| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:02.17 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we're gonna get started because Ian's gonna be a little bit late and we don't have time to Dilly Dally today, we have a lot of things going on. So. required. |
| 00:00:11.03 | Walfred Solorzano | reporting in progress. |
| 00:00:15.12 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. Good evening, Mayor Blasin and council members. The regular meeting of the June 13, 2023 City Council is being held in council chambers at 420 Litho Street. And the members of the public can participate in person and they can also participate in Zoom. This meeting is also being broadcast on the city's website and on cable TV channel 27. |
| 00:00:40.40 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, City Clerk. I hereby call this General Meeting of the City Council to order at 5.01 PM. Would you please call the roll? |
| 00:00:46.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Cox. Here. Council member Hoffman. Here. Council member Kelman. Here. Vice Mayor Sobieski. |
| 00:00:51.35 | Steven Woodside | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:00:56.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Not arrived yet. And Mayor Blostein. |
| 00:01:01.10 | Steven Woodside | Yes, present. Okay, so the first item on the agenda this evening. The vice mayor is walking in. The vice mayor has arrived. |
| 00:01:06.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, Vice Mayor. All right. Vice President here. Not on the mic, but here. |
| 00:01:09.88 | Steven Woodside | Marissa. Great. Okay, so the first item on the agenda this evening is our closed session discussions, and we have a number of those conference with Labor negotiator SCIU local 1021 and South Dakota Police Association conference with legal counsel real property negotiations pursuant to California government code section. 54956 MLK school site. Conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, Dinahan versus Colwich, public employee appointment, government code section 54957, city attorney, and conference with labor negotiator, government code section 54957, City manager, so I will go ahead and open it up to public comment. |
| 00:01:52.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, if any members of the public would like to comment, you can fill out a slip and then bring it over to the Nobody's here for the record. And if you are on Zoom, you can press, you can use the raise hand function over here on telephone on Zoom, press star nine. See no public comment. |
| 00:02:09.33 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment at this time. And I understand that one council member would like to recuse themselves from a portion of the closed session. |
| 00:02:17.04 | Joan Cox | Thank you, Mayor. I will be recusing myself from item two, the real property negotiations, because the subject property is within 500 feet of my residence. And I will be recusing myself from item four, the public employee appointments, because I... a member of the firm being considered for appointment and one of the firms being considered for appointment. And so I will recuse myself from that matter as well. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:49.25 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:02:49.27 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:02:50.03 | Walfred Solorzano | closed session. Recording stopped. |
| 00:02:58.30 | Unknown | no Thanks. Yeah, all right. Okay guys, we're gonna get a little Thank you. |
| 00:03:18.28 | Walfred Solorzano | Recording in progress. |
| 00:03:21.30 | Steven Woodside | Okay, welcome back to this regularly agendized city council meeting on June 13th, we have returned from closed session, and there are no closed session announcements. So, City Clerk, do you want to call the roll? |
| 00:03:38.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:03:41.45 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:03:41.47 | Jill Hoffman | presence. |
| 00:03:42.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:03:43.76 | Jill Hoffman | here. |
| 00:03:44.00 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:03:45.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member coming. |
| 00:03:46.32 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:03:46.34 | Steven Woodside | Here's the show. |
| 00:03:47.17 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Sobieski? Here. and Mary Blaustein. |
| 00:03:50.21 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so our first agenda item this evening is approval of the agenda. So moved. We have a second. A second. Okay, all in favor say aye. |
| 00:04:02.14 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 00:04:02.27 | Steven Woodside | I. |
| 00:04:02.29 | Unknown | Ah. |
| 00:04:03.03 | Steven Woodside | Fantastic. Okay, and this evening we have no special presentations, but for mayor's announcements, I do want to acknowledge that this afternoon at noon we had a ribbon cutting for our rainbow crosswalk for Sausalito Pride. And there are a number of really exciting events for Sausalito Pride this month, thanks in big part to Councilmember Kelman, who has been chairing those activities in partnership with the Great Pride Committee. So I'd encourage everybody to check out SausalitoPride.org because there are a lot of exciting things happening over the next month. And with that, I'll move on to item two, which is action minutes from the previous meeting. Do we have any? amendments or a motion to approve. |
| 00:04:47.41 | Walfred Solorzano | a public comment. Um, |
| 00:04:49.18 | Steven Woodside | Oh, sure. I'll open up public comment. |
| 00:04:50.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Sina, Sina. |
| 00:04:53.74 | Steven Woodside | I did have one amendment. which is that The meeting, both the special meetings took place on Tuesday, May 23rd. And the first one is agendized as Monday, May 22nd. |
| 00:05:07.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, I'll note that. No, actually, no, there was one. There was a third one? No, we had one on Monday. |
| 00:05:11.26 | Steven Woodside | was a third one. And then 212 say no. |
| 00:05:14.39 | Walfred Solorzano | And then we had one on We had a special meeting on Tuesday and then had the regular meeting on Tuesday. So we did have a, no, the dates are correct. We did have a special meeting on Monday. I think that one was at 9 a.m. |
| 00:05:24.08 | Steven Woodside | Well, then we need a second. We were still awaiting the second segment. |
| 00:05:26.14 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, we're still waiting for a second, seven minutes. We're still waiting for a second, seven minutes. |
| 00:05:27.89 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Great, just wanted to be sure. All right, fantastic. Okay, so do I have a motion to approve the minutes? |
| 00:05:34.75 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, sorry, we do have a public comment for the for the minutes. Oh, we don't. Oh, no. |
| 00:05:41.09 | Steven Woodside | All right. |
| 00:05:41.18 | Sandra Bushmaker | Okay. |
| 00:05:45.88 | Sandra Bushmaker | WE DO. Bye, Sandra. THE END OF |
| 00:05:49.97 | Sandra Bushmaker | We can't hear you. Good evening, council. I just wanted to raise that issue about the May 23rd meeting, but I think it was explained because I see that there was a motion made on the the master plan concept. That was not included in the minutes. So I gather we're waiting for further minutes. for the 23rd, is that correct? |
| 00:06:10.32 | Steven Woodside | return. |
| 00:06:10.34 | Sandra Bushmaker | There's a further |
| 00:06:10.98 | Steven Woodside | set of minutes coming. Okay, good. Thanks. |
| 00:06:12.02 | Sandra Bushmaker | Okay, good, thanks. |
| 00:06:13.32 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay, now might I have, oh, we have any further public comment at this time, City Clerk? |
| 00:06:18.37 | Walfred Solorzano | See you then. |
| 00:06:19.21 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment. Do we have a motion to approve our minutes? So I'm moved. |
| 00:06:27.62 | Steven Woodside | Any seconds? Okay, all in favor say aye. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, we'll now move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the consent calendar. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and noncontroversial, 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. 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 actions. 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 from the consent calendar. I don't want to remove anything from the consent calendar, but I did want to read the Juneteenth proclamation as we do have a public holiday this Monday, the 19th for Juneteenth. and Sausalito has partnered with Marin City on their Juneteenth celebration. So if you are here, that celebration starts at 9 a.m. in Marin City. So I hope you'll be able to join us in celebrating. And I'm gonna go ahead Just read that proclamation and then move on with the consent calendar. Whereas on September 22nd, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation Officially ending slavery. changing the status of more than three and a half million enslaved African-Americans in the Confederate States of America. And whereas in remembrance and celebration of June 19th, 1865, announcement of the abolition of slavery, we celebrate Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day. as the true anniversary and oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, And whereas those who were freed from bondage celebrated their long overdue emancipation, on June 19th. Today our city commemorates Juneteenth, a chance to celebrate human freedom reflect on the grievous and ongoing legacy of slavery and rededicate ourselves to rooting out the systemic racism that continues to plague our society as we strive to deliver the full promise of America to every American, And whereas on Juneteenth, we recommit to our shared work to ensure racial justice equity and equality in America. We commemorate the centuries of struggle and progress led by abolitionists, educators, civil rights advocates, lawyers, activists, trade unionists, religious leaders, public officials and everyday Americans who have brought our communities closer to fulfilling its promise. Now therefore be it resolved that I, Mayor of Sausalito, on behalf of the City Council, proclaim June 19, 2023 as Juneteenth National Freedom Day and encourage the community to unite in solidarity and continue to fight for justice. So again, if you can join Marin City, 9am is when the Juneteenth celebrations begin on So with that, does the rest of the council have any comments on consent calendar items? 3A Juneteenth proclamation, 3B, Honoring Bridge the Gap as the California AD12 Nonprofit of the Year. Very exciting. Adopt a resolution approving an encroachment agreement for encroachments in the public right-of-way at 60 Woodward Avenue. Adopt a resolution approving the amended restated joint powers agreement of fire risk management services. 3E, the impact of HDL's business license compliance efforts. 3F, declare certain computer equipment surplus and authorize this disposition. 3G, Sausalito bike return monthly report. 3H, adopt resolution amending the revised master fee schedule. and 3I approval of First Amendment to Community Development Block Grant and Home Investment Partnerships. Anyone on council have any comments on any of that? Okay, I'll go ahead and open it up to public comment. Any public comment on consent calendar items? |
| 00:09:47.79 | Unknown | and |
| 00:09:49.04 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment and ask for a motion on the dais to approve our consent calendar. So moved. Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Fantastic motion carries unanimously and we'll move ahead in the agenda to our public hearing items of which we have none. So we'll begin with our first business item this evening. And before we dive in, I just want to say we do have four business items this evening and we have a long packed agenda. So if we could all monitor ourselves in our comments and our questions to be as concise as possible so that we can move through the agenda. |
| 00:09:59.48 | Jill Hoffman | Aye. |
| 00:09:59.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:10:22.08 | Steven Woodside | and respect staff and communities time to finish within our no starting a business item after 10pm window. That would be greatly appreciated. And we'll work towards moving forward with motions and discussions after the motions this evening, just for efficiency's sake, if possible. So I'm going to, with that, hand it over to Chad Hess, our Interim Budget Director for Presentation of the Fiscal Year 23-24 Budget. Thank you, Chad. |
| 00:10:45.43 | Angeline Loeffler | THANK YOU. Maria, can you put the presentation on the screen? |
| 00:10:54.87 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:11:02.19 | Unknown | even then. |
| 00:11:03.00 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:11:04.04 | Unknown | you Thank you. I think I'm going to see them in the room. |
| 00:11:16.26 | Unknown | So that's the thing. |
| 00:11:19.55 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. Yes, but I'd like to control from here if I can. It's the same one. |
| 00:11:50.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:01.05 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay. We'll make it work. Can I not present from here? |
| 00:12:06.52 | Walfred Solorzano | Uh, |
| 00:12:07.02 | Unknown | I don't think we can. |
| 00:12:09.42 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay. |
| 00:12:10.20 | Unknown | Oh, you said that's not what you would have to be. |
| 00:12:11.93 | Unknown | Bye. Thank you. |
| 00:12:12.41 | Unknown | All right, so we'll make it work. |
| 00:12:14.72 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:12:14.78 | Unknown | I think. |
| 00:12:15.04 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:12:15.26 | Unknown | do that. |
| 00:12:16.34 | Unknown | Should we? |
| 00:12:17.10 | Joan Cox | We used to be able to present from the diocese We should be able to do that. |
| 00:12:21.15 | Unknown | I think because it was this before Zoom? |
| 00:12:23.59 | Joan Cox | Yes. |
| 00:12:23.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:24.62 | Unknown | Okay, probably because we're using Zoom, we, okay. |
| 00:12:32.27 | Angeline Loeffler | that email you this and then you can |
| 00:12:42.58 | Unknown | All right. |
| 00:12:43.05 | Angeline Loeffler | So, |
| 00:12:43.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:43.29 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 00:12:43.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:43.49 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 00:12:43.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:44.54 | Angeline Loeffler | It's okay. All right, so tonight I've got hopefully a fairly short presentation for you on the budget. There has been a few minor changes to the budget since the last time we met. But to reflect, first I want to go over kind of a budget timeline and discuss where we've come from and where we've been. Our process really started back in March where we adopted the fiscal year 22 audit report from our external independent auditor, Maize & Associates. From that, we went right into the mid-year budget review. So we did an update reflection on fiscal year 2023 or 2223. And then we started moving through the preparation of our fiscal year 24 budget. um, Back in April, we discussed our initial capital improvement plan, which will be presented or it is modified for this evening's presentation. We held various budget workshops or budget meetings throughout May. And then tonight we're going to give you kind of a final look at our fiscal year 24 budget before we move to adopt next week. Um, IF WE GO TO THE NEXT SLIDE. Again, just kind of a visual representation of that budget process. that one. Yep. Thank you. So here we are tonight. What we're looking forward to is having the budget basically approved as is or minor tweaks before we go into formal adoption before June 27th. So, I think we go down two slides. Oh, too far. So the capital improvement plan updates that we're bringing forward tonight, honor the Measure L promised that we will spend those dollars on infrastructure. Last time we met, we had some dollars that were unassigned about just shy of a million dollars in Measure L funds that were not allocated to a capital improvement project. The city manager made the recommendation that those dollars be assigned to 50% streets, 20% storm grades, 20% landslide mitigation. And then the additional 10% into city buildings. So our new CIP plan reflects those changes. They are blue lined on the attachment in the council packet. So you can see those changes and I'm going to cover the highlights here next. Also within this, it includes two project managers to help manage those those projects, one for the sewer fund and one for the CIP fund. One of them will be paid out of sewer fund revenue. The other will be paid out of Measure L resources. Um, if we go to the Yep, the next slide. The major improvements we're going to spend just shy of $2 million on street resurfacing and repair. The bulk of those dollars are Measure L dollars. We're investing in looking at building HVAC electrification. A building facilities assessment for MLK. and our other city owned properties really to get an idea of what that deferred maintenance cost is. We're doing a structural assessment on the Spinnaker. And then we've got bridgeway slide repair. below Woodward and then City Hall access improvements. All are the highlights or some of those additions that are being funded for through measure L. If we go to the next slide, just a real quick representation of our overall capital improvement plan. The bulk of it is coming from measure L $2.9 million is going to be funded through our measure L funds. Some other highlights, we have grant funding of a half a million. We have Um, We have impact fees, about 160,000. We have measure A. and measure AA funds that are coming from the county. All of those revenue sources are really coming together to implement that capital improvement plan, which has a total of about 5.1 million. but I think that's a good question. Moving forward, we're going to talk about our citywide funds. So if you go one more slide. Um, The top the top slide there is the revenues. The only change that I have there is we included 158,000 of county revenues from Measure AA, which is geared towards road infrastructure improvements. That number wasn't available previously, so that has been included in our budget. So that increased revenue slightly from a citywide perspective. If we go to the next slide where we took a look at citywide expenses, Overall, we've increased our citywide expenses just shy of 900,000. The biggest change there is our capital. We've included additional capital dollars based on the feedback that we received from the last time we met. Overall, our citywide expenses, we are planning to spend down some of our savings or residual dollars that we have that we saved up over the years. Overall, we have a deficit spend of about 1.1 million. It's not debt spending, but it's expenses exceeding revenues for that period. as a result of our increased capital spending activity to invest in roads and other infrastructure. if we go a couple slides. forward, we look at general fund revenue, the general fund revenue has not changed from the last time we met. If we go down one more slide, general fund expenses have increased just shy of $11,000. There was a overtime calculation that we had to rework just slightly. in the general fund and it resulted in about $14,000 of additional labor costs from overtime And then we had a slight reduction in a, repair or supplies and materials. Those two categories offset, part of that is just because of how things were grouped, I made a modification. But overall, we had an increase of expenditures of just shy of 11,000. are planned or projected deficit is just $2,137 for fiscal year 24. Um, By the time we meet next time, I think I can refine that down and get us to at least a balanced budget. for fiscal year 24 with a zero, zero change in fund balance. I can find an expense to cut to get us there. So I think that's a major step in the right direction. We do have a lot of unknowns down the road, but as far as operating expenses, I feel like we can meet our objectives using the resources we have available. On the next slide, I give a breakout by department. One of the significant changes here We did a reclass between library and administration. We're moving some of our director of communication and library director's wages up to the administration, general government. line item just because a lot of his time is spent in that domain. And we're trying to get a more accurate reflection of what are the true costs of providing those services to our leaders as well as the community. So that is just a reassignment of wages between the departments. And again, you can see there's that 14,701. That's an overtime adjustment. and then down below community recreation had a $4,000 decrease. in their department. If we go a couple slides forward, I give just again our business units, parking fund, MLK, And then the Tidelands Fund, there were no changes to those funds as presented. So the information that you were given last time we met is still accurate. So we can go ahead and go through those slides. I don't want to take up your valuable time on that. The sewer fund as well, if we go to slide 20, the change that we had in the sewer fund was the addition of CIP, We brought in some additional CIP spend within that fund. That fund does have a projected deficit spend of about 461,000. on infrastructure, mainly driven by the infrastructure investment there. That fund does have a healthy cash balance of just over $6 million. |
| 00:20:57.98 | Joan Cox | slide to the sewer fund? Yes. |
| 00:21:00.04 | Angeline Loeffler | Slide 20. Sorry. I'm going to go. Yeah, slide 20. There we go. There we go. Sorry about that, folks. So way down at the bottom, you can see that the sewer funds cash has been holding stable. So we have sufficient resources to invest in those infrastructure improvements within the sewer fund. Um, If we go one slide forward, There is just a reconciliation of all of our funds. That's that citywide funds concept. The first one here you can see within our kind of unrestricted revenues, we've got General Fund, Old City Hall, MLK, Parking, Bank of America. ALL OF THOSE FUNDS ARE AGGREGATED OR SHOWN AS A So, If we go to the next slide again, you can see the summary of our special revenue funds and capital project funds. The big change on this page is really that general capital project funds, second from the bottom, we increase the expense to reflect that increase in capital outlay. We increase that number to show those additional measure L spends. And then on the next page, we scroll down here, we have our debt service funds and then our OPEB trust fund. And again, that change in balance of a negative 1.1 million reconciles back to those front slides. So this gives you a little bit more expanded breakdown. Um, If we go to the next slide, fund transfers, here is a summary of those fund transfers. The only change that we have here is The stair fund has a budgeted transfer out of 110,000. There was a project that Director McGowan wanted to include, and we can utilize some of those special revenue resources for this very specific project. Um, That's a great example of being intentional with spending those restricted dollars first. If we go one more slide, I just wanted to give an update here. One of my big tasks that I'm currently undertaking is I'm going to bring back the budget book. We haven't done an official budget book. in two or three years. So I'm bringing back the budget book that will give all of the detail for all of our accounts and all of our funds with graphics and visuals. There is a draft up on the agenda now if you want to look at that, but that will be greatly expanded. It has all of the general fund detail by department, all of our revenues, gives you the last two years of actuals plus the last two years of budget. So there's a lot of good information out there. I will be adding all of our special revenue funds within the coming week. So I think that's a big update that we're bringing to you. We're going to, it just brings more budget transparency to the community and our council leaders. that will be available as a hard copy of the library. We're also going to have the electronic version posted to the city's website available for anybody to view. And then also just, you know, another update from the finance department really just want to reemphasize that we've had some stability coming back to that department. I've got one staff member who's who's been here with with us for two years, a major accomplishment. Two staff members have just surpassed their one year mark, which is really great. I'm very fortunate that we have that there. And then we just have a new person who's three months in. And then, yeah, I'm the interim. They are looking to fill that position in the near future. So, again, I think we're getting some, we're moving in the right direction within the finance department. The next steps, if you go one more slide, June 27th, I'm going to bring four resolutions forward to you. One is to adopt our position control, if you will, our available positions and the pay schedules or pay ranges within those. We'll formally approve the two new positions that we're bringing forward for Um, The project managers, one for sewer, one for CIP. And then we're gonna formally adopt the budget. We're also gonna review our investment policy. We are required to review that investment policy at least annually and adopt it. And then we're also bringing forward the GAN limit calculation, which we are under significantly for number of dollars or tax dollars that we can appropriate. So we'll bring those forward next week just to be on your radar and be prepared to to adopt those. And then City Manager has, if you go one more slide, City Manager has some thoughts that he would like to share before we go into questions. |
| 00:25:15.61 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. Thank you. Chad. Mayor and council member of the public. I'd like to really just bring attention to what you've done in the last two years since I've been here. When we started talking about what the city needed to do to be that model organization for our community, our residents, our businesses, our other partners, the idea was we needed to go back to the basics and back to the basics meant a focus on finance, a focus on the people that do the work and a focus on infrastructure. And I'm very pleased to say that, you know, the public has watched, they have supported, they have been what I call partners. When we talk about new money for infrastructure, that's a result of the work done by many people to implement Measure L after Measure O was set to expire this coming year. So that allows us to do some things that we haven't been able to do in the past that involve our infrastructure. So kudos to you for that. Good for us to pay attention to streets, to storm drains, to our landslide susceptibility, as well as to our city building. So all that is good infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. As it relates to transparency, the idea of finance in the past couple of years, post-pandemic, we've been able to adopt budgets, but without a real thorough review of various city funds like the parking fund, like the stair fund or the old city hall fund or the MLK fund. And so now that's been front and center so the public can see how that all plays into the operation of the city's budget and how we provide services with the people that do the work here. And then last but not least, you know, before I thank you all and Chad and his team and the departments for putting together the information necessary for you to consider moving this forward and adopting it next council meeting as required by law. I wanna talk about the progress that you have made the council, the community and our staff. When I got here two years and seven days ago, |
| 00:26:33.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:27:20.86 | Chris Zapata | We were talking about a budget that had a, a gap in the general fund of just south of $5 million. A year later, we were talking about a gap in the general fund budget that was just north of $3 million. And today we're showing you a budget that's essentially balanced in general fund. And that's a tribute to some hard decision making, some better economic conditions that have started to occur in our community. but you know also you know it's important for us to know that without the support of our residents without measure l dollars without you know dollars, without money that comes from our parking enterprise, all those things, MLK, don't allow us to do the things we need to do. But we have made what I call a major turnaround, and that's a tribute to some leadership on your part. I want to thank you all for that. I want to say that our next presentation, which will be on the 27th, should be pretty cut and dry. It's the presentation of a budget to adopt. And as Chad mentioned, some of the things that need to happen that are required by law. GAN limit, et cetera, get done as well. But the heavy lifting has been done over the last six months. And so I thank you for all that. I thank Chad for his efforts. And I think that this is a better, better time in Sausalito, even though there are some unmet needs out there that we know about that will happen planned or unplanned. The city is in a much better financial position this year than it was during the pandemic and post pandemic. And I'm happy to report that. And you see this in your document today. |
| 00:28:54.71 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, City Manager, and thank you, Director Hess. This has indeed been a substantial effort by the Finance Department and the City Manager to bring us to a balanced budget this year. truly appreciative of the amount of time and dedication that you have both put into getting us to where we are, being very responsive to our comments, meeting with each of us individually, responding to community outreach and questions as well. Truly appreciate it. And I'm glad that we've arrived where we are. And so before I open it up for questions, just gonna remind my council members that we do have four business items. So please be concise with your questions. And with that, I'll bring it back to the dais. Oh, no questions. Good job, guys. Great job. We have seen the budget a number of times. So at this point, this should also be very cut and dry. But I'll go ahead and open it up for public comment. |
| 00:29:44.16 | Walfred Solorzano | For anybody, we don't have any public comment in the council chamber. And okay, we do have some on Zoom. We'll start with iPad guest. |
| 00:29:56.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:56.07 | Pat Zook | Thank you. |
| 00:29:56.11 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:58.97 | Pat Zook | are you there? Thank you. |
| 00:30:01.88 | Steven Woodside | Yes, we can hear you. And maybe you can see me. I'm not sure. We can see you and we can hear you. |
| 00:30:05.37 | Pat Zook | Hi, Pat. Oh my goodness. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. And congratulations on the balancing of the budget to the city manager and the staff. I noticed that one of the larger items in the budget is the ferry landing phase one. Regardless of the source of the funds, and maybe this is a question more to the city attorney than to you or to the Um, staff. I'm wondering if this budget allocation implies approval of any specific plan or the ferry landing. particularly in light of the fact that those plans have not been either approved or submitted to the voters. But regardless of my preference, I'm wondering if this budget allocation implies the approval and potential execution of any particular plan for the ferry landing. Thank you. Thank you very much. |
| 00:31:07.45 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:31:09.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 00:31:12.03 | Sandra Bushmaker | Bye. Hi again. I had the same issue as Pat Zook just brought up. My concern is, as we know, you've had plenty of opposition with regard and an objection to several of the matters in the forum. Perry Landing. improvement project phase one Uh, One of which is the 1128 issues and I'd like to have a city. attorney opinion on that. And I would also like to have an answer to the question of whether you're when you approve this budget, are you approving a phase one and which phase one plan for this particular project? And lastly, I want to congratulate you all for bringing our finances back into better shape. I'm really happy about that. If I understood things correctly in watching the budget meetings, we did move monies from certain funds to get us in the black this year. And I just want us to be aware that those funds were there for a particular purpose And I'm speaking generally, I know there are, I don't have the specifics at hand to be able to point to them, but I just want to be aware that that we are By depleting certain funds, we're also depleting maintenance costs and source of funds for those maintenance costs. So I just wanted to bring that to our attention and make sure that we stay in the black. Thank you very much. I mean, I'm not going to be a good one. |
| 00:32:42.96 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Sandra. |
| 00:32:44.18 | Walfred Solorzano | and Vicky Nichols, |
| 00:32:46.56 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Vicki, welcome. |
| 00:32:49.44 | Vicki Nichols | Hi, good evening. Again, thank you to the city manager and staff for bringing us back to basics. I'm very pleased to hear about this. I'm certainly pleased that you're bringing the book back. That was one of my questions last time. That really is a way for the public to see what is happening. rolled up into each account. I heard something tonight that I'm just not clear on. And that was, there was two references to measure A and measure double A Measure A, I believe, and I could have this backwards. I'm not in a way. position to check anything. is I'm actually in my car, as you can probably see. Um, I believe that's the county's measure that is just allocated for parks. And I thought I heard something referenced to roads. So that's not clear to me. I know at the last voting, when we were going to re, uh, Revote this in the city of Sausalito has saved over $438,000 towards our parks through this tax measure. And I got that information from the city finance director at the time. So it, to my understanding, it's really reserved for parks. So I'd like to see that clarified. Thank you. |
| 00:34:11.74 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Leave any further public comment at this time. Blues Brothers City Clerk Walfred. |
| 00:34:16.76 | Walfred Solorzano | seen none. |
| 00:34:19.34 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I will go ahead and close public comment and bring it back up to the dais. To clarify, do we need to make a motion to accept this version of the budget for adoption at the next meeting? Or is this direction just leave budget as is? |
| 00:34:34.96 | Chris Zapata | It would be just leave the budget as is and we'll bring it back as is to the next meeting for formal adoption by the council. |
| 00:34:38.88 | Steven Woodside | performance. I'm prepared to make, I'm going to go ahead and make a motion that we leave the budget, that we accept the budget as pursued now and move on to the next meeting. Do you want to take a look? |
| 00:34:47.62 | Joan Cox | Okay. Thank you. I would like to discuss a couple of the comments by the council before we, by the public before we make. before we vote on that motion now that it is pending. |
| 00:34:56.16 | Steven Woodside | That's fine. I just wanted to get the motion out on the table so that we can be more efficient this evening. So go. I believe that Councilmember Kellman |
| 00:35:03.03 | Ian Sobieski | some of your topics. Go ahead. Well, Go ahead. Yeah, thank you. So I would love to hear from the city manager or our director of finance on how we and the public should be thinking about monies that are reflected in the budget, whether this is an allocation, should we wish to move forward versus approval? If you could speak to that question and then if you could speak to Vicky's question about the measure A funds and utilization, that would be helpful. |
| 00:35:28.22 | Angeline Loeffler | Yep, I sure can. So within the CIP plan, and this budget, we're just allocating funds. It's not specifically saying this is what we're going to do. It's just saying that those funds are available to proceed. Um, before any decision is made that would have to come before council to get the final blessing for that project. to be let. So it's not saying this is we're doing project A, B or C, it's just saying we're going to make funds available for that. As far as measure A and measure AA, you are correct. There are two different county measures. Measure A, if you look on slide 22, in the slide deck. So County measure a is for roads. and, County measure A is for parks. So there are two county measures that have a very similar name and there's special revenue funds for each of those sources to ensure compliance with the spending requirements. |
| 00:36:23.32 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, and then one more question, if I may. Yes. And then can you also speak to the question I keep asking about levels of service? So the allocations that were made here, are based on the level of service that we have experienced sort of through COVID, but of course could be impacted Should we wish to bolster some of those resources or change the levels of service or staffing, right? |
| 00:36:48.07 | Angeline Loeffler | So when you say levels of service, I'm thinking staffing. |
| 00:36:50.98 | Ian Sobieski | yeah. |
| 00:36:51.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:36:51.38 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes, so the numbers that are presented here Add. They maintain the positions that we currently have, plus they add three positions, two project managers, and then the administrative aid for admin, share between HR and culture, or park and rec. So there's no cuts to employees. There's no cuts to their hours. It's what we have today plus a little extra. |
| 00:37:18.41 | Steven Woodside | you're a ton House member Cox, did you have additional questions or did that cover? |
| 00:37:22.72 | Joan Cox | Thank you. That addressed my questions. |
| 00:37:25.00 | Steven Woodside | Okay, are there any other motions on the table or can we go ahead and take a vote? |
| 00:37:28.91 | Joan Cox | Well, I would also, however, like to comment that I very much appreciate the report on the stability in the finance department And I so appreciate the budget. I am such a dinosaur. being able to, you know, OpenGov was supposed to be more transparent than |
| 00:37:41.28 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:37:41.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:37:41.36 | Sandra Bushmaker | you. |
| 00:37:46.72 | Joan Cox | the physical, but for me, Having something that I can pull out and flip through is absolutely invaluable. So kudos and many thanks for that decision. |
| 00:37:58.04 | Angeline Loeffler | And if I may, I plan on printing copies for you. |
| 00:38:01.38 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:38:01.40 | Steven Woodside | Woo hoo. |
| 00:38:01.77 | Joan Cox | you |
| 00:38:01.85 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:38:02.31 | Angeline Loeffler | us. |
| 00:38:04.42 | Steven Woodside | Okay. All right. Does anyone else have anything they want to add before we go ahead and take a vote? Okay, all in favor of accepting the budget as presented this evening for formal adoption on the 27th of June say aye. |
| 00:38:19.67 | Unknown | Ah. |
| 00:38:20.53 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thank you so much. What was the second? |
| 00:38:21.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:38:21.71 | Walfred Solorzano | What was the second? |
| 00:38:22.93 | Steven Woodside | on that one. I'm sorry. Vice mayor. |
| 00:38:24.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice mayor. |
| 00:38:25.09 | Steven Woodside | Yep. Thank you so much for that excellent presentation and all of your hard work and for the budget book My fellow members of the Council, thank you for your efficiency and helping us move through these business items. So now we're going to be able to move on to item 5B. which is the retention of a business improvement district consultant for investigation of and potential formation. Thank you. of a Sausalito BID. So I believe we've got Director Phipps from our Community Development Is that? Is the lighting correct now? Okay. Great. Director Phipps? |
| 00:38:56.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:38:58.40 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of City Council, members of the public, and staff, happy to be here this evening. to introduce and discuss item 5B, as mentioned, regarding the retaining of a business improvement district consultant for investigation of and potential formation of a Sausalito property business improvement district. And I will refer to this district as a PBID moving forward. property business improvement district. Before I even dig into the background, I just wanna make it abundantly clear. to attendees this evening that no decision on the formation of a PBID is being made at this time. The item before council this evening is whether to pursue a consultant-led detailed investigation into the support and feasibility of forming a PBID that can be voted on, yes or no. at a future date. Now for some background, this is a follow up to previous direction provided by city council on April 25 following the interview of two firms who responded to the city's RFP. in connection with the potential formation of a PBID. Following Council interviews, Council selected New City America to participate in a roundtable facilitated by the Chamber of Commerce in connection with the potential formation of a Pbid. The roundtable was held at the Sausalito Visitor Center at 22 El Portal on May 16th. That's a Tuesday and was well attended by both property owners and business owners within and around the city's downtown commercial district. Add the roundtable following an in-depth presentation by New City America Incorporated. President Marco Lee Mandri Although some questions and concerns were discussed, the group unanimously voted. minus 1. to encourage the city council to move forward with the P bid investigation. Now that the business roundtable has occurred, and positive feedback was received From attendees, we are bringing this item back to council for council to render a final decision. on whether to retain a business improvement district consultant for the investigation of and potential formation. of a Sausalito property business improvement district. To reiterate, No decision on the formation of a PBID is being made at this time. The item before council this evening is whether to pursue A consultant-led detailed investigation. into the support and feasibility of forming Peep it. As a final note, Staff is pleased to report that through negotiations with New City America Incorporated, We were able to agree upon a total fee that is lower than their initial submittal by approximately 16%. That reduced fee is reflected on attachment three in connection with this item. With all that said, staff recommend that city council authorize the city manager to execute a contract with New City America Incorporated for a downtown Sausalito property business improvement district investigation and potential formation process. Council, thank you for your time this evening. I'm available to answer any questions. We also have Marco Le Mandri, president of New City America Incorporated, I hope, attending us virtually to answer any questions as needed. Thank you. |
| 00:42:14.35 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Director. |
| 00:42:15.03 | Ian Sobieski | Phipps, do we have questions from? Yes. Council Member Kellman. Hi, Director Phipps. Thank you for joining us. Real quick question. What is the difference between a bid and a CBD? A bid? |
| 00:42:26.67 | Brandon Phipps | Well, personally, I think CBD, it stands for Community Benefits District, and that's a greater umbrella term. Bid and PBID fall within that umbrella. |
| 00:42:36.29 | Ian Sobieski | So would you recommend one versus the other or? Is there... a distinction in your mind that we should take into consideration. |
| 00:42:44.98 | Brandon Phipps | Based on the analysis evaluation that's already been done, as well as kind of the recommendation from city management, as well as some of the comments and discussions that we've had with Marco, president of New City America Inc. I believe the property business improvement district is the best kind of CBD for us to ideate for the downtown at this time. |
| 00:43:05.86 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, and then my other question for you, maybe this is for Marco, but I'll try you, is around the formation of the board. Thank you. So, We've seen some public comment concerns that the city is the largest property owner downtown. I thought I recalled that the representation on the board was reflective of the property ownership ratio Is that accurate? And how can we So the concern, just to be clear, is that the city's large property owner, but may not be adequately represented based on the amount of property and street frontage, and therefore we are giving away. the decision-making process to a nonprofit board. |
| 00:43:40.68 | Brandon Phipps | Yeah, council member, thank you very much for that question. It's an important one to touch on. So as a property owner within the PBID, it's my understanding that it is city's intent do not consider its level of support, its survey response when evaluating PBID support. As far as utilizing our property ownership within the district to tip the scales, as it were, We're not interested in doing that. |
| 00:44:12.55 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:44:12.56 | Jill Hoffman | Councilmember Hoffman? Um, I might want to revisit that further. I'm not sure that was our... That was our... concerted direction at the last one. But I think that was, we did discuss that for sure, 100%. And segues nicely into my next question. which was also at the April 25th meeting, We as a council requested that the next presentation include four items. And it's in the minutes, and I requested that they be specifically included in the minutes under 5B under that. but I didn't see those in the staff report. And I'll, reiterate what those four things were. I understand that it's a little early to have these sort of these four things that it may be as part of the process. We'll get these things, but I would like to see this in the next, you know, iteration that we have coming back to us, because I think it's very important that we have this information and understanding about what the city's responsibility would be with regard to how much, you know, land we have, because that's directly proportional to how much each party is going to pay in the city's party. So the four things were, How much property does the city own in a proposed district? And understand that's in flux because that's gonna be part of the public process, but we do have a pretty good idea. However you define downtown, the ratio of the city on property is pretty large. What percentage is the assessment to the city? What would be the cost of the nonprofit management of the district? Because you're creating a third entity to manage the district. as I understand it. which would require, I think, an executive director, a paid person, And then how would the district be dissolved? You know, would it have to go back to a vote to dissolve the district or would it be some other sort of process that would be less impact less onerous, I suppose. if we decided not to go forward. So I'd just like to reiterate those four things that we requested from the last city council meeting by consensus. And that those be some sort of, the next time we have a staff report on this or we have a presentation, that some sort of scope is provided to us. that these things may move around and change. But that's an important part of my decision making process if 90% of whatever the district's gonna be is gonna be the city. You know, that's an interesting thing. and factor for us to think about as we move forward. Anyway, those are my... questions. I think. Thanks. |
| 00:46:38.87 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you, council member Hoffman. Very much appreciate the questions. I'm gonna answer your last question first. regarding how long will the district last? And your question assumes that we will form the district, I believe. So districts are generally formed for five years. After five years, the district will automatically expire unless it is renewed by property owners. So that is question one. Question four, as related to your first questions, percentage of property ownership, percentage assessment to the city and potential cost to operate. Yeah, I apologize for not having that information at hand at current, but much of those things, as you mentioned, are going to be in flux and are going to be based on the attitudes of the business owners, excuse me, more property owners that we survey as a result of moving into phase one of this process. However, I don't think it will hurt to, for example, have a map within and around the city's downtown commercial district, which shows city property ownership you know, acreage, total acreage, for example, and shades it so we can have a visual, something to refer to quantitatively. So I'm very happy to carry that forward. And that percentage assessment Obviously will depend on how large the district is, but we can kind of ideate a couple Um, maybe, scales of the district to give a rough percentage as to what city assessment might look like. |
| 00:48:14.45 | Jill Hoffman | I think that'd be very helpful. Thank you. |
| 00:48:18.90 | Steven Woodside | Other questions from the dais? I just wanted a clarifying question for the city clerk. I noticed that in the public comment, we don't have inclusion of the letters that we received at 12 around 12 PM this afternoon from Cass Green, which was which I understand since it came late, but I just wanted to make sure that when we do, update the agenda online. These are included because there are 22 letters of support from local merchants. |
| 00:48:45.19 | Walfred Solorzano | I think they're on there now, except for Carolyn Rebels, which I'll add on there. But Cass Greens, I think, should be on there. |
| 00:48:52.55 | Steven Woodside | under Okay. I'll refresh it and try again. Yeah, I didn't see it either. |
| 00:48:58.88 | Walfred Solorzano | I'll make sure it's on there. Okay, great. I just wanted to acknowledge that. |
| 00:48:59.89 | Steven Woodside | Okay, great. I just wanted to acknowledge that we did receive those 22 letters, and I know that that was quite a lot of hard work to gather all those. And I know it'll end up on the final version, but just making sure that that's clear. Okay, so since there's no further questions from the dais, thank you, Director Phipps. I will go ahead and open it up for public comments. Thank you. |
| 00:49:19.45 | Walfred Solorzano | like to make a public comment, you can fill out one of these speaker slips over by the television and then bring it over here. And so in-house, we have Carolyn Revell. |
| 00:49:31.55 | Carolyn Revell | Bye. And I did send mine in, but somehow it didn't make it. So thank you. I'm Carolyn Revell and I support a new city America being hired to explore creating a business improvement district for downtown Sausalito. If. If business owners surveyed in phase one approve a community benefit district, it can provide services beyond those These services can include enhancing the physical appearance of downtown through attention to design and street improvements such as tree planting and maintenance, planter boxes, hanging flower baskets, attractive trash receptacles, additional tree lighting, all of which will make downtown a more welcoming destination for residents and That in turn will help fill vacancies improve property values and increase city revenue. A bid can work in tandem with our park and rec department to plan and market events and also with the Chamber of Commerce, Sausalito Center for the Arts, Sausalito Beautiful and other nonprofit organizations committing to enhancing our town. as I wrote in my career as an urban planner in Bethesda. out in Montgomery County, Maryland, I had experience with an Business Improvement District in Bethesda. Maryland. and Its mission was to create an environment in which downtown businesses and residents can thrive and prosper. That bid handles landscaping and maintenance as well as promotion of the downtown through innovative marketing campaigns and large scale events, It also runs a mini bus. from parking garages to stores and restaurants, an office with information on transit, bike, and pedestrian access, and field teams in bright matching uniforms called Ask Me's to provide information and respond to health and maintenance emergencies. So it operates on a larger scale than Sausalito. I feel we have much to learn from Bethesda Urban Partnership and other models of successful bids. many in California and many that have been fostered and managed by New City America. So the experience of New City America in creating successful bids in over 90 cities, should give the council confidence in approving a contract that the firm will conduct phase one of this process in a professional and informative way. Thank you so much. |
| 00:51:42.21 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Carolyn. |
| 00:51:43.49 | Walfred Solorzano | All right, next speaker is Cass Green. |
| 00:51:52.36 | Cass Green | Hi, folks. It's so nice to be back in this room again. Well. Here we go. So I'm Cass Green, one of the owners of the Interbob Tide, a partner in McDevitt Enterprises, and also vice chair of the Economic Development Advisory Committee. So we, when I say we, it's the Interbob Tide and McDevitt Enterprises, support moving forward with the contract with New America to investigate the creation of, I'm going to adopt Brendan's terminology PBID. And we're going to just use that one from now on. in downtown Sausalito. With a Pbid, the businesses can, we can pull our resources to drive demand for Sausalito business goods and services, which will increase Sausalito tax revenue. For example, Sausalito's TOT revenue typically runs from 1.8 to $2 million a year. Of that, the Interbob Tide is approximately one half. efforts of a CBID will attract new businesses, increase occupancies, increase sales tax revenue and the quality of life for the downtown portion of Sausalito. |
| 00:52:54.83 | Unknown | me. |
| 00:52:54.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:56.02 | Cass Green | There's a broad consensus in the downtown community to move forward, evidenced by the, we now have 37 different business entities that have signed a letter of support of moving forward with the contract as specified in attachment C that the staff wrote. um, And thank to Sam for getting most of these signatures. In general, you must invest dollars to make money. You have to we believe the community believes that a rising tide lifts all boats. We would like to rise that tide and with it increase the tax revenues of the city of Sausalito. And we think that the city can benefit And we urge you to move forward with the contract as provided by city staff in attachment C. Thank you. |
| 00:53:43.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:53:43.61 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. |
| 00:53:47.09 | Walfred Solorzano | Any more speakers in house? Seeing none, we do have some people on Zoom. Sandra Bushmaker? |
| 00:53:55.14 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi Sandra. Hello again. A couple things. I was unable to identify exactly how much this contract was going to cost. I was trying to read it on my phone and I was unable to see the numbers. So I'd like to know what you're voting on tonight and how much that contract is for. Secondly, I just wanted to endorse the issues that were raised by Councilmember Kellman and Hoffman with regard to having that kind of information prior to making a decision on whether to proceed. I'm not speaking for or against the business improvement district. I just think these factors need to be brought to attention in order to make a decision for or against this PBID. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:54:43.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Next person we have is Willie. |
| 00:54:48.95 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Willie. Welcome. |
| 00:54:50.28 | Willie McDevitt | Hi, my name is Willie McDevitt. |
| 00:54:52.26 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:54:54.57 | Willie McDevitt | the general partner of the landlord for the Inn Above Tide. Historically, I was involved in creating a BID in Petaluma 25 years ago or something like that. And as a resident of Petaluma, I I am the direct beneficiary, the things that are available to residents downtown as well as people from out of town, but it's really improved the quality of life for Petaluma residents and quite frankly, Um, you know, the downtown Petaluma area and largely due to the efforts of the BID has become a magnet for people from throughout the Bay Area. So I support and willing to have our entity help pay for the eventual assessment that might come from a BID. And, urge you to vote for the contract with New America substantially along the lines of that has been proposed in the staff report. And council members, thank you all for volunteering. I know you work your butt off and it's appreciated by all. Thanks. |
| 00:56:13.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. Do we have any further public comment at this time? |
| 00:56:18.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 00:56:20.97 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll bring it back up to the dais. And again, for efficiency sake, I'm gonna begin by offering emotion, but then open it up for a discussion from the Council just so we can get through our items. So I'm happy to go ahead and make a motion to approve the contract for New America City to begin initiating phase one of the BID, PBID. |
| 00:56:41.73 | Melissa Blaustein | Second. |
| 00:56:42.57 | Steven Woodside | Okay, there's a motion on the table. I'm going to open it up for discussion from all of the council members. Councilmember Kilman. |
| 00:56:50.67 | Ian Sobieski | I don't have much to say other than thank the members of the public who came in, particularly the business owners, for giving a perspective. It's always helpful to hear from the folks who are going to be tasked with being a part of this. And also thank you to the city manager for offering this up as an option and for Director Phipps for continuing it. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for us. other projects in play. We talked about the master plan at our last meeting, and I know some initial information went out about that recently. We're looking at massive sea level rise infrastructure vulnerability assessment and work. And I think this fits in to that big picture, holistic planning that I have to say after 23 years here in Sausalito, I've always wanted. So I welcome the opportunity to learn more and better serve the community. |
| 00:57:34.73 | Unknown | Remember Cox? |
| 00:57:35.98 | Joan Cox | I also am in support of proceeding with this phase one. of this project. And I will note that the consultant kindly reduced their fee from $99,000 to I think it was $83,000. So I appreciate that. Fee reduction, given the disparity in the fee proposed by the other proposer and to address Sausalito being the majority vote. I think it's important that even if Sausalito holds the majority of the property that Sausalito necessarily be the majority vote, but a um, proportionate vote because it's important that the business community that's investing in the P bid have the key voice in how their investment is spent. And obviously, Sausaludo is one of those. Right now, Sausalito... and makes all of the decisions. The whole point of forming a new this P bid. is to give some of that autonomy to those folks who are investing in that. So in some way, we have to figure out a proportionality that maybe Sausalito's fee is reduced so that The fee is commensurate with the voice, but it's not the majority of those. That's just my opinion. We just wanted to address that issue, but I'm in favor of the phase one. Thank you. |
| 00:59:05.49 | Unknown | Councilman Groffman. |
| 00:59:06.23 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 00:59:07.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:07.83 | Jill Hoffman | So, yeah, thank you. I'm also, I'm in favor of exploring this and I'm in favor of going forward. I'm a little bit cautious about |
| 00:59:08.51 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 00:59:08.54 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 00:59:18.31 | Jill Hoffman | Uh, $83,000 when I don't know what the potential spend for the city is. And that's why I had requested that the percentage and the potential areas that Sausalito would be attributable to a Sausalito be given to us tonight so that we can make that decision. Because obviously, like I said, if it's a very high percentage that most of the land downtown is Sausalito, and so Sausalito is just gonna be paying tax dollars into something you know, Anyway. in and above what we support anyway, right? So we have lots of other business districts in town too that we're trying to, we have to support and we have other enterprises in town that we also have to support. So I'm not saying that I'm against this. We discussed this at EDAC and I was very interested in, in exploring this as a potential way for us to concentrate some improvements downtown and management of those improvements downtown. It just, that part just makes sense to me. I'm in favor of that. And the key to me for the spend for phase one was I don't want to spend $83,000 to get to a no, right? Like I'm cautious really about that. And so if it's, if it's a no early on, then I think the earlier we know it, the better. Again, that goes back to why I had requested those four things. Why we all actually requested those four things at the next time that we looked at this. My question is to, I suppose, the city manager or to Um, maybe I think it's the city manager. Um, is I think this contractors Did they have a monthly fee or was that another? Or Brandon. |
| 01:01:05.50 | Chris Zapata | It's for Brandon to... |
| 01:01:06.68 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, sorry, it's a Brandon question. So they have a monthly fee. So I'm wondering... Um, What's their monthly fee? Is it 9,000 or something like that? I don't know. That number's sticking in my head. I don't know why. |
| 01:01:23.24 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you, council member. I believe the monthly fee is $8. |
| 01:01:27.10 | Jill Hoffman | 8,000. Okay. So what I would, what I would propose is that we, I mean, you know? what I would propose is that we have them move forward and come back to us in September with some of these preliminary sort of assessments, right. Of, If this is something that's just, you know, we're not going to be able to move forward on just because Saucely is paying the majority, then it's better that we head it off before we invest. a lot of time and energy into it, which I know a lot of time and energy from the business community, from EDAC and from our staff and from our city council. So that's just my caveat on this. The... And I think that was it. That was just my assessment about where we are. Thank you. |
| 01:02:18.26 | Sergio Rudin | And council member, in response to your question, that contract section four actually specifies that we paid a one-time payment of $40,000 to cover the investigative stage of the scope of work, which includes doing all the preliminary analysis as to what they need to do to form the bid. Thank you. So... It's not a monthly. contract. Yeah, it is. |
| 01:02:39.05 | Marco Le Mandri | Thank you. |
| 01:02:39.07 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 01:02:40.32 | Steven Woodside | Hold on, what? Let's let Marco, yes. |
| 01:02:42.55 | Marco Le Mandri | Yes, thank you all for the questions. And I'm sorry I couldn't get on earlier. I could hear you, but I couldn't get on. So it's a monthly fee of $8,000 a month and the contract is divided into two phases. One is the investigation, which I think addresses some of the council members concerns. Because if after five months we do our survey, we work with our steering committee, city will obviously be part of that. If it doesn't have legs and the report will be back, we should stop because there's not enough what's called weighted support. as defined by the state constitution. So that's why it was divided up into five months would be an investigation at $8,000 a month At that point, then we would give a report to the city council based upon the work of the steering committee. And then we'd say, okay, our recommendation is we not move forward, but we believe there is enough support to move forward. So that would be a report to the city manager, as well as the city council. Five months later, which I think puts us at about November. And that would still give us enough time should there be enough support for it to get it done by July 2024. in the event that people wanted to proceed. |
| 01:03:56.97 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks Marco. Let me ask one follow-up question on that. And that's because we would wanna have it on the fall 2024 ballot, because it has to go to a vote of just the members in the district, right? |
| 01:04:09.35 | Marco Le Mandri | Yeah. Marin County tax assessor needs to know usually by about the third Monday. That's typical of most tax assessors throughout the state of California. So a public hearing, which is about a 60 day process would have to be completed by the end of July in order to inform the county tax assessor that it should be on the. fall 2024 tax bills. |
| 01:04:34.95 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Okay, great. Thanks very much. That's very helpful. Sure. |
| 01:04:37.77 | Marco Le Mandri | Sure. |
| 01:04:38.55 | Jill Hoffman | Yep. |
| 01:04:40.47 | Joan Cox | I'm sorry. |
| 01:04:40.52 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:04:40.54 | Joan Cox | Bye. May I just ask that in November when this, you know, when the decision to move forward or not comes that we've AND for sure by then have the answer to the questions posed by Council Member Hoffman, because that will be an integral part of that decision. |
| 01:04:59.76 | Marco Le Mandri | Right. And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut anybody off. |
| 01:05:00.20 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:05:00.37 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:05:00.45 | Unknown | I'm... |
| 01:05:00.79 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:05:00.80 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:05:04.91 | Marco Le Mandri | But I just wanted to say that the balance, you know, whether the city is the majority owner or not will be determined as part of our survey. The city owns, as I know, the old city hall, but they also a lot of parking lots and whether those parking lots are included or not included will be discussed extensively with the city manager as well as with the steering committee. So it's it's not. assumed that the city is going to be the major property owner because it really depends on where the boundaries are set. |
| 01:05:37.68 | Steven Woodside | Okay, Vice Mayor, we'd love to hear from you. |
| 01:05:40.28 | Melissa Blaustein | Well, it may not be called a community benefit district, but if it's designed well. then this PBID will benefit the community. So I'm excited. Thank you. |
| 01:05:49.61 | Scott Thornburg | you |
| 01:05:49.64 | Unknown | Correct. |
| 01:05:49.96 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 01:05:53.78 | Melissa Blaustein | Preaching to the choir there for sure. So I'm excited and I agree with Council Member Joan Cox's comments on the governance aspects that I thought are well suited. The idea here is that the businesses are close to the ground and they understand very well the dynamic of what makes it better environment for, um, generating tax revenue to the cities and, Tax revenue to the city is taxes that, residents don't have to pay for services they benefit from. picture definition of a potential win-win. |
| 01:06:31.31 | Marco Le Mandri | Thank you, Councilman. |
| 01:06:32.77 | Steven Woodside | Great. Well, I was really thrilled to receive a call from Cass Green who said, please tax us. We would like to do this, which is which is quite rare to hear from your residents and business people in the community. And I'm really happy to see so many engaged merchants and business owners and members of the EDAC in the community coming together to foresee this project and to see what we're capable of and what types of benefits we can have as a community. So I really appreciate all of the time and effort our consultant of our community, of our community development department and our economic development advisory committee for bringing this forth. So we have a motion on the table and a second. So all in favor, say aye. |
| 01:07:11.20 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:07:11.60 | Steven Woodside | Aye. Great. Motion passes unanimously. It is only 821 and we are on our third or fourth business items. |
| 01:07:12.30 | Marco Le Mandri | Yeah. |
| 01:07:18.30 | Marco Le Mandri | Thank you very much. I'm going to jump off, but I appreciate it. Look forward to working with you all. Thanks. |
| 01:07:18.47 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you very much. |
| 01:07:22.22 | Steven Woodside | Thanks, Marco. We look forward to it as well. |
| 01:07:23.23 | Marco Le Mandri | Thank you. Thank you. Bye. |
| 01:07:26.91 | Steven Woodside | We're going to take a two minute break. |
| 01:07:28.97 | Sandra Bushmaker | do that. |
| 01:07:31.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:34.10 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 01:07:34.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:07:34.13 | Sandra Bushmaker | . |
| 01:07:34.37 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:07:38.76 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 01:07:38.77 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:07:39.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Recording in progress. Thank you. |
| 01:07:40.97 | Steven Woodside | All right, everybody, we could quiet down in the council chambers. bring it right back to our business items this evening. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and move forward with business item 5C, which is discussion and direction. for nonprofit use and rates for city parks and facilities. And I think that the city manager Thank you. is presenting on this. |
| 01:08:04.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:04.88 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Really? He's on Zoom in his office? Okay. |
| 01:08:13.50 | Steven Woodside | What? Do you want me to do it? I'll do it. I mean, I can move them. Yeah, I'll do it. It's fine. Let's come back in. It's good. It's, It's a very straightforward item. |
| 01:08:26.66 | Sandra Bushmaker | And... |
| 01:08:26.97 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Bye. Okay, I was about to give the staff report for you, city manager. |
| 01:08:40.50 | Steven Woodside | Should he not? All right. We're just doing we've moved right ahead to item 5C, which is nonprofit use of our parks and facilities. |
| 01:08:48.35 | Chris Zapata | Do you want me to provide an introductory report on that, comment on that, Mayor? I can. So what we're bringing forward to you tonight is an item that was requested by Mayor Blaustein, and it involves seeking council direction on how we treat nonprofits and using our parks, and especially those that are our neighbors in Marin City. So as you know, the city of Sausalito has a major investments in it, pork system. you know. North of $10 million. So your parks are quite a treasure and a lot of people want to use them. But the real question is, what do we do to connect Marin City. closer to Sausalito and one of the ways that Mayor Blaustein has approached this is by working with Marin City nonprofits to encourage their use of our city facilities and programs and events in our city and create more involvement between the two communities in a way that connects us by looking at our parks fees and potentially some type of waiver. One of the things that I think is important is I wrote the staff report. I apologize for my lack of knowledge. I wrote in the potentially some type of waiver. One of the things that I think is important is I wrote the staff report. I apologize for my lack of knowledge. I wrote in there, there was a paucity of, non-profits and social, that is not accurate. There's quite a bunch of them. So let me stand corrected on that so I do. But again, the idea of working with our partners in Marin City, to increase involvement in our community by Marin City residents and Marin City nonprofits was the goal. And I think if there is direction provided to council by council to city staff to continue on this path, there are a couple of questions that need to be addressed. Number one is, you know, this is apply to all nonprofits. If it does, okay, that's an equation that we have to factor in. Is there an economic impact on this kind of a decision? And the answer is yes, if we for went or did not have nonprofits pay in Saucyutel last year, that would have been about $98,000 of revenue that we would have to forego if we do this on a freebie basis or no. no charge basis. So the fiscal impact is something that, you know, we would have to bring forward. Who could and couldn't use it, what the process for selecting people might or might not be. So if we receive direction tonight, you know, we can do more work. to provide you more data and actually more specific information on, you know, The ratio of non-Sauciero residents that use our parks, the waiting list for different programs, and you know what this might do in terms of impacting our budget on a go forward basis if you were to look at fee waiver for nonprofits in the Marin City and Sausalito zip code. So with that, that's the report I wanna provide. I'm happy to answer any questions. |
| 01:11:44.45 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you, Councilmember Kelman. Thank you, City Manager. Just a quick question about the staff report. So as an example, MLK Field 1 or 2, there are two cost structures for resident and non-resident. How do we go about charging teams that use the site for practice and for games? |
| 01:12:05.01 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:12:05.04 | Unknown | in front of our city system. |
| 01:12:06.73 | Ian Sobieski | No, if they're outside of city. |
| 01:12:06.85 | Chris Zapata | No. |
| 01:12:12.92 | Ian Sobieski | Meaning does one team pay $26? Thank you. Okay. |
| 01:12:21.18 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. And then also the MLK tennis courts, as an example, I won't ask it as a question other than if you could find out. I know that there are people who make money coaching on our courts. I'd like to understand how the city shares in that. and how that number is tracked and Basically, way more information on the... finances of some of our park areas. It doesn't just curiosity based on the issues in the staff report. |
| 01:12:48.46 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Understood. |
| 01:12:54.40 | Ian Sobieski | Oh, go ahead, Councilman. |
| 01:12:55.95 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:12:57.35 | Jill Hoffman | So, Thank you. a couple of quotes sort of along the same lines that Councilmember Kelman was asking, One of the, I did discuss this with the city manager. I did inform him that we have 132 registered nonprofits in Sausalito. So we have plenty of We have lots and lots of nonprofits in Sausalito, some more active than others, certainly, So that's one of the issues that I wanted to, and that sort of led me to think about, well, okay, access to our facilities by our own, you know, by people in Sausalito, which then led me to think about, and then I saw the pickleball, right? the pickleball emails that we got. And so- That leads me to think of you know, how are we managing our new $10 million renovated facilities. We are still looking for sources of revenue. We even though we just talked about our budget, but I believe we are going to still have budget stress for the next, you know, going into the future. And so what are the revenue streams from our assets from our parks assets and from, you know, renting our parks assets, I, I have a feeling that our. from what I've seen and what I've looked at, our non-resident fees are super low. And a lot of our assets and parks are used by people outside of Sausalito because they're You know, the thought is we want to have access people have access to parks, right, just in general. But on the other hand, There's a lot of people in Sausalito that can't access our assets because our fees are too low. And so, and, and, you know, it's a revenue stream, right? We're looking at revenues. We want to raise revenues. Let's, let's think about that. I always, you know, there are, we've had some big festivals in Sausalito in the past. And I was always, I was surprised when I got on the city council to find out how low, the fees were from the city to use our public assets and public parks for different events that were going on in Sausalito. I always thought they were big money makers for the city. In other ways they are because people come here and they go to restaurants and they go shop and they stay in our hotels. direct benefits to the city or sometimes minimal. But bringing us back to the current question before us in the staff report, you know, I think the direction, the direction is to certainly explore this, look at some parameters about what, you know, there are different flavors of nonprofits. You know, some nonprofits are 100% nonprofits, and other nonprofits, you know, they have directors that have to get paid and it's a little bit of a different calculus in my mind about those types of efforts. So I have no, I think it's a good thing to think about and look at, but, I guess the third thing was You know, if we're looking at cohesion amongst Southern Marin, it would be interesting. Also to think about other assets in Marin and reciprocity with those other entities, whether it's, whether it's Mayor Beach or it's some federal property that's outside of Sausalito, maybe it's over in whatever, Fort Baker. You know that we have some reciprocity agreements that if, you know, we can use your facilities or our residents can use your facilities if, you know, we have some sort of agreement. So, I mean, I know that's a lot broader than what this report was intended for, but I think it's a great effort, and I don't, I don't wanna create more work for staff, right? But I think what we charge and fees and revenue streams is a good thing to think about for our parks, our beautiful, fabulous parks. So thank you. |
| 01:16:40.19 | Unknown | Thanks, ma'am. |
| 01:16:40.65 | Melissa Blaustein | Is it just comments or questions? |
| 01:16:42.65 | Unknown | I mean, I think apparently it's a little bit of both. |
| 01:16:47.55 | Melissa Blaustein | Bye. |
| 01:16:47.61 | Unknown | Well, then I won't be circling that. Go ahead. Go ahead, Vice Mayor. |
| 01:16:47.68 | Melissa Blaustein | And... |
| 01:16:51.31 | Melissa Blaustein | Well, I guess my question is, have we ever done, like we did with parking, did we ever do a business assessment of the pricing for our parks and recreation facilities. Yeah. I'm not aware of one, but I won't say that now. Go ahead. Okay, well, then my comment would be, I think this is a great subject to bring up, I would say. that we should do the same kind of clear-eyed business assessment that we do for our parking lots with regard to what we charge for our fields and it just may not have been updated. I think the differential between resident and non-resident is It's almost the definition of trivial. we charge the same amount, $26 versus $32. So... That seems like it shouldn't be the case. Residents should have more of a preference. uh, That's separate from the matter at hand, which motivated the mayor to push this important issue of trying to do what we can to bring the community of Marin City closer to South Salido. So I'm violently in support of that theme. and would ask the staff to figure out how to make that easy to implement and to achieve the goal. the metric of saying 94965. May not be the best metric. Maybe we should actually say Marin City. Because 94965 also includes, for example, all the nonprofits out at Fort Cronkite. of which I know many of them are quite well-heeled. and can certainly afford to pay. uh, to pay. So the goal, let's be clear, is to is to do what we can for our neighboring community. and to bring us closer and to have residents of Brin City come and participate more in the physical environment of our Sausalito City. And so this is a nice way of rolling out the welcome mat, but let's be precise on how we achieve that. |
| 01:18:41.62 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:18:41.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:41.81 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Thank you. And I want to endorse what everyone has said. So obviously, if we were to make this a blanket direction as to all 94965, that would have perhaps higher and unintended financial consequences than what was actually asked in the staff report, which was to provide direction to staff regarding amending rates for use by Marin City nonprofits. And so I really wanna endorse what the vice mayor said, which is to focus initially on extending this to our disadvantaged neighbors to participate in our public facilities, so I'd like to FOCUS ON THAT DIRECTION IN TERMS OF MAKING IT AVAILABLE TO MARINE CITY, NONPROFITS AND THEN WE CAN EXPLORE best to address the rest of the nonprofits in the 94965 area. But thank you to the mayor and to staff for bringing this forward. I think this is a really great AND I LOOK FORWARD TO advancing it. |
| 01:19:52.18 | Steven Woodside | Do we have public comment on this item? Can I open it up for public comment? |
| 01:19:57.12 | Walfred Solorzano | See none. |
| 01:19:59.40 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment then. And oh, I see a hand raised. I see Sybil and Alan's hand is raised in Zoom. |
| 01:20:10.69 | Sybil (Public Commenter) | Oh. Thank you, Mary. It's so hard sometimes to get that icon when you call for public comment. And let's react real fast. So I just wanted to speak in favor of this excellent initiative. I think it's so important to include the community-ser serving nonprofits in Marin City and the benefits that are also provided available to other nonprofits. And certainly, to other community organizations in South Felido. And I think the way you could look at maybe looking at a difference if you decide to go on and review all nonprofits in 95965 is to look at the difference between community serving nonprofits and organizations that are a nonprofit but are doing business that's totally different than serving the community. There's a lot of, you know, you can have a political nonprofit. You could have a lot of, you know, you can have a political nonprofit. You could have a lot of different nonprofits that have nothing to do with But you know, making the community better for its residents. So I'm totally in favor of anything we can do to share all the beauty of Sausalito and Marin City across our whole neighborhood between the two cities and all of us that are living here. Thank you. |
| 01:21:53.44 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much, Sybil. Do we have any further public comment at this time? |
| 01:21:58.25 | Walfred Solorzano | No further comment. |
| 01:21:59.47 | Steven Woodside | Okay, seeing none, I'll go ahead and close public comment. And I will just add a few comments given what I've heard from the dais. So it seems like the direction that we're leaning towards is giving a full assessment of our park use and fees and understanding what the what the market value of our rentals for our parks is would be. a good step and also assessing the difference between community serving nonprofits and the 130 nonprofits in the 132 pardon me. that are registered in Sausalito. I would ask of my fellow council members on the daisle while we're investigating the best path forward, we might present a fee waiver program for Marin City nonprofits who apply for park usage before this comes back to us at the next at the next hearing with more information about the park fees. Is that something that you would be comfortable with? I we we receive very few requests, but in the event that we did that we might be willing to honor those while we explore further park usage before making an official policy. |
| 01:22:55.56 | Melissa Blaustein | I would support having the city manager at his discretion align that kind of waiver with the goals outlined in the general plan. |
| 01:23:03.81 | Steven Woodside | also. Okay, is everyone okay with that and that direction is clear to staff so we'll get a further fee assessment, hopefully we'll be able to make a more clear and official policy for Marin City nonprofit park usage and nonprofit park usage going forward but in the interim we'll have a waiver program at the city manager's discretion for Marin City nonprofits that apply for park usage. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you very much. And thank you to staff for bringing that forward. And now we'll move on to the last... Business item on tonight's agenda which is the review on city boards, committees, and commissions, which we have heard twice. So I'm going to go ahead and open it up. by starting with making a motion and then we can have discussion unless we want to do want to hear the staff report from city manager. Oh, go ahead, city manager. |
| 01:23:54.33 | Chris Zapata | So thank you again for your attention to this matter. As you all know, in October of 2021, one of the things that was brought forward was, not only do we have a need to focus on infrastructure and finances, we also need to focus on the bandwidth of our staff as it relates to the staffing of the many boards, commissions and committees that were in place at the time as part of what the city's model of community engagement was. And again, always begin by thanking those who do do that service. This is not intended to Thank you. have them feel like they're not appreciated. They absolutely are. The question is, you know, how many committees, commissions and committees and ad hoc working groups can you have with a certain finite number of city staff? And at the time, not only were we in the process of involvement in a pandemic, we had, you know, obviously serious financial concerns that were in front of us. We had a number of needs, including a state mandate of a housing element. We had a very large challenge with our homelessness population. And so to try to figure out how we could effectively do the work that was basic, but was actually being done not as well as could be done because of the stretching was the impetus for this request. At that request, the city council gave direction for the city manager to reach out to the board's commissions and committees, which I did, and asking them for their ideas on how to be a resource to the community and to staff and to the council, but in a way that would slow down a demand on staff time. And so through that process, a number of things happened. One was a number of groups modified their schedules instead of on a monthly basis. It became a quarterly meeting as opposed to every month. A couple of committees that were internal to the city staff, such as the finance committee and OMIC committee were put in on, on hold for a minute so that we could catch up with, you know, work that needed to be happening. So that was helpful. The city council authorized staffing. Hiring a sustainability and resilience manager was important. Hiring another person in the public works department was important. And actually cleaning up some of the work that was necessary at that time has mean that there's been really, really good progress made. So the question of, you know, how do you continue to improve the situation is in front of you tonight? There have been certain ideas about what could be done, what's required. And we're in fact, the city council, um, wants to end up pushing us in terms of this continuous improvement. So, you know, I'm very pleased to say that, you know, the demands that we're here in January of 2021 have been met by more resources and by some reconfiguration of some of these bodies in ways that have given staff some breathing room to do other work that's required as far as providing city services so tonight is a continuation of that discussion we'll take direction from you there have been many ideas have been forwarded over the last couple of of almost two years. And there's been some metrics developed about how often the boards, committees, commissions meet, what their requirement of staff and what staff is involved. And you can see that some committees, you know, require more staff time and more staff people. Some commissions are required by state law. Some have been put together by Act of the City Council. And so now I think in an interest of getting to a better place, this is on the agenda again tonight. So thank you for the support and the direction prior, given in prior conversations that has made it better. Thank you for the resources that you provided and just the fact that we have solve some major problems in Sausalito by getting our housing element submitted, by working through our homelessness challenge and by dealing with our budget and fiscal constraints. I think in a very aggressive way, we've been able to really, I think, move the needle. And again, I wanna again, thank the people that volunteer for boards, commissions and committees. This is not to say that, you know, the city could do without him. The city absolutely needs to help, but we also need to do it in a way that doesn't burden those committees or those efforts and make sure that those efforts are aligned with what the council wants done. and that continue this idea of less staff time so staff can do ongoing work that I think there's a backlog of. And maybe in the future with more staff and more staff broader capabilities, then we could go back to helping these committees do the work that they're charged with doing. But right now, I think that we're in a better place, but it's not perfect. So we're looking for direction from you all night. |
| 01:29:05.81 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, city manager. Are there questions from the dais? Council Member Cox. |
| 01:29:10.25 | Joan Cox | I just had a couple of questions in terms, this chart, on the last page of our report is very helpful in terms of the name of the body and the number of staff in the meeting. And some of them have three staff members. Some of them have two staff members. Has it been examined whether it's necessary Obviously the agenda setting, it's helpful to have staff there because that kind of sets the, the, the future work, but for racial justice or for Yeah. Planning Commission for Finance Committee, which really doesn't meet, you know, you have three staff members there. So that's a lot of time. Has it been examined? whether all of the staff that attend these boards and commission meetings are necessary to the boards and commission meetings. |
| 01:29:58.63 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, that's how we came up with that chart Council Member Cox. And obviously some of it is not, for example, the finance committee involved three people, but it's now slowed down and doesn't meet as often. It actually hasn't met in over a year. Right. You had a counselor served as a planning, as a finance committee. the planning commission and always involves the director of the department, the city attorney or an attorney, as well as staff that presents. And so that's a legitimate number. Historic preservation, I believe, is the same. The sustainability commission is now one. The library board of trustees is one. you PBAC commission is two, sometimes more, but that's a good round number. And why is that two? Sometimes we have city staff, public works, the director, Anna Stafford. It's a project manager. Or we have somebody from the police department that is involved. Sometimes somebody, city manager might show up. |
| 01:30:52.44 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:30:58.60 | Chris Zapata | but typically it's two people. So I believe those numbers are pretty solid. The racial justice task force involves the city manager, the communications director, and at times other staff members. So I think that's, but it meets not in a regular timeframe. It meets as needed. So I would suggest the Economic Development Advisory Committee involves now the Community and Economic Development Director, involves city staff to set the meeting up, run the meeting. And, you know, at times it includes the city manager. So that too is a little little light maybe in some situations but it's close enough for us to kind of give you a sense of staff time involved and give you an estimate on what it all takes to serve these particular committees and commissions. |
| 01:31:46.63 | Joan Cox | Thank you city manager and thank you counsel for indulging my question. |
| 01:31:50.21 | Ian Sobieski | Mayor, I just want to make one clarification from that list is that, and I conveyed this to Director Phipps today, the Sea Liberalites Task Force was a limited duration task force with a specific end date and objective, and we achieved those objectives, and we have phased it out, so it's not currently ongoing. |
| 01:32:09.02 | Steven Woodside | Thanks. I think there's a lot on here as well that we already discussed and made determination on at our prior meeting with regards to the internal city council run working groups we've already discussed. So the discussion this evening is for volunteer, driven boards and commissions and the determination with regards to those. Just to clarify, we had a lengthy discussion about all of our working groups previously. Okay. Are there other questions from the dais or should I open it up for public comment? Okay, seeing none, I'll go ahead and open it up for public comment. |
| 01:32:42.74 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi, Sandra. |
| 01:32:43.99 | Walfred Solorzano | Nobody in house, but yeah, Zoom Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 01:32:45.39 | Sandra Bushmaker | So, |
| 01:32:46.96 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 01:32:46.98 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi again. Uh, I have a couple of points that I want to make. One is, I want to speak in favor of task forces. I, you may know that I served on the mudslide task force, which had gone through several several names, but we were formed in June after the mudslide in February. and we were given a task and we had a report on Council's dais in September with recommendations. It was a very efficient way. We did not have staff Maybe on one or two occasions we called staff in to give a presentation for some data that we needed to come to our conclusion. But it was a very efficient way The key element is to have a clear task described for that particular task force. But I think it's a good way to engage the community, to get them involved of a short duration so that they know that they're in and out and they've made a contribution to the city. And then just a little pet peeve of mine. There seems to be a lot of miscommunication about the Disaster Preparedness Committee and the Disaster Council. I see this in oral. I see it in written comments. I see it in staff reports. I see it in several areas where there seems to be a miscommunication. And we know that the Disaster Council is a policy state policy setting, body. that it was enacted by stat by our city ordinance. The disaster preparedness is not committee, is not a mandatory committee. So I just wanted to make that distinction because they seem to get mixed up in our language. And I think we need to be really clear that The Disaster Council that. is a Yeah. city ordinance enacted body. So I just wanted to clear that up because I, like I said, I hear a lot of |
| 01:34:50.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:34:51.11 | Sandra Bushmaker | you |
| 01:34:51.14 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:34:51.21 | Sandra Bushmaker | You can finish your sentence. |
| 01:34:51.97 | Steven Woodside | It's... Oh, you mean, okay. Thank you, Sandra. Yes, we appreciate that. I hear a lot of miscommunication, period. Thank you. |
| 01:34:57.89 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:34:57.93 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm going to go. |
| 01:34:57.94 | Sandra Bushmaker | I know. |
| 01:34:57.98 | Walfred Solorzano | I hear a lot |
| 01:34:58.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:35:02.03 | Steven Woodside | All right. |
| 01:35:02.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:35:02.53 | Scott Thornburg | Scott Bloomberg. |
| 01:35:03.70 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Scott. Welcome. |
| 01:35:06.18 | Scott Thornburg | Scott Thornburg, CEO of Economic Development Advisory Committee, or EDAC. This topic did not come up for consideration in our quarterly meeting yesterday. So I can't speak on behalf of the entire group. We didn't make a, we didn't vote on this yesterday or anything, but we have discussed this at length previously. And as a result of the city manager's recommendations, we did scale back our meetings where we only meet quarterly now and require minimal staff time as a result. So we are. We are meeting quarterly, require about four hours of staff time each quarter. And that has been working pretty well. I do think this group could be very successful as a task force. My personal opinion, I do believe they could be very successful. It's a passionate group of volunteers who are most interested in advancing economic development in the city. I think the only task oriented project that we're currently working on right now is the bid. Much of the rest of the work that EDAC supports is staff augmentation. That includes business development, marketing oversight, and events. These would normally be done by CDD, communications, or parks and rec. So I think the question for the council to really consider is, Is economic development a task that is a one-time thing with a limited timeline, or is this an ongoing commitment that the city needs to make? So I think the group could be really successful either way, but there are differences in a city commission versus a task force, and some of it comes down to support. |
| 01:36:31.38 | Unknown | So. |
| 01:36:40.48 | Scott Thornburg | from the city and staff. Some of it comes down to the authority that comes with the city commission. Ultimately, I think this group is really, you know, they've been really successful for the past two years, and I think they could continue that success either way. And ultimately, it comes down to where our priorities lie for staff time and resources. So thank you. |
| 01:37:00.83 | Steven Woodside | Thanks, God. I think we have Vicki Nichols as our hand raised. |
| 01:37:08.10 | Vicki Nichols | Yes, hi, good evening. I'm not sure this is the appropriate place because I'm not sure what age friendly is considered. But I wanna just put in a huge plug for them. and say that I happen to know, you know, obviously the people that have been behind that, particularly Sybil, who is a self-starter, who is really relying on the city minimally and puts her professional experience to getting grants and things for us. This group does a tremendous amount of work to bring value to the community. We're fortunately that they often liaise and I'm not sure I might get this wrong, but They do have a strong working relationship with our unique village in Sausalito. which according to some of the other county Ours is independent and is very stellar. these services to the community, senior community, and all ages really, but particularly the aging community, are invaluable and have put Sausalito on the map in terms of some of the things they push for legislation for reducing costs for seniors adapting their homes. It's now been adopted throughout the state. So any support we can give them, they have certainly earned it. Thank you. |
| 01:38:27.07 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vicki. Do we have any further public comment? Okay, I will close public comment and bring it back to the dais. And I'm just going to offer a motion and then see if there's a second and continue with discussion in the interest of efficiency. So I am going to move that all boards and commissions with the exception of planning, library board, and historic preservation, which are state mandated committees move to quarterly meetings, and that we make an effort wherever possible to limit staff to one per meeting for each of these quarterly meetings. So that's the motion that I would make. |
| 01:39:04.08 | Melissa Blaustein | I'll second that. I do have a friendly amendment, if I could, as a library liaison that was actually on my list here. |
| 01:39:06.51 | Steven Woodside | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:39:10.04 | Melissa Blaustein | Uh, It's required our library. Board of Trustees is founded as part of the formation of the library in 1906. And a bunch of codified law when the library had a very different relationship with the community requires that the library board of trustees as a result of municipal action in concert with state law, meet monthly. And it's basically overkill. There isn't enough content to meet monthly as it's currently constituted. So there is perhaps a legal path to fix that. So I'd love to make the friendly amendment ask the city attorney to look into whether it's possible to make the appropriate legal changes to allow the library also to meet on that quarterly basis. |
| 01:39:50.49 | Steven Woodside | Right. Any other motions or? |
| 01:39:53.78 | Ian Sobieski | Mayor, there's a clarification. It may need to be an amendment. The point that Sandra Bushmaker made around the Community Safety Disaster Repairness Committee versus the Disaster Repairness Committee. We did talk about that before. One of them is mandated. Do you want to include that in your list? |
| 01:40:03.80 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 01:40:07.40 | Steven Woodside | That one, that's the council. That's the city manager and the mayor that meet in the event of emergency. So that's an exception. |
| 01:40:12.58 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. |
| 01:40:12.69 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:40:14.18 | Jill Hoffman | So I do have comments and then I have an alternate motion. Absolutely. So, and I, full disclosure, I did talk to the city attorney today and I did talk to our city manager about, you know, continuing on the path that I thought that we started on in April of 2022, when we gave direction. to move most of our non-statutory or our non-statutory boards and commissions to independent bodies. And so... Um, That was a direction of the council at that time. And so what we've been looking at I think as we move through the evolution in the last year and a half-ish, is that, is how to do that, right? And not lose the skill and the expertise and the passion of the people that want to volunteer and are volunteering. And so, And the idea of the task force, right, the very successful model that we've had as task forces. And that's why I talked to our city attorney this afternoon about could we move them? Could we move? And really, principally, I'm talking about three committees, because as I look at this, I look at the list that we had today, right, we go down from the top. We have a finance committee. We pretty much suspended finance committee. Planning commission, they're in a different category. They need to meet and obviously get planning projects done. same for historic preservation. So I'm not talking about them, I'm not talking about Library Board of Trustees, nor am I talking about the bike and ped committee, because we need to have the bike and ped committee as a commission so that they can apply for grants from TAM. there is a good basis to keep them as a Brown Act committee and staff supports them. The disaster preparedness, I think we've pretty much done away with the disaster preparedness committee, but the council is required by ordinance and it's a different, it's a different entity and we've talked about that in the past. The Racial Justice Task Force, it's a task force, that's fine, you know, I'm not talking about that. OMIT, we've sort of suspended OMIT Sea Level Rise Task Force we just heard about that they're principally winding down and done. So really the only, the only, The only committees I'm talking about are really sustainability EDAC and Parks and Rec. And so... you know, what we've learned and what we talked about in the past year and a half is how can we, and that I've talked about with the city manager, how can we reduce the burden of this overhead work on our staff, And how do we empower these bodies to be more efficient, How do we empower them to be more faster moving, covering more ground? and more focused in what they do and independent. And so that's why the task force model, I like that. Well, I think it's shown to be very successful. And in talking with the city manager today, and we've talked about this at council too, aligning efforts of these commissions in general, right? With city council policy directives, with staff time and directives and priorities that we've set, and budget. So sometimes these bodies act independently even though they have staff liaisons, even though they have city council liaisons, And they sometimes they compete with what's going on with the staff or what directives we've given to staff, what budget we've given to the staff. And so... the idea is that this would be one step more into bringing the efforts of these bodies in alignment with our current staff efforts as directed by the city council, as directed by our department heads and by our city manager. And so the idea, and that's why I talked to our city attorney, Sergio, today about, you know, within the boundaries of the Brown Act, how can we do that? And he said, that a city council created task force is really still a city council created body for work, right? And so even if we said, okay, we're moving all these to a task force, you would still have, it would still have to be a Brown Act body. And so... The idea, then the thing that I talked to the city manager about was, well, what if we, but Sergio told me, our city attorney, we can create a task force to support a certain staff member or certain effort. within the staff and the directors of the city council. So the genius idea. is that we transition these three committees I just talked about, right? Because these are very active committees, very productive, very active committees. And we transition them from a task force. And we say this task force is now aligned with, and it's pretty easy, right? It's a pretty... pretty simple, logical transition. It's, EDAC is a task force that supports the economic and economic and business development. So they're under Brandon Fitzs. Right there under Brandon. They meet with either with Brandon or without Brandon, but they continue principally on their current path, right? And something we talked about the last city council meeting was that in January, we're gonna talk about whatever bodies are out there. Every January, what task force is out there and what are they supposed to be doing, right? So from now until January, whatever task force we transition, continue on your current path, right? Continue on your current path, but now you're gonna be a non-Brown Act body, independent, right? Fairly independent. but you're gonna be supporting, which they already do anyway, the business development. right, aspects of the city under our, our, you know, our newly hired Brandon Phipps, which is a great, To me, it's a much better, cleaner alignment. And as we heard from the new chair of EDAC, a task force makes a lot of sense for the kind of body that they are and actually how fast those guys move. how fast they move and how fast they're able to adjust their efforts without having another awaiting quarterly for their quarterly meeting. or whatever they're doing. So EDAC would be under community development and business development. Obviously we hired a sustainability manager, Katie Tho Garcia, right? We hired her this year. It makes sense that sustainability would be moved as a task force under our sustainability manager. I mean, our sustainability manager doesn't work for the sustainability commission. the sustainability commission and those people, those efforts should be directed by our sustainability manager, and work in concert with her and consultation with her. on their efforts, not that they're not gonna have their own ideas and bring them to the table as they should, but it's just, that's where they fall in our city structure. Parks and Rec, obviously, I mean, the Parks and Rec Commission, obviously, they would fall under Brian, right? Brian Patale, our community services manager, which is really our Parks and Rec director. So that's my alternate motion, is that we transition these three City commissions to task forces. continuing the same work that they're doing continuing under the specific city departments, non-Brown Act, we can think about we can still think about, do we wanna have a public quarterly meeting with the, even as a task force, right? We can still say, well, quarterly turn on a Zoom somewhere and post it up on a website, post it up on our website. hey, we're going to have our quarterly you know, task force meeting, We're inviting the public to weigh in. This is what we're working on. I mean, we can give that direction too. So I think tonight was... My understanding was that tonight, the city manager was looking for direction in that. Sergio was looking for direction from the city council on what we wanted to do and, And then we would, you know, he would come back to us with, okay, This is how this committee was formed. this is how you transition it and this is how you move forward. I would also and this is not part of my motion, but, and I'll give you a succinct motion. I wanted to get my comments first though. that in January, we also look at whatever, whatever, what our boards are out there that aren't performing or that finished that we take actual action and dissolve them. So, um, and then we do that every, every January, Sergio's cameras on, I see. Did I not get that correct, Sergio? |
| 01:48:38.44 | Sergio Rudin | I'm sorry. |
| 01:48:38.49 | Ian Charles | Bye. |
| 01:48:38.54 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 01:48:38.68 | Ian Charles | you |
| 01:48:38.81 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. You hit the points, I think, more or less. I just wanted to clarify that in order to avoid being a brown act body, |
| 01:48:39.67 | Jill Hoffman | You hit. Thank you. |
| 01:48:40.46 | Ian Charles | you |
| 01:48:40.48 | Jill Hoffman | You hit that. |
| 01:48:47.79 | Sergio Rudin | These entities that would be formed would have to be formed by staff, not counsel. So the direction staff would give would be to dissolve whatever Bodies you would like to dissolve and you could direct staff to solicit public input and then staff could come up with whatever committees they would like to, to advise themselves on how best to address the topics you would like them to solicit public input on. |
| 01:49:09.20 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, okay, my apology. My notes were wrong. I thought the city council could form a task force to support an individual Okay, that's fine. Okay, so then that's very helpful, actually. So then my motion would be that those three committees that we just talked about or that I just mentioned that EDAC parks and rec. Or I don't. Sergio, do we need to make a motion or would that be just direction? |
| 01:49:38.09 | Sergio Rudin | out. I will leave it to the council, but I think the city manager and the city attorney need direction on what's |
| 01:49:40.88 | Jill Hoffman | but. |
| 01:49:41.15 | Carolyn Revell | Yeah. |
| 01:49:44.94 | Sergio Rudin | what the Council would like us to do. in order to achieve whatever your vision is. And we really just need to figure out what your vision is and then we will work to achieve it. |
| 01:49:54.24 | Joan Cox | But there is a motion pending. So if you have something different that you'd like to propose, Right. Otherwise, we can vote. Yeah. |
| 01:50:01.01 | Jill Hoffman | Otherwise, we can vote. I had one more part of my comment. And this, I don't know, city manager, do you want to weigh in? I mean, we talked about this today and this was the direction that you were. You are supporting. Do you want to weigh in on that or no? |
| 01:50:21.07 | Chris Zapata | What I'm supportive of is the idea that we're more efficient with staff time And I think over the course of the last 18 months, we've become more efficient. If there's a construction of support that we would provide to various that the council sees as aligned with their priorities to have the community the council's blessing that it not be a council appointed body, but a staff appointed a situation where you tell us, you know, we want you to work on, infrastructure maintenance. And so I appoint Kevin McGowan to, appointed committee that's outside of the council outside of the brown act but it achieves what you want to achieve that's one way to get it done. But frankly i'm very pleased with the effort that the Council has done over the last you know year to get to a better place, whether it's less meetings suspending various bodies. Making sure that we have adequate staff to staff the bodies that we do have right now, so anything we do tonight is icing on the cake in my mind, mayor and Council. |
| 01:51:26.29 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. Okay, so my alternate motion then is that we transition EDAC Parks and Rec And sustainability to to a task force to be to be |
| 01:51:46.24 | Sergio Rudin | created and appointed by staff. |
| 01:51:47.93 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, yeah, yeah. Under the particular departments to which they should be. aligned. That's my motion. |
| 01:51:59.44 | Ian Sobieski | May I offer a friendly amendment? I second it with a friendly amendment, which is that I would put feedback in that grouping as well. We have a grant writer. We got into a little bit of a rabbit hole when we saw some direction around applying for a grant. The council hadn't heard, and I think putting feedback into that grouping makes sense because we have a grant performance plan that is driven by the Council that so I, so the reasoning for keeping feedback isn't within my reasoning, but I would offer up something else, which is that I think with a new sustainability and resilience manager, resilience and stability manager, which I think the sustainability commission could be very, very helpful. for her and staying up to speed. If in your motion we could delay the dissolution of that for let's say nine months in order for her to adequately come up to speed. Because I don't want to put on Katie create that committee, she doesn't know the players yet, doesn't know the work that we're prioritizing, I think would be really, really helpful for her to help her achieve. And I'm sure we're here, I would ask her if that's true, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it might be true. Let me just clarify. |
| 01:53:12.03 | Jill Hoffman | for I'm happy to accept, but... Uh, Sergio, we talked about the pedestrian and bike committee TAM requires it to be, I think, a Brown Act Commission in order to type body, right? In order for it to assess and to apply for grants. Have I got that wrong? |
| 01:53:35.44 | Sergio Rudin | So, I know we are required to have one for some grant terms. I would need to look at the exact grants to figure out exactly what the requirements are. So I couldn't tell you for sure. |
| 01:53:46.86 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry, apologies. then I accept with that caveat, I suppose, if it's required. Yeah. Uh, That's a great point, yeah, I don't know the answer. Okay, so let's put P back to the side. |
| 01:53:56.82 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, so let's, |
| 01:54:00.21 | Jill Hoffman | Is that okay? Sure. And then, but happy to say a date certain in the future, right? Like this transition would happen by the end of 2022, December 23. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 2023. And then to be discussed right in our January meeting when we look at what we're talking about overall. So anyway. |
| 01:54:22.98 | Ian Sobieski | Just want to make sure our new hire has support mechanism in place to perform and |
| 01:54:24.83 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Okay. All right. Well, there's a motion on the table. There's a second. |
| 01:54:27.73 | Ian Sobieski | Definitely. |
| 01:54:31.36 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 01:54:32.10 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:54:32.19 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:54:32.36 | Steven Woodside | called the role |
| 01:54:33.23 | Melissa Blaustein | Wait a second, I just, I don't know what the motion is. Can somebody repeat it for me? |
| 01:54:33.51 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:54:36.88 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:54:36.90 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, could you reiterate the motion? |
| 01:54:38.72 | Melissa Blaustein | Maybe the city attorney could read it out loud since he seems to have edited it. |
| 01:54:41.89 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, the motion on the table is mine. You hear the first motion last. |
| 01:54:45.49 | Melissa Blaustein | Right. |
| 01:54:45.82 | Jill Hoffman | SO THE MOTION IS TO TRANSITION THE to dissolve sustainability, EDAC, and Parks and Rec I suppose, could we say with the recommendation from the council that they be reformed as task forces underneath the three departments. |
| 01:55:08.02 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. Yeah, you could definitely include that as as direction of staff. |
| 01:55:11.52 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, and direction of staff, and then the transition to occur Thank you. no later than December 30th of 2023. Is that clear on the motion? Okay, city clerk, can we call the roll? |
| 01:55:30.44 | Melissa Blaustein | Can we have a discussion? you on the motion. I think there's, I mean, we heard a lot about. |
| 01:55:34.52 | Steven Woodside | We heard Yeah. I mean, there's no. |
| 01:55:37.16 | Melissa Blaustein | I mean, there's nothing like that, I think. |
| 01:55:39.25 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:55:39.77 | Melissa Blaustein | I just want to correct, I think, is something that's taken on a life of its own around this P-back issue that you mentioned. Councilmember Kellman. |
| 01:55:48.89 | Steven Woodside | Payback's not in the motion. |
| 01:55:50.91 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. Well, just that the city council wasn't involved in the approval of the grant that somehow took a life of its own. on March 22nd of 2022, the city council unanimously voted for that. |
| 01:56:06.76 | Ian Sobieski | I understand. I don't want to pick the... |
| 01:56:09.74 | Melissa Blaustein | I just wanted to share that. |
| 01:56:09.76 | Ian Sobieski | I'm just trying to make sure that something doesn't. Lots of the impulsics around that. |
| 01:56:12.27 | Melissa Blaustein | Fair enough. I just want to, for the record, |
| 01:56:15.30 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:56:15.31 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:56:15.35 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Make a stand on that. |
| 01:56:16.81 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I took P-back out because of the issue about whether or not we can apply for grants and whether or not it's required, right, as a Brownock Commission body. |
| 01:56:25.15 | Melissa Blaustein | I just wanna make sure that I just want to for the record clarify that the city council voted unanimously to pursue the thing that we are now revising and it wasn't p back. |
| 01:56:27.43 | Jill Hoffman | for the record. |
| 01:56:31.31 | Steven Woodside | That's right. |
| 01:56:34.25 | Melissa Blaustein | going off on their own. |
| 01:56:35.21 | Steven Woodside | That's absolutely right. Okay, now we can take a roll call vote. |
| 01:56:38.90 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:56:38.92 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox. |
| 01:56:40.66 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:56:40.71 | Sandra Bushmaker | No. |
| 01:56:41.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:56:42.97 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yes. |
| 01:56:43.38 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:56:43.70 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cohen. Thank you. |
| 01:56:44.61 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yes. |
| 01:56:44.91 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:56:45.48 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Sobieski? No. And Mayor Blasdine. |
| 01:56:48.32 | Steven Woodside | No. Okay, and then we'll vote on the second motion. |
| 01:56:52.93 | Melissa Blaustein | Is it modified with My Friendly Member? It is modified. |
| 01:56:53.03 | Steven Woodside | I'm sorry. It is modified with your friendly amendment. So if for those just to follow up, the motion was, to move that all boards and commissions move to quarterly meetings with the exception of planning library board and HPC. However, we will pursue all avenues to limit the amount of time that library board is meeting so that it's not once monthly. And we'll also do the best to limit staff to one per meeting of the volunteer bodies. |
| 01:57:19.22 | Joan Cox | And may I just make a brief comment to explain my rationale since I haven't. |
| 01:57:21.61 | Steven Woodside | Absolutely. |
| 01:57:22.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:24.01 | Joan Cox | commented, I take very seriously the city council's role in appointing community members to our boards and commissions. have invested significant effort as a resident, as a council member to get to know our community and understand their strengths and what they can offer. And I, and reluctant, especially given how new some of our staff are. to delegate that what I consider to be a very important role THE END OF THE END OF THE the city council, to staff at this time. And so that's the main reason I am in favor of maintaining these boards and commissions as city council appointed boards and commissions with the reduced schedule to reduce the impact on on staff resources. Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts. |
| 01:58:17.64 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay, now we'll take a roll call vote on the motion. |
| 01:58:18.58 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. Councilmember Cox. |
| 01:58:21.91 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:58:22.03 | Ian Sobieski | Yes. |
| 01:58:22.97 | Walfred Solorzano | So remember how |
| 01:58:24.93 | Ian Sobieski | No. |
| 01:58:25.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Komen. |
| 01:58:26.92 | Ian Sobieski | I get to vote twice. |
| 01:58:30.87 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm sorry. Okay. Council, Vice Mayor Sobieski? Yes. And Mayor Blasie. |
| 01:58:36.30 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Thank you. |
| 01:58:37.20 | Melissa Blaustein | So I have a motion. |
| 01:58:38.43 | Steven Woodside | Yes, I would love to hear this motion passes. Go ahead. |
| 01:58:39.24 | Melissa Blaustein | to hear a motion. Sorry, sorry. I have three motions actually, or three things to propose to talk about. One is I'm playing on the fly here off of my colleague, council member Hoffman's idea. And that is, it can be yes and. So I would, or if not a motion, I'll make a motion as a motion or direction that we actually ask staff to look into putting together volunteer groups that report directly to staff members as volunteers, just like VIPs does on all of their subject matters. sustainability, Katie can recruit people to help her as volunteers from the community. And so can PBAC and I mean, so can Brandon Phipps and others. I was sympathetic to Council Member Hoffman's proposal I just know that I just know that I don't like to dismantle something before we have a replacement. So in 2011, the United States launched its last shuttle with the expectation we're going to have another way to get into space. but we didn't have another way to get into space. So we shut down a perfectly operable spaceship without any alternate way of getting the space We're dependent on the Russians. for a decade. I think I'm happy to replace our Brown Act appointed boards and commissions. I'd like to actually get Council Member Hoffman's idea up and running. See if it works, see if it works well. see if staff really likes that interaction. And if so, I'm much more sympathetic to shutting down the Brown Act Board. So that's why I would propose that we actually give that direction to staff. |
| 02:00:07.53 | Steven Woodside | I don't know if we need a motion for that, but I think if staff wants to pursue that Is that something that... |
| 02:00:12.64 | Melissa Blaustein | it would be a direction that they actually establish as an advisory group to staff members. they don't have to do it just well i mean it would be a kind of encouragement i suppose with this idea in mind that we're still looking at our brown act boards and commissions won't be the last time we ever bring it up uh We want to know if there's another way of doing it, as the state manager said, towards efficiency. So it seems like an experiment where And I'll see you next time. |
| 02:00:40.23 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:00:40.27 | Jill Hoffman | Sounds like Council Member Hoffman's motion. |
| 02:00:42.27 | Melissa Blaustein | I guess. No, but not shutting down the Brown Act. |
| 02:00:44.01 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I see exactly where you're going. And I don't disagree actually with that. And so, and I think that we have these three really great fairly new department heads, right? Brandon Phipps, well, Katie Tho Garcia is not a department head, but I would like to see how they can leverage the talent that we have in Sausalito. And that leverages on the boards and commissions that are most closely aligned with them. And that sometimes the impetus for this issue was that the time of the of the staff was being drawn off by the boards and commissions, right? And they were competing with each other. And so, I'm happy to explore that. I think that's a great idea. And I think that direction is, I think, you know, we may have to take a vote on that. I don't know, but I think the direction is that that the boards, that the department, those three department heads typically, specifically look at those three commissions and see how they might be able to transition them to a more effective, task force underneath their own direction. So a force multiplier exponentially for that department head. So especially with EDAC, I have to say, is a powerhouse. I mean, you guys are amazing. And so is sustainability and so is, and Parks and Rec has, tons of potential, just absolute tons of potential. That's a direction I would give. I agree. I'm not sure. |
| 02:02:11.97 | Steven Woodside | Not really. I'm just at a loss to understand. Would it be a duplicative body of the bodies that we already have? Because my concern with regards to the Brown Act and maintaining the Brown Act is the transparency that it ensures and provides and the ability for Council to employ folks to those boards and commissions. So I think it's the prerogative of staff now to create and assemble community groups for assistance for them if they would like. But asking staff to assemble co bodies that essentially work or compete with the Sustainability Commission or other boards and commissions to then replace them so that we have committees that are not appointed by the council doesn't solve for my issue with the boards and commissions, which is transparency and appointment from the city council. |
| 02:02:52.09 | Melissa Blaustein | maybe I would modify it to make it less controversial. How about we just start with parks and recreation, which I'm a liaison for, and we allow Brandon to solicit volunteers uh, to help with Parks and Rec. Brian. Brian, sorry. and just see how that goes. I note as it lays on the Parks and Rec often they miss their quorums. and that the members themselves are sometimes frustrated. So I just think that the advisory role and the helping role could be different. |
| 02:03:24.81 | Jill Hoffman | then this would |
| 02:03:25.40 | Melissa Blaustein | So I'm just maybe starting with Parks and Rec. |
| 02:03:27.38 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, well, I think I want to do it for all three because they're all three so closely aligned. And then the answer might be in six months, From staff and from Chris, no. We'd rather just have the commission. I mean, that's what this is about, right? and give staff the freedom to give us feedback. on this and with regard to the, you know, you know, public, the transparency, right? I completely agree on that too. But, But most of the time, I have to say, EDAC, the eight years I've been on the council, I've been in lots of council liaison for boards and commissions. People don't, you know, the time when people weigh in is when it's elevated to a city council meeting, and it's coming up to us for direction or a vote, That's when the real transparency happens. And sometimes it's like, well, No one's heard about that effort until something comes up for a vote. But that's just the way it happens. you can offer transparency even with a task force. I mean, even on our task force, some public presentations. We have committee meetings, we have committee, I'm sorry, we have committee reports at every city council meeting, right? So the council liaisons would also be keeping the council and the public apprised about what's going on. I think this is a path worth exploring. It's in keeping with the request and direction from the city manager. with regard to staff alignment, it's in keeping with our sort of our discussion that we had in April of 2022. I don't see any reason not to try it. I mean, the answer may be the staff, it's too much for the staff and they don't want to do it. But Council Member Cox had one to weigh in. Yeah, sorry. |
| 02:05:08.39 | Joan Cox | Thank you. My concern is that If we direct staff, to utilize volunteers, task forces separate from the boards and commissions to which they already devote staff time Now, instead of reducing the time that they're investing in boards and commissions, we're increasing it. And so that actually defeats the purpose. In addition to... |
| 02:05:35.27 | Unknown | business. |
| 02:05:37.23 | Joan Cox | the fact that If it's a staff appointed task force, there's no city council liaison. And there's no periodic reporting to the city council. as we do with our reports on boards and commissions, regarding what those task forces are doing. And so, I feel as though we just took a vote to... maintain by a four to one majority to maintain the city council appointed Boards and commissions structure And, that this motion is an end run around that, |
| 02:06:16.84 | Ian Sobieski | you |
| 02:06:17.23 | Joan Cox | And so I believe that |
| 02:06:17.87 | Ian Sobieski | And. May I turn them? When you're done. Could you go ahead? I just was getting ahead of them, |
| 02:06:27.84 | Melissa Blaustein | I just had a question for Councilman Cox, but go right ahead, Alaska. |
| 02:06:32.28 | Ian Sobieski | Well, I just wanted to offer that somebody who voted on both that I. I think it's important to continue to support the entities that do exist if there's going to be a majority vote to put them into existence, which is why I offered a fourth vote. But I think the task at hand is to evaluate and investigate new ways of doing it. And so that's how I took the vice mayor's suggestion was that, We both can be true and you know, we don't know if one is better than the other, perhaps since the second or the first motion failed. So let's give this the opportunity. I will also say that from my perspective, It's really important that the council be super clear on the priorities that each of these boards and committees work on. And that is something that has been in the past a little bit foggy sometimes. And so this idea of transparency actually begins with us giving clear direction as opposed to these bodies coming to us and saying, this is what I think you should be doing. Not that that's a bad idea to hear new concepts and new recommendations, but when they're out of alignment with the priorities that we've set, It creates confusion for staff, it creates confusion for us. And so I think that is my North Star here is how do we alleviate that conflict that I've seen before? So I'm sorry to interrupt. |
| 02:07:48.65 | Joan Cox | And so that was my third point is that with staff appointed task forces that are not appointed by the city council and that are not. periodically reporting to the city council We. are. in danger of what happened with the Bridgeway median. where grant funding is applied for, without the council knowing ahead of time And staff with very good intentions went in a direction that the council ultimately decided not to go. That's the danger that you run when you have especially... newer staff, although that was not a new staff member, getting feedback from community members . without council liaison and participation. So, but the main thing is we're now doubling the burden on staff by telling them that we're going to maintain our boards and commissions and now we're directing them to also have staff appointed task forces. So I had a question. Okay. |
| 02:08:55.33 | Melissa Blaustein | So I had a question. Okay. Just in terms of clarifying, because maybe it was unclear. I was just thinking as an idea of, And because of the Brown Act, this is our only chance to talk about it all together. giving a mechanism by which department heads could have a group of volunteers to help them. not an advisory group, but just a group of volunteers. So, |
| 02:09:13.81 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Brian already has a host of volunteers outside of the Park and Rec Commit Commission that assist him at Jazz by the Bay and all kinds of other So I don't think staff is right now pre prohibited from having volunteers assist the city manager hears from volunteer members in the community all the time with feedback and ideas and you know, with obtains assistance from. |
| 02:09:44.45 | Melissa Blaustein | And just as an aside, I just have to say it again. On March 8th, 2022, The city council passed 200 K of measure of funds to be used for the median issue. And on March 24th, 2022, On the consent calendar, the city council unanimously approved the grant that we heard. So this was not PBAC. acting on the realm with staff. City Council twice. affirm that direction. |
| 02:10:08.19 | Steven Woodside | So I just... I just want to say I had thought that the second motion would be a change of discussion with regards to the future boards and commissions. I do think we We took a vote on what's going to happen with boards and commissions, and now we're doubling back and starting the same discussion again. So I want to be respectful of indulging in this idea of how we might pursue staff to be empowered to do more work, but I feel like it's a, a continuation of the vote that we just took. So if you could clarify, vice mayor, since you were the one who had this edition, |
| 02:10:39.75 | Melissa Blaustein | Right. |
| 02:10:40.10 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 02:10:40.54 | Melissa Blaustein | Well, I, uh, Let me ask the city manager a question. Chris, is there... in your management of the organization, do you feel empowered to ask for volunteers to help? in our different departments, if they have expertise, say for example, a, person who's an expert on bonds issuing bonds and whatnot, would you feel, um, that Chad and you had the authority and comfort to reach out to that individual if they were a volunteer get them to help the finance department in thinking through how to issue a bond |
| 02:11:10.84 | Chris Zapata | Absolutely. We ask people all the time for input. And at the same time, you know, We do have people that volunteer constantly for things that we do in Sausalito, maybe not as many as we'd like at times, but we do have some volunteers and there's no restraint on me or the department at asking somebody that's either in the community, outside of the community for some insider input on something that, you know, we may need more information on. So, you know, we absolutely have that latitude. |
| 02:11:40.21 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Well, in that event, maybe I then will withdraw my motion. I will simply offer my personal encouragement that I think that that's |
| 02:11:40.75 | Chris Zapata | And, |
| 02:11:47.62 | Melissa Blaustein | a direction that I encourage you to innovate in. and it may inform our future discussions on the matter. |
| 02:11:54.47 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay, well, I did have a question. I had a couple of clarifications. |
| 02:11:55.86 | Melissa Blaustein | I did have a clarification. |
| 02:11:58.83 | Jill Hoffman | So one of the assumptions was that either the mayor or the council member Cox made it, was that you couldn't have a city council member on the task force, right? that supported a certain department. my understanding from Sergio is that you could have one or two council members on a task force. that was directly supporting a um, a department and I thought, uh, I'm in favor of, I don't think it's an end run. I think it's just an and. Right, let's explore it. If it's, you know, you're projecting I don't think you project failure. It may actually be a success and it may be something that the staff wants and they like, but let's explore it. Let's not cut it off and let's not prevent them from doing that. I think that's an interesting thing. for us to talk about with our staff. And so why would we cut that off? So I'll make the motion. You don't wanna make it, I'll make your motion. I think we should continue to explore, or I don't even know if, Well, maybe we need a poll, I guess, for direction. |
| 02:13:02.19 | Steven Woodside | I'm not sure if this is pursuant to, since we've already made a motion and voted yes on the motion, can the city attorney weigh in on if this is pursuant to since we've determined a specific future for boards and commissions, if we do another motion? I just want to... |
| 02:13:12.23 | Jill Hoffman | This is an additional motion. This is an item on our agenda. And we had one motion and now we have another motion that's consistent with that prior motion. So I'm happy to listen. That's why I asked for this. Okay. It is consistent. It's not contrary. You're making it contrary, but it's not. Okay. |
| 02:13:30.97 | Steven Woodside | That's all. All right. I just want to have the city attorney weigh in quickly because I did ask for support. Then we can wait for a second on the motion and or accordingly. Sergio? |
| 02:13:41.01 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, so I mean the agenda item is review past updated information for city boards, commissions committees and ad hoc and working groups for the purpose of providing direction to city staff on resource allocation. Which I think is pretty broadly phrased and could support additional direction to staff to explore other volunteer opportunities if that's the direction. that the council wants to provide the staff. |
| 02:14:01.58 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thanks, Sergio. All right, there's a motion on the table from Council Member Hoffman. |
| 02:14:07.47 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:14:07.84 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:14:11.97 | Ian Sobieski | I'm not going to second only because it won't win. It won't have three, so... the vice mayor, we're going to move in that direction. It would be different outcome than before. |
| 02:14:20.59 | Melissa Blaustein | My comment is Chris, Chris, satisfied me that we have that latitude currently in the goal of securing volunteerism. In the interests of finality and moving on, not act any further to complicate this situation. Though I do have another motion, which probably will fail too. Go ahead. Should we not? Can we actually, we can |
| 02:14:40.96 | Steven Woodside | It's... |
| 02:14:41.44 | Melissa Blaustein | I guess not. I guess we don't. |
| 02:14:41.45 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I have no, I think, I mean, |
| 02:14:46.04 | Melissa Blaustein | It is, yeah. I just, I, I just note that And no one may second it either, but I mean, you know how it is, you have things on the agenda, so. I'm not sure there's a detail of exasperation, especially when it's only 9.30. Go ahead. In the evening. Go ahead. I mean, that's why we ran for office is to actually do the. |
| 02:14:58.04 | Cass Green | Go ahead, Newt. Go ahead. |
| 02:15:03.42 | Melissa Blaustein | people's work as best we know it. I would like to just note that the historical planning commission is the second highest hourly take. It meets asynchronously. It fills a very important role. Um, I don't think we should do anything about it tonight, but I'm wondering if we could ask the Brandon Phipps to look at whether the mission of preserving our historical standards more efficiently executed by some combination of the HPC with the PC. or augmenting the role of historical preservation with a staff person with expertise in that area. |
| 02:15:44.70 | Steven Woodside | So the direction would be to investigate this at this stage. Okay, I would second that. |
| 02:15:49.54 | Joan Cox | I will just comment that I did discuss this with planning commission members and historical preservation committee members because I had the same thought and received the vociferous objection given you know, we went to great effort before your election to Um, adopt historical standards for the citywide. And while it was actually finalized by your council, Um, And to identify qualified historic preservation committee members with the um, background and qualifications to undertake that important work for Sausalito. |
| 02:16:33.26 | Unknown | you know, |
| 02:16:35.10 | Joan Cox | I also was considering that for efficiency purposes, but abandoned it. at. after. polling. Planning Commission and Historical Preservation Committee members. I would like to be respectful of their investment and Thank you. understanding of their disparate roles. |
| 02:16:57.19 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. I respect that, but I'm just wondering we might not have our, planning director. since he's trying to design a department and a process to achieve these goals, weigh in with some alternatives that may even, by the way, be persuasive to the very people that are currently So this is without any other agenda than best practices of looking at it. |
| 02:17:25.44 | Unknown | Okay, should we? You what? I seconded it. |
| 02:17:30.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. Thank you. All right. Councilmember Cox. No. Councilmember Hoffman. Councilmember Kelman. |
| 02:17:38.00 | Ian Sobieski | for the reasons cited by Council Member Cox, |
| 02:17:41.31 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Sobieski? Yes. Mayor Blasdien. |
| 02:17:45.31 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:17:45.34 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Thank you. |
| 02:17:48.48 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:17:49.67 | Steven Woodside | We'll move on now from business item 5D. And we'll go on to communication. So this is the time on the agenda when we hear from members of the public on items that are not on our agenda this evening. And... Oh, sorry. |
| 02:18:08.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Alex Merrill. |
| 02:18:10.40 | Steven Woodside | Oh, okay. All right. I was just going to say, if you'd like to make public comment, please fill out a peek. All right. Alice Merrill's here. Fantastic. |
| 02:18:13.69 | Walfred Solorzano | So, |
| 02:18:18.60 | Unknown | Bye. Thank you. these. Just so that you can look at this. and for the minutes. Thank you. And then And |
| 02:18:34.95 | Unknown | Ciao. to go to cheap. |
| 02:18:38.88 | Unknown | the bananas and black beans. |
| 02:18:42.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:43.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:43.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:43.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:43.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:44.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:44.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:44.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:44.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. to change. |
| 02:18:49.38 | Alice Merrill | So speaking of Marin City being our neighbors and caring, what happens? Oh, sorry. You guys. No, we're good. We're good. |
| 02:18:57.23 | Walfred Solorzano | guys. We're good. We're good. |
| 02:18:58.37 | Alice Merrill | I don't know. I'm excited. there's been this proposed development part of the housing committee for the county. Uh, the County has voted. Uh, yes. Some of them voted no, but there wasn't a lot of disagreement about it. Um, It's huge. And the people in Marin City sincerely don't want this to happen. And Bye. What's that thing that happened for the housing element if you didn't get it in in time, then it became that other thing and you could And a builder's remedy and you can do whatever you want. |
| 02:19:37.52 | Unknown | And I'm going to |
| 02:19:41.08 | Alice Merrill | And that's pretty much what this guy is doing, 75 units. 24 parking spaces right above the park. It's this beautiful park for the kids, literally, across the street. Mm-hmm. blocks a nice development that was put in for seniors and people with disabilities. After the church, I guess there was a church there, it burned down, I think, but anyway. The people in Marin City don't want it. And they're not getting a lot of support from the community bigger than they are, you know, like us. And I think that we need to help. I think that we need to add our thoughts and our thinking and our support. it's built for, this is good. Well, there's no time. I mean, this is, there's no time. So I have a lot of other things to say, but, um, Just think about about how we can help them call the planning commissioners and say, help people in Marin City, don't make them bottom of the pile again, again, again. It happens all the time. May I ask Alice? And if you want to give me more time, I'd be happy to tell you a little more. |
| 02:20:52.50 | Joan Cox | Do you want to? Thank you. |
| 02:20:55.47 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 02:20:55.69 | Joan Cox | I would I know all about it. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. Isn't it true? This has already been approved by the Marin County Planning Commission and |
| 02:20:58.84 | Alice Merrill | Isn't it? |
| 02:21:03.30 | Joan Cox | the Marin County Board of Supervisors. And isn't it true also that the Marin County Board of Supervisors has voted to invest upwards of a million dollars in this development. |
| 02:21:13.76 | Alice Merrill | The Board of Supervisors, yeah, has been, they've supported it. |
| 02:21:15.03 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 02:21:18.52 | Alice Merrill | And some of them voted no, one, I think, maybe two. But it's... you know, there's a lot of other land in the county, and they just put it there because nobody, you know, because we do that. And so, I find it. And then the other thing is that it's for, quote, low income. There will be a lot of low income. But there's a really important part. Can I just have a minute more to tell you about this really important part? Can I? about the taxes. When a building is considered low income and has all this government funding and everything to build, They don't actually pay They don't actually pay taxes. property taxes, which means that here's a building with going to have maybe kids in it. Those. We and Marin City will not get property taxes for the schools. That's just, one of the things that's horrible about it. So let's try to... Give them some support and go over and stand in their thing when they... raise their signs and just call supervisors, do what we can do something. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:22:42.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, Ian Charles. |
| 02:22:48.14 | Steven Woodside | You're muted and we can't hear you. |
| 02:22:52.13 | Ian Charles | I'M IAN CHARLES. I'M A RESIDENT AND HOMEOWNER HERE IN SAUSALIDO. MY WIFE AND I PURCHASED OUR HOME ABOUT A YEAR AGO NOW AFTER SPENDING 20 YEARS IN TIBURON. I'M BRINGING TO YOUR ATTENTION THE SITUATION BEHIND A PARCEL OF LAND THAT SITS DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF OUR PROPERTY OFF PROSPECT. between our private road and Channing Way, specifically parcel number 06519152. Unfortunately, I spent the last five months communicating across every imaginable channel in the city of Sausalito. I've notified the fire department multiple times of the fire hazard that exists. I've communicated with Kevin McGowan, City Attorney Sergio Rudin, Andy Davidson, and nobody can tell us who is responsible for that piece of land. The City Attorney pulled the acceptance and dedication of that piece of land from 1962 and still cannot inform us who's responsible for it. In fact, the previous owners and some residents believe that there was a closed door session at the city of Sausalito that included Joan Cox, that has given responsibility of the maintenance to certain residents in the area. In the life of me, I can't understand how the city can assign responsibility to residents that don't even, they're not even adjacent to the property. So my ask is this, either we can find a path to understand who is responsible for the maintenance because of the fire hazard and the tree roots that are dug up our road, or I'll be forced with no other means to address this than a lawsuit. And that's certainly not where I wanna take it, but after five months, I've had no success. Thank you very much. |
| 02:24:55.82 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:24:55.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much. |
| 02:24:56.36 | Joan Cox | Can I ask him a question, please? Sir, would you kindly reach out to me so that I can get up to date? I don't, I'm not familiar off the top of my head of what you're discussing, because you gave an APN number and not a property address. But if you would reach out to me offline, I'd like to work with you to figure out a resolution. |
| 02:25:16.68 | Ian Charles | I appreciate that, and I will certainly reach out to you immediately. |
| 02:25:20.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:25:20.42 | Ian Charles | Thank you. |
| 02:25:23.43 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. Do we have Thank you. |
| 02:25:25.64 | Walfred Solorzano | for the |
| 02:25:25.72 | Steven Woodside | further public comment? |
| 02:25:26.58 | Walfred Solorzano | This is what we're doing. |
| 02:25:27.82 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Sybil. Welcome back. Thank you. It's good. |
| 02:25:33.74 | Sybil (Public Commenter) | Thank you. Thank you, Mayor and Vice Mayor. I just wanted to call your attention. It's kind of like other reports of significance. I don't know if any of you have seen the recent grand jury report, which came out on May 30th. called the coming state, excuse me, the coming wave of older adults is when prepared. And it's a really excellent report. It has 11 findings and seven recommendations for the county of Moran. It's an excellent background on the services that are currently being offered in the county and what isn't being offered and some gaps and so forth. The Commission on Aging is invited to, respond the board of supervisors is required to respond in 90 days the commission is invited in 60 days so we're working on our response now but um i i recommend it um so just being informed on on what's going on in the larger county and it has a lot of good in demographic information as well and once again it's a grand jury report that came out May 30th called The Coming Wave of Older Adults is When Prepared. And I'd be happy to send a copy to the clerk and ask him to give it to you all if you haven't seen it or maybe had an opportunity to see it. Thank you. |
| 02:27:12.46 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Sybil. Please do send us a copy of that. |
| 02:27:15.58 | Walfred Solorzano | It will do. No further comments. |
| 02:27:20.34 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment and we will move on to item seven, which is council member committee reports. Do any council members have committee reports to share? That's when we're Huffman. |
| 02:27:30.82 | Jill Hoffman | You want to get the EDAC record? |
| 02:27:33.80 | Melissa Blaustein | I should probably do better. |
| 02:27:37.84 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. Actually, I'll just say one thing and maybe you can tell me what I missed, but EDAC has a new chair. Scott Thornburg was elected. He is also very pivotal in the Pride campaign that Councilmember Kellman has been launching. He's a marketing expert. And I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to the letter he sent to us, it's in the public record concerning the, his professional assessment of the CDA program, that's a marketing program that the city of Sausalito has. engaged with and just a quote from his letter, he says, Based on my 15 years of experience in marketing and public relations, I believe the results CDA has produced for Sausalito are truly exceptional. So at the EDAC meeting, he summarized CDA's performance. I recommend it to anyone who wants to see by the numbers how that marketing campaign has preceded, and would help them understand a point of view on that particular program. So what did I miss besides that? Okay, great. |
| 02:28:41.02 | Steven Woodside | Other council member committee reports? |
| 02:28:47.75 | Steven Woodside | you know? I attended a transportation authority of Marin meeting where we honored the crossing guard of the year from old mill school, which was quite nice. And we heard the MTC report and update on the Marin transit snowman area smart so the smart train. And also a big update on the heavy lifting of Safe Routes to Schools and how effective the Safe Routes to Schools program is. has been in Marin. So I did want to share that out because it was a really, helpful meeting and it was nice to honor the crossing guard. Hopefully, maybe next time we'll have a Sausalito crossing guard who gets that honor. So we'll move on to |
| 02:29:25.31 | Joan Cox | I just wanted to remind council members that the MCCMC meeting is being hosted by Sausalito. on June 28. So I wanted to be sure that all council members have that on their calendar and are planning to attend as well as our city manager hopefully. Thank you. |
| 02:29:41.02 | Steven Woodside | the spinnaker. |
| 02:29:41.93 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:29:41.97 | Steven Woodside | At the Spinnaker. He was here tonight. At the Spinnaker. There's Jeff Shrash in the back. Thank you for... Thank you, Jeff, for hosting. Yes, thank you, Jeff, for hosting that. And we're certainly looking forward to it. Yes, go ahead. |
| 02:29:43.49 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 02:29:52.45 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Right. Thank you. |
| 02:29:53.29 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:29:53.78 | Jill Hoffman | I do have a report. The Cal City's North Bay Executive Committee, I attended that of interest for the group is, if you haven't seen it or haven't been aware of it, there's a huge, not, yeah, it is huge actually, a report. |
| 02:29:53.95 | Steven Woodside | I do have a- |
| 02:30:10.27 | Jill Hoffman | New concept community going up in American Canyon, and it's just north of Vallejo. So it's right in that just, you know, south of east of Napa, the town of Napa. But the interesting thing is it's, it's a kind of a pre-planned community, but mostly prefab buildings. And so we're going up there, I think, for a tour of it. I don't know, sometime in June, I think we haven't got the date back or, Oh, this Thursday? Oh, this Thursday, to take a look at it. So it's gonna be super interesting. It's 307 acres of land. Um, all kinds of different financing is almost 100% affordable. So it's a super interesting, project and I look forward to viewing it or hearing about it if I can't make it. But I think it's gonna be very, very interesting. Um, Anyway... That was, I wanted to throw that out. |
| 02:31:09.67 | Steven Woodside | I'll also throw out that I attended the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Columbus, Ohio last week. And so going forward, all Sausalito mayors will be invited to attend the U.S. Conference of Mayors. It's an invitation that was extended at the summit of The city summit, which I attended an extension of invitation from the State Department, And there was a lot of incredible access to administration officials who are responsible for funding, so we now have a number of points of contact at specific. cabinet offices that will be really beneficial to us as we apply for or push for more grant funding for a number of programs for climate, for infrastructure. And hopefully this will be a pattern that continues for all of our mayors going forward. And everyone will have the opportunity to engage with that community. And it was a really great experience for me to brag about Sausalito. Everyone all over the country knows it and seems to love it. And I'm not surprised. So I wanted to share that out. as well. Okay, so we'll move on to item eight, which is city manager report city council appointments and other council business. So the first thing we do here is take public comment on that item. So I'm going to go ahead and open up public comment on items 8b through 8e. |
| 02:32:15.78 | Walfred Solorzano | Vicky Nichols. |
| 02:32:17.29 | Vicki Nichols | Hi, Vicki. Okay, I'd like to comment tonight as the chair of your historical preservations commission, and ask your help in being a little bit different from your normal process. We have a potential fifth candidate to fill out our committee. My understanding he's put his application in We would love to get him on board. He has the qualifications that the state requires. And we are attempting to get some extra funding, assistance from the state with some training. And I must say that Community Development Director, Brandon Phipps has been very supportive of the HPC. So I really appreciate that. We'd love to get this first, the fifth person on here as a compliment, and we can get all the training together to make us more effective. And as soon as we can get People that are less experienced up to date, we can start trying to go in after our own money because it doesn't seem that there's money in a budget for our historical stuff. We're going to start trying to do it ourselves. So please help us and see if you can do an interview. and get this person on that is clearly qualified and matches the state qualifications. Thank you. |
| 02:33:37.46 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vicki. Do we have further public comment on this item? |
| 02:33:40.75 | Walfred Solorzano | So you know, |
| 02:33:41.04 | Chris Zapata | Amen. |
| 02:33:41.31 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 02:33:41.80 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so city manager, do you have a report for council? |
| 02:33:44.93 | Chris Zapata | I have a couple I'd like to report on quickly if I may, First of all, on June the 15th, South Sudan will be hosting be the host city for the economic development administration's regional grant exercise. Mayor Blaustein will be providing that welcome. So that's a very good thing. Hopefully we can make the case that Sausalito could use some of their funding. The second thing is on June the 19th, the city of Sausalito is going to be a partner with the Marin City Juneteenth Festival being organized by the Marine City Arts and culture foundation. So that's one thing that is important to note. And then secondly, We'll also partner with the sister cities of Sausalito to help with the visit from Sakaiti Japan. Those are things that are really important to build community fabric and connect more closely to our neighbors. And I want to report those out to you that those are in play. Thank you. |
| 02:34:38.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, city manager. And the next item is appointments to boards, commissions and committees, and I will note that we heard that we need an appointment for. HPC I know we received a letter from the sustainability Commission about a potential candidate there, and I have had discussions with the disaster preparedness chair about how there's been an immense need for a quorum as we've been waiting. the future of boards and commissions. So I would just like to note that for staff that we might open up interviews, hopefully at the next meeting, but we don't have any appointments to make this evening. And with that, I'll move on to item 8D, which is future agenda items. Who would like to get us started with future agenda items? |
| 02:35:12.97 | Melissa Blaustein | just riffing off what you said, Mary, I would look at all our boards and commissions and make sure all terms of office and everything are updated. and fix any that need to be fixed. |
| 02:35:21.95 | Joan Cox | Great. Anybody else we completed our discussion of boards and commissions for this evening, but one thing I had asked to be addressed is a code of conduct for our. board and commission members so I would like to still move that forward as a future agenda item. And thank you city manager for attaching to your report, the current, Uh, ordinance regarding boards and commission governing boards and commissions. |
| 02:35:51.02 | Steven Woodside | Councilman Kellman, did you have a question? |
| 02:35:51.83 | Ian Sobieski | Just to reiterate my request that the community-based catastrophic insurance conversation I know you met Bridget. I know we talked about it. And so I let her know. the connection there and so look forward to Moving on that, so I'll set something up with her, actually. Fantastic. |
| 02:36:06.74 | Joan Cox | Thank you. And I would also like to have Sausalito explore Um, participating in a different... insurance risk pool. |
| 02:36:17.67 | Steven Woodside | Great. Okay. And I would add that I would like to see a report or status update on the landslide task force. I just continue to elevate this issue. Recently heard from some neighbors who are very much susceptible to a landslide at Marion and Edwards. And I would just like to see where we're at with our assessment and an update there because this is really critical. better to get ahead of it. And I'd also like to add to the agenda, potentially some letter of support for the residents at 825 Drake, or at least a discussion of how we might support Marin City residents with regards to 825 Grave great Drake and appreciate Alice Merrill and others who have brought that forward. Other future agenda items? Okay. Any reports of significance? Okay, with that, we will somehow adjourn at 9.56 p.m. Great job, everyone. Four business items. Thank you. |
| 02:37:09.59 | Unknown | MISSING. |
| 02:37:09.92 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:37:09.95 | Steven Woodside | Recording stopped. |
| 02:37:09.97 | Walfred Solorzano | record. |
| 02:37:10.32 | Unknown | Good morning. |
| 02:37:10.56 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:37:10.57 | Unknown | stop. I thought we were. |