzano | on the... |
| 00:18:34.96 | Unknown | Yeah, can we do a meeting where that's all we do? It's like, it's hard to continue. |
| 00:18:35.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Jenna, because that's all we do. It's like, it's hard to continue after that. I know. I agree. Completely. Okay, we'll let folks head out, and then we'll... |
| 00:18:46.69 | Unknown | I'm not going to be a little bit. |
| 00:18:56.56 | Walfred Solorzano | Is there, was there a wedding ring found that's missing? |
| 00:19:01.46 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:19:01.47 | Walfred Solorzano | Did anybody lose a ring? |
| 00:19:04.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Stacy. |
| 00:19:04.87 | Walfred Solorzano | He brought it up. |
| 00:19:07.24 | Stacy Gregory | What's up? |
| 00:19:08.04 | Unknown | We're waiting. Thank you. |
| 00:19:09.88 | Stacy Gregory | Yes, it was sitting right here next to this mask. I'll take it. |
| 00:19:10.03 | Unknown | Yeah. sitting right here next to this mask. I'll take it. Ready to go get some cake? Okay. |
| 00:19:18.37 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Okay, well, it's tough to get back into regularly scheduled programming after we get to start with that, but that was fantastic. Thank you very much again. And we'll go ahead and move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the action minutes for our previous meeting. So do we have any public comment on the minutes from our previous meeting? |
| 00:19:38.70 | Unknown | See none. |
| 00:19:40.00 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, I'll now go ahead and close public comment and I will ask for an approval of the minutes from our previous meeting. So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, motion carries unanimously, and we will move on to the consent calendar. And before I go through, The typical processes of the consent calendar, there are two really important proclamations on the consent calendar this evening that I did want to acknowledge and read aloud, if you'll so allow, because there are two very important months celebrating some very important groups this month. So I wanted to first share our proclamation of Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Whereas during Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we celebrate the diversity of cultures and remarkable contributions of these communities, and whereas throughout history they have represented the bigger story of who we are as Americans and embodied the truth that our diversity is our story, And whereas these cultures are the stories of vibrant, diverse, and resilient set of communities that have been part of the American experience for more than 200 years, And whereas in less than 50 years, nearly one of every 10 people in America will trace his or her heritage to Asia and the Pacific, a region that covers more than one-third of the Earth, including the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Pacific, and whereas generations of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders have helped develop and defend the United States, often in the face of racial and cultural prejudice. And now... Everything okay. And now therefore the mayor and city council of the city of Sausalito hereby proclaimed Tuesday, May 9 2023, Native American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in Sausalito. And it is also Jewish American Heritage Month. So I will read that proclamation as well. And I will acknowledge that Councilmember Kelman and myself are members of the Jewish community and also of the Bay Area Network of Jewish elected officials. Whereas over the past 369 years, Jewish Americans have given to their communities and this nation as loyal and patriotic citizens. And whereas for generations, the story of the Jewish people wanted resilience, faith, and hope in the face of adversity and persecution has been woven into the fabric of our nation's story And whereas there is also a dark side to the celebrated history of the Jewish people, a history marked by genocide, pogrom, and persecution with a through line that continues the record rise of anti-Semitism today. And whereas Jewish Americans have served in government and the military, have won Nobel Prizes, headed universities and corporations, advanced medicine, created and performed in enduring works of performing in visual art, written great American novels, and become emblems of justice as members of the Supreme Court, and so much more. And whereas we honor the timeless values, contributions, and culture of the Jewish Americans who carry our nation forward each and every day, This mayor and city council in the city of Sausalito hereby proclaim May as Jewish American Heritage Month in the city of Sausalito. So we're lucky to be celebrating both months. this year and having those proclamations on our agenda, and I appreciate you allowing me to read them aloud. And now I will officially go through The process of our consent calendar matters listed under the consent calendar considered routine and non-controversial. require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous council support. and may be enacted by the Council in one motion in the form listed below. 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 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 when public comment will be heard on any item that was removed. With that being said, would any council members like to remove or discuss items on the consent calendar this evening? Okay, seeing none, I will now open it up for public comment. |
| 00:23:30.93 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. Also, Mayor, for item 3F, can we make a clerical amendment ordinances 03-2023 rather than 02? |
| 00:23:41.73 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, and will the minutes note that please? Yes. |
| 00:23:43.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 00:23:45.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, so then I will make a motion to approve this evening's consent calendar. Second. Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you very much. All right, so we'll go ahead and move on to business items for this evening. And the first item on the agenda is... is to review past and updated information on city boards commissions committees ad hoc and working for the purpose of providing direction to city staff on resource allocation. So city manager, I believe that you are sharing that presentation with us this evening. |
| 00:24:13.85 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, members of the public for this opportunity to again revisit this. Again, this is brought back at the request of the city council. And before I start with it, I really want to thank all of the volunteers who donate their time and their talent, adding value to the organization and community and their service on boards, commissions, committees, and ad hoc groups. Can we go to slide three, please, Noelle? Noelle. 2021. in 2021 you know um the city council hired a new city manager and one of the things that i did was i looked at the culture of sausalito how things had been done here and and what the current situation was and and fundamentally what i saw was a situation that i i thought was untenable at the time a lot of committees a lot of commissions a lot of staff time a lot of work and essentially very few staff and changing staff to deal with doing that effectively so after reviewing this I noted that you know obviously there was some extenuating circumstances COVID being one of them which created some changes there were some things that created new committees in groups such as an ad hoc group to help search for a city manager there were a number of meetings that had to happen related to homelessness and labor negotiations and again this was exacerbated by the staff churn you know city clerks changed finance director director changed, community development director changed, parks and recreation directors changes. All of these combined with the existing committee structure was made very, very, made our situation here Mary very difficult. So I brought this forward in October of 2021. And essentially the reason you want committees and commissions, committees so you can do the work, but if you're not able to do the work, then you are not doing right by the people that donate their time and talent. And certainly there are times when you stretch staff a little more than I think they are able to. So one of the things that I really wanna make clear, next slide please Noelle. is that a meeting isn't just a meeting. A meeting like a city council requires three steps. It's not just the agenda and us sitting here tonight talking about them. There's the preparation that goes into it There's a staff that's here tonight involved in the meeting, responding during the meeting. And then certainly the follow through and the work after the meeting that's heard is important. So in some of the analysis that we've done, we've talked about the number of meetings, but I really wanna make it clear that a meeting doesn't just happen on its own. And there are follow up and preparation that makes this a little more involved than one would think if you're looking at it from the outside. Next slide, please. So the city council heard that information and acted to direct the city manager to do things that would help the situation, help us be more effective and be mindful of some of the staffing constraints that we were facing at the time. Some of it was, you know, asking folks to look at what they were doing, how they were doing it, and some specific recommendations about frequency of meetings, that meetings be more quarterly as well. they were doing it and some specific recommendations about frequency of meetings that moving meetings be more uh quarterly as opposed to monthly that some bodies look at transitions to non-brown act status that there be a process to do all this by the end of 2022 and i didn't get to it so i take full responsibility the council gave me the latitude to make this happen by the end of 2022 I was not able to but I'm still working on it one of the things that I did ask and I think is important to note is that whatever work we do that these committees be directed in a way that I thought was extremely important back to the basics let's look at our finances let's look at our infrastructure and let's look at our organization and you know people infrastructure so that to me is fundamental in any effort going forward including what we're going to talk about this evening our budget I also was told to seek community experts because there are many in Sausalito many talented people with wealth of experience and different kinds of experience they can help in many many ways and they have and so to keep seeking those but seek them in a way that didn't involve setting up council committees that involved you know more staff work than we could handle at the time next slide please In addition, I think the landscape is improved regarding this area because some things have gotten completed, including a housing element. That was a huge, huge heavy lift, a lot of staff time, a lot of community time. The encampment working group is no longer enforced because we have been able to effectively and innovatively close the encampment. some bodies by virtue of council direction and consensus have been disbanded like the machine shop working group that one is no longer on my list of things to do And again, the meeting frequency that was reduced less than staff requirements and then you all as the city council did some things really important you added uh people resources you added an assistant city engineer to help you've added a resiliency and sustainability person to help we've added a person in in our office noeli gonzalez who helps us with a lot of the things and and certainly we've rebuilt our finance department our community development department to help meet some of the demands more effectively than we were a year and a half ago so that's improved significantly and then uh unilaterally because we had such change in the finance department most of the finance business which was done on a monthly basis in 2020 and 2021 was transitioned to the full city council and then the omit committee work that we were trying to do had to be changed because one of the persons sitting on that body was chose not to run for office who's included the Knowles and the person that we had structured to deal with a lot of the leases and so forth had a serious mishap and is unable to work with us. So so those have been suspended in essentially the city manager is trying to work with, you know, innovative and creative ways to work on omit related issues. And, you know, there is a backlog there. And that was evidenced by our closed session tonight that we have some work to do there. this is a busy, busy slide, but let me tell you what the net is. There's the city council agendas, and in 2020, you had about 50 meetings. 2021. In 2022, you had 39 meetings. And those involve a lot of people and a lot of time. And so that's the big enchilada. And then there's the state required library board of trustees, and then there's a planning commission, historic preservation commission, and then the safety commission as well, that are all part of the municipal code. The remainder of those committees are council created. And if you do the math that I'm doing, I looked at the bottom. there's 179 meetings held in 2021 involving various various amounts of staff and staff time and that improved in 2022 to 156 meeting meetings so that's in trending in the right direction in my mind and when you add more staff to it I think that it's becoming better than it was. But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods. You know, there's still work to be done for sure. Next slide please, Noelle. You know, we have to implement the work done by existing bodies. There's a backlog of work that we have to do that we haven't gotten to, whether it's the landslide task force and the 12 recommendations made there, or other recommendations by other bodies. So we have to do that. There's some decisions needed on what we do with the Finance Committee, what we do with OMIT. To be candid with you, I didn't know what OMIT stood for when I got here. and our leases and Martin Luther King proper, the facility, all of that involved in that body. and then when i put together the list that i provided in october i was told that i'd made errors that there was certainly some of these committees were inactive inaccurate so we've provided a number of them to you we'll do it again and some of them just don't belong on the docket anymore because they don't exist one of the things that i still need to do is keep working with whatever board committee commission that's not part of the state code or the city councils or the city's municipal code to try to transition away from the Brown Act requirements that really create a lot of work and a lot of opportunity for for error on the city staffs part and then one thing that you asked and I will try to do more of this year is to recruit experts in the community to the city managers working groups so that there can in fact be a utilization of the talent in the city on an ad hoc basis on a defined basis and that there is in fact some alignment of those duties with what the council wants and the city manager can then execute that using the same people but in a different way. That's the work that needs to be done. So I wanna go to the next slide please. When I talked about some of these committees, let me just kind of run through them. The housing element advisory group complete, works completed. The city manager recruitment working group work completed. Blue Ribbon Committee on Housing, Build and Zoning Ordinances work completed. Geological Hazard Working Group, the work's been completed. Then chemical coordination working group, the work's been completed. And on the machine shop, there's no further action required. Some committees, though, have an unknown status. Next one, thank you, Noelle. The Dorothy Gibson residents, which had a working group and has a commitment to provide from the Dorothy Gibson estate housing to a city employee of low income. And the city council working with the committee and the estate found that we could, in fact, bifurcate that into potentially a unit for a homeless person. So that work needs to happen, and I don't know who's going to be working on that obviously I keep harping on infrastructure that working group needs to continue there's a legislative review committee there's a cannabis committee which I'm not quite sure of the ad hoc committee on revenue you've kind of done that as a council but you know do you want to keep that going i'm not sure what's going on with the age friendly task force the affordable housing working group or the bridgeway marina so those to me are examples of work that need to be done and require some direction from the city council so in summary i'd like to say that uh it's been um Very apparent that a lot of good ideas come from committees It's been also very apparent that with the situation the city found itself in two years ago that there was a real need to rethink this and I believe we have And I think there's some direction needed from the council on if what we're doing is working if there's more tweaking It needs to be done if some of these committees need to be resuscitated Or some of them need to be disbanded, you know, that's what the city councils do and our job is to do the work of of the committees need to be resuscitated or some of them need to be disbanded you know that's what the city councils do and our job is to do the work of the committees the commissions the task force but also to make sure that city council and the community are mindful of the extent of time and personnel involved in doing this work because sometimes you can be so busy doing work in this disregard, you can't deal with the basic work that you have to do on a daily basis and that creates what I call a scenario where there's burnout there are situations where certain committees are composed or comprised of people that are all like-minded and so in that echo chamber of a committee there may not be alignment with what the City Council wants to do or what the community wants to do. So some of these committees need to be looked at from the standpoint of some diversity and who they are and what they think. Because when they're all of like mind, then you'll get what you want, which is something very, very aggressive, which may not be what the city council believes in. And you need some kind of diverse opinions in that group, I believe, to help make that function more effectively. So again, I'm very happy with the support of the city council to keep reviewing this. I'm also more than happy with the allocation of staff to work on these to make this flow more efficiently. And certainly I'm grateful to the community people who continued and who have volunteered their time and talent to the city of Sausalito. Any questions, I'm happy to answer them, Mayor. |
| 00:37:38.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much, City Manager. Do we have questions from members of the Council before we open it up for public comment? Okay, seeing none, I will open it up for public comment at this time. |
| 00:37:51.03 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Peter van meter. |
| 00:37:53.28 | Walfred Solorzano | Great. |
| 00:37:58.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Bye, Peter. |
| 00:37:59.99 | Peter van meter | First, I have to say how |
| 00:38:05.09 | Peter van meter | Anyway. How thrilled I am to be here looking at you face to face in person. I've long advocated going back to live meetings, and it's really exciting to be here. On this topic, I have fortunately or unfortunately had the opportunity to be on a variety of committees, official, ad hoc, otherwise, for like the last 45 years. So I think I have a little bit of perspective to offer on this topic. Obviously the statutory committees, as your city manager mentioned, have to have the Brown Act rules. They have to have the staff support and all the rest of that. But the rest of the committees, it seems to me, this last point was really important. Thank you. And that is to be operating under the direction of the city council. is I see the committee as being an extension of your time availability. So they're gathering the input, they're forming opinions to recommendations to their Council It can be in a very actually in formal manner. And I don't see that they need to have staff support specifically if they're given specific council agenda direction of what their agenda should be. And some committees, of course, have been operating really kind of on a wild, basis in my opinion. You know, one of the ones that had some public comment on recently was the bike and ped committee, you know, coming up with some independent ideas. apparently without necessarily a lot of direction. And you've got some other situations like that, too. So these committees could be informally organized under the direction of the council, given the purpose from you, but request staff time only when specifically needed. So they don't have a regular staff person. They could make that request directly to the city manager if resources are available. they could be supplied. Maybe they've got to change their timing. and getting the answers because of staff being commitment, but they could make those requests. and then require them to come back to you with periodic reports. Maybe that's quarterly, maybe it can even be even semi-annually. How are we doing on the direction that you have given us? and come back and give that report. And of course they can come in with the recommendations anytime they complete their task. And then, Maybe it's a short-term task. It's over. They're disbanded. You know, like you have some that are kind of zombie committees I gathered from the report at the moment. So that would be my general observations on the topic. Thank you. |
| 00:40:19.21 | Walfred Solorzano | Thanks, Peter. Do we have the question? |
| 00:40:22.10 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, on Zoom, we have Carolyn Ravel. |
| 00:40:25.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Hi, Carolyn. |
| 00:40:34.25 | Walfred Solorzano | We can't hear you yet. Unmit yourself, please. |
| 00:40:34.54 | Carolyn Revell | Can I unmute yourself please? Unmuted now. Yes, thank you. |
| 00:40:36.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 00:40:38.35 | Carolyn Revell | We often hear that Sausalito Beautiful is a good example of A committee that doesn't need to operate under brown act requirements. And I think that we are a good example in that regard. We do however, need a little bit of staff time, but we try to be very efficient when we have a meeting once every couple of months with an agenda that we can that doesn't require staff preparation time, but just an hour to coordinate Um, I have seen some wonderful work done by the different committees, the Sustainability Commission, for example, I THOUGHT WAS A VERY EFFICIENT GROUP AND HAS LED, I THOUGHT WAS A VERY EFFICIENT GROUP AND HAS LED, I SUPPOSE, TO THE a new sustainability coordinator. It does seem to me that Peter had some excellent ideas there THE IDEA OF TASK FORCES OR MEETINGS THAT ARE ONLY quarterly such as EDAC is now doing working with subcommittees. So there are lots of creative ideas without losing the benefit of citizen expertise and participation. THAT STILL IS CONSIDERATE OF STAFF TIME, WHICH IS THE MOST CRITICAL problem to address here. Thank you very much. |
| 00:41:46.68 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you, Carolyn. Further public comment, city clerk? |
| 00:41:51.44 | Walfred Solorzano | No further comment. Oh, actually, Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 00:41:58.96 | Sandra Bushmaker | Oops. I'll be quick. I just would like the City Council to keep these committees on a relatively short leash if they're going to continue to function in order that we don't run into the problems of runaway projects which have not had city council approval. I sent you all a letter in this regard. uh, a couple of weeks ago, and I hope you read it. Thank you. Thank you, Sandra. |
| 00:42:26.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Sydney Boutier. |
| 00:42:31.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Hi, Sybil. possible. |
| 00:42:32.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Sorry. |
| 00:42:33.24 | Walfred Solorzano | It's OK. |
| 00:42:37.66 | Walfred Solorzano | I don't see her yet. |
| 00:42:38.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:42:39.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Could you restart the timer because you just got on? Yeah, thanks. |
| 00:42:39.82 | Unknown | Could you restart the chat? |
| 00:42:43.63 | Unknown | Thank you. Yes, representing Age-Findly-South Salido. I just want to comment that the Age-Findly-South Salido began by conducting a citywide survey and created a strategic action plan based on the results and community meetings and with input from city officials, all of whom were interviewed. as we created the plan, we then presented the plan to the City Council, which talked about taking action to help improve the city for especially older adults, the people in the the later phases of life here in Sausalito and also intergenerational. efforts and Um, Those were all, um, there were city council had some comments and we made some adjustments and we've been conducting that plan pretty much without needing staff time. Occasionally we run grants through the city We've conducted our own fundraising and provided the funding that we needed to be able to fulfill different parts of the plan and make enhancements in that way. And we're working on a report now for showing what we've done over the last really six years. which is our actual five year report. We're running a little late on it. And so that'll be coming back to the city over the next couple of months. And We hope that we've been a positive, had more on the positive side than the negative side of taking staff done. And we've certainly appreciated the Um, the guidance that we have gotten from City Council in particular and from some. of staff from time to time, especially recreation in part. Thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 00:44:49.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much. |
| 00:44:53.87 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, we have a person on an iPad. |
| 00:45:02.21 | Unknown | Hi, it's Pat Zook. I'm not sure what are we doing here? Start video? Can you see me? |
| 00:45:08.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. for a second. |
| 00:45:09.48 | Unknown | I'm not seeing you, but you can make. |
| 00:45:09.50 | Walfred Solorzano | you but you can make. Now we see you. look. |
| 00:45:11.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:45:11.86 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:45:12.26 | Unknown | Hi, Pat. Hi, I'd like to follow on to something that a couple of things that Peter said and that Ms. Ravel said, I have long thought that we should move toward the beautiful modality. which is a sort of a self assembled group of people who are interested in contributing. In the past, that kind of a group has really made for community. and has not been inhibited or prohibited or constrained by city council appointments which may give sometimes inappropriate weight to a particular group of folks I'm not sure. In addition, Sausalito Beautiful, I'm not a participant in Sausalito Beautiful, by the way, so please don't. think of this as an advertisement of any sort for them. except that I think they do good work and I think they are, honorable and interested and When it's called for, they actually step up and raise their own money and spend their own time. And I think that's a very good thing. on. And there are many areas in town that can use that kind of involvement and support without being lassoed in or constrained by city appointments or otherwise other than necessary city staff. Thank you. |
| 00:46:38.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:46:40.27 | Walfred Solorzano | And we have a speaker off the telephone. gonna mute yourself. |
| 00:46:53.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:46:53.82 | Unknown | Hello. |
| 00:46:54.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 00:46:56.59 | Unknown | You can speak to me here in public office. |
| 00:46:56.67 | Walfred Solorzano | My name is Richard Quarman. |
| 00:46:58.78 | Unknown | Thank you. I'm sorry. |
| 00:47:00.77 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Sorry, can you state your name? You hear it? Yeah, we can hear you. |
| 00:47:02.71 | Unknown | Can you hear? Okay, my name is Richard Corman. I live at 91 Gerard Avenue. here in Sausalito. I've lived here since 2009. I recently got a notice about experience changing the parking, extending the area seat parking, permit of |
| 00:47:23.28 | Walfred Solorzano | Hi, excuse me. Hi. This is not the item. This is a different item. When we get to that item, or I believe that item already passed, |
| 00:47:24.33 | Unknown | zoned. |
| 00:47:32.01 | Walfred Solorzano | We can talk about that one. |
| 00:47:32.89 | Unknown | Oh, did it pass? Because I just wanted to say I'm in favor of it, and I'm a resident that is affected by that. So I didn't know how to. I'm sorry for jumping the line, so to speak. |
| 00:47:41.24 | Walfred Solorzano | It's okay. Thank you very much. |
| 00:47:45.30 | Unknown | Has it been passed? Yes. |
| 00:47:47.13 | Walfred Solorzano | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:47:49.07 | Unknown | Oh, okay. Thank you so much. I'm sorry to jump the line. |
| 00:47:53.49 | Walfred Solorzano | We're always happy to hear we did a good job, so thanks. |
| 00:47:56.86 | Unknown | I'm really in favor. I'm happy somebody is, that you guys. |
| 00:48:01.94 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. That was the last speaker. |
| 00:48:04.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, great. I will bring it back up to council for discussion who would like to get us started on this item. Thank you. Okay, Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:48:14.51 | Unknown | I'm happy to lead off. I agree with most of what we heard this evening. I definitely believe that um, the, committee's Um, that are not independent of the city need to function under the direction of the city council. They can seek resources from the city manager, but their work needs to be transparent, requiring periodic reports regarding how they are carrying out the direction from the City Council. I think Sausalito Beautiful and Age-Friendly Sausalito set the gold standard for independent committees They are two different modalities, both of which work very well not constrained by City Council appointments I would love to see other committees such as bike and ped move in that direction, especially since Bike and Peg already is not particularly directed by the City Council, but more by MCBC and other regional agencies with specific goals. I support the movement of non-Brown Act committees to meeting quarterly. I believe that's a really functional... approach and I also strongly support continuing to appoint city council liaisons to various committees. That was one of the key ways in which I really learned more about various aspects of our city when I was first elected to the city council. And so I think participation of a city council liaison helps keep committees on track and carrying out their assigned goals. And those are my thoughts, thank you. Thank you city manager for a thorough report. |
| 00:49:58.99 | Walfred Solorzano | who wants to weigh in next. |
| 00:50:02.38 | Unknown | Mayor, I'm wondering, I'm happy to go next. I'm wondering if we want to be clear about those that are sort of our internal committees and |
| 00:50:02.48 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:50:11.39 | Unknown | the distinction between that and then the additional committees there. So I don't know if you have a way you want to structure that conversation, but the question around OMIT, for example, would be different than PBAC. |
| 00:50:20.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Right. So right now we have an agenda setting committee, a finance commit, well, technically, so we can talk through what we do about this. We have about 13 city committees and working groups that are staffed by the council and then a couple members volunteer based like nine volunteer based and then for it's not clear if they're volunteer based or committee based. So I think we could discuss those that apply as that are working groups within the City Council amongst ourselves first if we wanted to do that. agenda setting committee is traditionally the mayor and vice mayor finance committee. We agreed already, as I understand, for us to eliminate that. Legislative committee, we haven't met this year. I think it makes sense for the liaison who is part of the MCCMC Ledge Committee to continue to facilitate whatever legislative suggestions might come up from that, but otherwise not have that committee meet, as we've discussed. The OMIC committee, there's the OMIC committee, the Ferry Landing Committee, the Richardson Bay Working Group, um, machine shop working group, Homeless Encampment Working Group, homeless legal working group, B of A Working Group, Cannabis Committee, Dorothy Gibson House, and the Fort Baker Task Force. So I would like to suggest, because we've had so many ongoing discussions about specifically real estate, that we create a new committee for or essentially one working group that would focus on real estate. which would include ferry landing, Ferry Landing, Richardson Bay, B of A, et cetera, although we no longer need B of A. Or do we have specific? Thank you. |
| 00:51:58.97 | Unknown | May I chime in? So I think, |
| 00:51:59.83 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, sure. |
| 00:52:04.08 | Unknown | And again, I don't want to derail how you want to structure this. So in response to that specific one, I don't know that I would want to go in that direction for two reasons. One is I think we've had some good conversations recently and unanimously would like to professionalize our real estate services and be able to outsource those to somebody who can actually, you know, this is what they do, right? In which case, I don't know that we need to have additional council members involved with that. And then, so that's just more as to our real estate specifically, and then I have a more sort of existential comment around whether or not two council members should pursue something that requires a policy directive independent of the full council and bake something and then bring it or whether those things should be more collaborative from the start. So again, I don't want to derail how you want to structure this, but I just want to respond to real estate really quickly. |
| 00:52:55.69 | Walfred Solorzano | That's fine, I'm okay with that as an approach, given the direction that we're going. I wanna hear from others so that we have everybody's feedback. But with regards to those that we have now, Are there any that we should eliminate immediately? For instance, I don't think we need the Cannabis Committee. I don't think we need the Fort Baker Task Force. I don't think we need the B of A Working Group. I don't think we need the Encampment, homeless Encampment Working Group. |
| 00:53:17.34 | Unknown | I would simplify it and say, I would only keep agenda and finance. |
| 00:53:22.75 | Jill Hoffman | May I weigh in? I think Chris had those laid out on slide 10 of your presentation. I was just now looking city manager to try to find. I think that's what you're talking about. I didn't write fast enough. So I think if we can see it, I think it's easier. Principally, I agree completely. I think, but I think we can talk about OMIT separately. because that's our real estate management. Yep. So here we go. So, okay, I agree. |
| 00:53:58.61 | Unknown | Do you want to take us down this list? |
| 00:54:00.62 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:54:00.64 | Unknown | Yeah, could you pull up that? |
| 00:54:00.66 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, could you pull up |
| 00:54:01.41 | Unknown | it. Thank you. |
| 00:54:02.04 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. That's what I was thinking. |
| 00:54:03.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:54:04.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:54:04.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:54:04.23 | Walfred Solorzano | . |
| 00:54:04.30 | Unknown | really tiny. |
| 00:54:04.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:54:04.64 | Jill Hoffman | Tiny one. There we go. |
| 00:54:04.97 | Walfred Solorzano | There we go. Okay. So the Dorothy Gibson working group, this actually does require ongoing discussion because there's interest. First of all, because we've said that we were gonna continue to build the Dorothy Gibson house. And I know that you and I had served on that council. |
| 00:54:17.92 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, we were. Yeah, the status was of that. The reason it's sort of dormant is because we were waiting for funding from the state and I think we do. We have it in our pocket city manager. That homeless grant funding that we received from the state, 500,000 from the state and 500,000 from the county, give or take. |
| 00:54:30.39 | Chris Zapata | $500. |
| 00:54:33.95 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. We don't have it in our pocket. It's been committed. The state has committed the money. The county has committed the money. We have to work through the agreement, and then it will be in your pocket. |
| 00:54:42.13 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so that was, I think it was sort of dormant. We were awarded that grant money, and we've just been waiting to get it. It's been delayed about, I don't know, seven months. So that's with regard to Dorothy Gibson. But I agree, Infrastructure Working Group, I think Legislative Review Committee, Cannabis Committee, Ad Hoc Committee on Revenue Options, Age-Friendly Task Force, Affordable Housing Working Group, and Bridgeway Marina. I think those are all... revenue options you know age-friendly task force affordable housing working group and Bridgeway Marina I think those are all we could disband all of those frankly except for Dorothy Gibson because we still have some work on that |
| 00:55:03.40 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:55:16.49 | Walfred Solorzano | . I was going to go through each of them one by one and have folks weigh in. OK, great. |
| 00:55:17.93 | Jill Hoffman | is going to go through each other. |
| 00:55:23.09 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:55:23.11 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:23.16 | Walfred Solorzano | THE END OF |
| 00:55:23.22 | Unknown | Let's just do, |
| 00:55:24.12 | Walfred Solorzano | and just raise hands and say. Okay, so Dorothy Gibson Working Group, are you saying you don't want to continue though? reconvene. Okay, yes. Okay, everyone in favor of doing that. Okay. Infrastructure? |
| 00:55:36.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:36.22 | Unknown | I guess I just feel like, you know, Councilmember Kellman, brought up a pertinent question to settle first, which is this issue of these two person working groups and is that the way we wanna, do we wanna establish a category of work? |
| 00:55:36.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:36.78 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:55:52.54 | Unknown | workflow with that. I do. But Councilmember Kellman proposed just two of those. So I'm willing to let that have a fair hearing. Once we establish that, category, well, then we can go through and pick which ones we want to have and which ones we don't. But there's the question of, In finance, we used to have a committee of two people to do the work and then they would clean it up, right? Now we decided not to have that. There's an alternate approach, which is everyone is allowed, of course, to pair up and work on anything they want under the Brown Act or work individually. but not have two people blessed by the city council to use staff time in some negotiated fashion to run a topic way down the ball field, and then present it as a semi-fait accompli. It's efficient. It gets stuff done. And so I'm on both sides of the fence a little bit. But I think that her idea deserves some actual discussion about how we want to organize ourselves before we go through the list. |
| 00:56:48.68 | Walfred Solorzano | My concern with regards to eliminating that system is that it will end up taking further staff time because then two different working groups of two will ask questions of staff and then one person will ask questions of the staff and they'll be repeating information back and forth. And so if we were going to do it that way, I worry that it will be the opposite and not be as efficient. And I also think often Some meetings can be more effective in smaller groups and it's important to, I mean look at all the work that you and Councilmember Hoffman have done on our Fair Landing Task Force and how quickly you were able to move a lot of those initiatives forward that otherwise might not have happened. |
| 00:57:18.97 | Unknown | And look at the work we did on the Housing Element Task Force. We got that response back in like a weekend. We're the only certified housing element and that would not have happened had we relied on the entire council to do that work So. But I also believe it's important that these working committees be blessed by the council so you don't just have two people rogue. going off and doing their own thing. |
| 00:57:43.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, transparency is really important and the existence of these committees ensures that the community knows who's working on what and that there's an opportunity for reporting out and who to go to for specific point projects, which is a huge consideration and part of the balance of who's doing what on the council when. Councilmember Kelman, go ahead. |
| 00:57:57.39 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up, Vice Mayor. So I would make a distinction between the housing element working group that worked over a weekend at the specific direction of the full council versus, and I'll just use my own example of something, Bridgeway Marina. So we've talked a little bit about how that has changed status and Council Member Hoffman and I were the two person team on that. and to you know, illustrate my own belief system, I said, I don't think it's appropriate for us to make a decision, carry that ball down the field, and then come to you and tell you what that decision is. I think we should decide this from a policy perspective collectively. And I think there are some key aspects, I think Ferry Landside is one of those, that needs guardrails around that, Bridgewater needs guardrails around it. And so I don't know if that is some type of very specific regular cadence of reporting and buy-in, because that's gonna end up creating more work as well. And so I'm cognizant of that, but I'm only just using the ones that I've been engaged on, which is the housing a bit, and then Bridgeway Marina, And frankly, I would much rather have the full council weigh in on what we do with our waterfront as it pertains to Bridget and Marina than to bring UFA to complete just because two of us like the direction. So that's my concern, and I don't have an elegant, immediate solution to it, but thank you for hearing it. |
| 00:59:18.02 | Unknown | yes so Bridgeway I'll use Bridgeway Marina as an example Tom Riley and I met hours and hours and hours with the owner of Bridgeway Marina to negotiate a letter of intent. WITH THE periodic reporting to the city council about our direction, but That work never would have gotten done. We did work the city attorney didn't have time to do to get that LOI in place. And so I... had we Already, we can't get everything to the full city council that's on the agenda on the future agenda items because we stopped meeting at 10 o'clock at night. So there's not time. the full city council to together handle all of the business and all of the minutiae of some of these matters. but I fully endorse your approach of guardrails to ensure that the committees have a specific purpose and specific reporting so that they're not going off on a tangent |
| 01:00:21.79 | Walfred Solorzano | I also think maybe annually, as we're doing now, we review the standing committees and determine whether or not they're still relevant, whether they need to exist, and whether they need to require staff time. I think that we can find a balance between Councilmember Kelman's important comments about what should be coming forward to the whole council and what should be worked on independently, but I also believe if you spend a few months working on it independently, you can come forward with additional information that otherwise would have required extensive staff time and staff reports. So there's, I think that there's a place where we can find a balance to the small working groups that while being Brownette compliant and efficient and to eliminating staff time, because that's the ultimate goal, right? That's why we came forward with this item because we wanna be efficient and use staff time and resources in the best way possible. |
| 01:01:03.93 | Jill Hoffman | So, so if we're, so right now we're just talking about council working groups, right? So I think, um, I think that's fine. I think we just, we perhaps come up with a definition for what a working group is, how long and when we form the working group, what their remit is, how long we expect them to continue I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE You know, we've tried in the past to do |
| 01:01:21.26 | Chad Hess | TO BE ABLE |
| 01:01:21.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:01:21.36 | Chad Hess | So... |
| 01:01:25.11 | Jill Hoffman | you know, written reports, for every council meeting to attach them to the agenda or attach them to the committee reports at the end of the agenda. you know, That takes a lot of work. But it's helpful, right? And it's helpful that we, if we... we make sure the committees that we're on are focused and there aren't a large number of them It helps us to give monthly, not monthly, but city council meeting updates. on where we're at and that's when we comply with the brown act that's when we can talk about it as a council member and that's where you can get direction for a whole council so I was involved with the |
| 01:01:58.35 | Chad Hess | THE WHOLE THING. |
| 01:02:00.46 | Jill Hoffman | Bridgeway Maria prior to Councilmember Cox for about eight years with Tom Theodorus and hammering out the parameters for that deal. And so, you know, that took an enormous amount of time getting that across the finish line where we're at now, you know, I don't know. But I do agree with Councilmember Kelman, that should move to a full council consideration. at this point and whether or not that warrants or what the scope of that is going to be going forward. I would suggest that we talk now about what we think about the definition of a working group is, Um, What what and I think if we want to give a remit when we form a working group, that's fine If we want to give a time estimate, I think that's fine, too. And then I agree annually And in December, the December meeting should be a review of all of the working groups and committees and commissions, frankly, non statutory and decide whether or not we're going to what we're going to do with those if we're going to continue them for another year, what the remit is for the next year. or whether or not we're going to dissolve them and have that as a basic practice, and it's not a drama that we're... you know, recognizing that a committee is no longer You know has a better or more efficient way to achieve what we're trying to achieve rather than the construct of a working group or committee So that's what I would suggest. I think now's the time to talk about that So that's you've heard my input on it |
| 01:03:17.92 | Unknown | So thank you everybody for this conversation. So to further it along, I would then add I mean, my preference is to not have them, but in the interest of efficiency and collaboration here, I would say that there needs to be an acknowledgement of key decision points, and it's probably before, let's say, potentially even before options are drafted and then brought to the council, because I'm thinking of a couple of opportunities where options were, a lot of work was put into the options, It doesn't mean the council is going to like those options that is brought to them. And so I think any sort of rules of the road and put this in the meeting minutes, please, is that any council member can, can say, Hey, I'm not comfortable with the direction you guys are going in without the council talking about them. Um, and somehow get it onto the agenda just to have that transparency. But, but I think, |
| 01:04:04.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:04:04.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Absolutely. |
| 01:04:04.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:04:06.37 | Unknown | I think there's a lot of effort that goes into developing options that reflect that committee and not necessarily the entire And I just don't want anybody working on a committee and coming back. and saying, but we did all this work and now here we are and you don't like anything we brought to you, like that's really frustrating. And I don't want that for anybody. |
| 01:04:24.03 | Walfred Solorzano | But that's kind of part of the government process too, right? Like you spend a lot of time bringing something forward. You try to get people to get on your side. They won't. |
| 01:04:27.90 | Unknown | FORWARD. They will. with that. |
| 01:04:31.61 | Walfred Solorzano | It's fine knowing that. |
| 01:04:31.63 | Unknown | It was fine knowing that. |
| 01:04:32.45 | Walfred Solorzano | you could do it. |
| 01:04:32.98 | Unknown | all that work and it comes back and someone goes, I really just don't like that direction. If everyone buys into that and we're all here and say yes into the microphone, then |
| 01:04:36.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Sure. |
| 01:04:37.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:04:42.58 | Unknown | I'm more comfortable with it. |
| 01:04:43.96 | Unknown | I totally endorse that. I think that's the risk of a working group. And that's why the working group should touch base with the council to ensure the direction they're moving is reflective of the entire council approval. Vice mayor. |
| 01:05:00.89 | Unknown | I just wanted to make sure that Councilmember Kelman had a chance to propose something. That was my proposal. No, but I mean, just to be your ideal world, actually, because I'm intrigued by the notion of getting rid of them all together. |
| 01:05:08.09 | Walfred Solorzano | That was my proposal. |
| 01:05:14.86 | Unknown | but also cognizant of the fact that we do end at 10 p.m. We start at five, so it's an honest day's labor. But when you think of the examples, the numerous examples that you know as well as anyone of the work that we do, what would be a model that would work that would not involve these designated pairs of working groups? |
| 01:05:36.68 | Unknown | I think we did it, we've done it well with, let's say, the example of you and I with some of the upcoming leases. Right. We have some leases that need to be reviewed. We don't have somebody in house to deal with them. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE you know, vice mayor and council of government, you guys go out and come up with a plan and propose that plan. And we did that. And now I think our job is done as to that particular issue. And so it was limited in the task. It helped move something along. It filled a gap when there was not a staff member to do it. but we're not continuing to carry the water on that. Because remember, too, our whole team here is really built out from when we all started. And I think we have, got a community economic development director now, we have a standard resilience manager, we have people who can do the work, and I think we need to figure out maybe new ways to support them as opposed to thinking we need to do their work. |
| 01:06:29.89 | Unknown | And if I were just to, if you don't mind, just to engage with that, because the council member used us as an example, we actually weren't even, we're a working group. We just sort of started working on it. |
| 01:06:33.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:06:39.93 | Walfred Solorzano | we were you were asked you were asked you were appointed you were asked officially in closed session and we discussed it and you were appointed i didn't remember so you were a working group you were appointed and and that's yes congratulations thank you very much you've officially dissolved that working group that you did not know you were a part of which is why we should circle back to councilmember hoffman's point which is defining |
| 01:06:40.77 | Unknown | You were asked, you were asked, you were appointed |
| 01:06:42.78 | Unknown | I thought we were unofficial. |
| 01:06:47.24 | Unknown | I didn't remember that. |
| 01:06:48.16 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:06:48.30 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:06:52.91 | Unknown | Oh, yeah. |
| 01:07:00.92 | Walfred Solorzano | what a working group is from the status of the dais and what it does and what it looks like. So I would like to propose a group of two council members appointed by the mayor to focus on a specific issue related to an upcoming agenda item. |
| 01:07:17.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:17.09 | Unknown | I like that. |
| 01:07:19.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 01:07:20.29 | Unknown | staff. Did you get that? Remember C-level task? |
| 01:07:20.34 | Walfred Solorzano | Staff, did you get that? |
| 01:07:23.52 | Unknown | Sea level rise task force. Landslide task force. And landslide task force. I mean, you got us a million bucks. That was a pretty good task force. Yes, everybody has to ask for money. |
| 01:07:23.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Level Rise Task Force. |
| 01:07:31.28 | Unknown | Everybody has to ask for money. |
| 01:07:32.61 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, yeah, ask for money. Well, you and I are technically on the grant ask for money task force. Which is great. Yep. Okay, so so we could go through this list and decide which ones are gone essentially are completed and then I think We could talk about this again. I mean, we're not done with the item, but I just mean we should be reviewing the status of these as we give our committee reports. Because if we report out, which is an ongoing agenda item, and we say, actually, we're done. then I think we can, they're in dissolved item. And perhaps we can add Committee updates and dissolutions to the agenda, if that would be helpful, just to increase staff efficiency going forward. |
| 01:08:08.07 | Unknown | And one thing that Council Member Hoffman suggested was that this be revisited every December. I would respectfully suggest it be revisited every January. With onset? |
| 01:08:20.03 | Walfred Solorzano | of a new asset of the new mayor and vice mayor. That makes sense. |
| 01:08:20.35 | Unknown | the onset of the new mayor. |
| 01:08:23.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Okay, let's do that. All right, so then for now, now that we have a definition of what the working group is and a commitment to continue to reassess the efficiency and tasks of said working groups, let's take a look at these committees here. So the Dorvi Gibson working group, myself and Council Member Hoffman can reconvene that Um, the Infrastructure Working Group, Goodbye. |
| 01:08:45.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:45.87 | Walfred Solorzano | Never heard of it. |
| 01:08:45.88 | Unknown | Never heard of it. |
| 01:08:46.59 | Unknown | Okay. Legislative Review Committee, I would say, you know, I've been an active member on that in past years. But right now, as has Council Member Hoffman. And myself. We don't have any big pending legislation at the moment. So when and if we do, we can reconvene that for a specific piece of legislation to assist the city attorney and the city manager. |
| 01:08:56.01 | Walfred Solorzano | And myself. |
| 01:09:03.64 | Walfred Solorzano | We convene that for a specific piece of legislation. Okay, Cannabis Committee, I don't think we need right now. |
| 01:09:11.60 | Unknown | Agreed. |
| 01:09:12.09 | Walfred Solorzano | Ad hoc committee on revenue options. This is related to the budget, but I think we've had that discussion, and we don't need the committee right now. Age friendly task force I would really like to keep on going because the point person is Sybil Batelier who does an amazing job of running it and she touches base with the city on a semi regular basis but I don't think that she's cumbersome of staff in any way. |
| 01:09:21.44 | Chad Hess | Because the |
| 01:09:31.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:09:31.36 | Jill Hoffman | Agree. So let me. You might have to weigh in on it. I'm sorry. I have my hand. Okay. So the Age-Friendly Task Force, so there is a distinction between working groups and task force. Right? Working groups, you know, we're not subject to the Brown Act. We go out and go forth and do work. |
| 01:09:47.71 | Unknown | We have a great day. |
| 01:09:47.80 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:09:50.36 | Jill Hoffman | Same thing for the. but the task force are principally different because you're bringing in, you're not really using staff for a task force you know, you're bringing in specifically looking at and bringing in experts to do a specific thing. So the sea level rise task force was 12 people or something like that. We set our own agenda, we move very fast. We use some staff time, but not much. Same thing for the landslide task force, right? It was a very specific remit. So age friendly task force, seems to me it's more like an ongoing commission, right? So different from what we're talking about right now. Different animals. Very different. So I don't know, maybe we want to move that conversation over to the other boards and commissions. Yeah, I'd like it. |
| 01:10:25.38 | Unknown | animals. |
| 01:10:29.83 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Sure. Okay, Affordable Housing Working Group. Thank you. |
| 01:10:35.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:35.56 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm going to go. |
| 01:10:35.60 | Unknown | I think we're actively streamlining. |
| 01:10:38.56 | Walfred Solorzano | I mean, Yeah, with the housing and options group that you and I sit on. |
| 01:10:42.02 | Unknown | when I sit on it. So I think that should remain. |
| 01:10:44.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:44.36 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:10:44.38 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:10:44.40 | Unknown | Is that you guys, not you and me? |
| 01:10:46.03 | Unknown | that's us it's us okay because we're the housing we're the housing element not the affordable housing |
| 01:10:52.31 | Unknown | I have a question about that then. Since we're trying to follow our rules, how long will it last? I mean, should we talk about that now? What will its ending be? What is its remit? |
| 01:10:58.61 | Unknown | WORSE. |
| 01:11:02.67 | Unknown | Yeah, so we're trying to get full funding to build an affordable housing project as soon as possible at the city's corporation yard. Thank you. |
| 01:11:12.71 | Walfred Solorzano | or whatever site or whatever's. |
| 01:11:12.73 | Unknown | Yes. or whatever site we can you utilize the grant funding but there's a deadline to actually utilize the grant funding and so |
| 01:11:21.05 | Walfred Solorzano | so And I think we can put together, we can define it in a remit for the next meeting with specifics, if that's helpful. Go ahead, Councilor. I think the Vice Mayor had... |
| 01:11:29.12 | Unknown | I THINK THE I was just going to say that wonderful articulation might be memorialized on the city's website or in the description of the working group, at least in the minutes, for our own memory. |
| 01:11:41.15 | Unknown | I'd rather write something out than just my off the cuff. |
| 01:11:44.30 | Unknown | That was pretty good, but you know what I mean. It's just that way we can refer to whether it's mission accomplished or not. |
| 01:11:49.47 | Unknown | Yeah, and if I may, I'll say this is a really good example of, so I didn't know there was one, and I'm in support of the corporation yard, but that is the type of conversation that the full council probably should have had and said, is the corporation the right location? and maybe you guys have had other locations and then we talk about it and that's the direction that moves forward and we get some type of, so this is, we haven't had a lot of transparency or conversation on this particular working group. I know you guys are working very hard and doing very good work. I'm just trying to be consistent with our guardrails, so please don't take. |
| 01:12:25.49 | Unknown | No, I don't take offense, but I will say that this was announced and approved by the City Council back in 2020. And it was listed as a site in our housing element for 100% affordable housing. So... |
| 01:12:38.86 | Jill Hoffman | this specific thing is an agendized perhaps we can say maybe next week or next City Council meeting under committee reports we specifically request you come back and talk to us about what the specific remit is for this committee timelines if there's a deadline let's let's let's talk about it and let's and I think that might be the way to that's our city attorney |
| 01:12:40.75 | Unknown | specific thing is an agenda. |
| 01:12:51.25 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:12:56.87 | Chad Hess | . |
| 01:13:00.29 | Jill Hoffman | Can we? Where's Sergio? That we can do it that way instead of having it agendized on the business as a business line. I think it's a committee report. Is that, can we do that city attorney? |
| 01:13:12.09 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, that's fine. |
| 01:13:13.54 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 01:13:14.10 | Walfred Solorzano | I can't take any action on it because it's just a committee request. |
| 01:13:14.13 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:13:15.87 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, yeah. You won't be able to discuss or debate a committee report. |
| 01:13:20.71 | Unknown | So I think Janelle's point, Council Member Kellman's idea is to be able to establish the guard rail. So it'd have to be something that could be fully discussed and and acted on in the sense of establishing guardrails saying, for instance, you could imagine focused only on the corporate yard or on five other sites. That'd be a distinction, a policy matter that I think you're advocating should be part of the discussion, which is why it would have to be a business item, it seems. |
| 01:13:47.61 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 01:13:50.98 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so I think that's fine, I agree. So then it needs to be agendized as a business item. Once we decide on the parameters though of it and what the remit of that committee is and what the deadlines are for that committee, then we can all receive updates from that committee during committee reports then it's flagged, okay, I have a question about that. Let's agendize that for a business item, right? Totally agree. And hopefully we can move through those fast. |
| 01:14:13.56 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:14:15.01 | Unknown | Right? |
| 01:14:18.62 | Unknown | And maybe there's more than one that we need to agendize to understand the remit and the guardrails. We'll see as we go through this process tonight. Sure, okay. |
| 01:14:28.72 | Walfred Solorzano | So that brings up the next one, which is Bridgeway Marina, which is already on future agenda items. So I'm hoping we'll hear that in the next few meetings anyway. And I would say, |
| 01:14:35.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:14:36.02 | Walfred Solorzano | that for now. |
| 01:14:36.97 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:14:37.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Right. |
| 01:14:37.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:14:38.12 | Walfred Solorzano | TODAY. |
| 01:14:38.42 | Unknown | I'm going to go. |
| 01:14:38.54 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:14:38.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:14:38.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Right. |
| 01:14:38.88 | Unknown | THE END OF Thank you. |
| 01:14:39.15 | Walfred Solorzano | figure. |
| 01:14:39.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:14:39.50 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:14:39.58 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:14:39.64 | Walfred Solorzano | direction. Exactly. Okay. Is there more from this slide? Because I know there's more of these. |
| 01:14:39.89 | Unknown | Yeah, exactly. |
| 01:14:46.98 | Walfred Solorzano | City Manager, do you have more? Oh, I mean, okay. Okay, but you have your- Well, we have more, for instance, I have the social justice working group that I serve on with Council Member Kellman that is still ongoing and we have a lot of work we're doing. |
| 01:14:50.84 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Well, we have more for it. |
| 01:14:58.89 | Unknown | What is that called? |
| 01:14:59.48 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. the Social Justice Task Force. Okay. |
| 01:15:02.55 | Unknown | We should apply the same guardrails, right? So we should draft up the remit, bring it. Yes, exactly. We should do all of that. |
| 01:15:06.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, exactly. Yep. |
| 01:15:09.98 | Unknown | Sewer Consolidation Committee. |
| 01:15:11.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:15:12.02 | Unknown | So that has been a longstanding, that's me and Ian. That has been a longstanding committee from 2017. |
| 01:15:21.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:21.43 | Walfred Solorzano | 17. Thank you. |
| 01:15:23.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:23.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:15:23.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:23.58 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:15:23.78 | Unknown | Um... |
| 01:15:23.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Um... I didn't know you were going to |
| 01:15:24.98 | Unknown | on it. |
| 01:15:25.57 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:15:26.36 | Unknown | But I do know that we do have sewer consolidation on a future agenda item, and so I think at that |
| 01:15:27.10 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm sorry. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:15:33.50 | Unknown | future agenda item, we should include a discussion of the ongoing role of the sewer consolidation committee. Essentially, two members of the City Council meet with two board members of the Sausalito-Marins City Sanitary District, together with its executive director, together with the public works director, to discuss terms and process for proposing consolidation to both of the deciding bodies. |
| 01:16:03.50 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Okay, there are some others, like the Machine Shop Working Group, which we no longer need I'm not |
| 01:16:11.98 | Unknown | positive about that. I'd like to consider that only because we are aware of a possible tenant for that. space that could make it very financially viable. And so I would like to just- When you say we, |
| 01:16:25.32 | Unknown | Can you say we? Raise your hand if you're in on that. Yeah, what do you... |
| 01:16:27.80 | Unknown | Raise your hand. Yeah, what do you... Well, I thought you were aware of it, actually. I'm not aware of it. Okay. |
| 01:16:33.66 | Unknown | Actually. |
| 01:16:36.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, if you would like me to continue the machine shop working group, but at this point it's council member Kilman and vice mayor Sobieski. |
| 01:16:36.19 | Unknown | Okay, if you So maybe we should. |
| 01:16:44.65 | Unknown | Well, we actually passed a resolution here prohibiting staff from doing any more work on the machine shop. So it would require changing that President Biden. |
| 01:16:53.94 | Unknown | Understood. So let me, I will do some research and bring to you what I'm aware of that's in the possible offing that we could take advantage of should we decide as a council to do that and whether it's worth pursuing. |
| 01:17:07.17 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:17:07.27 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:17:07.36 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:17:07.39 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Um, what I can also request that as part, sorry, I didn't have my hand up. that is part of that effort that you also let us know what the status is with regard to the transition of that building and sell that building through the GSA. Yeah. Because I know that it was in that process and, you know, anyway, our efforts were not successful last fall or two years ago, whenever it was. |
| 01:17:30.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, okay. And I think we agreed, we disbanded the Homelessness Encampment Working Group and the Legal Working Group. |
| 01:17:36.55 | Unknown | That was a good list you had up. Was that you, Walter? Yes, please. |
| 01:17:47.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:17:47.12 | Unknown | What do you think? |
| 01:17:47.64 | Unknown | Thank you. You had a list for us, whoever is leading that. Thank you, ma'am. |
| 01:17:52.77 | Unknown | I can't really see it. If you put it in slideshow view. Okay. |
| 01:17:53.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:17:58.83 | Unknown | That's better. |
| 01:17:59.94 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:18:01.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Just made a big first. |
| 01:18:01.93 | Unknown | but, all right. |
| 01:18:02.69 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 01:18:02.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:02.93 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 01:18:02.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:03.03 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 01:18:03.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:03.23 | Carolyn Revell | Yeah. |
| 01:18:03.30 | Unknown | That's not what we were just. At the bottom, the Major Justice Task Force. |
| 01:18:07.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:18:07.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:07.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:18:07.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:07.97 | Walfred Solorzano | and we're looking at slide 10. |
| 01:18:10.66 | Unknown | We finished. |
| 01:18:11.06 | Walfred Solorzano | I think we finished that. I think we're OK. I think we have a good understanding. |
| 01:18:11.21 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:13.74 | Unknown | understanding Justice Task Force. |
| 01:18:15.77 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, and myself and Councilmember Kellman are continuing work on that. |
| 01:18:18.86 | Unknown | I'm gonna do the remit. finance. What do we want to do? |
| 01:18:22.16 | Unknown | Thank you. I. |
| 01:18:22.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:22.84 | Unknown | I think it stays disbanded for the moment. |
| 01:18:25.47 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:25.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:25.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:26.44 | Unknown | because we're just about through our budget process and we can look at reconvening down the road. Vice Mayor. |
| 01:18:32.26 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor, that would traditionally be you and I. How do you feel about disbanding it completely? |
| 01:18:32.91 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE without just bending it completely. We're trying to, there I'll tell everybody. |
| 01:18:37.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Can we try to keep the discussion |
| 01:18:40.51 | Unknown | Well, I think the thought was that my, we'll be talking about it more in budget, but I actually feel like our biggest problem with the way that we've been working with our finances is that they've become obscured by the complex way we've been presenting them. And the Finance Committee as a separate structure only added more complexity rather than |
| 01:19:01.33 | Unknown | Well, you were on the wrong finance committee. |
| 01:19:01.35 | Unknown | Thank you. They should. Okay, perhaps, but I would love it actually, the constraint of presenting our financial information in a tight format in a public setting is a nice goal for providing clear financial reporting. And my hope for the organization is that it could, is that we'll be able to see that later today and ongoing. So I guess that's a way of saying I'm in favor of it. |
| 01:19:26.00 | Walfred Solorzano | in favor of it not existing. |
| 01:19:26.07 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE Thank you. |
| 01:19:27.61 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Do we have consensus on that? |
| 01:19:30.19 | Jill Hoffman | Do we wanna, we're not gonna disband it, we're gonna pause it? Yes. We're gonna suspend until we get through this budget and then revisit in the spring? I mean, in September. I think we should revisit in January |
| 01:19:32.87 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:19:32.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:36.50 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 01:19:36.55 | Walfred Solorzano | I'M GOING TO BE ABLE TO |
| 01:19:36.62 | Unknown | in September. |
| 01:19:37.56 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:19:39.03 | Unknown | like we would do all of our, but I just don't wanna disband, I don't wanna. |
| 01:19:40.16 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:19:40.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:19:40.19 | Walfred Solorzano | Do all of it. |
| 01:19:40.77 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:19:42.96 | Walfred Solorzano | I'd rather revisit it after the budget because there might be something that comes up that myself and the vice mayor want to talk about, and then we may reconsider the finance committee. |
| 01:19:47.33 | Jill Hoffman | I know. Fine by me. Fine by me. Fine. So finance committee suspended. |
| 01:19:55.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:55.64 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:19:55.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:55.81 | Jill Hoffman | I love it. |
| 01:19:56.02 | Unknown | rise, tap, |
| 01:19:56.68 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:19:56.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:56.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:19:56.85 | Unknown | of course. |
| 01:19:57.14 | Jill Hoffman | WE ARE TRYING VERY |
| 01:19:57.97 | Unknown | It's very, very hard to disband, I swear. We're supporting Katie in the RFP and she has it in her hands and really we're disbanded. She's just calling on individual members of the community who happened to be on the task force to help guide her. So consider it disbanded. There is a |
| 01:20:17.98 | Walfred Solorzano | facet of the Community Safety Disaster Preparedness Committee that is, wait, are we, let's slow down because that's transitioning to boards and commissions that are appointed and we're not at that discussion yet. And I think that's a little different than the ones that are just the working groups. And I would prefer to go through those as a separate item and have a discussion about what we want those to be and the continuation and future of those. So are we comfortable with the status of working groups right now? |
| 01:20:27.80 | Chad Hess | that's not. |
| 01:20:40.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:20:40.46 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:20:40.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:20:40.93 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:20:40.94 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:20:40.96 | Jill Hoffman | What did we decide? We decided to omit to design. |
| 01:20:44.03 | Walfred Solorzano | of OMIT, we've suspended OMIT since our prior discussions. |
| 01:20:49.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:20:49.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:20:49.42 | Jill Hoffman | WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO |
| 01:20:49.75 | Walfred Solorzano | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:20:49.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:20:49.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:20:49.94 | Jill Hoffman | And we've also said – That's going on the list. I'm just going to remember. Okay. Yeah. |
| 01:20:50.02 | Walfred Solorzano | and try to professionalize that. Yeah, because we're going to hire a professional to work with us on our lease agreements. And so that's the plan. Sure. Okay, great. So I think, and then obviously county-based commissions are staffed by our council, but they don't require additional staff time. So those stay the same. which is- |
| 01:21:08.77 | Unknown | which is- perception. |
| 01:21:10.73 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:21:10.75 | Unknown | is, if the MCCMC legislative committee asks us to write a letter in support or oppose. we draft that letter, but then staff has to put that on letterhead so we can sign it. So that's a minor exception, but I think for the most part, it requires little or no staff time, those committees. |
| 01:21:30.00 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Okay, sorry. |
| 01:21:31.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:21:31.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:21:32.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, okay, so now let's move the conversation back to what we're gonna do about the statutory committees and the non-statutory committees and how we might move forward, which ones need to continue to meet and under what capacity. I would note that we still have not found a path forward that is compliant with non-Brown Act needs for these meetings to be able to be city council appointed and not meet at least quarterly or annually. That was something that we had looked for when we said, OK, we can move to non-Brown Act. But given that there seems to not be a pathway forward for that, I think we can. |
| 01:22:08.86 | Unknown | I'm sorry to interrupt you. Why is there not a pathway for it? |
| 01:22:12.44 | Walfred Solorzano | So, I don't believe that we can continue to have boards and commissions that are appointed by the city council not have some form of following the Brown Act. |
| 01:22:25.01 | Unknown | So if the city council takes the action to put somebody on a commission, then it has |
| 01:22:30.45 | Sergio Rudin | I can clarify this issue. |
| 01:22:30.46 | Unknown | I know. Yeah, please do. |
| 01:22:32.98 | Sergio Rudin | Anytime the council formally creates a board, commission, committee, task force, or working group, it's a Brown Act body. So all it takes is a quote-unquote formal action of the city council to create that thing. And the bar for what constitutes a formal action is relatively low. So, In general, if it's something that the council is creating, except for say, you know, ad hoc working group of limited scope and duration, it's going to be a Brown Act body. |
| 01:23:04.50 | Unknown | Exactly. THAT'S WHAT I'M GOING TO DO. |
| 01:23:05.45 | Sergio Rudin | Um, |
| 01:23:05.45 | Unknown | Um, |
| 01:23:05.85 | Unknown | distinction, I think. |
| 01:23:06.86 | Unknown | And Sergio, what if it already, we're here, we're talking about things that already exist and discontinuing them potentially. Is that... we're not creating anything now, now we're transitioning them. |
| 01:23:18.52 | Sergio Rudin | I mean, if you're eliminating them, you don't have a problem, obviously. |
| 01:23:21.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:23:21.97 | Sergio Rudin | if you had previously created them you know, the safer course of action probably is to have them comply with the Brown Act. |
| 01:23:30.54 | Unknown | or become an ad hoc limited duration. |
| 01:23:32.90 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, exactly. Something of limited scope and duration that has a finite task that it's doing |
| 01:23:34.30 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:23:39.01 | Sergio Rudin | AND AGAIN, YOU KNOW, you know, to the extent you guys aren't making, you know, formal appointments, that also helps, you know, if it's just a couple, you know, people and you folks on the dais informally agree, oh, Council member so and so and this other council member will be working on this task. rather than having a formal vote on it, then it's an ad hoc working group. So. |
| 01:24:03.61 | Walfred Solorzano | But then how will folks, if folks are going to formally apply for these ad hoc working groups in order to have a robust community involvement, for example, if we're accepting applications and allowing for more engagement, then it would have to be a brown hat committee. |
| 01:24:15.16 | Sergio Rudin | You're creating a brown neck body. |
| 01:24:17.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Right. So it would be limited to folks that had approached the council or that the council knew if we didn't add up working group Which limits new participation or people who otherwise maybe just visited the city website, etc So in a way my my concern about that is it eliminates some aspect of transparency and some aspect of engagement or involvement For anyone who maybe doesn't know a member of the city council or hasn't ever yet volunteered And would otherwise have to become known in order to get appointed to these working groups the system now allows for people to very clearly apply and make an application and we know when appointments are over, etc. So that's my concern. |
| 01:24:55.07 | Sergio Rudin | My one suggestion on how best to address that sort of thing and leverage folks who may want to participate is if you have a council member working group, say two council members who want to work on a particular topic. You know, they can publicize, they can open the doors, they can do whatever they want to generate community involvement. You know, you can, the working group can consult with whoever would like to or not like to consult with. And that is perfectly fine under the Brown Act. It's, When you're formally creating a body where you're appointing people from the community to help assist, you know, that's, that's when you're potentially crossing the line into a brown act body. So. |
| 01:25:37.84 | Jill Hoffman | I have an input on that too. So I, you know, to follow on with our city attorney's comments and also Mayor Blaustein's, I think one of the things that was clear from our meeting when I rewatched it from April of 2021 or 2022 was that we were all we are on agreement that we know that there are lots. There's a lot of expertise in Sausalito that we want to engage and continue to bring in to help us solve problems for the city. And people want to do that amazingly. They still want to spend a lot of time and effort on that. So, And I agree that we can still do that. I mean, some of the fastest work and most effective work that we've ever done, and with highly motivated people in the community, was the task force model. And so we can still do that, and we can still announce, hey, we're forming a task force, and we're probably going to look at You don't even have to appoint you to say I'm forming a task force. If you want to be involved in this, send me your, you know, similar thing and we're going to be on this day and there's a zoom. and then you move forward very quickly with people that are motivated and want to be part of that group and what's going on and lending their expertise. I've found in my past eight years, that the committee's the task force model is much more effective and efficient in utilizing assets of our community and our staff than ongoing committees that kind of sometimes are just Meeting because it's on the schedule and they're meeting And so that's what I would suggest is I think in city attorney you can weigh in on this if I've got it wrong, but the idea is that we want to lessen the burden on staff from the Brown Act construct, which means that you have to notice it. It has to be an agenda that's published, that, you know, that you have to, it has to be in a place that's open to the public in a way that's open to the public. I'm not saying that any of these things are bad. I'm not saying that you can't do these without staff support, but because it's a Brown Act committee, you have to have staff support. And by the way, the work that's generated or requested from that committee is also quite substantial and that falls on the staff. I don't know, I'm just throwing this out here. Maybe it's a two-step process where We say either tonight or give direction tonight or something Oh. in a in a date certain sort of way that we're we are dissolving these certain boards and commissions as legislative bodies. Right. Because the way we form them, whether or not we intended to or not, imposes legislative requirements. So maybe we say we're transitioning these board, these non statutory boards and commissions, meaning we're not talking about any of the that are required to be brown act by ordinance or by state law, right? So those are four, I think. That's planning commission, historic preservation, library, and then the disaster preparedness Stand-up committee, okay? So we're not talking about those. And then at the same time, we can say, okay, we're moving these to non-legislative bodies, but we're reforming them as a task force. And here's the remit for this task force for the next, until through, for six months, right? So we're gonna look at this again in six months. So here's your remit for six months. We're gonna revisit your status in January of 20, whatever, every year, and go forth and do your work. And I think maybe that two-step process is the smoothest transition to move us forward to a more efficient construct So I'm |
| 01:29:21.00 | Sergio Rudin | I will say that a task force... or a Blue Ribbon Committee, or something similar like that, that can still be subject to the Brown Act if it's created by the City Council. So... Again, you know, there, there are ad hoc working groups that, you know, council members can participate in. But if you're taking a formal action to, you know, create some sort of advisory group that has, Um, that is going to be ongoing. Um, then you are potentially creating a legislative body on the ground. |
| 01:29:53.16 | Jill Hoffman | Right, let me respond to that real quick. What I'm saying in surgery is that I want to make it very clear that we are not doing that. that were saying This is a this is an ad hoc group for this specific purpose. When they give the deliverable, either before or after January the next year, then you say, thank you so much, your task force is now disbanded, But I may give you another I may create another ad hoc committee as you move forward. |
| 01:30:21.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:30:22.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:30:24.21 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. My biggest concern here is that the Brown Act exists to increase transparency in government allow citizens to be informed about what's being worked on. And my concern with a model that would shift us entirely to an ad hoc working group is that it would make that more difficult. Because I think we've received a lot of really interesting applications for boards and commissions and folks feel like it's also a runway for increased involvement. As Peter Van Meter mentioned, he's been on about 40 of our boards and commissions. Many of us have served on the general plan advisory committee the housing element advisory committee the planning commission EDAC, the Sustainability Commission, which helped us learn about the facets of city government, I think it's... I mean, my concern is not about making sure that they meet on a regular basis, but rather that when there are meetings, they're as transparent as possible and that every citizen has the opportunity to engage with and be a part of these boards and commissions or whatever we decide to call them if they'd like to. I would hate to see that opportunity be lost for us. And there's a limited number of seats on our planning commission for a very limited type of applicant. And the same goes for our historic landmark commission. So I would like to consider, at this point, those Brown Act commissions are meeting quarterly, the ones that have gotten back to us about wanting to continue to exist. I think we can find a middle ground where we consolidate some of them and they still continue to meet. For example, disaster preparedness and sea level rise task force could merge and work together. The sustainability commission could continue meeting quarterly and giving us updates. PBAC could continue meeting quarterly and giving us updates. And then perhaps potentially the EDAC and park and rec could merge because they do shared work and then that would be less staff time but losing the engagement and transparency is my biggest concern with regards to this but I think we can do both and decrease staff time so I'd be open to whatever you all feel the best way forward to do that is. |
| 01:32:22.27 | Unknown | you |
| 01:32:22.84 | Unknown | If you don't mind, I have a question for our city attorney, Sergio. I was just listening to your answer, and I'm still puzzled, and I want to make sure we're getting clear information. Just going back to something we decided moments ago, is the Dorothy Gibson House Working Group, something that's clearly been assigned by the city council? a Brownite entity or not? |
| 01:32:49.03 | Sergio Rudin | I think I'd have to go back and figure out how that was created. So short answer is I don't know right now. |
| 01:32:57.62 | Unknown | that it could be. |
| 01:32:59.38 | Sergio Rudin | I'm puzzling you. |
| 01:32:59.51 | Unknown | I thought that was an ad hoc committee. |
| 01:33:02.03 | Unknown | Well, can you help me understand then the city attorney what the definition of ad hoc is? |
| 01:33:08.36 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I will pull up the definition of legislative body in our... wonderful state law. Nice work. |
| 01:33:24.76 | Sergio Rudin | So legislative body means the governing body of the local agency or other local body created by state or federal statutes. So that's city council. A Commission committee board or other body of a local agency, whether permanent or temporary decision making or advisory created by charter ordinance resolution or formal action of the legislative body. So that's any commission, committee, board, or other body created by the council. and any other body created by a body created by the council. |
| 01:33:56.48 | Walfred Solorzano | So a task force would apply to that or an ad hoc working group because action is saying we're creating this group. |
| 01:33:56.75 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah. |
| 01:34:02.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:34:02.52 | Sergio Rudin | But there is a distinction. Here's the exception. The exception is advisory committees composed solely of members of a legislative body that are less than a quorum of the legislative bodies are not legislative bodies. |
| 01:34:03.42 | Unknown | distinction. |
| 01:34:14.66 | Sergio Rudin | Accept that standing committees of a legislative body, irrespective of their composition, which have continuing subject matter jurisdiction or meeting schedule fixed by charter ordinance, resolution or formal action of legislative body are legislative bodies. |
| 01:34:26.91 | Unknown | So that's the distinction between a standing body that has an ongoing role, a standing committee that has continuing subject matter jurisdiction or a meeting schedule affixed versus an ad hoc committee with a limited purpose, limited time, an ad hoc committee does not qualify as a legislative body. |
| 01:34:26.98 | Sergio Rudin | So, |
| 01:34:52.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:34:53.91 | Unknown | May I? Remember Kelman? Yes. So let me offer an example. Hopefully it's a good one, but we'll know in a second. So I thought it would be a good idea to do a pride celebration this year. So I called up a bunch of residents and invited them to join me in doing a planning. because we think it's a good thing for the community. No staff time, no, I've told everybody about it at every meeting, but it's, you know, it's driven by community members. There was no action, there's a limited duration, there's an outcome to it. Please tell me that's not a brown act. We didn't appoint it. Absolutely not. You just started. So that's kind of. But then where's the. |
| 01:35:30.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. And absolutely not. You just started. Correct. So that's kind of. But then where's the transparency of the work that's being done if one council member can go off and have their own meetings and work on the other side? |
| 01:35:38.81 | Unknown | have their own meetings. So here's my suggestion. Here's my suggestion. I think it comes from two places. First of all, I think it comes from our very talented staff. I think that now that we have the right people in place to do a lot of the work that perhaps we were doing as individuals, we need to make sure that these communities are supporting them. How do we support Katie? with sustainability, how do we support Brandon? How do we support Brian with these different groups? And if there is a council member that would like to be involved on that, we have to be diligent about every single meeting. Like we had a meeting, this is what we talked about, this is what we're trying to do, which I think for this particular, my particular example, I think hopefully I've done for you all. If I haven't, I'll do a better job. But I think that's something to consider is how do we, |
| 01:36:12.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:36:19.57 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 01:36:19.80 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:36:24.80 | Unknown | how do we make sure we're serving the staff that we didn't used to have? And what I'm hearing is that if there's no formal action and it's not ongoing, it's not Brown Act. And I'm also hearing that there's a concern about we're making sure that people are doing things, how do we make sure there's public involvement? And I think the answer to that is that the council itself needs to be more diligent in the remit. I think some of the remits of these groups have really shifted since, I mean, I've been here for 21 years, 22 years, really shifted during that time. Some have become advocacy groups, and they're no longer actually carrying out the priorities of the council. They're coming to us with priorities. Some are coming up with new projects that aren't on our priority list, aren't on our capital improvement, aren't paid for under the budget. This creates a lot of difficulty and complexity for us. And so I think we should really try to find a way to develop very clear remits. And it's okay to say, I'll take sustainability, a group I love who've done great work, and say, okay, for Q1, we want you to focus on this. You've done it. Great, or here are the council's priorities. Katie, go off and use this group. And Katie says, yeah, hey council, I decided for Q2, I want them to work on this. Does that jive with your priorities? And we let the staff have that interaction now. It's a new way of doing it because I don't think we've had the level of talent that we have now in City Hall, but I wanna make sure that we are creating that safety net for them, but also aligning with the council priorities. |
| 01:37:48.11 | Walfred Solorzano | But isn't that the argument for using staff time? And why we're not gonna have the Meetings Brown Act? Because if the staff is gonna spend the time on the meetings anyway, |
| 01:37:52.07 | Unknown | because if the staff is going to spend Sorry, thank you for the opportunity to clarify. So my thinking with Katie as an example, and I don't mean to speak out of turn because she's not here, but is that she's new, and so she may have a breadth of projects and is quite sure, you know, which one to tackle or maybe she feels like, hey, if I had some volunteers who could help me with this, that would be really meaningful. And I think we want to make sure we set her up for success in that fashion. And so in that way, she's driving that need, not the other way around, because what's happening now is these committees are driving the need for staff time. What I'm saying is our staff to drive the need for committee time. I'm spikling into the way of doing it. |
| 01:38:33.47 | Unknown | I understand. |
| 01:38:35.41 | Walfred Solorzano | you So, |
| 01:38:35.49 | Unknown | commissions |
| 01:38:36.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:38:36.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:38:36.19 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:38:36.27 | Unknown | Sorry, go ahead, Councilman Cox. I just want to point out, we've spent an hour on this. |
| 01:38:37.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:38:37.25 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:38:37.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:38:40.51 | Unknown | We have two hours to discuss three items including our budget. So I'd like to move efficiently to wrap this up. for now. give staff enough direction to proceed in a way that conserves their resources. and come back because we already have some future tasks associated with this. So I just wanted to throw that in there as a point of order. |
| 01:39:03.02 | Jill Hoffman | I have, yeah, thank you for that. I agree. And I think that I would suggest this, that we've made some good progress so far. But I think that we need to wrap our heads around what the parameters are for a task force and the staff requirements between, the difference between the staff requirements for, which I think we're clear on, but for legislative bodies as opposed to an ad hoc committee, right? And so I think that's what we're kind of struggling with. With the mayor's points of we want to have transparency with what council members and ad hoc groups are working on, but we also wanna make those bodies efficient. We wanna lessen the burden on the staff and we wanna make those bodies more agile in how they come up with solutions at the direction and within the remit from the city council. So I think that maybe perhaps I would suggest that with that direction, that we set a date for this to come back to us for more refining and final action on these, if we're not gonna do it tonight. Like I would prefer to make a motion and it's a two step process. We move everybody to non-legislated bodies with them coming back to us and deciding what the ad hoc group is. and how to move forward as a suggestion for this year. So I see that one council member shaking her head that she doesn't want to do that. So I guess we're not going to do that. No, I think Councilmember Cox was shaking her head on that. She doesn't want to do that. |
| 01:40:39.41 | Unknown | I think Councilmember Cox is shaking her head on that. She doesn't want to do that. I'm not clear what converting everybody, like sustainability becomes an ad hoc committee. That's... |
| 01:40:49.73 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 01:40:49.80 | Unknown | THE FAMILY IS A FAMILY |
| 01:40:49.97 | Jill Hoffman | because we have a sustainability manager now. We have transitioned that purpose to the staff. And that person as a staff member is the person that's best able to manage the sustainability efforts at the direction of the city council |
| 01:40:54.68 | Unknown | the same. |
| 01:41:04.06 | Jill Hoffman | in the most efficient manner. So if we're trying to move to How are we focusing efforts? in keeping with the direction from the city council and so that you don't have competing efforts from an independent body or are we within the remit of the city council? To me, yeah, sustainability is a good example. I love what sustainability does. They've done a tremendous amount of work. We've moved past that. We've evolved into we're bringing this as part of our staff. So... But I understand we're not ready to take action or final action. I'm ready to take it, but I don't think anybody else is. So that's what I would like to, but I would like to bring this to resolution. Like we had a meeting in April of 2022. We were pretty clear. Here's the four steps. We're moving these things to non-legislative bodies. You know, but here we are, we still can't figure out how to take final action. So that's my solution. |
| 01:41:57.99 | Unknown | At some risk, I'm going to suggest another idea to add to the firmament, which is the problem is, of course, if city council appoints these commissions. Volunteers can work for the city staff, as council member Hoffman's just describing. The VIPs program worked for our chief. They even got uniforms. You can have a system like that where members who want to help with the economic development of our town can work for Brandon. They report to Brandon, they meet with Brandon, but he's ultimately the boss. he could even select who those people are and we maybe could put some guard rails over an application process and a need to refresh those individuals who would advise not city council, at City Staff. And be able to do work. For example, to pick on economic development again. enormous work in terms of programming, And in terms of finding tenants for vacant spaces, that would all be a posse that would help Brandon do his job. The guardrails, of course, would be that we want to actually ensure that that is a vibrant volunteer group. Ask our staff to put some rules, meet regularly with an advisory panel, for instance, that they would refresh from time to time. But there are other ways that we could tap the voluntary resources of our community in a way that would be open and transparent. That wouldn't require the Brown Act strictures. |
| 01:43:21.39 | Unknown | in a way. |
| 01:43:28.83 | Unknown | So what you're discussing is a staff run committee approach rather than a city council run committee approach. And that is a basic construct that this council has to vote on. We have to decide whether we want to direct how our boards and committees operate and take action and set their agenda or whether we want to just allow staff whether we want a city manager-run city or we want a city council-run city. That's the decision we have to make. |
| 01:43:59.38 | Unknown | Merch, I mean, I, I see it slightly differently, Council Member Cox. I actually think Ian is onto something here because I think two layers to it, which is that number one, the council needs to be very clear about the remit and the priorities. So this is what we think should be having economic development. That needs to be carried out very clearly. But I think we are trusting our staff because we have good people to be able to do the work and task the people that are in with them. And so I still think it is a city council directed effort, just much like when Director McGowan came in a couple weeks ago and talked to us about the capital improvement program. He takes the lead, he's the expert to come to us and we give the direction and then he goes back and does the work and if he decided that there were, you know were three engineers in town who for some reason were going to help him figure that out and he liked having that to support his work, then that would be something that we would help support in some way. I think it's an interesting construct to consider. We don't have to take any action tonight, but it is a new construct and I'm willing to consider it. |
| 01:45:01.66 | Unknown | Yeah, it's, you know, the whole purpose of the Brown Act is to shine a light on what gets done. and so by having staff run committees that don't report to the city council that just report to staff we have no idea whether staff has misunderstood some direction from the council and is going off on some Tangent. The whole purpose of the Brown Act is to avoid back room deals and I'm not sure. you know, committees being appointed and and run. without public transparency. So that's the tension we have to address. |
| 01:45:35.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, my biggest issue is transparency and also community engagement because folks are proud to say, I'm a sustainability commissioner or I serve on EDAC. |
| 01:45:43.34 | Unknown | on EDAC. |
| 01:45:44.39 | Walfred Solorzano | appointed. I'm an appointed sustainability commissioner. I'm an appointed member of the planning commission. It's something that you're very proud of and you want to say I serve my community and to allow for transparency in that effort. And it's something that is unique to citizen engagement and allows an important pathway for what residents are able to learn about in city government. I mean, I understand the need here, but I think there's a medium where some of the bodies could meet quarterly. A sustainability commission has already agreed to meet quarterly and is doing great work with a liaison with Katie. And I don't know that moving them away to say, this is your one task is the best bet considering how much they're able to achieve in one quarter already. And limiting them to one task when they have such an impressive track record for all the things they're working on, right? I mean, and again, we don't have to take action now, but my, and I think there is a way forward that will make sense that takes into account what everyone is saying here. But there are some commissions that make sense as Brown Act bodies, and there are other situations where an ad hoc working group or a task force might make sense. So maybe we need to look at the list and say, I mean, if I look at the list, sustainability commission is critical and should continue meeting quarterly. I don't think it's taking up more staff time than it otherwise would if it was a mandated or a staff run committee. EDAC could consolidate with parks and rec because they work on similar activities and meet quarterly thereby eliminating staff time. Again, we don't have to make any decisions about this, but if we think about if they are quarterly, the amount of staff time and then a suggestion for ad hoc working groups, I think we could get to a place where staff time is eliminated up to 70% and we're still allowing for transparency, citizen engagement, and being able to offer the pride of serving your community. |
| 01:47:26.72 | Unknown | Thank you. Something else important that we raised at a prior meeting that didn't get included in this agenda item is a code of conduct for our boards and commissions. A challenge that we've been experiencing in the last couple of years is the, attitude and communication and treatment of staff by some of our appointees. And so, and myself and other council members. And so I think it's important just as we adopt code of conduct for our own behavior, that we need to do that so that we clearly communicate to our boards and commissions what our expectations are regarding their behavior. |
| 01:48:05.36 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Well, we've made some progress. I think we can probably move forward because we have two other business items, except the vice mayor looked like he really wanted to say something, and I don't want to take that away from you. |
| 01:48:15.17 | Unknown | Well, you know. At the risk of belaboring the point, the commissions, if they were appointed by the city manager, they'd still be called a commission, he'd still be a commissioner, he'd be on the Parks and Rec Commission. Thank you. he would just be working for Bryan, he wouldn't be working for city council. And that means that When Brian meets with the Parks and Commissions, he's not meeting with his semi-bosses. He's meeting with people that are volunteers, like VIPs, or volunteers for the police. So they can provide input and labor, and they can volunteer to help our Parks and Recs be a better organization. But they don't have to have an agendized meeting. They can meet frequently and in an ad hoc way with Brian to accomplish the goals of Parks and Rec. And if any of them want to advocate for a change in Parks and Rec separately, they can come and stand right there or organize a letter writing campaign to say we want three volleyball courts, not one. But that currently is something that is different than the way Parks and Rec works, which by the way, as with many reports and commissions, often don't even meet quorum and have busted Brown Act meetings because they're- |
| 01:49:19.16 | Walfred Solorzano | Well, to be fair, we haven't had an opportunity to appoint that we have received many applications for parks and rec and disaster preparedness because we were waiting to see what the status of our boards and commissions were. And in fact, I'm actively hoping that we can appoint both to sustainability and to disaster preparedness. So we do need to come to a conclusion because disaster preparedness also has not had the opportunity to have a quorum because of the stall of this discussion. So I just... |
| 01:49:41.26 | Unknown | Yeah, I mean, if you look at kind of how we went off on a tangent on the grant money advocated for by the Bike and Ped Committee, Thank you. that was that went forward without the city council approval, that's an example. of what can happen. when especially with a new staff member who doesn't know what the city council direction is and doesn't understand THEIR OWNERS. the, the direction that the city council is advocating could get misdirected inadvertently. So, I don't know if we're going to decide this tonight. I don't think I think it requires more than we have tonight since there's obviously strong opinions on both sides of this. |
| 01:50:30.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, so let's move on. |
| 01:50:33.49 | Jill Hoffman | I, sorry, sorry, pardon me. Yeah, before we move on, I think it's really helpful if we by consensus agree what the direction is and what we're gonna address at our next meeting. And so I think what I heard was number one, we're gonna, for our legislative bodies, we're gonna work on a code of conduct to adopt for our whatever, our legislative bodies and also all the legislative bodies, meaning |
| 01:50:34.13 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:50:35.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:35.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:50:36.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:57.20 | Jill Hoffman | you know, everything that, all the bodies that are subject to the Brown Act, right? And then the second part of that is, At the next meeting, when we discuss this agenda item, we're going to talk about discussion and further direction on the remaining non-statutory legislative boards and commissions and the potential transition of them to non-legislative bodies. |
| 01:51:19.02 | Walfred Solorzano | I think we need to decide if we want to transition them to non-legislative bodies or not. And I was going to reiterate and sum up what the direction was. |
| 01:51:22.43 | Jill Hoffman | not. I think that's what I just said. I think that's what I just said as direction, right? So that's what we're gonna look at at the next meeting on this. Further discussion and direction on remaining, so that discussion implies discussion on how we're gonna move. |
| 01:51:25.91 | Walfred Solorzano | That's it. |
| 01:51:39.62 | Unknown | whether or not to transition to non-legislative. |
| 01:51:40.45 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So, and how to do that, and then anybody who's interested can watch the tape in preparation for the next meeting. Okay. |
| 01:51:52.62 | Unknown | Thank you. Just to add one thing on that, because I am the liaison to the Library Board of Trustees, which by law has to meet monthly. Thank you. |
| 01:52:00.85 | Unknown | She said non-statutory. |
| 01:52:02.51 | Unknown | That's a statutory board. Yeah, that's what she said. |
| 01:52:03.77 | Unknown | I'm saying. |
| 01:52:05.21 | Unknown | I'm saying that we shouldn't limit our discussion just to non statutory that when you think the library board trustees is actually burdened by this obligation, and it would be great to figure out if we could change our statute. It's a municipal statute interacting with state law. so that they would not be obliged to meet monthly. And then I can't help but notice that the You know, we're the biggest time sink, 250 hours last year. Planning commission is 100 hours. Third place is the historic planning commission, another 25 hours. So I can't help it. Those are established by municipal code. And I'm wondering, and I would be interested in looking at ways of streamlining that by combining the historical planning commission with the planning commission, perhaps taking two of their members and putting it on the PC. So I know that's an issue in and of itself, but if we're talking about saving staff time, that's 24 hours a year. |
| 01:52:56.81 | Walfred Solorzano | So given the amount of time that this discussion has taken and how vast it is, I agree we shouldn't consider that for future direction. But I think we need one meeting that is specific to a conversation about the future of non-statutory boards and commissions and whether or not we change them as legislative bodies from non-Brown Act to Brown Act and what that looks like. And we agendize at a later date what we do with statutory boards and commissions and whether or not we might increase efficiency there. I think it's very positive for us to always be looking at how we increase efficiency. An additional piece of a direction that I do want to make sure that was discussed that is considered and noted in the minutes with regards to our working groups. We did give a specific definition of what our working groups are and we noted that in January we will revisit each of those, and specifically we will also draft a remit of what each of them are for the next meeting. So the affordable housing or housing and homelessness working group in particular, for instance, will do that. And I think that that, Thank you. |
| 01:53:53.93 | Unknown | There's one more, which is to make sure we give clear priorities and that the council does its job of making sure that the priorities for each of these, as we develop a remit both for our own committees and for these other ones, is very clear. So that – |
| 01:54:07.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Right. Although, and I will note that in the municipal code, there's a clear remit for the existing boards and commissions. So we need to think about when we consider what that looks like. And if we do or don't transition them, I would ask that those be included in the staff report as well. |
| 01:54:20.19 | Unknown | I guess I was making a distinction with priorities so that we have groups coming to us that are informing the things we have set our priorities versus bringing us new priorities, which can be very difficult from a budgetary standpoint. |
| 01:54:32.93 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, agreed. Okay, is that direction clear to staff? I think Council Member Hoffman did an excellent job of putting forward what we're going to consider at the next meeting, and then we added a few points from Vice Mayor Sobieski and Council Member Kelman. So just wrapping it up, we're going to have a future agenda item where we look at the non-statutary boards and commissions and what's going to happen for them. We've defined what a working group is going forward. We will have a clear remit and priorities for each of those working groups. We will reassess every January whether those need to continue to exist. And hopefully we will just do a better job of limiting your staff time so that we can focus on what's important. So I know this was a long discussion. I really appreciate everyone's engagement and your feedback and perspective and also appreciate the public comment. And obviously's an ongoing conversation and I would I was wondering if I might ask my fellow members of the council if we hear the budget prior to the valet parking just in case as the hour is nearing late that we might have to continue the valet parking conversation to a further meeting |
| 01:55:32.42 | Unknown | Can I ask that we take public comment on the valet parking? Because I know a lot of people are interested in this. We did notice it for tonight, so I still think we should take public comment, even if we continue the item. |
| 01:55:43.15 | Jill Hoffman | think? Thank you. I have a solution. If I could propose. Oh, I'm excited. If I could propose. Tell me more Council Member Hoffman. I mean, not a solution of course, but. |
| 01:55:46.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:46.86 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, I'm excited. Tell me more Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:55:52.16 | Jill Hoffman | But I think with regard to this agenda item, 5B, there's really two discussion points. One is, do we want to raise the rates of all the parking lots downtown to the same rate? So that's number one. And I think, I don't know if there's a dissension among us for that, and it may be that there's unanimous consensus on that issue. And so I think it would be productive if we could at least hear that part and vote on that. With regard to the pilot program, there are issues with that. I know there's a lot of concern in the public about that program. I have no problem with putting that part of it maybe to the end of the agenda or maybe even a later agenda, given that we haven't even started talking about the budget. But I would like to address at least the parking revenue. Since we're here, it's teed up, it's agendized, and we can talk about it. Does anybody have any? |
| 01:56:47.80 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm again worried about if we're gonna have time because anything related to revenue or related to parking will elicit the same amount of public comment whether or not it's about the valet parking. So I think even if we try to separate the item, I'm happy to have the discussion after the budget. I just, we're on a very clear timeline for budget. |
| 01:57:04.20 | Jill Hoffman | Is there anybody, can I just ask if, okay, that's fine. No, no, you can ask if you want to. That's fine, that's fine. I think that's fine. I just would like to get to the vote on the parking fees because those are revenues. |
| 01:57:06.44 | Walfred Solorzano | No, no, you can ask if you want to. |
| 01:57:14.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Do you want to just make a motion? I think we'll all. |
| 01:57:16.50 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, sure. Well, we haven't had... |
| 01:57:17.45 | Walfred Solorzano | We have a great day. Thank you. |
| 01:57:18.04 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:57:18.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:57:18.10 | Unknown | But... |
| 01:57:18.15 | Walfred Solorzano | COMMENT. |
| 01:57:18.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:18.78 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, we haven't heard the report. We haven't, yeah. So I think we have to do that first. Do we want to amend the agenda to hear this after the budget? |
| 01:57:18.91 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:57:19.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:57:19.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:28.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. Or do we want to try to knock it out? If there's time, we'll try to knock it out |
| 01:57:28.58 | Jill Hoffman | Or do we want to try to knock it off? Thank you. |
| 01:57:32.33 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:57:32.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Let me, let me. |
| 01:57:32.57 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:57:32.97 | Unknown | Let me. you |
| 01:57:33.65 | Unknown | Thank you. We're going to have to take a cup of coffee. |
| 01:57:37.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:38.03 | Jill Hoffman | It's not going to be fast. It's not going to be fast. |
| 01:57:40.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:57:40.67 | Jill Hoffman | If we say, but if I amend it to, let's continue the valet parking pilot to a later date and we only hear and vote on the increased fees, I think that might- I would second that motion. To amend the agenda. |
| 01:57:55.72 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:57:55.77 | Walfred Solorzano | I think that might. |
| 01:57:56.46 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:00.53 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:58:00.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:58:00.71 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:58:00.75 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:58:00.80 | Jill Hoffman | What? |
| 01:58:00.86 | Walfred Solorzano | Director McGowan raised his hand. |
| 01:58:01.17 | Jill Hoffman | Director McGowan raised his hand Oh, yes. |
| 01:58:03.94 | Walfred Solorzano | And Sergio looks like he wants to tell us that that's not allowed. Okay. Based on his face. I'm sorry, I can't. |
| 01:58:06.60 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Sorry, I tried. Okay. Okay. |
| 01:58:09.10 | Walfred Solorzano | Go ahead, Director McGowan. |
| 01:58:11.28 | Kevin McGowan | Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. The item this evening is just to ask council if you would like us to continue working on this item. We're not implementing any fee changes or anything else at this point in time. We're just asking if you would like staff to continue working on this. |
| 01:58:30.94 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, given that, I think we should hear the budget and then see where we're at and potentially consider that. But since it's not requiring immediate action and the action necessary is to see if they want us to continue working on it, at this point with our priorities for the meeting and the hour, I would suggest that we hear budget. And if there is time, we can hear from Director McGowan on that topic, if that's okay with everybody. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. So with that, we are now going to move to item 5C, which is a preliminary discussions on our fiscal year 2023-24 budget. And we have our interim finance director all the way from South Dakota, Chad Hess, and our city manager, Chris Sapata, is with us too. |
| 01:59:04.96 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. Thank you mayor members of the council. Can you put the slideshow up Noeli please? Yeah, thank you. So yeah, city manager, yeah, that's the job description in the code says the city manager has to present a budget to the city council. And again, I go back to thanking you for your focus on finance. As obviously you worked on the mid-year budget for this year, you finished the audit for last year, 2021, 22. And now we're talking about the budget 23-24. And again, one of the things that I want to really highlight and commend you on is your focus on the basics, our finances, which is this is about, which includes infrastructure and city staff. So next slide, please. So tonight, we are not asking for any decisions on the budget. This is an information share with you and the community. We wanna show the work that was done by our departments and our consultants. We wanna show you individual accounts that I think are kind of a mystery to some people, but not to us. We need to demystify them. Things like our parking fund, our MLK fund, our old city hall fund, our stair fund, Thailand's fund, et cetera. We wanna talk about our operating contingency and capital expenses associated with these funds. We wanna look at some year end balance scenarios in the general fund. And I understand that this is up in the air, but at some point we talked about a potential May 20th meeting to further discuss the budget. And so we're flexible depending on what the council wants to do. Next slide, please. I want to say that through a lot of hard work and hard decisions, there has been significant progress made in our budget. The three years we've been through have been rough, so we still have challenges, but we're improving. We've been doing that by managing our costs, spending less on certain things. At the same time, we've kept service levels to the community constant. You still have the same level of services that you had four years ago three years ago two years ago one two years ago We have not cut service levels We've rebuilt an entire departments in the last two years community and economic development finance parks and recreation the city clerk's office and Go to the next slide, please. So when we talk about challenges, and I'll get into what I love, which is a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat analysis before I turn it over to Chad, and I'll be brief. I want to talk about some of the challenges. Not unique. I mean, not normal. You know, a global pandemic. You know, never seen anything like it in 30 years. You know, I've obviously talked about our revenue model, which is more dependent on sales tax and hotel taxes and tourism. I obviously know and you know that the cost of services continue to rise. And we've had unanticipated expenses. You know, we had significant expenses related to our encampment. We've had other expenses we've had to deal with that weren't part of our budget planning, but those are challenges. So let me talk about the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities, and the threats to our current budget situation. so one of the things that you have to do in this community is give uh respect and uh thank yous to to prior city councils and administrations that have allowed sauce leader to maintain service levels by doing certain things for one a hotel tax that's been essential passing measure o and measure l this past year to work on infrastructure that's been essential to creating more budget strength. The foresight to create a 115 trust to provide for pension smoothing opportunities that's the current budget strength and then uh our budget is returning to pre-pandemic revenue levels which is a recovery that you know we are very grateful for. And these in concert together allow us to do some things that some cities can't do. And one of them is to prepare our annual required pension obligation to CalPERS. When we do that, we receive savings in the six-figure amount. So if you didn't have the money in the bank and didn't have the foresight to do these things in the past, you wouldn't be able to do that. But there are some weaknesses. Certainly, you've heard it, the infrastructure. You know, we have a backlog of growing and continued deferred maintenance. Our streets, our buildings, our stairs, our sidewalks. That is known and we keep saying that. And you know, there is really an important need to focus on that as a weakness. Our pension payments aren't going down, they're going up. And so our insurance costs, our utilities, our health care, they're all going up. Those things create, you know, drains on our budget. And then internally, we have a strong need to work on collecting fees, whether it's in the community development department, whether it's permits in other areas, whether it's licensing fees, all those things that we call pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, but add up to stuff. We need to do a better job, and that's a weakness that we need to start addressing, and I believe that we can with our intact finance department. Next slide, please. One of the things that's come up with respect to infrastructure is obviously our capital improvement program and Measure L and all of that. And one of the conversations that I've heard from the dais and other places is, you know, if we can modify our capital improvement program to create bigger bang for the buck, for instance, our streets. if we have an opportunity to talk about new revenue and that would be impact fees where new development that would come into the city would pay for its fair share of impact to our streets, to our parks, and other facilities. I'm pleased to say that your direction to hire a grant consultant, consultants, has started to create a very big foundation of knowledge about the city and funds that we can apply for. And though we haven't been successful in most of them, we are becoming more successful. And we'll report on that next council meeting in terms of all the grants that we've applied for and what we've seen as terms of funding. So we have opportunities to keep doing that and building on that database that California Consulting and others have built with us. The interest rate that we are in now, which we weren't in a year and a half ago, has created some opportunities, and thanks to some recommendations from folks, including our former finance director and our new finance director, there has been a real seizing of opportunity to take cash that we've had sitting in either Leif or our local Bank of Marin and increase investment interest income. And so to that end, you know, taking, you know, millions of dollars that the city sits on for various things, whether it's contingencies or others, we can now gain what we believe is a better rate of return. We just negotiated a deal with Bank of Marin for them to pay us 4% on i believe it's six or eight million dollars chad yeah significant amount of money which creates an infant interest and then you know earlier there was some conversation about the sewer consolidation committee that's an ongoing opportunity that i believe has presented itself that you know would allow us to simplify some operations in some of our city funds by getting out of the sewer business. But there's some work that needs to be done with that. Obviously there are some improvements needed in the system. There's the coordination with the sewer and sanitary district, then there's obviously LAFCO, the local agency area formation committee that would have to sign off on this before it could all get done. And then one of the things that we should do and can do now is start talking about what's the appropriate level of reserves? What should our contingencies be? Because some cities are much more conservative and some cities believe that they can put that one-time money to use today to save money tomorrow or to help things that are necessary. In terms of threats, we're always subject to national, state, or regional downturns. Those happen, they happen to cities whether you want them to or not. I am leery of the pension payments that we have structured right now because in the last 15 years that I've been in California, I've seen the goalposts moved. Whether it's discount rate being lowered, whether it was amortization period being shortened, all those things have created problems where cities have had to react. And so I'm not saying that's in the cards, but it could happen in the near future. You never know what the CalPORS BIRD is going to do with its investment policies, with its requirements of the partnering agencies. And if that turns into something not good for the city that means more cost out of our budget the other thing that I think is something to be concerned about is continued staff turnover when you turn over staff and Sausalito has the lost productivity loss of institutional knowledge and the actual time and money you spend recruiting people is significant and then either unsustainable operating costs that you know we have to be concerned about you know we bite off more than we can chew and at the same time if you know we get to a good place where you feel like the budget is strong again and all of a sudden we start to do things that you wanted to do two years ago and think you can do now, it may not be sustainable. And certainly, mission creep is a part of that. You know, you find a little bit of revenue, you decide you wanna do more of certain things when the idea may be is you should stick to the basics. So until you get out of Sausalito's, what I call challenging bridge, which is from now until 2030, You have to be very mindful of a lot of external things, whether it's, you know, the bond payments we have to make, the labor costs we may incur, some of the increases in operating costs, some of the deferred maintenance, all of that are really, really front and center with our budget discussions. But tonight I gave you that as a macro approach because Chad's going to get into the micro of the city budget and talk about these funds and then we'll be happy to answer questions. |
| 02:09:56.36 | Chad Hess | chat. Thank you, city manager. Thank you, Mayor and Council, for the opportunity to be in front of you tonight. I'm really excited to share with you a discussion around our finances, potentially a different view than what we've seen in the past. Traditionally we report on GAAP, generally accepted accounting principles. It's very structured, very rigid. That's what we report our audit on. And as you can see on the slide above, we break things up into multiple categories, multiple fund types. And you really have to understand what you're looking at in those financial reports to make an informed decision. So you can see up here we break things up into governmental type and business type. And then beyond that, we have special revenue funds, capital project funds, general funds, debt service funds, and all different types of categories and nomenclatures that – sometimes make it hard to understand what's going on. So tonight I'm going to try something. It may work, it may not, but my goal is to really get feedback and try to make it an iterative process as we move forward to find something that works for you and the community to really understand where we're at in our financial picture. So here I need a title and I forgot to update that, but we're going to call it the citywide funds. It's a non-GAAP term. I have to be very careful because I don't want to portray this as GAAP reporting. This is non-GAAP. It doesn't conform to the accounting standards. It's more of a cash basis. It's still accurate and relevant information, but it's not, structured in the way that you would see in your audit report. We still will report on GAAP. We will still have an audit opinion issued on that framework. But tonight's discussion is a little bit different. It may work, it may fall flat, but we'll find out. We have to try something different because I think what we've been doing in the past maybe hasn't been working as well as we hoped. So we're going to break it up into citywide funds, and then we're going to talk specifically about the sewer. The sewer fund is its own entity. We have to be cautious not to divert any resources from there. It's really at standalone. Everything else that I'm grouping under citywide funds are our city's resources. Yes, some of them are restricted funds, like the Tidelands, where we have to spend it on a very particular purpose. There's also various funds for police. We get dollars every year from the state that needs to be expended on police resources. We get dollars for street maintenance. Those are restricted dollars, but again, we have those purposes or those needs within our community. We truly need to be more intentional at how we use those dollars and spend those restricted dollars first before we spend our general fund dollars, which are typically an unrestricted dollar. So with that in mind, I'm going to discuss kind of four primary funds today that make up the bulk of the city's revenues. We're going to go in depth on the general fund, the MLK fund, the Tidelands fund, and the parking fund. Collectively, these represent, I forget which, 76% of citywide revenue. So we're gonna cover the bulk of the city's funding sources. So if we go forward to the next slide, We're going to start off with the concept of citywide funds. And here we look at those revenue sources. The bulk of those revenue sources, as you can see up here, relate to property taxes, sales and use tax, rental income, and then that fee for service. And I really should have called that parking. Essentially, that's made up of parking revenues. that alone represents a huge portion of... of the city's inflows or resources those available dollars to provide services to the community Um, Property taxes is a very stable, very predictable revenue source for the city. And as we've seen in the past, sales and use tax, you know, transit or COT taxes, those can be a little bit more volatile based on what we've seen with the global pandemic. So the revenue mix that we have does matter, and our goal is really to find ways to bring more stability to that. Hopefully we don't see another global pandemic that disrupts our community being very tourist-driven, But again, it's important to know where those dollars are coming from and the stability around them. So if we go forward, One slide. Here you can see numerically what the revenue dollars are that are being brought to the table. You know, if we look, 7.2 million is coming from property taxes. Sales and use tax is about 6.1. That does include measure O, or actually, sorry, measure L, which will be fully in effect for fiscal year 24. Rentals is about 2.8 million, and that is compromised of MLK, Old City Hall, Bank of America, the Tidelands Fund is all grouped into that rental business unit if you will. And then fees for services, really, again, I should have called that parking. The vast majority of that is parking dollars. That's going to be our parking fund that's rolled up into this. So, again, as you can see, those are really the primary revenue sources or the dollars that are coming to the community. Other than that, they start to dwindle off and become less impactful. But, again, those other dollars are important. A lot of those other dollars are probably restricted to some degree. But again, just being more intentional in how we spend them and being aware of what's out there and available to us, I think can take some pressure off our general fund expenses. So going forward, we're going to talk real briefly about The citywide expenses by kind of object. And if we look here, salaries and benefits, the people represent about half of our outflows. Those people do provide the services of our community and provide that quality of life that we value here in City of Sausalito. Professional services is another big component. So those are various things from outside vendors or contractors that provide services. And then retiree benefits is 7.3, but again, we need to keep an eye on that as things do change. Again, that's gonna take up a slightly larger share as we kind of approach that peak in fiscal year 2030, 2031. But again, it is kind of a moving goalpost to some degree. Um, If we go to the next slide here, you can see very, very quickly, numerically, again, that salaries and benefits is $12.6 million. about 50%. Now, I do want to bring your attention to that wages and benefits line. We developed three scenarios for council tonight. That's a lot of dollars. But this represents what we anticipate to be kind of that highest level. If we fill all of our vacant positions, if we add additional project managers for sewer and for the CIP program, if we include the real estate manager, and everything is at kind of that highest tier. That is our highest wage that we predict working with our HR director. So we're being very conservative when we budget that, because I wanna show you the highest potential expense and we can come down a bit from there. But when we add up all of those expenses for citywide, and I hold CIP, constant. So if you look at that CIP expense for capital outlay of $1.1 million, that is simply funding the CIP projects that are currently in effect. So those things that are in progress, that's the dollar amount that Director McGowan predicts those projects will require in fiscal year 23-24. That doesn't complete the projects, but I want to draw your attention to that. That is a significant change on how we budget. In the past, 2324 that doesn't complete the projects but I want to draw your attention to that that is a significant change on how we budget. In the past that 4.5 4.9 million represented the whole project costs it's in place. We are not going to spend all of that dollars in that year so I believe it's very. almost misleading to have such a large CIP number there because there's no way we're going to expend all of that in one fiscal year. It's going to be spread out over multiple years. So if we look at the 22 23 budget, we're looking at a $2.5 million deficit citywide funds. And a lot of that is driven by that, that how we budget our CIP. So if we remember back, I think two or three meetings ago when he brought forward the CIP schedule and you could see this was the spend on each year and those projects overlapping multiple years. What I'm doing is I'm taking the 23, 24 column of his projected expenses, and that's that 1.9 million on this budget. So I'm not over-inflating those CIP costs. Over time, we would spend that 4.9 million, but it's gonna be over multiple fiscal years. That's a key distinction that I want you to be aware of. So if we take our revenues, we take our $25 million in expenses, we're left about $1.4 million in citywide resources. That needs to be allocated to somewhere, whether it be our people that provide services, whether it be our CIP and infrastructure, or whether we continue to build reserves. That's the question that we need direction on tonight. What should we do with those surplus dollars? And yes, some of them are restricted, but my job as the interim director is to make sure that we do everything in our power to spend those restricted dollars first before we utilize or lean on our general funds unrestricted dollars. So, It's a different way of looking at it, but hopefully I can bring a little more discussion and a little more, I don't want to say clarity because it does co-mingle everything, but unless you know how to read gap financial statements, I think you... kind of get lost in the numbers. So, Here we can see very visually revenue sources by funds. If we go to the next slide. If we look at the whole, if we look at the total citywide revenues, the general fund is the lion's share of that. And that's really driven by the property taxes. Our secured and unsecured property taxes that are coming into the city are put into that fund. Our sales and use tax are put into that fund. And that's going to be a large amount of that general fund revenue. The other things is parking. Parking brings about $2.3 million to the table. MLK is about 1.4. The Tidelands is just under 800,000. And then all of our other funds represents about 2.2 million. |
| 02:20:59.03 | Chad Hess | So as we go forward tonight, we're going to talk about those four funds. We're going to talk about the general fund, MLK, Tidelands and parking. All of the other funds we're gonna get into more detail in a future meeting and I'll provide line item detail, but those... do not carry the weight as the other funds. So I wanna focus on those and get some direction on how we should move forward. So if we go to the next two slides, We're going to first talk about the general fund, And here on the general fund, the primary drivers, property taxes. We see a slight increase in property taxes. It's about a 4% increase in property taxes, which is very predictable, very, very gradual increase over time. As I said before, that represents, you know, I'm sorry, the general fund is the primary operating fund. It represents 75% of citywide revenues. And it is the operations, supports primarily from property taxes, sales taxes, transient and occupancy taxes. In addition, the proceeds from the city's parking and rental operations are shown as interfund transfers. Okay. Within the general fund, we have those dollars from outside sources, but it's also subsidized by parking and rental. We get a lot of dollars that flow into our general fund from those other funds. So just be aware that those are counted kind of below the line instead of a revenue. I'm not sure. Now, depending upon on the dollar amount of transfers from these business components of the city, we can make the general fund show either a surplus or deficit in really any given fiscal year. I want to bring you back to last year where we had a deficit on gap financials about 150,000. we could have increased the transfer from the parking fund and eliminated that. So I think that goes to the point, we just need to be aware of how these funds interact and all of those revenue pockets that we have available. So, It's important to know that how we budget our transfers matters to the general fund, because we have revenue that's coming from outside of it, and just being aware of where those dollars are coming from and the dollars that are available is important for us to understand. So this projection here, if we start looking at the expenses, I'm sorry, go to the next slide. |
| 02:23:21.29 | Chad Hess | Okay, here's our general fund revenues by source. Again, here you can see property taxes are slightly increasing. Um, the largest increase is going to be your sales and use tax. So here on this slide, you can see sales and use tax is about 6.1 million. Of that, Measure L represents about 2.9 million, which is up about a million and a half from Measure O's dollars. Sales tax revenue as a whole is kind of flat, but the increase in that half penny for Measure O is really what's driving that primary increase. all of those dollars are recorded in the general fund, and that's just how we've done it in the past. We've always receded Measure O and now Measure L within the general fund and then transfer those dollars over to the CIP. So that's one thing that maybe we can change or have a discussion around is where do we receipt those dollars originally? If the intent of all of these Measure L dollars is capital, maybe we just start recording them directly into the capital fund and spend those dollars specifically for that. But right now, and as we've done in the past, everything is in general fund as sales tax revenue. So moving forward to the next slide, you can see here, again, general fund expenses by object salaries is the lion's share. 53% of the general fund and then professional services is 18% supplies and materials are 12.5, just as a quick visual. But if we go to the next slide, you can see the numerical values of this. Looking at supplies and materials, we've decreased supplies and materials by about 800,000, and that represents a huge decrease in the homeless encampment expenditures. That took a large portion of our budget in fiscal year 22-23. And then professional services did have a decrease, and that is because we're relying more on in-house labor for our CDD department. We're no longer using as many outside professional services. So that's a prime example of why that is reducing for professional services. Salaries and benefits is an increase, and again, but that $12 million does represent the highest projected labor costs if we fill every position in the community, including the two frozen police officer positions. So we're going to talk more about wages and benefits in a future slide, but here we're projecting a $462,000 deficit. But the thing we need to be aware of is I've maintained the transfer outs for Measure O or Measure L at our historical values of $1.2 million. So there is a difference between what we're receiving for Measure O or Measure L and what we're transferring out. So we have a larger deficit if we do transfer out all measure L dollars over to CIP. That being said, I think we have some potential savings in the general fund by being more intentional on how we code our expenditures for those capital outlay endeavors. Right now, all of the engineering costs for those CIP projects are recorded in the general fund, and I think some of those wages should be recorded over to follow that revenue source into... The CIP fund because those those those wages and efforts that are our engineering department, you know, incur directly benefit those CIP projects and we couldn't move forward without their efforts. So I think we need to just reevaluate our labor cost allocation to to record the expense that's attributable to that in the fund where those surplus of dollars are available. Thank you. to some degree. I'm not sure if you're that that is not represented here because I really wanted to get councils direction and in view on what are we gonna do with those measure L dollars so we can come back to that in the discussion but be aware that the general fund could could show a larger deficit based upon how we handle that transfer out, or the measure L dollars. So with that said, we're going to jump over to the next slide where we, again, talk about general fund expenses by department. Here it breaks it out a little bit differently. We have a slight increase in library. That we're going to fill a position in-house that was typically, I think, funded or vacated. So that's bringing the library back to full staffing. The police department here, we do see a decrease in the police department budget, but I want to draw your attention to that. That represents a decrease in wages attributable to the parking fund. So in the past, the parking funds expenses or wages, the parking enforcement officers was recorded within the general fund. but all of the revenues were within the parking fund. So that that decrease represents the, the, the reassignment or reallocation of wages to be offset against the revenues that they're used to generate. I just want to draw your attention on that. If we look at public works, we're fairly constant there. Community development, we are slightly up. MR PRICE. Recreation is holding flat, and then our debt service is holding flat. But overall, we're seeing just a slight increase in expenses from 2.2 to 2.8. So the departments have done a fairly decent job of holding their regular expenses. to previous levels, but we are feeling the effects of inflation. So there is some discussion that needs to be had around what do we do with general fund and how do we move forward with those measure L dollars? Now... We can pause here and have a discussion or we can continue on with the other funds I'll open up to council on how they want to move forward |
| 02:29:20.84 | Walfred Solorzano | Does council have a preference? I know I have several questions from what just came up, so it might make sense to go fund by fund, but up to all of you. |
| 02:29:28.37 | Unknown | Yeah, I had some questions also from the city manager's preliminary report. So up to you whether you wanna do those now or let's. |
| 02:29:32.50 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. THE FAMILY. |
| 02:29:35.22 | Unknown | Thanks. |
| 02:29:35.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:29:35.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:29:35.51 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 02:29:35.57 | Walfred Solorzano | AND I'M GOING TO BE |
| 02:29:35.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:29:35.76 | Walfred Solorzano | It's been. |
| 02:29:36.00 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 02:29:36.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, okay. Whatever. I think we should do it section by section in the city manager's report and then circle back at the end, so. |
| 02:29:43.39 | Chad Hess | Okay. So if that works, we'll pause for feedback. |
| 02:29:46.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, please. Okay. Why don't you get started Councilmember Cox? |
| 02:29:47.39 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. One thing that was mentioned in the city manager's report was that service levels to the community have remained constant. And I wanted to understand that. because from my perspective, we've cut our library hours We've cut our community development department counter hours. We've cut our programs offered by Parks and Rec. So I'm not clear on what service levels have remained a constant and... You served as our Parks and Rec director for a time, and I think that's... |
| 02:30:25.54 | Unknown | I believe. |
| 02:30:33.45 | Unknown | So I do think we have cut service levels to the community from COVID, and we're still recovering from that. |
| 02:30:41.33 | Chris Zapata | Let me see if I can clarify that for you council member. Thank you for the question. Thank you So the the CED department has actually seen an increase in counter hours in the last month and a half We were struggling through that with contract and with filling positions the cuts were not Made by the city council the city council actually budgeted more money for CED for consultants and for full-time staffing The issue was we couldn't fill the positions. So that's what I mean when there was no cut there in terms of Parks and Recreation you're absolutely right there was a administrative position of Parks and Recreation director that was removed from the budget this past year but the same level of eventing all all the Jazz by the Bay concerts, the community activities have not been cut. If they have happened, they've happened as they've had in the past, and if they haven't happened, it's not because they were cut. So that's the, what was the third one you mentioned? |
| 02:30:45.03 | Unknown | Yeah, thank you. |
| 02:31:42.31 | Chris Zapata | the library I think I'd like Mr. Chambers to respond to that one but my understanding is that I thought our library hours had been constant at seven days a week and I'm not so sure that we lost any library hours so I mean our |
| 02:31:53.07 | Unknown | I mean, our hours, I came to City Hall yesterday at 7 o'clock, couldn't get in. The library had closed at 5. And so that never used to happen. |
| 02:31:59.15 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. Let me ask Gabbard to respond to that. |
| 02:32:05.05 | Unknown | Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me? |
| 02:32:06.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Hi Abbott, thanks for being here. |
| 02:32:08.11 | Unknown | Um, Yeah, coming out of COVID, we made the decision to reduce, continue to be open seven days a week, but to reduce some of our hours. We used to close at 9 o'clock on Monday through Thursday, and we're closing at 7 now. And we used to be open from 10 to 5 on Saturday and 10 to 5 on Friday, and we've changed those to 12 to 5. They were all reductions in hours that I've been pondering for a long time. We did studies pre-COVID that suggested that those were the least busy times of library open hours. So COVID actually gave us an opportunity to do something smart that we should have done a while ago, but that would have been much more difficult to accomplish when we would have just been saying, hey, we're cutting hours. |
| 02:32:57.62 | Unknown | And I'm not saying it was the wrong thing to do. I'm just pointing out that our service levels to the community have not necessarily remain constant. And I will say the front door still says that the library closes at five every day. So we might wanna update. |
| 02:33:12.26 | Unknown | I don't think that's true if you take a close look at it. Thank you. |
| 02:33:15.67 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:33:15.98 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:33:16.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:16.10 | Unknown | Thank you. All right. |
| 02:33:17.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:17.46 | Chris Zapata | So thank you for that opportunity to provide more information. And I sort of stand corrected, but not totally. I think the real reason I say no service levels have been cut is there has not been, even during COVID and budget deficits, any direction by the city council to reduce workforce. You know, we've had reductions in workforce by virtue of, you know, people leaving and recruitment delays, et cetera, et cetera. But other than the freezing of the two officers, no one on the city council has said, you know, cut somewhere. It's been's been supportive I know that before I got here there were certain positions in the city manager's office that were removed from the budget but you know that's not what I since I've been here I haven't seen you know that level of service decrease we we decreased it by my choice where Heidi Scoble, Serge Avila and myself, I farmed off Heidi to community development, but no one on the council told me to cut the city manager's office. |
| 02:34:19.76 | Unknown | Yeah, this was a statement that service levels to community have remained constant. Not that we cut something or directed cuts, you know, code enforcement has been a complaint I heard a lot. So I'm just, and again, I don't have an issue with any of, the other services provided I just wanted to be sure that we're operating from a factual basis regarding some of the challenges we faced in the last couple of years resulting from COVID. |
| 02:34:50.73 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:34:53.47 | Walfred Solorzano | Do you have other questions on the presentation? I have a few if no other council. So just on the, and I just wanna also really commend the city manager and Chad for taking this approach to looking at our budget because, well, I think the traditional accounting methods are very important from an auditing standpoint. This makes it much more clear from my perspective for members of the public and for myself as well to take a more holistic look at our budget. So I really appreciate that. With that in mind, you said a couple of times in the presentation if we could be more intentional about how we code some of the funds in the general fund, we would be in a better position. How so? Could you be specific about that? |
| 02:35:31.69 | Chad Hess | Yeah. Yeah, certainly. So one example that rings true is each year we get an allotment from the state for a COPS grant. So it's a community, it's an acronym. Do you know what COPS stands for, Chief? community or Yeah, yeah, so it's an acronym. I'm still learning. I'm still learning all the California-based acronyms. But it's an allotment that is provided every year. It's a very stable, very predictable revenue source. We get on average about $168,000 a year over the last four or five years. |
| 02:35:50.20 | Chris Zapata | It's an acronym. |
| 02:35:51.08 | Unknown | I'm still learning. I am still learning. |
| 02:35:52.92 | Chris Zapata | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:36:09.10 | Chad Hess | Those dollars are meant to be spent to purchase equipment for our police department. they've just been accumulating in that fund. We haven't been intentional about spending those dollars, but instead we would spend general fund dollars. So just being aware that those dollars are out there, informing our department heads that, hey, you have dollars that are restricted for you. Let's spend those dollars first instead of spending our unrestricted dollars in the general fund. So it's just coding the expense to the proper accounting fund. that uses that restricted dollar first. And there's other examples, we have a library improvement fund that's just sitting there, but we've spent dollars in trying to improve our library in the past years those dollars should be spent first that are restricted. |
| 02:37:00.06 | Walfred Solorzano | and our STEPS fund would be. |
| 02:37:01.36 | Chad Hess | Yeah, there's a stairs fund. It doesn't have an excessive amount of dollars in it, but there's, I think, maybe 100,000. I've got a slide on that coming up. from the stairs perspective let me Let me see if I can get you that number. |
| 02:37:15.65 | Walfred Solorzano | We can wait till you get to it in this slide. I don't want to jump ahead. |
| 02:37:18.44 | Chad Hess | There is a stairs fund, and it has about $166,000 in it. that could be spent. on improving the stairs. Yeah, we'll get there later when we start talking about like our other citywide funds. Those are a lot of those restricted funds. Cumulatively, there's probably upwards of $3 to $4 million that are just sitting there that could be spent on that particular purpose. We just need to be more intentional at recognizing that specific use of... and recording the expenditure there. |
| 02:37:52.27 | Walfred Solorzano | So you're saying we have untapped available revenue pockets that until now we weren't looking at. |
| 02:37:56.64 | Chad Hess | Yes, exactly. We have very specific dollars that are meant to be spent on a specific purpose, but if nobody is watching those expenses come in and being aware of those very specific pools, They just go unused and they start to to just accumulate. |
| 02:38:12.17 | Walfred Solorzano | So for example, you mentioned the library fund. We had an issue with our library's roof last year. Yeah. And maybe this is a city manager question, but to your knowledge, the project funds for that came from the general fund, right? We haven't tapped this library improvements fund. |
| 02:38:16.20 | Chad Hess | roof. |
| 02:38:27.61 | Chris Zapata | Abbott can help me with this as well, but my recollection is there was an insurance request that was made and I'm not sure if we received insurance funds to offset the general fund costs, but we didn't take them from the library fund and typically the library funds are almost do not disturb, do not touch, unless you check with the library board commission and the librarian. So Abbott, can you tell me what's going on with those funds? |
| 02:38:56.97 | Unknown | THE EXPENSES ULTIMATELY CAME TO ABOUT $100,000. AS I UNDERSTAND IT, WE WILL SOON OR HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED A CHECK FOR $90,000 FROM OUR INSURANCE BOOL. I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT THE ACRONYM IS. BUT IT'S ACTUALLY A GOOD POINT. THERE'S A $10,000 DEDUCTIBLE AND THEORETICALLY WE COULD TAKE THAT FROM WITHIN THE LIBRARY'S CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT FUND RATHER THAN THE GENERAL FUND. |
| 02:39:23.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, thanks for that Abbott and thanks Chad. I think that's it on my questions for the general fund specific presentation. I just wanted to get further information on that. Do other council members have questions on this part? |
| 02:39:32.38 | Chad Hess | Thank you, Mayor. |
| 02:39:34.26 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, go ahead, onto the next. |
| 02:39:35.33 | Chad Hess | Okay. So we'll continue on with our MLK fund. So the MLK fund is the largest rental fund within the city's portfolio of rental assets. Here you can see that we're projecting fairly stable revenue. It's not increasing much. There's some rent negotiations going on, so I didn't want to overestimate those revenues. I want to be conservative. The biggest gain is just utilizing the return on investment or the assets that are held there. This fund houses close to $1.8 million of cash right now, and those dollars are now invested in a Bank of Marin offering that offers a higher rate of interest than we've received in the past. So just based on that balance, I'm projecting we should get about $58,000 in interest revenue in that fund. Our expenses are holding constant. The biggest of those expenses is our COP payments, the COP, 2016 COPs. That's close to about $600,000 a year. That will continue on through 2031. I do want to draw your attention to an error that I have on here in fiscal year 21 and 22. The debt service expense here is just the interest expense. That got past me, so that is something that I will need to correct. We still are showing positive cash flows in these funds, but I do want to draw your attention that that is not valid. That should be closer to $600,000 in both of those years. If you look at the debt service expenditure, $221,000 in fiscal year 2021, and then $203,000 in 2021-2022. That represents a full accrual. I'm getting a little technical accounting here, |
| 02:41:23.09 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:41:28.73 | Chad Hess | that's not accurate as far as like a cash outflow. If we're looking at a full school accounting, that is accurate, but unfortunately, I didn't catch that soon enough. But we, you know, looking at fiscal year 2024, that is on a cash in cash out basis. We have available funding in that fund. I'm projecting about 600,000 of available resources. The question then becomes What are we going to do? Do we continue to build reserves in that fund for future improvements of that facility? Or are we comfortable bringing some of those dollars over to the general fund to subsidize the operations of our community? You know, I believe the intent of that building was an investment on the city's behalf to acquire that property, rent it out for a great community use, but also it brings some revenues to the community that we could use to do things within the general fund. |
| 02:42:25.33 | Unknown | Sorry, may I ask a question here? Because it's a theme, I want to make sure that we cover it as we look at all the funds. So you just made a really important point, which is we have money sitting there. how are we tracking when and how we've spent that money for improvements to the facilities? And sorry, just let me continue. It's sort of like the service level question that Councilmember Cox asked. sure, we have a lot of money if we don't spend it on hiring people and fixing roads and buildings, et cetera. How do we look at this information without getting too far ahead of ourselves thinking, oh, there's an extra $600,000 might as well put in general fund, when we have to balance that against the needs for improvements and upgrades? |
| 02:43:06.03 | Chad Hess | of that facility. And that's gotta be a discussion that we have with Director McGowan and looking at that building and what is the useful life of the roof. Like I can't assess that, but we need to just be aware of the conditions and determine what's our level of comfort of keeping some funds in that. Thank you. |
| 02:43:27.29 | Unknown | Okay, so that's one of my requests for, and I don't know, I don't have an idea at this moment about how it gets displayed, but if somebody were to pull this, they would say, oh, look at this money, put in the general fund, you guys have funds, right? And we need a way to also capture what the requirements are, P and L, if you will, for each of these funds, even if the last part of it, the expense, hasn't actually been acted upon. And I don't know how, and that's for simplified reporting for us so we can make better policy decisions because this information in a vacuum, I don't think tells the whole story. |
| 02:43:27.31 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:43:31.61 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 02:43:52.39 | Chad Hess | Sure. |
| 02:43:56.89 | Chad Hess | So I think you're asking about like the deferred maintenance or the future maintenance needs of that facility. Like what needs that? |
| 02:44:05.31 | Unknown | Past, current, and future. |
| 02:44:06.95 | Chad Hess | So the past expenditures, if they were capital-related, would be capitalized and presented on the balance sheet. But I think for forward-looking, like what is it going to take to replace all of the roofs on that building? Or if we needed to reside everything or replace a huge parking lot out there, what's that capital need that we need to hold back to maintain that rental income? that's got to be a discussion of multiple departments just not that we need to hold back to maintain that rental income. That's gotta be a discussion of multiple departments, just not finance. And I think that needs to be a policy discussion on, okay, this is the value that our experts in that area say is a range. And then once that range is provided, we need direction on, okay, what is that policy? What is our minimum fund balance? based on those future needs, and then anything above and beyond that, I think could then be moved over to the general fund. to support their operations. |
| 02:45:05.49 | Unknown | Sorry to belabor the point, but I'm suggesting though that future reports, I don't know again how to do it, need to capture that because otherwise we do start to believe that there is money, pockets of money that are ready to be spent. And that I think is a misrepresentation of the community's needs to reach a so-called level of service across various departments and requirements on infrastructure, streets, roads, hires, things like that. So I don't know how we capture that, but that's as we simplify our reporting, I do think it's an important need because out of context, this is difficult. |
| 02:45:25.84 | Carolyn Revell | Okay. |
| 02:45:38.63 | Chad Hess | Okay. That point, point taken. Let me, let me brainstorm on, on how I can present that information and come to the table with another idea. Yeah, valid point. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:45:50.12 | Unknown | Vice Mayor, you wanted to weigh in? |
| 02:45:51.45 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:45:51.79 | Unknown | Yeah, Chad and I, you and I spoke about exactly this point. And it's worth saying that that's exactly right because |
| 02:45:55.03 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:45:55.22 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:46:00.20 | Unknown | All our financial reporting doesn't include the real liability, which is all our deferred maintenance across the entire city. So what Councilmember Kelman's pointing to in the MLK Park is something we probably should do across the whole town. We don't do that for our roads, we don't do that for our sidewalks, we don't do that for our parks. Everything has an implied cost to both, to replace down the road. And so we have, because of our convoluted reporting, not actually been keeping up to date on what our obligations are to maintain these business units, the MLK business unit, the parking business unit, in terms of infrastructure expense. And so that should be somehow captured. |
| 02:46:45.54 | Chad Hess | Are you looking for kind of a schedule of you know, five, seven, 10 years out as far as like, we're going to need X number of dollars in four years to do a parking lot replacement, or is it just, Thank you. |
| 02:47:01.06 | Unknown | My deep dive with you and others, there's been a conceit that we're leaving money in these funds because of future expenses, but there's been very little sharpens work, actually none, about what those future expenses actually are and what the right levels actually are. So in terms of reporting what the free cash flow is, you want to, of course, keep tabs on what future liabilities of that cash flow will be and leave that amount, but only that amount. And those are what you might call infrastructure reserves. The kind of reserve. We have our budgetary stabilization reserve, for example, it has a purpose. There could be a reserve for maintenance of that business unit. The MLK business unit, the parking business unit. Because you have to keep them going. So you need to have some money for those things. |
| 02:47:25.42 | Unknown | Thank you. in the world. |
| 02:47:29.95 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:47:40.94 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 02:47:40.99 | Chad Hess | Yep. |
| 02:47:41.18 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 02:47:47.50 | Chad Hess | Thank you. Point taken, I will work with Director McGowan to... try to help document what that reserve should look like based on the conditions of those of those facilities |
| 02:48:00.72 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox had a comment as well. |
| 02:48:02.74 | Unknown | I just wanted to follow on to that discussion and use the sewer an example. So back in 2020, we adopted a 20-year plan for maintenance slash replacement of our entire sewer system citywide, our collection system citywide. |
| 02:48:19.28 | Chad Hess | I'm not sure. |
| 02:48:19.97 | Unknown | That's the type of thing |
| 02:48:21.61 | Chad Hess | of detail that you're looking for. |
| 02:48:23.43 | Unknown | looking for that's one possible approach to evaluating what but we hired an expert to evaluate our system and tell us what needed to be done what would should be prioritized and then amortize that plan over 20 years and now we know |
| 02:48:36.32 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 02:48:40.71 | Unknown | how much to charge our residents on their taxes each year to be sure that we have enough money |
| 02:48:44.44 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:48:44.47 | Unknown | here. |
| 02:48:44.54 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:48:46.57 | Unknown | to, accomplish that maintenance. So I'm just using that as a model of how we might adopt Kevin's capital improvement plan, which he already has for our various facilities, how we might amortize that over time to include... |
| 02:48:56.10 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:48:56.66 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:49:03.27 | Unknown | as Janelle suggested, sort of a P&L for our various funds. |
| 02:49:09.36 | Unknown | I may also add to that particular study, it showed $18 million in deferred infrastructure maintenance as to our sewer conveyance system. $18 million. So what were we not spending thinking we had money in the bank when we should have been spending it on that? And that's something I think moving forward we need to remedy. |
| 02:49:25.90 | Chad Hess | Are you looking for the same level of detail that you received in that sewer report for the MLK, for Old City Hall, or something that we would develop in house? |
| 02:49:35.54 | Unknown | I'm not necessarily suggesting that same level of detail, but I'm suggesting that as a model of what- |
| 02:49:38.81 | Chad Hess | Okay. |
| 02:49:41.63 | Unknown | of an approach you might consider maybe a rough order of magnitude, maybe a much higher level, but some analysis that amortizes over time. |
| 02:49:43.15 | Chad Hess | My friend. |
| 02:49:53.98 | Unknown | so that we, pay Currently, we actually start banking currently what we need to accomplish that long-term maintenance rather than just deferring that expense and facing a gargantuan one in the future as we did with the Sewer Collection Fund. |
| 02:50:11.03 | Chad Hess | Is that something we could work together on? I mean, is that within your domain on deferred maintenance on MLK? |
| 02:50:18.25 | Walfred Solorzano | Kevin looks really excited about this opportunity. |
| 02:50:19.92 | Chad Hess | opportunity. |
| 02:50:21.24 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:50:21.27 | Chad Hess | looks thrilled. |
| 02:50:22.43 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:50:23.73 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 02:50:23.90 | Chad Hess | Okay. Yeah, it's a little outside of my knowledge of expertise. But yeah, certainly if we can put |
| 02:50:26.21 | Unknown | it's a little |
| 02:50:32.37 | Chad Hess | some numbers on paper, you know, we can certainly put it on a financial model to help us save for the future. |
| 02:50:39.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Ice cream? |
| 02:50:40.79 | Unknown | Only to emphasize the complexity of that task a little bit, it is a complicated task. For example, a building, the amortized cost of a building that you might need to replace changes a lot if the lease terms go from |
| 02:50:45.64 | Chad Hess | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:50:52.66 | Unknown | a plain lease to a triple net lease. That of course can encourage a certain kind of leasing in this city. So it's a useful exercise to go into, but it is a complicated task. And really the emphasis is on what council mayor coming point out, which is in no, in no fund and really across the whole city. That's been a kind of reporting that we haven't done the city manager provided that that infrastructure deficit report maybe a year ago, but it's not been something we've asked for. a lot of detail about, and I think we should add it to our dashboard. of the state of the city. We have a financial dashboard. which on an operating basis is actually quite Good. but There are all these deferred hidden costs that we kind of have a vague sense of. It might be, and they're scary because we never took a sharp pencil to them. |
| 02:51:42.77 | Unknown | Yeah, and I'll just add one last thing. Vice Mayor, you used the language, where's our obligation to maintain our business units? And in response, Chad, you said what the reserve looks like based on condition of that infrastructure. Yes, I think that's the task. |
| 02:51:53.47 | Chad Hess | Mm-hmm. Okay. It's going to take time. I mean, it's something we will have to work through in the coming years. I don't even know how long it's going to take. It'll take a while. |
| 02:52:06.05 | Walfred Solorzano | It'll take a while just for the purposes of clear direction on this as we're giving direction at the end of the meeting So you would like to have Chad partner with Kevin? Sorry Kevin You to take a look at our reserves in light of |
| 02:52:17.32 | Unknown | to |
| 02:52:21.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:52:21.03 | Walfred Solorzano | different. |
| 02:52:21.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:52:21.55 | Walfred Solorzano | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:52:21.59 | Unknown | infrastructure costs no not not quite what I'd like to to know is what type of reserve should we have in order to maintain infrastructure to a certain level of condition and I think we can overlap that as you were saying vice mayor with the capital program and get a sense of what's deferred and what's not |
| 02:52:23.41 | Walfred Solorzano | No. |
| 02:52:42.50 | Unknown | Could I take a stab at that, Mayor, just in terms of summary? The thought here that where Gertrude is clearly taking us with the city manager's direction is a simplified dashboard of the city's financial condition. That is comprehensible to hopefully everyone, even us. And part of that is just the cash flow statements, but there's a element of those that's non-financial, which is the accrued deferred maintenance on all these business units. |
| 02:52:44.39 | Unknown | Just |
| 02:52:57.57 | Chad Hess | on it. |
| 02:53:10.12 | Chad Hess | students. |
| 02:53:12.21 | Unknown | What I think we're going towards is a simple dashboard of our financial cash flows. Thank you. |
| 02:53:17.44 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:53:17.46 | Unknown | And there should be a line item that is the accrued, deferred liabilities associated with the things that are represented on the cash flows. |
| 02:53:25.10 | Chad Hess | And then also looking at planning Multiple years out like five to seven to 10 years on what what do things start to look like because eventually we will need to replace a rough and and I think part of that that understanding to defer maintenance is it may not be this year next year but it's seven years out. How do we plan for that? So I think looking a longer term horizon with our financial data is something that the city needs. We need to look out longer than just one fiscal period at a time. And it, it's it's going to take time to develop, but the sooner we can get there and the more thoughtful we can be in that the more successful we're going to be in that long-term plan. |
| 02:54:07.01 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, so we could add financial forecasting to the dashboard as part of the direction. |
| 02:54:10.19 | Chad Hess | Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Great. |
| 02:54:10.60 | Unknown | Thank you. Can I just make one more example? Yeah, yes. |
| 02:54:14.23 | Chad Hess | Yes. |
| 02:54:15.17 | Unknown | HOAs do reserve studies. |
| 02:54:17.28 | Chad Hess | Correct. |
| 02:54:17.54 | Unknown | because they have to figure out what they're going to need to charge their residents each year so that when it's time to replace the roof, we have enough in the reserve fund to replace the roof. Okay. |
| 02:54:28.39 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:54:29.89 | Unknown | I'm not, I don't think we're asking that you. provide that to us for this budget cycle. It's impossible, but we're, I think, adopting We're envisioning a process for approaching future budget cycles to ensure that We're not just relying on how much cash we have in the bank. But what the commitments against that cash should be. |
| 02:54:51.56 | Walfred Solorzano | It should be. I do hear that we're getting direction to at least consider for this budget cycle what in the broad strokes what the MLK fund cash looks like with regards to deferred maintenance just so we have an idea. There's the two pieces here. There's the financial dashboard and forecasting and thinking about what we need based on this new approach to looking at our budget and there's what we need immediately within this budget cycle. So I just want to be mindful of that as well. Okay. Any other comments on this slide before we keep going? Just want to Move us along to the best for us. |
| 02:55:18.37 | Chad Hess | Thank you. The last point that I did have in the staff report was talking about the Interfund advance. And that's been something that's been out there. There's been multiple, multiple questions on. Um, I don't know if you guys want to address that tonight, but there's about 600,000 that's still owed back to the general fund from years and years and years ago. There is a schedule that is out there It's just another thing that creates complexity and confusion between the funds. So there's about 1.3 million in cash there I my proposal would be to just pay that interfund loan back move forward if we if we need a roof next year Then we can just figure out do we need another interfund advance down the road, but that's something that I think would just clear up some confusion between the MLK fund and the general fund. |
| 02:56:05.17 | Walfred Solorzano | Why don't we wait until we take public comment and then we can discuss that together and give direction on that specifically, but we'll definitely keep that in mind as something for direction. |
| 02:56:08.17 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 02:56:12.27 | Chad Hess | Perfect. All right, so next we're gonna move on to the parking fund. If we look at MLK expenses, we've already talked about that debt service is the largest component of that. The parking fund here, the parking fund revenues are slightly increasing, and that's based upon what we're seeing in this year's activity. They are coming back from our pandemic levels or pre-pandemic levels, but also that increase in parking I don't think is fully captured in that. There's still a little bit of pencil sharpening that could take place on that top line revenue. Interest earnings is another large component of that. Again, just having better cash management on our idle resources and earning that interest is bringing some dollars back to the parking fund. The biggest change is, again, we talked about it when we were looking at the general fund, is the salaries and benefits. And here we're moving... those parking enforcement officers and the management analyst into this fund that offset the revenues that they help generate. So this gives us a more accurate projection of, okay, what's that net income for this business endeavor? That's the largest change. Professional services, again, there is an increase there. That's attributable to, again, kind of a matching principle. In the past, all of those credit card fees for the parking revenues, the card swipes, was coded to the general fund. So the general fund was bearing that expense when the revenue was generated in the parking fund. So that's being captured within that professional services line. You can see like two years ago it was 98,000. And it wasn't capturing all of those transactional costs. So that's part of this. The other noticeable change is the decrease in the transfer. So last year we budgeted about a $2 million transfer out. That's been reduced because we're picking up the wages and the transactional fees that the general fund was bearing. So at the end of the day, they even out. But this gives us a more true or accurate projection of, okay, what is that net income? of the parking fund. that is a significant change that I want you to be aware of. Overall, that fund does generate dollars. that come into the general fund to help us. But again, I think we need to do that analysis on what is it going to take to replace those lots in the next five to seven years, and what type of cash reserves do we need to keep there to meet those needs. And that was a discussion that Director McGowan and I have had, but again, it takes time to get that information on what it's going to cost to replace those lots. But again, I think that point taken on the MLK fund is very relevant here as well. What do we need to hold back to protect that revenue? discussion and parking. |
| 02:59:02.96 | Unknown | Good job. Yeah, great job. |
| 02:59:04.80 | Chad Hess | Good job. Okay. Moving forward, Tideland's Fund. So this is a restricted revenue source. The Tideland's Fund is unique. There's a lot of learning to be done in understanding what we can and cannot spend these dollars on. So the top line revenue, I think we were a little over-optimistic in prior years, so that has scaled back slightly. A lot of these are percentage-based rents based on their sales of that entity. Looking at where we're trending for fiscal year 22, 23, I felt I had to dial that back slightly. So there is a slight decrease in revenues. I don't think we're gonna get to the full 88.8 that we see in fiscal year 22, 23. Again, interest earnings is up just because of a better rate of return. And then looking at, the expenditure side of the house, professional services has seen an increase and that's attributable to the Eelgrass restoration project. About half of that restoration project or restoration space is within the tideland. So that would be a qualified expenditure. Um, Katie and I had a conversation with the State Lands Commission and kind of discussed that and that would be an eligible expense. So we plan on coding a large portion of that or at least half of it to this Tidelines Fund over the next several years. That's about 80,000 that is projected to be attributable to this fund in fiscal year 2023-24. The transfer out that does represent a transfer to the the general fund to capture the the the administrative overhead of that fund of all of the billings and and you know the property management aspects of that and One thing that I am considering is maybe we code some of our, instead of doing a transfer out to the general fund, we look at the wage allocation, code it directly to here, similar to what we're proposing in the parking fund. I didn't have all the time and effort to do that here. So there's a $200,000 transfer out of this fund into general fund to cover that administrative overhead of managing it. The other $72,000 is a debt service payment, so that debt service payment is transferred to a debt service fund, and that debt is paid off, I think, in two more years, so there will be an additional about $72,000 of available resources in a couple more years. It doesn't solve our challenges today. But again, this is another example of us being more intentional on how we spend our restricted dollars. You know, the police boat patrols a lot of the areas in the tidelands. Can we code some of those public safety expenditures against this restricted revenue source? Based on my discussions with state lands commissions, that would be an eligible cost because it provides public benefit. You know, if we do a riprap improvement along the shorelines that's within that tidelands area, that would be, you know, preserving that land, that would draw public benefit, and that could be an eligible expenditure in here. The rules is, is it must pertain to land that's within that granted zone. So it's very specific on what we can spend it on, but I think just being intentional with how we code things, we can start to utilize those tideland dollars more effectively. |
| 03:02:34.76 | Unknown | So this isn't an accounting thing, but I just want to say out loud, it would be very helpful to get maybe a city map outlining all the areas of our waterfront that would qualify for- |
| 03:02:44.31 | Chad Hess | that are five for our tidelands. Yes. Yeah, I there's there's a there's a GIS map that's out there. I can I don't know, I can publish it as a one way communication to you. And I think we could probably post something on the city's website as well. |
| 03:02:46.33 | Unknown | Yes, yeah. |
| 03:02:57.96 | Chad Hess | Yeah, very easy request. |
| 03:03:03.51 | Chad Hess | Other questions, other thoughts about the tidelands? |
| 03:03:10.52 | Walfred Solorzano | I don't think so at this point. |
| 03:03:11.83 | Chad Hess | OK. Next is the sewer fund. I didn't spend a whole lot of time on the sewer fund. |
| 03:03:16.07 | Unknown | If I could, Chet? Yes, please. The sewer is its own animal, so before you go there, you're now done going through. |
| 03:03:16.91 | Chad Hess | Yes, please. Yes. |
| 03:03:22.30 | Unknown | the three business units basically of the city. And you have property tax, sales tax, and then three business units, parking, Real estate rentals. Yep. And what am I forgetting? |
| 03:03:36.66 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 03:03:36.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:36.69 | Chad Hess | in the title. |
| 03:03:37.21 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:37.23 | Chad Hess | So, |
| 03:03:37.25 | Unknown | COT tax. |
| 03:03:38.63 | Chad Hess | Yeah, the TOT taxes. |
| 03:03:38.68 | Unknown | Yeah, TOT taxes. That was his own thing. Each of those is roughly 10%. It's actually 10%, 9%, and 8% effectively. So two of those equals our whole sales tax. So all I'd say is in terms of the dashboard, and I'm saying this to my colleagues as you get a reaction, it's, you know, you have total revenue, you have total expenses. You have total revenue from our units. And it's worth taking a deep dive into these just like you would in any business. You want to know your subsidiaries are doing so it's worth taking the dive but the dashboard ought to bring it all together and it all ought to also bring to the surface not just operating revenue and operating expense in total, but also the thing that council member kelman was talking about which is across the business units and maybe even across the city what's the the accrued expense that we are gathering by another year having gone by and there being a roof that we have to amortize or a parking lot that we need to pave or a sidewalk that we need to fix yep and then you can have an operating |
| 03:04:33.69 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 03:04:33.71 | Peter van meter | Thank you. |
| 03:04:33.73 | Kevin McGowan | Yep. |
| 03:04:34.01 | Peter van meter | Thank you. |
| 03:04:34.03 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 03:04:36.53 | Unknown | dashboard. That's the one slide. That summarizes the financial health of the city. You bring all the revenues together, all the expenses, and this one Accrued line item and then you can go into each business unit to show we did great in parking this year. We did. pretty good in rent because we renegotiated this or we didn't do great because we lost a major tenant and lost a year it's worth the rent. It's worth going into those, but the, |
| 03:04:56.80 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 03:05:01.94 | Unknown | This dashboard, I think, is still a work in progress and I think could be, pivotal in helping us understand our community's finances. |
| 03:05:09.79 | Unknown | So are we commenting at this point on the presentation? |
| 03:05:12.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:05:13.43 | Unknown | Well, it was kind of a – I didn't know. I thought we were from everything we were saying. We're doing questions, I think, so. All right. |
| 03:05:15.97 | Unknown | Thank you. I'm not doing questions. |
| 03:05:20.18 | Walfred Solorzano | I think some of our questions are just elongated comments if we're being honest with ourselves. I heard some comments. If we're being honest with ourselves, I have definitely just made a comment as a question |
| 03:05:24.59 | Unknown | I |
| 03:05:25.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:05:25.11 | Unknown | Thank you. We're, we're, we're, we're, |
| 03:05:25.87 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 03:05:30.92 | Walfred Solorzano | More times than once, but it's okay. It's an hour is late. So we're all a little. Anyway, at this point we are on questions because we have to open up to public comment and then we will, but we have noted some direction that's come as a result of the questions to be fair. Okay, go ahead on the sewers. |
| 03:05:43.37 | Chad Hess | Okay, go ahead, on to sewers. So on to sewer, yep, we'll talk real quick about sewer. Sewer is fairly stable. There's not a whole lot going on there besides we have deferred maintenance. If we look at that capital outlay, that again is a low number because that's what was projected on the active projects on the CIP. There are additional sewer projects that should be considered that will increase that capital outlay line item. Overall, there are resources available in that sewer fund. If we look down below, we still have about 1.6 million of bond dollars that were borrowed back in 2015 that are still unspent. So there's a definite need for sewer fund Capital expenditures. And I think the biggest restraint there is just capacity of staff to manage those projects in the in the salary and wages, wages and benefits section. We'll get to shortly, but we are proposing adding a project manager to help move some of those sewer projects forward within within the city staff. if we move forward, salaries and benefits, about 30%, professional services is about 17%, 18%. And supplies and materials is about 27%. Overall, the sewer fund is fairly stable, fairly predictable as far as revenues. It's the emergency repairs that are more unpredictable. |
| 03:07:12.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Can I ask a question here? Yeah, yeah. Because you've been talking about opportunities for recoding and I wonder which if any of our DPW employees would be able to specifically come from the sewer fund. |
| 03:07:14.07 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 03:07:23.74 | Chad Hess | So there is an allocation to the sewer fund of several employees. I don't know off the top of my head. I have a list back in my office. But there are, there's I don't know their names. There are several employees that are within that DPW department where a portion of their wages are coded to the sewer fund. |
| 03:07:45.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, and if there was a surplus in the sewer fund, if we needed to include personnel expenses additionally, that would be an option? |
| 03:07:46.30 | Chad Hess | Yes. |
| 03:07:52.24 | Chad Hess | Yeah, yep. So talking with Director McGowan earlier today, you know, part of the discussion on wages is coding them to... to the CIP fund. And his response was, yeah, we can certainly do that, but we need a better mechanism to track the time. The time that they allocate to various projects and various endeavors. So he, at previous cities, he said that they have used time tracking tools and there are tools that are available. It can be as rudimentary as an Excel spreadsheet or there's web-based applications that people can code time to. But ultimately, we have to come up with a process that fairly and equitably tracks their time so it can be allocated to those various funds. it's a work in progress and we need to collect some data to make sure that we're doing it correctly. But yeah, I think there's a valid point on, are we charging enough of our wages and labor to the sewer fund? Because right now we're kind of guessing on on that. It could be more refined. Thank you. |
| 03:08:55.61 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 03:08:55.78 | Chad Hess | Good question. Yes. |
| 03:08:55.81 | Unknown | Good question. Yes. Go ahead. So other municipalities I represent, their staff prepare timesheets each day on which they identify. And I, as a lawyer, it's my most hated task is to prepare my timesheet each day of how much time I spent on each matter that I worked on. |
| 03:09:03.90 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 03:09:09.40 | Carolyn Revell | prepare my |
| 03:09:14.34 | Unknown | But that is the most efficient way to track contemporaneously what work was done on what task and then it's up to the coder to ensure that that gets coded to the proper fund. |
| 03:09:28.70 | Chad Hess | Yes and I. |
| 03:09:28.72 | Unknown | Yes, and I- Would that work for- |
| 03:09:30.96 | Chad Hess | Yes. |
| 03:09:32.06 | Unknown | Yes. Such a system workforce. Yes. |
| 03:09:33.21 | Chad Hess | I coming from public accounting, I can relate, you know, we code our time every 15 minute increments and that's I just want to be cautious of how much additional burden I put on the, those staff, but I want to make sure that we have a system that, that, that is easy and intuitive to use and in an accurate and how they, they code their time. |
| 03:09:52.76 | Unknown | And wouldn't such a cost Accounting system also assist in fee recovery which we aim in which the city manager pointed out is Has room for process improvement? |
| 03:09:59.28 | Chad Hess | THE END OF |
| 03:10:05.93 | Chad Hess | Yes. Yes. In DPW and the community development. Yes. Yeah. Great question. Thank you. Moving forward, if we're okay with sewer fund, I want to get into people and services. Um, So if we look here, as we talked previously in citywide expenses, the salaries and benefits is about half of our expenditures. And that's also known as services to our community. Those wages and benefits by services. From police officers, from park and recs, from public works, from professionals in the administration. That provides services. So I think we need to be aware of that is a large expense But we have great people, and the challenge I think we've had is how do we retain and how do we pay those people what they're worth? Looking on the next slide, we have three possibilities for where we think wages and services can come in. The minimum is about $14.7 million, which is a $300,000 increase over the fiscal year 2022-23 budget. That column is holding all positions where they're at, holding them at their 36 hour weeks. The only increase for that 300,000 is an increase in our pension obligations, an increase in our health insurance. And then also there were some unbudgeted items, like the holiday payout for the police department wasn't budgeted prior year, that needs to be included. That's really holding things where they are today. You know, I think my opinion and city manager's opinion is that's not sustainable long term. We don't recommend going for the minimum. Um, the middle ground is, is filling those, those vacant positions, bringing on our, our, our, our real estate manager, bringing on the, the two project managers, um, one to assist directly with sewer, one to assist with CIP projects. Um, And then filling our open police vacancies. There still would be two frozen positions within that middle column. So we wouldn't fill all of our police vacancies, there would still be the two frozen positions. Um, And then the max column is we unfreeze those two police positions and everybody is paid at the highest tier. We don't think that's necessarily where we need to go, but we just wanted to illustrate what that cost could be. In all of our previous slides, I was using that max column just as a buffer to show those larger wage and benefit expenses. So there is some margin to pare back that depending upon where we choose to go with our staffing. Um, our people are such a key component of providing the services of our community. And turnover is very expensive to our city and staff. So I just wanna caution us that we need to make thoughtful and informed decisions on wages and staffing because every time we lose an individual, we go backwards. You know, the finance department was in disarray just because we've had turnover and turnover and turnover. that institutional knowledge is gone. I think the same holds true with our police department. If we're gonna bring on a new cadet, it's $100,000 to get that individual from passing his background check through the academy, through his six months of training, And in that year, we're not receiving any benefit, but we're spending that $100,000. So that turnover really, really sets us back. And also the level of officer. There's nothing wrong with a rookie officer, but he doesn't have that experience that a tenured officer has on how he responds to a call. You know, I think there are some things that we need to just be aware of when we're looking at wages and benefits to make sure that we are retained, the best people we can get. I'm not sure. So that's a big component, and I think that direction needs to be decided before we can move forward. |
| 03:14:24.01 | Walfred Solorzano | So just in looking at the changes that you've put together here on the bottom, a couple of weeks ago when you came to us with our budget, we had roughly 7 million to play with that was not already allocated. So is this change what would need to be additionally taken from that 7 million for each scenario? |
| 03:14:40.72 | Chad Hess | So that 7 million that we were talking about, that's the unassigned fund balance within the general fund. |
| 03:14:47.03 | Sandra Bushmaker | All right. |
| 03:14:47.23 | Chad Hess | Yes, so if we go all the way back to citywide funds, we've got some dollars to play with, about one point some million dollars Part of that can go to wages, part of that can go to infrastructure, or we could draw down some of our savings if we chose to. Um, Again, that that that's a policy discussion on what is our level of comfort for our savings. |
| 03:15:11.01 | Walfred Solorzano | But essentially the numbers that are outlined here are the additional costs that would need to be taken from our budget as outlined now. |
| 03:15:17.93 | Chad Hess | Yes, yes. So we're in the budget as presented tonight, we're projecting the 15.6 million, that max column. |
| 03:15:25.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, so you're showing us the maximum now. I'm showing you the highest. |
| 03:15:26.82 | Chad Hess | I'm showing you the highest threshold. So we can. we can scale back. you know, we could go from the middle column to the, to from the max column to the middle. you know, and there's about a $350,000 savings. So we could pair back a bit. Great. I don't think we want to go to the men column. Yeah. So that... I don't know. We have to figure out where do we want where do we want our staffing to be? Do we want to bring on those additional project managers? Do we want to bring on the real estate manager? Do we want to? to unfreeze those police positions, where do we want to go with our staffing? Could I? |
| 03:16:03.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Could I ask you also to do just for our benefit, at some point when we look at the budget, professional services versus our in-house staffing and the cost for both as a comparison? |
| 03:16:13.30 | Chad Hess | as a campaign. Thank you. I can tell you it's more way more affordable to do it in house. |
| 03:16:17.40 | Walfred Solorzano | I know. So I would love to see that. I mean, I would imagine. So it would be great to see the numbers side by side so we can get a sense of, for instance, Brandon has hired four people in CDD, which has significantly reduced our cost for four leaf. So where else might we do that? Where would it make more sense just as we're making these budgeting decisions and also perhaps to justify choices with regards to what we do for our wages and where we spend? |
| 03:16:34.64 | Chad Hess | Right. |
| 03:16:38.59 | Chad Hess | Yeah, I think that's a great question. you know, even I know what my billable rate was when I was with a consulting firm, a public accounting firm and the change between that and now as a, as an employee, there's a huge savings to the city. Thank you. |
| 03:16:53.69 | Walfred Solorzano | and you're here full time. |
| 03:16:54.76 | Chad Hess | Yeah, yeah, I'm dedicating all my time to the city, which is wonderful. Yeah, I don't have that number, but I think we can do an analysis based on what we've paid like for leave versus our wage and benefits. there's a huge savings by having them in house. |
| 03:17:10.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Hoffman has a question too. |
| 03:17:11.43 | Chad Hess | Yes, Councilman. |
| 03:17:11.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:17:11.95 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:17:11.97 | Jill Hoffman | It's just a follow up on that. |
| 03:17:12.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:17:14.98 | Jill Hoffman | Just a request that you include wages, but also the full load of benefits. Fully burdened, yes. |
| 03:17:19.41 | Chad Hess | Fully burdened, yes. And this is fully burdened rates. But yes, thank you. |
| 03:17:28.83 | Chad Hess | Great questions. If we go one more slide forward, I provided employee counts over time. This was something a council member requested and it was a part of our comprehensive financial report previous years. We did our best to roll forward 2020, 2021 and 22 They're a little murky between categories. I'm comfortable in the totals, but if we look at MLK and Parking and Sewer, we couldn't get the best data in the amount of time we had. I'm gonna try to sharp my pencil and bring this back, but I just wanted to provide this as an illustration on where we've had staffing Over the past the the big noticeable dip from from 2012 to 2013 is is the fire the fire hall or the fire department that was was merged in with southern marine fire. But you can see you know over over time how things have varied between various departments and in total counts. Looking forward, we get to our other citywide funds, and these are those restricted dollars. that we need to be more intentional on. Those things that have that little asterisk or that little star next to them, those are typically the funds that DPW pulls from for their CIP projects. I'm not sure. you know, but there's considerable dollars. If we look at the very first column, that's kind of where our mid-year 23 was trailing. We had about 1.3 million. I did make some adjustments. We have that kind of updated opening balance column, and I'm looking at kind of where things are trending and where things are at currently and trying to project or roll it forward a couple more months to get us a more accurate projection. The biggest change is really that general capital projects fund. Again, in the fiscal year 22, 23 budget, it was the total project costs over a period of time. I'm trying to bring that back on what are we truly going to spend today. Um, But then if we start looking at our revenues and expenses, you know, the big ones that come to mind, you know, that police state grants fund, We had about 300 and 28,000 at the projected opening. We have spent some of those this year But again, we're projecting 182,000 coming in. And at the end of the day, June 30th, 2024, we still have 214,000 sitting in that fund. just being intentional with how we spend those dollars. Ideally, those are spent on equipment because it's easier to track the compliance. They could be spent on people as well. The other thought is there's capital expenses within the general fund for the police department. If we shift those over to Um, You know, this police state grants that may free up some dollars in the general fund as well. Um, Overall, I'll let the numbers speak for themselves, but I think just being more intentional and making sure that the department heads are aware of these restricted dollars and just trying to match up our current expenses with those restricted funding sources can make a world of difference. If we move forward, the next slide just summarizes the transfers. Sorry. Yes, yeah. Sorry. |
| 03:20:41.73 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 03:20:45.49 | Chad Hess | The gas tax, so those are the gas tax dollars that are provided by the state. We get remittances, I think, every month for basically when you pay at the pump, you pay a tax. And those are meant to improve roads. |
| 03:20:55.24 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:20:58.96 | Unknown | Okay, so this is not the tax that we get on service stations in town? |
| 03:21:07.17 | Chad Hess | Are you talking like the business license? |
| 03:21:08.58 | Unknown | Bye. No, so what I'm talking about, HDL six, seven months ago, maybe even a year ago, put out a sales tax report and it showed that we only had one place where you could get gas in town. |
| 03:21:21.50 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:21:21.62 | Unknown | And we all know that's not true. there are at least two gas stations plus service stations on the marinas. But they were not classified as such even though Interesting. Yes. So I flagged that for you. |
| 03:21:36.03 | Chad Hess | to come up with? I don't have an answer on that. I wasn't aware of that, but that's a good question. I know HDL does that. |
| 03:21:38.85 | Chris Zapata | I have maps. I have an answer if you want the answer. |
| 03:21:43.52 | Chad Hess | Thank you. I do want an answer. |
| 03:21:45.36 | Chris Zapata | They categorize the two gas stations as grocery stores, I believe, service stations, not gas stations. That's what the answer was that they provided when the question was asked. |
| 03:21:54.53 | Chad Hess | . So I'm assuming that that impacted more of their business license tax than their gas tax, or? I don't know. Interesting. It's been resolved, though, it sounds like. |
| 03:22:04.89 | Chris Zapata | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:22:05.14 | Unknown | and respect. |
| 03:22:06.49 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 03:22:07.28 | Unknown | It has not been resolved, please look at it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:22:12.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:22:12.85 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 03:22:12.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:22:12.90 | Chad Hess | NOTEDED. |
| 03:22:13.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:22:14.03 | Chad Hess | This is not over. |
| 03:22:15.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:22:17.76 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:22:17.80 | Chad Hess | Yes. All right, so transfers, another big talking point is, and we talked about it before, is what are we gonna transfer to the capital project fund? Do we wanna transfer the full measure L revenues, about 2.9, or do we stick with what we've done in the past That's a decision that we need to make. |
| 03:22:39.67 | Chris Zapata | And Mayor and Council, if I can jump in real quick on that one. I think you made promises to the community, and I think I've heard no deviation from those promises, and so I would think that we would make that transfer. Thank you. |
| 03:22:55.53 | Chad Hess | Yeah, but to compensate, I think, as we discussed previously, just trying to figure out what is those What are the costs of labor that could be moved into that capital project fund to offset some of that impact on the general fund? |
| 03:23:09.53 | Unknown | Chad, can't you just in terms of simplicity and reporting, have our revenues from property tax, sales tax, revenues from our different business units, our revenues from Measure L. And then you have expenses, so, and we'll see in the expenses outlays the capital and everyone can see Are the outlays to capital equal to Less than or greater than. the revenue for Measure L. For Measure L? And we'll know whether Measure L money is being used for capital just from that. So rather than |
| 03:23:34.70 | Chad Hess | measure L. Yes. Oh. |
| 03:23:39.89 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:23:40.03 | Chad Hess | Sure. |
| 03:23:40.48 | Unknown | discussing how much to transfer where from which fund i mean having a dash |
| 03:23:43.89 | Chad Hess | Yeah, I'm fine with that. This is more of a gap concept. You know, if we go back to the citywide funds, I can break out measure L, from sales tax. |
| 03:23:55.17 | Unknown | It just seems like a one pager with all our revenues, including Measure L is a source of revenue, just like TOT is a source of revenue, just like parking fees is a source of revenue, and then expenses, and one of those line items will be capital expenses. |
| 03:24:01.07 | Chad Hess | Yep. |
| 03:24:08.72 | Unknown | And if it's equal to, less than measure L, then we're not transferring all measure L. If it's greater than, then we're using all measure L plus some extra money from somewhere else. Yeah. That simple, that's a simple way of looking at it. Yeah. And whatever needs to talk about transfers. |
| 03:24:17.71 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 03:24:22.13 | Chad Hess | Yeah, whatever needs to talk about transfers. I can make that change on kind of the next edition of our citywide funds concept. |
| 03:24:30.43 | Unknown | You know, we used to have a committee, speaking of boards and commissions, that really tracked how we spent certain monies that we had promised we would spend in a certain way. That had to do with our COPs having to do with the parking. |
| 03:24:44.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Is it our finance committee? |
| 03:24:45.89 | Unknown | No, it was a citizen committee. Sit. Citizens Advisory Committee to track the expenditure of the COP funds. When we make promises to voters, I think it's really important that we track our compliance with those promises to voters. our word is useless and the next time we go and ask the voters for something, we won't necessarily get what we ask for. And so I'm not necessarily comfortable with just lumping all of this together. Is it possible for you to somehow You can certainly have a summary sheet that shows all of our revenues, but is it possible for you to somehow track the |
| 03:25:37.06 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 03:25:37.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:25:37.11 | Chad Hess | Thank you. The sources and uses of Measure L. |
| 03:25:39.89 | Unknown | of measure L. Of course sources and uses of measure L. Absolutely. |
| 03:25:43.84 | Chad Hess | Yes, so that goes back to our gap reporting. So under gap reporting, there's individual funds. So the underlying data is there, it's tracked, it's audited against the accounting framework. But I think what Vice Mayor Sobieski is asking for on our informal reporting that comes to council on the dashboard view is simply show Measure L as its own line item, and then you could just see is that comparable to what the capital outlay is. |
| 03:26:14.47 | Unknown | That's all well and good for this council sitting here for so long as we remember that that's what we're planning to do. The intent, yes. But for future councils, Measure L is a 10 year tax. I really think, I would really like to ask, is it possible to ensure that we have a system in place that clearly tracks those sources and uses for the 10 year life of that tax? |
| 03:26:20.80 | Chad Hess | Yes. |
| 03:26:40.42 | Chad Hess | It short answer is yes, that that's the true purpose of fund accounting is to show that that ins and outs for that special revenue source. Yes, I could even take it a step farther right now those measure L dollars are receded in the general fund. We could create a new special revenue fund for measure L and show every dollar that comes in and then. create more accounting to transfer it out, but we could create, Lots of lots of checks and balances. |
| 03:27:12.86 | Unknown | I'm not looking to create extra work for you. |
| 03:27:14.65 | Chad Hess | you. No, no, no, it's not. I, and I didn't mean it to come across that way. |
| 03:27:18.58 | Unknown | To the extent that you're charging, staff time towards that Is it possible to ensure that those that those expenses were truly spent towards the capital improvement program for which Measure L was intended through timesheets or some other... |
| 03:27:39.60 | Chad Hess | Time tracking. Time tracking is the method, yes. Thank you. |
| 03:27:43.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:27:43.57 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 03:27:44.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:27:45.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:27:45.07 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:27:45.12 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm right. |
| 03:27:45.39 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, just to follow up on that conversation, I'm wondering if even in our dashboard, if you can just insert a footnote or something that says, you know, the accounting for Measure L under our gap reporting, this is the page of how it's accounted for, but then this is the explanation for why it looks like it's just a smooth accounting on the dashboard, right? So that, because most people just look at our city council meetings, our city council packets, they're not gonna go back and dig through whatever. |
| 03:28:14.85 | Chad Hess | our audit report. |
| 03:28:15.93 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, so that'd be like super helpful. Like on the page audit, this is accounted for on the audit page, blah. |
| 03:28:19.34 | Chad Hess | Yeah. Thank you. draw their attention to that audit report. If somebody's curious, they can... |
| 03:28:22.77 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Yeah, just a quick footnote, right? Yeah. I think, right? |
| 03:28:26.25 | Chad Hess | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. |
| 03:28:31.09 | Jill Hoffman | We have to. |
| 03:28:33.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Let's just get through this and then we'll see. |
| 03:28:35.44 | Chad Hess | Thank you. Next slide we kind of get to next steps. labor negotiations, determining that level of service, identify CIP priorities that have available funding or meet the priorities of the community, and then continue to refine our revenue projections as new information's available before the end of June. And then one additional bullet point that's kind of come up is, kind of our community partners. So CARS is one community partner that we've funded in the past for rides for seniors. Um, You know, that was something that we did prior years that's not included in this budget because we didn't fund it last year either. But that that request is still out there. You know, Destination Saw Solito is a is a I believe a website that we we contribute to. Um, you know, those type of things, you know, how do we want to approach those? I think, do we do them all at once? Does everybody come in and say, this is my ask, this is why it's important? And then it's determined during the budget cycle or do we do one off discussions? How do we approach that? I think that's some further direction that city manager and I need on what's council's preference for managing. |
| 03:29:56.42 | Chris Zapata | If I may, Mayor and Council, a little clarification on cars. They were not in the budget, but we are funding them. It falls within city manager authority to provide that. I believe it's $21,000, $22,000 match to the partnership. So the question is, next year going forward, when some of these groups that are partners in the city request funding, what's your approach to it? And that's one thing we want some clarity on. |
| 03:30:22.40 | Unknown | Is it possible for us to adopt standard, like a standard procedure that, when an organization like Sister Cities, which is amazing, Ice House, which is amazing. And so many organizations are amazing and do so much for the city. Sausalito Beautiful. Is it possible to just have a standard procedure by which we assemble, compile all of those requests and review and decide on them? at one time so that we treat every organization with parity. |
| 03:31:00.03 | Kevin McGowan | I'm not sure. |
| 03:31:00.64 | Chad Hess | Yes. I mean, at the end of the day, yes. We could develop a framework that collects them, that... prioritizes them based on a rubric of requirements. Um, And then I think they're brought forward as part of the budget process. I mean, to me, that makes the most sense is where that would take place. Yes, I think we could work towards that with input on what does that measurement criteria look like and have meaningful discussions around that. So yes, it's possible. |
| 03:31:36.82 | Chad Hess | All right. The next slide is the budget calendar, just bringing forward kind of where we're at. So next step, we're gonna refine kind of the budget based on your feedback. bringing it forward to council again a couple weeks from now on the 23rd. Um, for kind of a second go at this based on your feedback. And then there's two budget hearings in June. ultimate adoption would be on June 27th. |
| 03:32:05.50 | Unknown | Are we planning to have a special workshop? |
| 03:32:07.56 | Chad Hess | I probably should have just changed the wording on that. I don't think we're planning on having a workshop. |
| 03:32:12.35 | Walfred Solorzano | We were calling for a special discussion about levels of service and infrastructure in particular but not all of our council members responded to the doodle, and I would really like for all of us to be able to be present. So I think we need to discuss what dates work when we get to future agenda items. |
| 03:32:31.12 | Chad Hess | It could be a workshop or it could be a standard meeting. Okay. We're both. |
| 03:32:34.59 | Walfred Solorzano | We're both. |
| 03:32:36.01 | Chad Hess | We'll take your direction. Great. All right, so with that, what direction do we go? Where do we, what are our priorities? |
| 03:32:46.78 | Walfred Solorzano | So I think we should open it up to public comment at this point. And from there, we will give direction. |
| 03:32:52.75 | Unknown | The break. |
| 03:32:53.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, actually some council members have requested a quick bio break, so we will be back in five minutes for public comment. |
| 03:33:00.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:33:00.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:33:32.14 | Walfred Solorzano | Peter. |
| 03:33:34.70 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:33:46.21 | Walfred Solorzano | you Okay, do you want to go potty? |
| 03:34:11.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:34:31.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:34:33.97 | Unknown | . Now I'll look for it. |
| 03:34:38.84 | Stacy Gregory | Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to add that. Thank you. |
| 03:35:05.17 | Unknown | which is like, |
| 03:35:09.22 | Walfred Solorzano | That's okay. All right. So now that we have everyone back. Thank you. Let's go ahead and open up this budget item for public comment at this time |
| 03:35:20.36 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Peter Van Meter. |
| 03:35:22.21 | Walfred Solorzano | Great. |
| 03:35:26.35 | Walfred Solorzano | 10.35. |
| 03:35:27.58 | Peter van meter | Okay, thank you. This has been very interesting. I like Chad's presentation and your discussion. I particularly like the fact that you're sample. discussion started at a maximum payroll. you know, that maximum column of the police departments being filled, et cetera. In fact, this morning I was out walking And I arrived at the chamber offices just as I was winding up my walk, and there was Acting Chief Gregory. getting ready to make a presentation. dipped in and sat down and listened. heard the story, but we all know and that is the devastated situation of our police department and the necessary application of filling the two vacant positions and looking at long range compensation is extremely critical. You know, you've got operating budgets, you've got a capital budget. I understand the emphasis on infrastructure and all of that. But let's look at the operating budget. Your police department is really the most important, in my opinion, among those operating departments. And there's a concept that, again, I heard this morning that I think we all know, and that is, and in fact, that Chad mentioned in his talk, MR. Compensation to retain. versus the expenses of new personnel and turnover. and the, offset is going to be much more in favor of higher total compensation to existing employees. and retention. as opposed to spending that 100,000 or whatever to introduce new rookie officer into the force and turning that over. So you need to have a longterm strategy. in terms of total compensation in the department that in my view is skewed toward. maximizing our competitive advantage in the employment market. for police officers, through retention. I mean, I heard this morning about other agencies offering What did you say Alameda $75,000 signing bonus? and then people earning $50,000 more in starting positions on top of these kind of bonuses, the competition is intense. So in your budget, please look at full funding of PLEASE. |
| 03:37:33.96 | Unknown | Thank you very much. Peter, I have a follow-up question for you. Um, Wouldn't you agree that it's important too, though, that we maintain our ability to maintain a standalone police force as opposed to being forced to consolidate with a police force elsewhere because we have committed to spend more than we're able to generate in revenue each year. |
| 03:38:08.77 | Peter van meter | Well, I happen to have a personal opinion, which really comes from, I had a police and fire a lot of different things, but when I sat on the fire board, was in favor of consolidation. And I'm very pleased to see that department moving to working with Mill Valley. So I don't know if I want to wade into the argument about joining with Mill Valley on this kind of thing. I understand we have an MOU of some sort in process already. but, philosophically as a person, I tend to like the concept of consolidation. I can't really answer your question, though. |
| 03:38:46.94 | Unknown | Thank you for that feedback. These are all things we have to consider as we're weighing our ability to pay our people what they're worth. |
| 03:38:54.82 | Peter van meter | I understand. |
| 03:38:58.30 | Unknown | Next speaker. |
| 03:38:58.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:38:58.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Actually. |
| 03:38:58.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, sorry. |
| 03:38:59.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, do we have public comment on Zoom? |
| 03:39:01.89 | Walfred Solorzano | So Senator Bushmaker. |
| 03:39:03.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Hi, Sandra. |
| 03:39:05.03 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 03:39:09.33 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yes, I'm back. Good to see you all again. I'm really happy to hear this conversation tonight. I'll be brief. I really, want to emphasize that I think we need to continue to build and retain City Hall. And that includes the police department. We need to make sure we've got a stable functioning government. and within the city hall, and I'm talking about the staff size, I mean, staff side. So, That is in a very important because we have seen the devastation of what happens to our city when we have the as Chris Zapata brought up the staff charge At the same time, Chris Zapata also warned you in his presentation and I happen to concur with this, that we really can't take a deep breath and relax. on our fiscal Yeah. surveillance, if you will, until 2030. And so we need to be very, very careful in what we're spending our money on. And I don't want to see us lose sight of project creep that, that Chris Zapata brought up. So those are the three points that I wanted to bring up in this discussion. I think we're on the right track. I think we've got a ways to go. I don't want us to relax and start spending money because we think we've got a pet project that we think needs to happen. I think we need to stick to the basics, rebuild city hall, stabilize our city government and Watch out for that project creep. All right, thank you. |
| 03:40:49.00 | Walfred Solorzano | And Tricia Smith? |
| 03:40:58.65 | Unknown | Or she's gone now. Oh, no, she's at the bottom. |
| 03:41:03.95 | Unknown | Hi there. |
| 03:41:07.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:41:07.10 | Unknown | Can you hear me okay? |
| 03:41:08.35 | Unknown | Yes, we can. |
| 03:41:09.08 | Unknown | We can't see you, though. Yeah, I don't know. I've got to start video. I don't know what's happening, but that's okay. It's late anyway. I just wanted to So it was 2015 that Age Friendly Sausalito Task Force created the CARS program. and the City Council unanimously agreed to adopt it. It's a city of Sausalito age-friendly program. Sausalito Village agreed in a service agreement to manage the program for the city. and that does run on about $21,000 a year. predominantly goes straight to the one employee that we have that manages the program. So it's a big bang for the buck when you think of how much uh, it, It has been. save so many of the people in our town. So just wanted to be clear about it being City of Sausalito Age Friendly Program. Thank you. |
| 03:42:07.74 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you, Trisha. |
| 03:42:11.97 | Walfred Solorzano | No further speakers. |
| 03:42:13.96 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, thank you very much. I'll go ahead and close public comment at this time and bring it back up to the council for discussion and comment in further direction. And before I ask who wants to weigh in, I just want to make sure we are providing direction as requested. So we were asked in terms of specifics to give general feedback, but also to advise this evening on whether or not we're comfortable with the moving of the Interfund balance, the 600k from MLK fund to the general fund. So when you give your comments and remarks, could you please as well weigh in on your perspective with regards to that? Thank you. And Councilmember Kelman, you look ready to go. So let's start with you. |
| 03:42:49.87 | Unknown | Let me just start with you. Yes. Let me just start with the comment that Ray Wheatley sent it to us today that I had already had on my mind around Measure L. And so I want to take the temperature of my colleagues in terms of directing staff to increase the CIP transfer to an amount closer to $3 million for the Measure L funding level. how you might feel about handling measure L monies for this budget. It's an outstanding question. I think that we should stay consistent with what we promised the voters and make sure that's used for infrastructure. I will I guess tend to at least say I am comfortable with making the move on the MLK monies but I am concerned about deferred maintenance and not knowing what those costs are. So I'm not, I'm lukewarm on it. I don't know if we're just trying to balance the budget, but knowing that we do need to, we're not gonna balance it, but just knowing that we need to also have some additional maintenance measures taken. It's a little bit concerning. I feel like I need more information. And I think I've given, in the form of questions, my comments already to Chad, so thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:43:54.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:43:54.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:43:55.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Who wants to? |
| 03:43:57.66 | Unknown | Council Member Cox? Thank you. I, like Council Member Kelman and the Vice Mayor, have provided many of my comments in the form of questions. Um... And I endorse everything that Council Member Kalman just said about ensuring that our use of Measure L funds comports with our promises to the voters, including increasing the CIP fund. And I am comfortable with moving the MLK monies to with retiring that debt, that internal debt, with the proviso that as we start to adopt this dashboard slash P&L analysis for each of our funds, we can figure out in the future how to manage that cash need and the accounting and the requisite accounting. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. |
| 03:45:03.03 | Walfred Solorzano | ma'am? |
| 03:45:05.25 | Unknown | Thanks, Mayor. I'm comfortable with that transfer. I commend Chad and the city manager for moving towards this summary of our finances in a way that's going to be more comprehensible to everyone while preserving the fund accounting and all the gap analysis. And so I think it'll help us make better decisions and be more transparent. I always think of watching those movies where the defense or the prosecution turns over all their evidence to the defense in a huge tractor trailer. And somewhere in there is the exculpatory information and the whole movie, the drama, is to find it. And in looking at our financial reporting, that's what comes to mind. Pages and pages of truth. So much truth, you can't figure out what the truth is. And Mark Twain said in a letter, I'm writing, and I apologize for the length of this letter. I didn't have time to write a short one. A simple financial statement is a hard thing to put together, especially one that's accurate and comports to the underlying gap accounting. But if we can achieve that, it's going to help tell the truth. It's going to be actually transparent. And I hope we'll stay, I hope it sounds like we have agreement that that's a goal and I hope we'll achieve that goal so that we can have a rational discussion about how to spend our money and not respond to fear, but respond to facts. |
| 03:46:36.50 | Unknown | Can I just footnote that was the movie Class Action with Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth |
| 03:46:40.52 | Walfred Solorzano | And Mary Elizabeth. Bye. |
| 03:46:41.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:46:42.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Antonio. Fantastic. Okay, Councilmember Hoffman, good luck following that. |
| 03:46:49.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:46:50.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:46:50.92 | Jill Hoffman | I'm thinking of all the other law movie references. Of course, my cousin Vinny is the seminal in my book. So, OK. Okay, let's see, feedback. Yeah, I agree that the Measure L Fund should be moved over their capital improvement fund and not booked as just a basic revenue to the city. I think that's, you know, we made that representation to the public when we brought both of those measures, Measure O and Measure L. So with regard to the MLK retiring the internal debt, I'm cautious about that. Final decision on that because we haven't done an assessment about what capital improvements are needed for this revenue generating asset, right? So in any type of business, you're always looking at you know, what's my what's a capital improvement needed to maintain This revenue stream, right? So if we don't maintain MLK Then we're gonna lose revenue because we're gonna be able to rent it And we're certainly not gonna be able to rent it for what we need to and in the deferred maintenance on it is The deferred maintenance, you know, as we discussed, right, all across town is needed, but especially for something that generates revenue of that level. And the issue also of the debt servicing that we're still doing with that particular asset that we have to be very careful about maintaining that revenue stream. So. I mean, I'm cautious about that, and I'd like to see more about it. I mean, earlier this night we talked about what capital improvements were needed there. So that's my only caution on that. I generally do support the way that we book, you know, especially for the revenue-generating assets, we book those those as funds and that's just a way an accounting way of maintaining that asset, that revenue generating asset which is different I think from streets it's kind of the same thing but it's also especially when we have debt against a certain revenue generating asset we have to be able to maintain it that's my feedback on those two things |
| 03:48:58.19 | Walfred Solorzano | Great, thank you so much. So just to sum up some of the direction, because I'm in agreement with my colleagues and really appreciate this productive discussion that we've had on the budget, and definitely so thrilled to have Chad here taking a different holistic approach to how we look at our budget to make it more digestible as Vice Mayor mentioned. So the immediate things that we need prior to our next meeting, and one thing that was really critical, and I'll put this into the dashboard context after vice mayor, but what type of reserves do we need to maintain, to have to maintain infrastructure to a certain level of condition in the context of our CIP and in context of the MLK fund? And with response to, I think we're all essentially in consensus about moving the monies from the MLK funds, but we would like a better understanding of how, what our long term costs of that, those CIPs might be. So tentative, yes, but we would like to see the numbers. I think three of us said yes, but also in respect for other council members, let's wait and see what it looks like. We also, there also was an immediate request to investigate the gas tax revenues and whether or not all of our gas stations are considered. an immediate request for a map of the Thailand's funds and where those apply. So we have a clear idea of where those go. And a consideration of how we look at additional funds or what's a carve out for things like Suslita Beautiful or cars, and how do we look at that in the context of the budget? Also, there was a request from myself and Council Member Hoffman to provide the difference in fee between full-time employees and cost of full-time employees at full level of staffing and the spends that we have on professional services. And that was all in. I think we also all agreed to immediately move the $3 million for Measure L into the CIP to keep that promise that we made to voters. So that's the immediate direction. And then kind of bigger picture on some of that, There was also a request and I think it's very warranted and we all are on consensus. with regards to Measure L, really doing more to look at how we're spending the Measure L dollars and making sure that there's some system, whether it's a citizen oversight or something more clear and checking back on our dashboard on that in particular. And on that topic, of course, there was a great request for a more simplified dashboard of how we look at our budget condition. with cash flows, both non-financial and then financial and accrued deferred maintenance, and then also looking at our three different types of revenue streams, so parking, real estate, and TOT sales tax, and the accrued expense for this. I'm really thinking about it from the standpoint of, what is the financial forecasting we can do many years out looking at this and how do we make it as simple as possible and there was also a call as well for footnotes on that where people could look back if they wanted more in-depth information with regards to where does that show up in our financial audit report for example and then Another important consideration that you and Kevin can work on together, because as you mentioned, there's a lot of codifying of our funds that maybe don't make sense, and if we had a better system for how staff puts in their hours, it would be helpful. So really looking at how do we log staff time, and where can we apply that staff time to which respective fund to be more thoughtful about our fiscal allocations going forward. So I think that that about wraps up the feedback and direction, and I really appreciate this conversation, the attention to detail, and the time that our colleagues put in on this topic. We're going to, with regards to item five B, I think we want to continue it, but I do want to say. I think with with a lot of the feedback that I've heard and that we've all received in public comment There was a request for a more robust town hall format conversation about the future of the downtown area in general parking lots one and two and three and four So I'd like to work with staff to put together more of a collaborative town hall And then perhaps at the next meeting we can hear item 5b as just the parking cost or as the valet program parking rates. But I do want us to have a comprehensive town hall discussion. It's not a council meeting, but rather an opportunity for folks to come and give feedback as they did. If you remember the discussions we had around the ferry landing in 2017, similar to something like that. |
| 03:53:04.99 | Unknown | Mayor, yes, we just closed out the budget item. We gave direction, but I wanted to just ask Chad if he got all the direction he needed or was there anything we didn't answer that he had asked of us? |
| 03:53:09.25 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 03:53:09.74 | Unknown | that you can't. |
| 03:53:17.25 | Unknown | Thank you. you |
| 03:53:19.31 | Unknown | Is that okay? Thank you. |
| 03:53:22.50 | Chad Hess | Yes, I have, I mean, wages and benefits is still open, but that'll take place with new negotiations. Everything else I feel comfortable with, the feedback you've given me. I just wanted to check, thanks. |
| 03:53:32.46 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for that. Okay, so then knowing that we're then continuing business item 5B and we'll have some sort of robust town hall discussion as well on the downtown conversation, let's go ahead and move to Item six, which is the time on the communications. This is the time on the agenda. |
| 03:53:50.09 | Sergio Rudin | Mayor, I think you still have to take public comment on 5P. |
| 03:53:52.01 | Walfred Solorzano | THE END OF Oh, okay, public comment on item 5B. Thanks, Sergio. |
| 03:53:57.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:53:58.23 | Walfred Solorzano | All right, we have Peter Van Meter. |
| 03:54:03.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 03:54:04.30 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 03:54:04.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh. |
| 03:54:04.47 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. We have Senator Bushmaker. |
| 03:54:06.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Hi Sandra. |
| 03:54:10.06 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thanks for sticking around. Yeah, I'm not in favor of the valet parking project or putting any more effort into the valet parking project. with regard to improving the The parking rates, I think that's worth discussion. |
| 03:54:28.42 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:54:28.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:29.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Thanks. Next person, Jan Johnson. |
| 03:54:34.79 | Unknown | Hi. Sorry, I'm trying to start the video. It won't let me in. I've. I'm not for the valet parking. It was linked in the staff report to the plaza plan. I think we just heard that parking is a major source of income from the city. something like 8 to 9%. I suspect the vast majority of that are At least the majority is from parking lot one. And you've just been discussing Mission Crete. If we're in a financial crisis through 2031, I think all planning discussion of Plazas out of parking lot one should be put off until we are out of the financial crisis. So hold tight and wait for eight years before you spend money we don't have. Thank you. |
| 03:55:35.07 | Walfred Solorzano | No further speakers. |
| 03:55:36.59 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much. Okay, I will now close public comment on item 5B and go ahead and move it on to item six, which is communications. This is the time on the agenda for members of the public provide any comment for items that are not on the agenda. If you would like to provide a public comment, fill out a speaker slip, or raise your hand in the Zoom application. The city clerk will call on individuals who have raised their hand in the order they were raised. After you are called on, you will be unmuted to allow you to share your comments. Public comments are a total of two minutes. I will now open up for public comment items not on the agenda. |
| 03:56:10.61 | Unknown | See you then. |
| 03:56:11.59 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, I'll close public comment and move to item seven, council member committee reports. |
| 03:56:20.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, the hour is late seeing none. All right, we'll move on to item eight, which is city manager reports, city council appointments and other council business. So I will now open it up for public comment on items eight B through eight E. |
| 03:56:39.04 | Unknown | See you then. |
| 03:56:40.11 | Walfred Solorzano | I'll go ahead and close public comment. Okay, city manager turning it over to you for information for the council. |
| 03:56:45.29 | Chris Zapata | No report this evening, Mayor and Councilor. |
| 03:56:46.62 | Walfred Solorzano | You don't want to share about the grant that we got? |
| 03:56:48.85 | Chris Zapata | Not yet. Okay. |
| 03:56:49.41 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Item 8C, appointments to boards, commissions, and committees. We have none this evening. Item 8D, future agenda items. So here we wanted to discuss because we need to have a conversation, a more robust conversation about labor negotiations and also infrastructure in our budget. I think the labor negotiations would be closed session, but infrastructure would be an open session discussion. you know, and it would be in a workshop format. I know most of the council members are able to attend on the 20th, but I just found out that Councilmember Hoffman is unavailable to attend at that time. |
| 03:57:25.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:57:25.13 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:57:25.77 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:57:25.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:57:25.97 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry, yeah, sorry, apologies for that. I was on the go last week, so I'm sorry. |
| 03:57:30.73 | Walfred Solorzano | because your son graduated from college. It's kind of a big deal. |
| 03:57:34.38 | Jill Hoffman | It was, but I did try to respond after talking to the city manager yesterday to the doodle poll, but it had been deactivated. So I didn't send an email though. Okay. So apologies for that. But I am, do we want to talk about dates now? |
| 03:57:41.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:57:41.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 03:57:42.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:57:42.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 03:57:47.64 | Walfred Solorzano | If we can, it might be the most efficient way forward. |
| 03:57:51.20 | Jill Hoffman | Available this Saturday, sorry. Thank you. one of the |
| 03:57:58.04 | Walfred Solorzano | THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE |
| 03:57:58.29 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:58:00.28 | Walfred Solorzano | Anyway, is there the 27th that Saturday or that Friday? I mean, it doesn't have to be on a Saturday. It just would need to be when we. |
| 03:58:00.72 | Jill Hoffman | Is there- |
| 03:58:07.39 | Unknown | I'm on a plane. Is there a time or a push for this? |
| 03:58:14.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:58:15.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:58:15.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Ideally, yes, because it's in line with our labor negotiations and our approval of the final budget. So I think if we're planning to hear revised budget on the 23rd and then have the official meetings the week of June I think the 13th, because we're still doing second and fourth until July. So that means we have a meeting on the 13th and the 27th to approve. So at some point before then. |
| 03:58:40.65 | Unknown | I'll have to be remote, which is fine. So my request then, given the time difference, might be, |
| 03:58:40.78 | Walfred Solorzano | the |
| 03:58:40.86 | Jill Hoffman | BE. |
| 03:58:41.25 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh. |
| 03:58:51.88 | Jill Hoffman | Hold on, are we talking 27th? |
| 03:58:53.76 | Unknown | No, I'm on a plane. I can't tell the third. |
| 03:58:55.53 | Jill Hoffman | No, no, okay, that's fine. I'm just trying to figure out the day. Next Saturday. |
| 03:58:59.46 | Unknown | Next Saturday. Oh, next Saturday. |
| 03:59:01.74 | Jill Hoffman | No, no, no. |
| 03:59:02.75 | Unknown | I was going to say I could do the second or the third of June. |
| 03:59:07.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. I can't do those dates. but we could do it on a Tuesday and we could do it at a time when we would have had a council meeting in the evening and you could join remote. |
| 03:59:20.15 | Unknown | I, |
| 03:59:20.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 03:59:22.82 | Unknown | It's going to be hard. Sorry, I tried to schedule this one. We didn't have anything. So, I mean, you're going to miss one of us, so if I guess feel, let me schedule something and if I can. |
| 03:59:39.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. So are you available on the 20th? Yes. Okay. So everyone is available on the 20th except Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 03:59:46.64 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:59:46.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:59:47.03 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I can. Thank you. |
| 03:59:47.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:59:47.96 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm not sure. |
| 03:59:48.13 | Unknown | What about the |
| 03:59:48.48 | Walfred Solorzano | to. |
| 03:59:52.94 | Unknown | What about the 18th? |
| 03:59:54.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:59:58.30 | Unknown | 7 a.m. I'm ready. |
| 03:59:59.47 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:59:59.50 | Unknown | I'm ready on the 18th too. |
| 04:00:00.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:00:00.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:00:00.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:00:00.80 | Unknown | to move stuff. |
| 04:00:00.80 | Unknown | I have a client board meeting starting at 7 p.m. on the 18th. |
| 04:00:04.55 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 04:00:06.98 | Walfred Solorzano | but we could do it in the late afternoon or in the morning. |
| 04:00:13.68 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I heard the deposition stuff. |
| 04:00:16.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:00:17.34 | Jill Hoffman | I have a deposition scheduled right now for that day, but it may come off calendar. |
| 04:00:21.15 | Unknown | calendar. 1 o'clock on the 18th. I can do, I can make that work. |
| 04:00:25.67 | Jill Hoffman | I have a deposition scheduled, but it may come up, but I can try to find out tomorrow. |
| 04:00:31.48 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, so we'll tentatively, I have meetings then, but I will move them to accommodate the group if that works for folks. If you can move your deposition on the 18th, that would be great. Otherwise, we'll plan on the 20th because we have to schedule it, but I'm hoping you can move the deposition because we'd obviously prefer for you to be there. |
| 04:00:48.00 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. You know, 20 people involved. So I probably can't move it, but I can find out if it's going |
| 04:00:48.07 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:00:48.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:00:48.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:00:54.77 | Unknown | if it's going. |
| 04:00:55.33 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, if it's going, but if we have, if we want to do another I don't know if you want to try another doodle poll. So 19th and 20th, not available. And then 22nd is Monday prior to city council meetings. That's what we're saying. |
| 04:01:09.60 | Walfred Solorzano | I could do the 21st also or the 22nd. |
| 04:01:13.13 | Jill Hoffman | I can do the 21st or the 26th. |
| 04:01:14.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, let's do the 21st or 22nd. 21st is a Sunday. |
| 04:01:17.72 | Unknown | So I will be remote, but I will do it. |
| 04:01:19.32 | Walfred Solorzano | I will. |
| 04:01:21.68 | Jill Hoffman | I can do it. I'll be in transit, so it depends on what time. We can adjust to that. |
| 04:01:25.67 | Walfred Solorzano | We can adjust to your schedule so that if the 21st works, why don't we find out what time of day works for everyone? We're gonna have a staff available to work on a Sunday. |
| 04:01:27.74 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 04:01:33.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:33.40 | Unknown | It was a Saturday. It was a Sunday, 21st. But, I mean, we were scheduling first. |
| 04:01:34.04 | Walfred Solorzano | So but I mean, |
| 04:01:36.97 | Unknown | Thanks. |
| 04:01:37.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Scheduling for a Saturday. |
| 04:01:37.61 | Unknown | Thank you. Anyway, so. |
| 04:01:38.96 | Walfred Solorzano | THE END OF |
| 04:01:39.03 | Unknown | to be here. |
| 04:01:39.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:01:39.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:39.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:01:39.89 | Jill Hoffman | What about the 20 seconds? |
| 04:01:40.68 | Unknown | What about the 22nd? |
| 04:01:44.50 | Jill Hoffman | The 22nd? |
| 04:01:46.03 | Walfred Solorzano | 11 to 1 is fine for me, too. I can do this. |
| 04:01:46.22 | Jill Hoffman | that works for me. |
| 04:01:48.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:48.30 | Unknown | into things. |
| 04:01:48.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:48.95 | Unknown | We're feeling it. |
| 04:01:50.56 | Unknown | Nice of you to ask. What day are we talking about? |
| 04:01:52.80 | Unknown | 22nd Monday, the 22nd 11 to one. |
| 04:01:52.97 | Walfred Solorzano | I love you. |
| 04:01:57.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:01:57.83 | Unknown | Hi, Chief. |
| 04:01:58.25 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 04:01:58.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 04:01:58.57 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 04:01:58.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:01:58.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:58.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:01:58.69 | Unknown | you |
| 04:01:58.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:58.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:58.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:01:58.81 | Unknown | you Bye. I'm not going to get out of |
| 04:01:59.57 | Walfred Solorzano | out of here. |
| 04:02:00.09 | Unknown | done. |
| 04:02:00.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, Monday the 22nd, 11 to 1, potentially 11 to 2, because there's a chance that this will take longer than two hours. appearing remotely. That's okay. Just to make sure you work with staff to post your location and you know, follow by my rules. |
| 04:02:15.16 | Unknown | This will be subject to that emergency thing. Great, I know. |
| 04:02:18.94 | Walfred Solorzano | I know. Yep, that's fine. I think we all agree that that's okay. |
| 04:02:23.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:02:24.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, we did it, guys. We planned a time that works for all five of us. I'm so thrilled. There we go. Thank you very much for bearing with us, members of the public that are still online, if any of you at all. Very impressed. Okay, and do we have other future agenda items at this point, or can we maybe... |
| 04:02:40.14 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I had, well, one is the boards and commissions. Sure. Since we haven't taken actually action on that. And then |
| 04:02:44.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Sure. |
| 04:02:50.48 | Jill Hoffman | And then I assume that because you were talking about the town hall for the ferry... But that's not an agenda item, that's not a city council agenda item, that's just a town hall. an informal town hall. |
| 04:02:59.88 | Walfred Solorzano | I think we need additional public feedback on that and a conversation around it. So |
| 04:03:04.98 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, that's I agree. I've got some a lot of comments about that too. So just a follow up. |
| 04:03:08.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, great. |
| 04:03:10.80 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thank you. |
| 04:03:11.74 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:03:11.86 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:03:11.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Anybody have anything else? Okay, other reports of significance? Okay, well, with that, it is 11.04 PM and I will officially adjourn this meeting. Thank you. |
| 04:03:28.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
Carolyn Revell — Neutral: Highlighted Sausalito Beautiful as a model for efficient committees without Brown Act requirements, supported quarterly meetings and creative use of citizen expertise. ▶ 📄
Sandra Bushmaker — Neutral: Urged council to keep committees on a short leash to prevent runaway projects without council approval. ▶ 📄
Sybil Boutier — Neutral: Described Age-Friendly Sausalito's work with minimal staff time, fundraising, and upcoming report, emphasizing positive community impact. ▶ 📄
Pat Zook — Neutral: Advocated for Sausalito Beautiful-like self-assembled groups without city council appointments to encourage community involvement and reduce constraints. ▶ 📄