| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.03 | Unknown | reporting in progress |
| 00:00:01.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Thanks. |
| 00:00:05.68 | Steven Woodside | She's going to be like... |
| 00:00:08.16 | Walfred Solorzano | Good evening, council. Good evening, public. Tonight's meeting of June 27, 2023 is being held in council chambers on 420 Litho Street. And it's also being held via Zoom and it's available to the public and it is on our city's website. And it's also on Channel TV Cable 27. |
| 00:00:33.14 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. So before we begin and call to order our official meeting this evening, we have some applicants with us who are applying for our boards and commissions, and we have vacancies on the sustainability commission as well as on our disaster preparedness committee. And so I understand that we have applicants from both of those committees with us this evening. So let's, who do we have present? I mean, I know a couple of ones. |
| 00:00:54.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Cool. Thank you. |
| 00:00:55.40 | Walfred Solorzano | I know we have a alphabetical order. We have Mark Moore and Michelle Moore for the sustainability commission. |
| 00:01:01.27 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE And then the disaster preparedness folks coming later? |
| 00:01:04.97 | Walfred Solorzano | We did have two confirmations, but I don't see them in attendance yet. Let me check on Zoom if they're on there. No, they're not here yet. I'll do a sweep. We might do a sweep around just to make sure they're not lost. |
| 00:01:17.17 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Well, we can start with the sustainability commission candidates in alphabetical order. So that would be Mr. Moore would be first, right? |
| 00:01:27.66 | Walfred Solorzano | RECORDING TO THE FEDERAL |
| 00:01:27.70 | Steven Woodside | Okay, great. Perfect. Let me just a second. My dog escaped and the vice mayor went and got him for me. And now he's back. Sorry about that. Thank you, Vice Mayor Sobieski. Okay, Mr. Moore, would you just come forward? And usually we start these off by asking you to tell us a little bit. You know, we have your application and your resume, but if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and your interest in the role. Great. Is his mic on? |
| 00:01:53.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:02:00.75 | Melissa Blaustein | And may it remind us we have how many vacancies? On sustainability commission, we have one alternate vacancy. |
| 00:02:05.68 | Unknown | I have to check if it's two of it. The chair has talked about it, so I have to go and check. |
| 00:02:10.32 | Steven Woodside | And... |
| 00:02:10.36 | Walfred Solorzano | and, |
| 00:02:10.58 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:02:11.45 | Mark Moore | Check, check. |
| 00:02:12.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Perfect. |
| 00:02:15.44 | Mark Moore | So just a brief introduction. Yes. All right. My name is Mark Moore, 11 year Sausalito resident, longtime Marin County resident. |
| 00:02:17.39 | Steven Woodside | Yes, absolutely. |
| 00:02:24.28 | Mark Moore | fourth generation San Franciscan Um, I've been involved in renewable energy for about two decades. And sustainability, most of my life, I started in the natural food business. And I worked for a company called Wildwood Natural Foods in a town called Fairfax. on the way to West Marin. ran their sales and distribution. And we dealt with a lot of natural and organic products that were very concerned with the earth And the reduction of pesticides and a better way of living, reducing meat consumption overall. So along the way, I founded a company in 2001, Solar Utilities Network, And I became a consultant in the energy business and we put together different renewable energy projects with PPAs with utility companies, bringing investments in finding land. putting all that together. And that led me up to this point where I founded my first nonprofit, I've got my nonprofit status this March 10th. for Solar Utility Network, Inc., California 501c3. And the main goal is to write grants. So there's a lot of federal grants with this current administration for renewable energy, and especially on Native American lands is where a lot of my time has been spent with California Native tribes and Southwestern tribes. and putting together land resources with investment and of course the revenue. But with these federal grants, we have the opportunity now to bring in huge sums of money to build renewable energy. |
| 00:04:07.52 | Steven Woodside | Great. Thank you so much for that overview. Now we usually just let each member of the council ask a question. Does anyone want to get us started? Bye. |
| 00:04:16.46 | Melissa Blaustein | Thanks for joining. |
| 00:04:17.12 | Mark Moore | Thank you. afternoon. |
| 00:04:17.88 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:04:17.90 | Mark Moore | Thank you. |
| 00:04:17.93 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Good to see you. So one thing that we have been considering here in Sausalito are resilience hubs. How might you go about approaching Resilience Hub, both in terms of what you're seeing around Moraine County, maybe what you might know about some technologies? What's your familiarity? And if you don't have any, that's fine too, but given your experience. |
| 00:04:36.36 | Mark Moore | So I say again, technology in regards to what? Thank you. |
| 00:04:38.35 | Melissa Blaustein | Resilience hubs? Yeah. |
| 00:04:38.81 | Mark Moore | Oh, yeah. |
| 00:04:40.19 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, so I'm just going to leave it open to you to comment as you see fit around that issue and base and renewable energy and promoting those types of programs. |
| 00:04:47.70 | Mark Moore | I mean, we have some challenges because we don't have a lot of roof space and we don't have a lot of ground space here. It's also dope. But... It doesn't mean you can't put renewable energy and wheel it through the utility companies to our benefit. I mean, maybe that's too broad. But the more renewable we can bring to this town, the more we're going to reduce our carbon footprint. And I think that's just the way we have to go. and, I mean, to elaborate a little bit, A lot of coal burning plants are being shut down across the United States. And I don't think we're going to find it. Nuclear power is going to come back in my lifetime. I don't see it. So we have to replace our need for electricity, we're dependent on it. We're going to have to keep supporting renewable. My expertise is more in solar, But that's only one part of the... Big picture. |
| 00:05:47.93 | Steven Woodside | I have a question. Do others? And Have you had a chance to take a look at our climate action plan or our low emissions action plan? And do you have thoughts about that? |
| 00:05:58.07 | Mark Moore | The 90 page one or the 500 page one? |
| 00:06:01.34 | Steven Woodside | The low emissions action plan is more like 12P. |
| 00:06:03.97 | Mark Moore | Yes, I've read through them. I got through most of it. And I understand. So the Renewable Commission is to analyze. and then to report to city council. and give. I guess as much good advice as possible for city council to make decisions. |
| 00:06:24.46 | Steven Woodside | And do you have thoughts specifically about our climate action plan or more generally, if you didn't read any of the documents, what do you think we could be doing a better job of as a city for climate goals and addressing climate change or renewable energy? |
| 00:06:39.87 | Mark Moore | Well, I think the transportation is... is important. on that level. I did read, you know, we're watching our water levels. |
| 00:06:54.19 | Mark Moore | I mean, that's the big question. You know, what more can we do in regards to that? I think we need to partner. I think in regards to our PG&E utility monopoly. I think it would benefit all citizens to have a more cooperative relationship with our utility company would be one help. |
| 00:07:19.94 | Steven Woodside | Thanks. Anyone else have questions from the diocese? Mayor? |
| 00:07:24.21 | Ian Sobieski | Not a question, just thanks a lot for volunteering. |
| 00:07:26.41 | Mark Moore | All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Good to meet you. |
| 00:07:28.65 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. Thanks for being here. We appreciate it. |
| 00:07:30.32 | Mark Moore | appreciate it. All right. Happy Tuesday. |
| 00:07:32.62 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, happy Tuesday to you too. Always good to hear. Okay. So now we have Michelle or who is another candidate applicant for the sustainability commission. So if you could start by giving us a little bit of your background and why you're interested in the role as well, that would be fantastic. |
| 00:07:47.11 | Michelle Or | you |
| 00:07:47.67 | Steven Woodside | Good evening. |
| 00:07:48.02 | Michelle Or | I mean, |
| 00:07:48.50 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:07:49.14 | Michelle Or | Um, Michelle or, and I'm a barrier native and Sausalito for the last about two and a half years was living in Marin before that. And, um, I thought I knew Sausalito before I moved here, but it turns out I didn't, I just love it. I wish I'd moved here earlier. Um, And, uh, So professionally, I'm an engineer and I work on shoreline restoration. So I do wetland restoration, oyster reef restorations, beaches, nature-based infrastructure to protect against erosion. And increasingly, my work has been also including sea level rise adaptation planning. My training is that is as a flood control engineer, so that fits pretty well. So I've been working with. Janelle and others on the sea level rise task force for Sausalito. It was the first time I had volunteered for something like that. I loved it. It was very rewarding. And so going into part of the reason I'm applying for the sustainability commission role is because I see the task force is being having a certain limited timeframe on it. And so looking to continue volunteering for the city. and also expanding my role into things other than sea level rise adaptation planning. And I know the sustainability, um, Commission seems like a good place for that. I'd be looking to bring over the sea level rise adaptation piece of what I'd been doing and my understanding from talking to people. on the commission is that that would be welcome. I also bring a background in ecosystem restoration along the lines of say the Willow Creek Daylighting. So could have a role there to the extent it makes sense helping with those kinds of efforts. And also personally really interested in preserving our beaches in Sausalito and our marshes and making sure that they don't erode too much over time they have been and so looking for some some ways of keeping those open spaces and those natural spaces in our city. Thank you. |
| 00:10:13.98 | Steven Woodside | much and thank you for coming in. Okay. So I'll bring it to the dais for questions. |
| 00:10:19.04 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm going to lead the witness. Michelle, thank you for all your hard work. And I think it would be really helpful if you could share with my colleagues some of the work that you've been doing recently with our new sustainability and resilience manager around not just serving on the task force, but the other work you've done around the RFP and really helping to move a project from ideation to execution. If you want to share a little bit about that, I think it's quite impressive. She's a good one. |
| 00:10:44.03 | Michelle Or | Sure. So there were many facets to the task force and the ones that I worked on the most were looking at how we could go about some long-term planning for the community, get funding for that, which we were successful in. uh, council member Kelman, uh, most of the credit there. Um, but we're able to get some funding for long-term planning. And then I've been working with others on the committee and also with Katie on, um, creating a request for proposals, which I understand is in your packets, uh, for approval tonight. So, um, since I do the kind of study that we were asking for, I felt like I was in a good position there to help frame what we wanted and to give a good sense for like what it should look like, how much it should cost and that sort of thing. So that's been very rewarding. I'm looking forward to that actually getting done. And my hope for that is that it preserves what we most value about Sausalito. So our businesses, our homes, our natural spaces are protected from flooding and erosion in a way that preserves our culture without just being responsive and reactive over time. |
| 00:12:17.57 | Steven Woodside | Thank you for that extra time and effort that you're putting in with KDN on the sea level rise task force. And I'm going to ask the same question that I had asked our other applicant, which is if you have, whether or not you reviewed our low emissions action plan or prior to that our climate action plan, what do you think we can be doing more of to achieve our climate goals and to mitigate the impacts of climate change in the city of Sausalito? |
| 00:12:42.48 | Michelle Or | I, I'll just say up front, I haven't reviewed that plan in terms of what we could do. So I don't know how that's been organized. I know on a personal level, I've been trying to electrify everything and reduce, minimize waste. And those are all the kinds of things that are important to me. I know the task force and you in particular have been working on removing single-use plastics from the city. I think that's really important. I mean, all of that counts towards reducing our emissions. I'd also love to put some effort towards seeing how we could make people not have to rely on cars so much and have some better options for bikes and other forms of transit around town. Um, There's just so much beautiful space that's used for parking in this town. I would just love to see people not have to have a car to do what they want to be able to do. Oh, and then on the task force, I guess the other thing I forgot to mention in response to your question, Janelle, is participated in a number of reviews of proposed developments at the request of the Planning Commission and just gave an opinion on how, well, basically an assessment of whether they were planning for sea level rise and if so, to what extent and how did it conform with what the state recommends along those lines. Great, thank you. |
| 00:14:11.97 | Steven Woodside | from the dais? Vice mayor? |
| 00:14:16.40 | Ian Sobieski | I guess your comment about bikes makes me want to ask whether to what extent you are dreaming about that in terms of this little town. in San Francisco, Waymo is driving people around in in vehicles without drivers. And there's a vision of a transportation network that's all electrified so that no one needs to drive their cars anymore. How does that fit in and how do bikes fit in on our hilly town? |
| 00:14:43.17 | Michelle Or | Thank you. It doesn't have to be a bike. Anything that helps people, you know, I, My husband and I surprised ourselves by doing without our second car for the last year and a half. simply because he didn't renew his registration. And it worked really well. And I didn't realize how much we could get by without it. So I just like for people to feel like they don't have to have a car. It could be a zip car. It could be, you know, other forms of transportation. |
| 00:15:20.19 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, I just want to follow up question on that. There's a just an approach. One is carrots and the others is sticks. One is banning. Let's say if you took away parking, then it makes it harder to drive your car downtown. If you take away, if you prohibit installation of gas in homes and people are forced to use electricity and then their carrot carrot approaches to achieving those same things. And I'm just curious where you where you think we should go in that regard between carrots and sticks. |
| 00:15:48.19 | Michelle Or | I work mostly in a carrots industry, restoration. I work with public agencies. It's grant funded. It's mostly what people want to do. I, you know, I guess it's going to be a combination. You have to have good support if you're using the sticks for what you're trying to accomplish. And that has to be coming from the community. |
| 00:16:17.77 | Steven Woodside | Thank you again very much for your interest and for being here. And we really appreciate your time and the hours you've already put into volunteering with us on the Sea Level Rise Task Force. |
| 00:16:26.66 | Michelle Or | Back to you. |
| 00:16:28.06 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:16:28.18 | Michelle Or | Thank you. |
| 00:16:30.27 | Steven Woodside | So city clerk, do we have, I know we had three other disaster preparedness candidates. |
| 00:16:34.46 | Walfred Solorzano | I went around the building. I didn't see anybody and they are not on Zoom. I had spoken to a couple of them and they said they were going to show up. So we do not have them here right now. |
| 00:16:47.15 | Steven Woodside | Okay. I think we had not planned to start closed session until 530, and I wanted to respect the posted time, which is when we're going to open the meeting. So I suppose unless we see... any of them in the next few minutes we should Pause and adjourn. |
| 00:17:02.15 | Walfred Solorzano | I'll make another sweep test in case. |
| 00:17:03.45 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thanks. |
| 00:17:07.97 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I think we can go ahead and get started. So I will now call this meeting to order. at 5 30 p.m. and request that the city clerk call the roll. Thank you. |
| 00:17:22.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox. Thank you. |
| 00:17:23.56 | Steven Woodside | year. |
| 00:17:24.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Kelman. Thank you. Councilmember Hoffman. Thank you. not arrived yet, Vice Mayor Sobieski and Mayor Blasney. |
| 00:17:33.13 | Steven Woodside | THE PRESIDENT. Okay, so the first thing on our agenda this evening, as usual, is our closed session. This evening in post-session, we will be discussing Conference with Labor Negotiator, Government Agency 54957. SEIU, Local 1021, and Cecilia Police Association. and Conference with Labor Negotiator, Government Code Section 54957. agency designated representative Deborah Muchmore And the city manager is the employee being discussed. So I will now go ahead and open it up for public comment on these closed session items. And do we have any members of the public present at this time? |
| 00:18:12.97 | Walfred Solorzano | We do not have, let me see. We had some people come in. We do not have any public members present for comment |
| 00:18:23.59 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so I'll go ahead and close it up for public comment and we will go into closed session. |
| 00:18:33.97 | Steven Woodside | Let's do that. Okay, we actually just had one of our candidates for disaster preparedness log in. So we're going to return to open session momentarily and go ahead and interview this candidate. And then we will go adjourn into closed session. So hi, thank you so much for joining us. If you could tell us your name and a little bit about yourself and why you've decided to apply for the disaster preparedness committee. |
| 00:19:02.37 | Steven Woodside | You're muted, so we can't hear you. |
| 00:19:08.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:19:08.38 | Steven Woodside | Can you hear me? |
| 00:19:08.96 | Unknown | Yeah. Yes. Okay. GUNNI HINIYI- Um hello, everyone. Sorry for being late. And my name is GUNNI HINI and I live around 4th street, actually right by 4th street, an old town Hurricane Gulch area. I am interested in because I am myself an earthquake survivor and I am one of the most aware, like, I guess, South Dakota residents on the disasters and how important being ready for any disasters in this area, especially earthquakes. Yes, we have maybe fires around, but so to that. And after the recent earthquake in Turkey, I just was interested in to see what our city is doing when it comes to disaster preparedness. I also have my undergrad in geophysics. So I'm pretty much familiar with the science a little bit. However, I never practiced it after I studied four years. And yeah, so the recent earthquake in Turkey reminded me, plus when I was even living in Palo Alto, I was also Um, joining the As a volunteer, of course, I was working with the preparedness team. And yeah, so that's how I found myself here. And I am looking forward to be volunteering for Sassolito. |
| 00:20:39.68 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:20:39.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:40.02 | Melissa Blaustein | I'll bring it up to the dais for questions. I love questions. Hi there. Thank you for joining us. It sounds like you have had a lot of different experiences that touch on this very important topic. Do you want to mention a few things that you see as priorities for Sausalito to address when it comes to disaster preparedness? |
| 00:20:58.32 | Unknown | Yeah, so what is it called retrofitting the houses, right? Do we know if the citizens in South Dakota, are they aware of that certain prior, I think, correct me if I am wrong, but I think before 1980s, right? If your house is built before 1980s, because when I talk to some of my friends, they are like, we are in America. I mean, If the disaster happens here, we are pretty much developed country. However, then I talked to some American California scientists and they told me, no, if you have your house, prior to 1980s, you more likely need, like you need someone to check your house and you need to be aware of that whether you need to retrofit your house or not. Do we know how many people are aware of it, right? What do we do for that? |
| 00:21:54.61 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:22:03.15 | Jill Hoffman | And apologies, I had some... court dealings to deal with in San Francisco today. So I'm just now arriving. So apologies for being late. And nice to virtually meet you. Thank you. |
| 00:22:15.06 | Unknown | Nice meeting you. |
| 00:22:16.94 | Steven Woodside | So you mentioned wildfires as another potential disaster preparedness issue. And of course, your personal experience with earthquakes. Are there other areas of concern? Have you thought about climate change disasters and the links between climate? Okay, I would love to hear a little bit about your thoughts on that. |
| 00:22:30.00 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:22:34.23 | Unknown | Well, I am very sensitive to that topic, however, I can't tell you that I'm super knowledgeable when it comes to how South Salito is preparing. Yes, but I know I mean, that can be my question to the city. I can evolve in that area. However, I am not gonna be talking too much. I know we have the risk, but... we have the heels too. So I don't know where we stand when it comes to, Um, the climate change and sea rising so very well. But I will be happy to be a part of and do more research on it. Thank you. |
| 00:23:21.13 | Steven Woodside | Great. Do we have other questions from the dais? Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for your interest and thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. Can I ask some questions? We actually don't have time, unfortunately. We just typically, we ask questions of the applicant. If it's a question about the process, we can probably quickly respond to that, and then we have to go into closed session. |
| 00:23:42.47 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:23:42.71 | Steven Woodside | . |
| 00:23:42.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:23:42.91 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:23:42.96 | Unknown | Sounds good. |
| 00:23:43.51 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:23:43.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:23:43.96 | Steven Woodside | Thank you though so much for your time. We appreciate it. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and adjourn into closed session as we've already taken public comments. So we'll go ahead and do that. |
| 00:23:54.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:24:02.00 | Unknown | Thank you. What do you think that again? Great. You can do that approach again. |
| 00:24:13.49 | Steven Woodside | Are we ready? Okay, great. Thank you so much. And I'm welcoming us back from closed session discussion and there are no announcements recording in progress. |
| 00:24:21.58 | Unknown | progress. |
| 00:24:22.50 | Steven Woodside | So I am now calling back to order this regular agenda, regularly agendized meeting of the city council at 7.15 PM. So, I have a couple of mayor's announcements that I want to share to get us started. This week we are officially kicking off Pride Month, and I wanted to just share a few things we have going on. On Thursday at the Sausalito Center for the Arts at 6 p.m. there's an opening party, which is absolutely free for everyone to attend. You just have to register on Eventbrite. And this Friday will be Pride Jazz starting at 6.30 p.m. featuring Banda Sin Nombre, And, um, this Saturday, if you were lucky enough to get tickets, there's a drag show at Jean Heller. And on that note as well, we will be having a drag story hour at our library on Monday, July 3rd from 1130 to 130. So I want to thank Councilmember Kelman for all of her excellent work organizing our first Pride festivities here in the city of Sausalito. A couple other festive things are coming up that I want to make sure the community is aware of, as I'm sure you all know, next week is the 4th of July. So we will be having our regular parade that starts at, um, over in Old Town and will come all the way down Caledonia Street. We're going to have the Cal Band as usual. Thanks, Jerry Taylor, for that. And I think all of the members of the council will be participating as well. This year, we are celebrating 10 years of our sister city partnership with Keshekesh, and they are bringing a delegation who will be in that parade as well. So it should certainly be a lot of fun. And I'm really excited to announce that Trisha Smith, who has done so much for our community, most notably lately running Sausalito village and doing tons of work to assist our seniors and to continue to do great outreach for senior housing and senior advocacy. will be our grand marshal this year. So we're really excited to have Trisha Smith be our grand marshal. Should be very exciting. And of course we will, as usual, have our fireworks and there are still tables available for the fireworks in Gabrielson park. And we're also still seeking donations to support the fireworks because it's thanks to you that we're able to do that every year. So those are all of the fun, happy announcements. And the city manager has a less fun, but still important update on an incident we had on bridgeway last week. |
| 00:26:40.00 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, members of the public. I want to start by saying, you know, besides our finances at the city of Sausalito, we've discussed three important things, infrastructure, infrastructure, and infrastructure. And that came to bear on Monday, June the 19th in the afternoon when a 12-inch cast iron water main failed. That infrastructure is part of the Marin Municipal Water District system. So when that failed, the impact to businesses nearby, to the community, to traffic was pretty profound because that's a huge line. In terms of Marin Municipal Water District, it's important for the community to know that the city of Sausalito City Council, nor the city manager, is responsible in charge of its part of the Marin Municipal Water District, which our representative in Sausalito is Mr. Jed Smith. He's the District 4 representative. And to give a little overview over the district, it has over 190,000 customers in 10 towns and cities. It manages over 900 miles of pipe and pump stations and water treatment plants. As part of their capital improvement program, they replace four to six miles a year. So a very big system, very critical without water. There isn't civilization without our partnership with them. Sausalito would still be getting water from its springs like it used to back in the good old days. So one of the things that happened immediately was I received a phone call from Pat Guasco, spoke to him extensively. Kevin McGowan was on the scene, the Southern Marin Fire District, our contract folks in community development, trying to work through how to reopen the businesses. and a meeting was set up by our office, Noelle Gonzalez, set up a meeting with the general manager of the district the next day. And so I spoke to Ben Hornstein, who is the city manager equivalent of the water district and his staff. And he talked to me about why it broke, what it was that broke. Some of the things that I think would be interesting to the community is it's a cast iron pipe It was installed in 1943. that's not the latest, greatest technology, but it points to the fact that a lot of infrastructure in Sausliu is old. What we see above the ground, but certainly what we have below the ground is quite dated. So why did it break? Sometimes it involves pressure as well as age, as well as just the useful life of that particular piping or something that is different. So one of the things I asked the general manager was, okay, it broke. So tell us a little bit about what you're going to do about it. What are you planning for this particular stretch of Sausalito so that this doesn't happen again? What is in the works with your capital improvement program that would in fact provide some comfort to the businesses and residents and people that use that road in Sausalito as to maybe preventing this from happening anytime in the near future. So they promised me a report on what their capital improvement program would be. They talked about, you know, the idea of taking a hard look at this to see if, in fact, there needed to be an accelerated or more attention paid to this area as it relates to the capital improvement program. Those were commitments made from the general manager. The other thing that was stressed to me and was also important is the business impacted certain or the brakes impacted certain businesses. And so those businesses have to deal with the water district and provide, you know, some claims assistance. And so they're committed to doing that. Secondly, the condition of the road, I was told it wouldn't be reopened for two to three days, it got open the next day. So that was much appreciated. But the work there is not done. It's like a Tijuana speed hump right now. So we want to make sure that that work gets done. And I'm understanding it will get done by the end of the month. And then any claims for impacts to businesses, it's part of the district's purview to handle. So with that, I'm happy to conclude that report and take any questions if you have any, Mayor. |
| 00:30:55.42 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much, city manager. Are there questions from the dais? Yes. Thank you. |
| 00:30:59.12 | Melissa Blaustein | Manager. Thanks to DPW for responding so quickly, Pat and others for their hard work here, and Abbott, of course, for getting it out to the community. I'm wondering, Chris, if you've had conversations with Jed or other members of the district to understand other pipes that might be vulnerable, other water conveyances that might be vulnerable, where they're located. can we get any of those either GIS or CAD drawings and I'm looking at our sustainability and resilience manager. That might be some helpful information for us as we do some of our long-term adaptation planning as well. So do we have access to data? Do we know where the, do they have a sense of where the next big problem could be? And can we get ahead of it? |
| 00:31:38.74 | Chris Zapata | I did not ask for that specific information, Council Member Kelman, but I will. I can. What I did ask was, what is your capital improvement program, and where is it working, and what's committed to Sausalito? And so that information, I'm sure I will get. |
| 00:31:55.55 | Steven Woodside | Thanks, city manager. Do we have other questions from the dais? Okay, and we do need to move to approve the agenda, but I wanted to make one slight change to the agenda, which is that as it appears, the boards and commissions. Pardon me boards and conditions conduct appears prior to the budget, but we will first be hearing the budget so I just wanted to make a motion for approval of the agenda with that adjustment so moved. |
| 00:32:16.00 | Michelle Or | MEN. |
| 00:32:21.31 | Steven Woodside | OK? |
| 00:32:23.63 | Michelle Or | Great. |
| 00:32:24.59 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Fantastic. Okay, great. So that passes. And then the next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from our prior meeting. |
| 00:32:27.19 | Michelle Or | Hi. |
| 00:32:37.46 | Steven Woodside | which would be the June 13, 2023 meeting. Do we have any public comment on those minutes? |
| 00:32:45.83 | Walfred Solorzano | If there's any members of the public that are in attendance, you can fill out, which there are none, but I'll just make the announcement. If you wanted to fill out a form to speak, there's one over by the television and you can bring it back over to the clerk area. If you're on Zoom, you can use a raise hand function. If you're on telephone through Zoom, you can press star nine. And seen none. |
| 00:33:05.14 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment and ask for a motion to approve the June 13th, 2023 minutes. |
| 00:33:10.49 | Melissa Blaustein | some of the |
| 00:33:13.47 | Steven Woodside | All in favor, say aye. Fantastic. The next item on the agenda is our consent calendar. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial. require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous council support, and may be enacted by the council in one motion in the form listed below. will be no separate discussion of consent calendar items. However, Before the council votes on a motion to adopt the consent calendar, council members may request specific items be removed. Items removed from the consent calendar will be discussed later on the agenda when public comment will be heard. So this evening on the consent calendar, we have 3A. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager towards the construction contract for West Street sanitary line replacement. 3b authorize amendments to the city's classification and compensation plans related to new classifications of capital planning and project management. 3c approve publicly available pay schedule. 3D, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager. to execute the fourth amendment to agree to purchase of parking equipment and related 3E, GAN limit for fiscal year 2024. 3F, investment policy for fiscal year 2024. 3G, authorize the release of RFP, sea level rise adaptation, community engagement for Sausalito. And 3H, authorize the release of RFP, sea level rise adaptation plan for Sausalito. Would any members of the council like to comment on or remove any items on the consent calendar as listed? I would like to just thank the sea level rise task force for their very hard work on both of these items on the consent calendar. I know that council members Hoffman and Kelman did a lot of excellent work in preparing that. And I know that Katie through Garcia, who's here with us also did a lot of work on getting those RFPs together. So I wanted to make sure we did give recognition for that as well. Okay, I'll open it up for public comment on the consent calendar. |
| 00:35:05.57 | Walfred Solorzano | See you none. |
| 00:35:07.40 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment and ask for a motion to approve our consent calendar. So move to. All in favor say aye. |
| 00:35:16.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:35:16.17 | Walfred Solorzano | Bye. |
| 00:35:16.54 | Steven Woodside | Hi, fantastic motion carries unanimously. We will now move on to public hearing items item four of which this evening, there are none. So item five business items, and we will start with as amended in the agenda. Five B is now five a adoption of the fiscal year, 2023, 2024. budget and allocated funded positions. And we have our interim finance director has at the podium. |
| 00:35:42.50 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you, Mayor, Council, and members of the public. Quite the honor to be in front of you this evening. Um, What a journey it's been. We started this process almost six months ago with our mid-year budget review. for fiscal year 23. And here we are tonight looking at our fiscal year 24 adopted budget. Um, can advance to the next slide. Just again, just a high level overview of some of the steps that we've taken. You know, we've reviewed our mid-year budget. We published our audit report March 16th. We've had several budget discussions and feedback sessions where you guys have provided additional guidance and clarity on the direction of our budget. So here we are tonight, June 27th. We're going to formally adopt our budget. We just approved the GAN limit and our investment policy through the consent agenda. So today is really just another opportunity to ask questions of council and the public. There aren't any significant changes from last week. So again, just a visual of the process. We started off with kind of a very high level preliminary budget on May 9th, brought that back on the 23rd with your recommendations. And then June 3rd, 13th, two weeks ago, we brought forward our first reading. And here we are tonight with the adopted budget. A small, small change from last week, but nothing significant. I did find a little bit more savings within the general fund. So we bring that number forward, but overall, nothing material to report. So here's what we have in front of us today. Three of these items have already been addressed. We're looking at the approving the publicly available pay schedules. That was done as part of consent. We're adopting our fiscal year budget, which we are doing right now. We've reviewed and adopted our investment policy as required by California law. And we've also adopted our GAN limit calculation, again, required by California law under the consent agenda. So moving forward, here we have a very high level summary of our funds, really our unrestricted funds, the general fund, the old city hall, MLK, Parking Bank of America those items that we can we can direct those resources as we choose. The primary driver or the primary fund of the city, the general fund, you can see here we have essentially a balanced budget. We've got a positive surplus of $863. Um, Again, we found just a little bit of savings in one of our departments, so we went ahead and adjusted that. Overall, we're going to end the year with essentially a balanced budget for the general fund. If you look at our other funds here, you can see the projected change in balance, most notably the parking fund. Parking fund has a slight decrease in fund balance where we're going to transfer about $1.5 million over to the general fund to support that operations. If we move forward to our restricted use funds, there are a couple of items that I just wanna draw your attention to as they make up a large portion of our overall change in fund balance for the year. The first one I want to bring your attention to is the sea level rise grant. So this is a state grant that we received in fiscal year 23. We received just a, we received a million dollars to help us study the impacts of sea level rise. Um, We received those dollars in 23, but we're not going to spend them to total in 2024. So $570,000 of our projected, I'm going to say deficit, but again, we're spending prior year revenues as $570,000, which makes up a large portion of our citywide fund deficit, which we'll see on the next page of $1.1 million. So I think that's an important note that we are spending previously recorded revenues from another year. We're not borrowing money. We're not going into debt on that. It's when those dollars are recognized. And I think that's an important point that we need to discuss. The other item that I want to draw your attention to is the general capital projects fund. So it's the second from the bottom. There we have projected, and again, I'm going to use the word deficit spending, but it's again spending previously earned or recorded revenues on infrastructure. So in this year's CIP plan, we've got just over $5 million going to be invested in our infrastructure throughout our community. of that All but about $700,000 is current year revenue. So $692,000 is previously recognized revenue, and we still are projected to end that fund with a positive $146,000 fund balance at the end of the fiscal year. And again, that is predominantly measure L dollars. Of the $3.4 million transferred in, $2.9 million is essentially measure L dollars that the community voted on and wanted to invest in our infrastructure. Moving to the next slide, we're looking at our debt service funds. We have two, the Tidelands Loan Fund, which is being paid off through a transfer in from the Tidelands Fund, where we charge rents for those granted lands. And then our 2006 A&B bond is part of this. Overall, you can see that bottom number in our change in balance of 1.1 million. That is, again, our projected deficit spend, and I use that cautiously. But again, I wanted to point out that the bulk of that is made up of our C-level rise grant and our capital improvement fund grant. Again, those are dollars that were simply recognized in a previous fiscal year, and it's just due to timing that is showing that. If we go to the next page, just a high level summary of those transfers in and transfer outs. Again, the primary beneficiary of these dollars, these transfer dollars is the capital projects fund. You can see that that's bringing in about $3.4 million from gas tax, construction impact, stair fund, measure AA, and then again, those measure L dollars. Um, So that gives you a high level summary of those transfers. And then on the next slide, I wanted to give just a quick update on fiscal year 2023, just to keep you guys informed on where things are at, because I think that's an important concept or important thing that we need to inform you of. I don't want any surprises as our audit gets published later this year. So I've been running some additional projections and looking at where things stand for fiscal year 23. Our general fund is showing a strong performance or a strong projection. And again, reviewing the numbers, I project that we're going to end the year in the black just over a million dollars. It's about $100,000 less than my last projection, but again, we're having a very strong performance. and we will end in the black at my current projection of about 1 million. What's driving that? On the revenue side, we've got business licenses are coming in strong. We've got about 400,000 over budget, mainly attributable to HDL and their enforcement and discovery efforts. They're doing a really great job for our community, making sure that people are purchasing those business licenses or paying in the taxes that are due. Um, recreation revenues are over budget by about 170,000. Again, very strong performance there. And then property tax collections are over budget by about 400,000. I think that was a budgeting oops when they, when they put together that mid-year budget, because that's, that should be a pretty predictable number, but that was under budgeted. And again, we're bringing in dollars to our general fund. General fund expenses are coming in under budget by about $600,000. The bulk of that is salaries and benefits, again, are under budget by about $800,000, again, due to salary savings where we have vacant positions. And also we budget some budgetary slack within that line item just to give some flexibility. Professional services is over budget by about $400,000 for the year. A big portion of that is attributable to the HDL fees. HDL works on a basically like a commission style. The more they find, they get a percentage of that. So With that increase of $400,000 of dollars that they're bringing into the table for business licenses, it does increase our professional services line, and that's a main driver of that. Supplies and materials is coming in under budget by about $200,000. Again, just due to the departments being very cautious of their costs and controlling those as they do the work that they do. Moving forward to the next slide, give you a quick update on parking fund. Parking fund is having a great year, very strong performance. Current year revenues are about $420,000 over budget. As of 6-15, we got 15 days left, bringing about another $80,000, $80,000 to $100,000 during that last part of the time. Some of that data is in the system, but I didn't have a chance to pull that. But based on historical averages or trends, we should have a really great year in the parking fund. |
| 00:44:55.53 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:45:01.67 | Angeline Loeffler | Expenses for that fund are slightly over budget, again, just due to those transactional costs that are associated with those higher revenues. A lot of our parking dollars are paid on a credit card, which does pull transactional fees. Current cash balance in the parking fund is $1.1 million, an increase of $118,000. And again, that's after a $2 million transfer to the general fund in fiscal year 23. Um, MLK fund is performing as expected, um, really close to budget. Um, again, we're expecting about a $500,000 surplus in that fund. Current cash balance and MLK after we paid our COP debt service for this year is $1.5 million, an increase of $548,000 over the prior year. I'm not sure. Again, I just want to bring forward that interfund loan that's sitting out there. We've got that interfund loan between the general fund and the MLK fund of $653,000. Again, my preference would be to pay that back, but I know there's been some hesitation, so I just wanna bring that forward, just maybe a discussion point if you choose. Or we can continue to follow the regular amortization schedule and pay it off in the next five years. But again, my preference would be to pay that off. Um, So with that being said, I will turn it over to city manager just for some of his closing thoughts before we open it up for questions, comments. the approval of the budget. |
| 00:46:23.41 | Chris Zapata | Mayor and Council, if you can ask your questions and comments and Chad can respond, I'll have closing comments for the staff before you take the motions. |
| 00:46:33.55 | Steven Woodside | Okay, but I'll warn you that we may run this meeting like the last meeting where there's a motion on the table. And then we discuss it. So just putting that out there. We'll give you an opportunity to weigh in, of course, but I just wanted to make sure you were aware. All right, so we're going to bring it back up to the dais for Director Hest. I just want to say thank you so much to you and your team and to the city manager for the amazing work that you've done in the city. changing the way we consider the budget, what's possible in the budget and where we stand, I think coming from what was a $3 million structural deficit going into this year. and cutting that down to something like 400,000 and coming up in the black. in this year's fund is really fantastic. So thank you for that. And we'll just open it up for questions on the dice. Go ahead. |
| 00:47:16.77 | Joan Cox | Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Chad, for a great presentation and for really great work on this process overall. Really appreciate it. how much you've dug in and learned in such a short amount of time. Oh, I was actually reading that last slide. |
| 00:47:35.06 | Steven Woodside | Can we put that slide back up that was just on there? The camera? We don't have. Yeah, thank you. |
| 00:47:40.46 | Joan Cox | Great. Thank you. So you kind of threw something out there as part of your clothes, Chad, that you would prefer to see us pay back. make that transfer. And that was not something that this council had previously decided to do, but you're raising it again. Can you explain more about why you think that is more prudent financially than the course we've done? |
| 00:47:58.86 | Melissa Blaustein | you |
| 00:47:59.02 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 00:47:59.34 | Melissa Blaustein | . |
| 00:48:04.68 | Joan Cox | been on. |
| 00:48:05.15 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, so it's really just an accounting entry. It's not technically a transfer. It's a payback of a loan. So years ago, the general fund borrowed dollars to MLK, and they're paying 3% interest. At the end of the day, we still have the same amount of dollars if we would pay it back. It's just taking it from one fund and moving it to the other. Um, I get a lot of questions on it, why it's there, it's additional entries. It's just cleaner if we clean it up and pay it back. Um, that's just my preference because it would eliminate that, those two line items on my, my, on the balance sheet. I wouldn't have an additional adjusting entry. We wouldn't be charging the MLK fund interest to the general fund It's just an accounting entry, and at the end of the day, the city is no different if it leaves it there or if it pays it off. |
| 00:48:58.78 | Joan Cox | And is there a reason not to make this transfer? |
| 00:49:02.54 | Angeline Loeffler | No. |
| 00:49:02.66 | Joan Cox | Why has this not been done previously? What resistance have you met previously to making this adjustment, and why are you bringing this up again this evening? |
| 00:49:02.96 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm going to go to the |
| 00:49:11.23 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. perhaps just lack of why it's there. I mean, it really, there's cash in the MLK fund. unless we're going to use it for something. In the MLK fund that's been identified in the near term, It really can just go back to the general fund, which would unassign some of your general fund fund balance, because in the general fund we have 600,000 that's non spendable in the general fund, so it would free up some. unassigned fund balance in the general fund. |
| 00:49:44.71 | Joan Cox | And so what we've talked about in terms of our long term deferred maintenance planning is creating cost centers within each of our areas, streets, sidewalks, sewers, storm drains. what upcoming expenses do we have and have we done that analysis for the MLK project? |
| 00:50:02.03 | Angeline Loeffler | On the MLK, yes. So we've done some preliminaries with Council Member McGowan and back in May, May 22nd comes to mind. We did some initial projections where we went five years out and looked at that capital spend. And in that projection, paying this back was part of that projection. I don't have it handy, but it is out on the peak agenda from May 22nd where I did those projections. And I can certainly bring those back. We don't have to decide on this today. I just, I wanted to create some discussion around it, which is great. So we can certainly revisit. If it stays there for the fiscal year, it does, it, it doesn't make a huge difference. |
| 00:50:45.16 | Joan Cox | Well, I just would like to be sure that we have monies within the fund to pay for... |
| 00:50:50.02 | Angeline Loeffler | The repairs. |
| 00:50:50.14 | Joan Cox | THE FAMILY IS THE FAMILY. repairs. Yeah, and I know that as part of you know, ongoing lease negotiations, upgrades have been requested by some of the tenants. So I wanted to be sure that we have a holistic conversation about this as a cost center and not just a line item entry. |
| 00:51:07.25 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. So this fund does put off positive cash flow to the tune of about a half a million dollars a year. So in the projection, we had this being paid back in fiscal year 23. Next year, we had some additional dollars being transferred over the general fund, which is part of the FY24 budget. And then based upon the CIP schedules there, I don't recall all of them off the top of my head, but there was like gym floor replacement, carpet replacement. There were a few other items to the tune of about 400,000 a year of improvements from fiscally like 26, 27, 28. So there are sufficient dollars to continue to invest in that investment, that revenue center of the city. And if there is a need to bring some dollars back for an improvement, a new interfund loan could be reestablished at that point in time if needed. |
| 00:52:04.52 | Joan Cox | And the COPs, what's the collateral for the COPs? |
| 00:52:11.39 | Angeline Loeffler | I don't know off the top of my head. As far as the, like, if we didn't pay them, it would come after the tax revenue, the tax dollars. They're backed by the full faith and credit of the city is my understanding. |
| 00:52:20.89 | Joan Cox | But I thought that somehow the MLK property was the- The collateral. |
| 00:52:26.46 | Angeline Loeffler | THANK YOU. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know off the top of my head. I can certainly do some additional research on that. |
| 00:52:32.28 | Joan Cox | I think I would want to better understand what those issues that I've raised before making that decision. |
| 00:52:39.23 | Angeline Loeffler | That's fair. That's great. |
| 00:52:41.75 | Joan Cox | just personally. But thank you for answering my questions. |
| 00:52:43.00 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 00:52:43.33 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:52:44.92 | Steven Woodside | House member Kilman, you had a question, right? |
| 00:52:46.68 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes, I have a few. Thank you, Chad. This is a lovely packet we have here. on. |
| 00:52:51.55 | Angeline Loeffler | It's back. |
| 00:52:53.14 | Melissa Blaustein | So, yeah, so a couple of these questions are going to be a little in the weeds, but my reason for that is because I want us and the community to be able to use this, not just as a proposed budget, but as a planning document in terms of helping us understand our priorities. And so |
| 00:53:10.93 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. |
| 00:53:12.58 | Melissa Blaustein | One of the things that We had... We had talked about a couple of meetings ago, we were talking about MLK and revenues. We spend a lot of money, as Councilman Cox was mentioning, about the COPs on our various parks. And then when I scroll down into page nine and I see general fund revenue account detail, under recreation revenues, very little dollars. MLK recreation revenue, $29,294 dollars. and the projected gets even lower. And that concerns me because we put so much money into that and it's such an opportunity as a new revenue source. And so I don't know that I have a specific question in terms of why does this number save this number, but how might we use this as an exercise to locate those opportunities for new revenue And I am curious why it declines in 2324. But as an example, how can we package some of this? So we understand the revenue opportunities and the two parks as an example. |
| 00:54:11.00 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 00:54:16.43 | Melissa Blaustein | you |
| 00:54:16.87 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, that's a really great question. And I don't know if I have all of the specifics, but I know that youth classes, so within youth classes, a lot of those activities are taking place up at MLK as well. So it's not necessarily only MLK revenue that is attributable to that location. Now, looking at the youth classes, there were some, in fiscal year 22, there were And a change into 23, there was a change in how the registration took place for like a tennis program that was run. I don't know the name off the top of my head, but I know that there was a tennis program that was originally we would collect those registration fees and then pass. Don't quote me. I want to say about 75% on to this other organization that ran the camp. So they took over the registration fees themselves and now remit a portion of those revenues directly to us. So that was a significant change on the revenue side, but then also on the expenditure side for recreation revenues. Um, I think additional research needs to be done on a lot of our revenue sources. There's a lot of... There's a lot of revenues that come into the city and it takes time to really dive into them and understand them and make sure that we're tracking them as we should, that all of these categories do specifically describe what it is we're earning. But I see your point. I think there's a lot of untapped potential. I had a really great discussion with, with Brian Vitale earlier today, and we talked a lot about recreation revenues and how we can, we can leverage those resources that we have. Um, So I don't think I have a great response today for that. But yeah, I agree. |
| 00:56:02.21 | Melissa Blaustein | That's a great response. I think that's a great response. So thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:56:05.06 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. OK. |
| 00:56:06.10 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, so let me move on then to the sustainability and resiliency. Obviously, first year that we've had this. |
| 00:56:09.60 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. Yes. |
| 00:56:11.93 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 00:56:11.94 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 00:56:12.45 | Melissa Blaustein | Interesting, you mentioned the million dollars is a 2024 spend, not a 2023 spend, which is, I'm assuming, why on page 25 we're not seeing. |
| 00:56:21.17 | Angeline Loeffler | You're not going to see it on page 25. You're going to see that under the special revenue funds. So that's going to be later in the book, like page... It's going to be before page 61. But- |
| 00:56:35.94 | Melissa Blaustein | Let me pose my question real quick, which is that at some point, we're going to need an efficient manner to tie together monies that are spent to enhance infrastructure resilience. And I don't know if that money and the budget reporting is going to live. |
| 00:56:37.59 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, yeah. |
| 00:56:46.03 | Angeline Loeffler | And I don't know. |
| 00:56:49.25 | Melissa Blaustein | under this sustainability resiliency summit summary or that that budget lives in department of public works or elsewhere so i want to be as efficient as possible around it and things will get lost and so as an example we just approved the sea level rise rfp |
| 00:56:56.68 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 00:57:03.18 | Melissa Blaustein | A lot of that work will be infrastructure work, the deferred maintenance will need to get captured somewhere and then organized within the capital improvement program I can't even begin to mind map that without a whiteboard. I want to fly it. |
| 00:57:16.27 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes, I and I know that sustainability and resiliency is going to impact all of our departments. It's, it's really. something that sets the vision for how we spend our dollars, how we look at those investments in the future. Um, And I've been thinking about that too. And I'm not quite sure how we track that. I know there's some additional like project tracking codes that we can set up in our accounting software. to help get a grip on that. I see your point because as we, as we build out infrastructure, as we invest in better, better like electric vehicles or improvements of our buildings to make them more efficient, there's a component of that that's associated with that. And how do we track it? I think the main dollar, the main spend, is going to come from those departments, like public works, parks, recreation, police, if they get into electric vehicles. But yeah, how does that tie back to our sustainability and resiliency efforts? There's a framework that I think we need to overlay our accounting records that helps track that. |
| 00:58:21.29 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, agreed. And I think it gets to my next point, which is Pitch 49, talking about Thailand's a waterfront fund. |
| 00:58:21.78 | Angeline Loeffler | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:58:27.41 | Melissa Blaustein | We have a lot of different maintenance and we've talked very briefly about doing some further investigation, I think, as an example to Spinnifer. Yes. So when I look at this page 49, |
| 00:58:34.22 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. |
| 00:58:36.92 | Melissa Blaustein | I have two questions. The first question I have is city-owned properties, where do we stand on receivable of rents? Is anybody not up to date? I don't know how to know that from here. And the second is, which of these could end up being in the red for us because we have some type of deferred maintenance obligation, and how are we planning for that? |
| 00:58:57.03 | Angeline Loeffler | Certainly. Great question. This book would not answer your question on who's and if there is a receivable or rents due to us. There was one tenant that was behind on rent, but they have subsequently paid within the last week or two. So my understanding is everybody is current within the Tideland's fund. So that's a report that we're working on bringing forward on a regular cadence on how we can show like the performance of our rental activities as well as like outstanding receivables. for the funds, it takes time to develop. But we'll certainly get there and we can provide a rough report if that's of interest to you. Not something that would be polished and great presentation, but it would show you basically those receivable balances. As far as deferred maintenance on these, within the CIP plan, there was a structural assessment or a facilities assessment for the Spinnaker property and that surrounding area, which will give us better insight as far as what deferred maintenance is out there and what's the potential costs of that. |
| 01:00:02.68 | Melissa Blaustein | Great example. That area will be part of the sea level rise vulnerability assessment. We'll actually have that information as a result of the work that will be done. |
| 01:00:06.51 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. |
| 01:00:10.89 | Melissa Blaustein | How do we capture that in the right fund? All right, so my last question, page 55, storm drain fund. I mentioned this one because during the storms, we had storm drains that backed up. Yes. And I think we even got emergency funds |
| 01:00:22.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 01:00:22.97 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 01:00:26.79 | Melissa Blaustein | 40,000, I can't remember city manager, but we were able to apply for some monies to cover some costs. I'm interested to where reimbursement monies get captured. |
| 01:00:36.98 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. So they would typically get reimbursements would go back to the fund that incurred that expense. So there are. A lot of those expenditures are going to come out of the general fund, out of the public works department. So when those reimbursements come in, they would make that fund whole that incurred that original expense. |
| 01:00:54.80 | Melissa Blaustein | So may I just throw out a thought exercise, which is some of those are deferred. some of them are climate risk and resilience. |
| 01:01:03.74 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 01:01:03.98 | Melissa Blaustein | as some of them may get addressed through funds that come through climate resilience work, or maybe even MMWD comes back with some analysis of their structure we'll have to figure out how to allocate for that's not all going to be general fund Monies. |
| 01:01:18.55 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 01:01:18.68 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. |
| 01:01:19.02 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 01:01:21.36 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you, Charles. |
| 01:01:21.92 | Angeline Loeffler | Great questions. Thank you. |
| 01:01:22.21 | Steven Woodside | . |
| 01:01:22.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:01:24.52 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:01:24.55 | Jill Hoffman | Does anyone else have questions? Councilmember Huffman? Hi. Thank you. I like the budget book. Thank you. And the team that put it together. Okay. the I believe, I recall at the last, and I apologize, usually I would have previewed this question to you, but I was just too busy last night. week. Um, The city, I think the city mayor, and this is about payment to the pension trust fund or investment, further investment in the pension trust fund. |
| 01:01:52.87 | Angeline Loeffler | The section 115. |
| 01:01:54.61 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, the section 115. Thank you. Yes. |
| 01:01:55.94 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. |
| 01:01:56.43 | Jill Hoffman | I couldn't find it in here. Can you tell me what page that's – and did we do it and what pages aren't there? |
| 01:02:01.15 | Angeline Loeffler | So, so that's a good, that's a good question. So the section 115 trust for financial reporting is included within the general fund. So my goal of this book was to get it as close to financial reporting as far as what funds roll up to it within each other. So it's part of the general fund presentation. So you won't be able to see that line item. Actually you would be. If we go to It's not gonna show you the balance of the fund. I can certainly, that would be provided on the Treasurer's Report, which would be published in July. to show you the balance But if you look at |
| 01:02:46.13 | Angeline Loeffler | Let's see if I can find it. Sorry. Um, On page nine. under miscellaneous revenues you're going to see an account number at the bottom of the miscellaneous revenues category. It's 401-0001. So 401 is the pension. section 115 pension fund. So you can see in 2021, we contributed $424,000 to that fund. And then in 2022, we contributed 250,000 to that fund. So that's the detail there. And then under The interest earnings category. Yeah, so just a little bit farther up that page, on page nine, under the interest earnings category, you can see fund 401. And you can see the performance in 22. We took a pretty steep loss there of $290,000. And then we have budgeted increases. I was very, very conservative of that because I have no idea where the market's going. Um, So, That is, I was very conservative. I didn't show an increase in fund balance for that fund because I have no idea what the market's going to do. |
| 01:03:57.86 | Jill Hoffman | So do we have somewhere in here, is there. um, Is there a current |
| 01:04:03.97 | Angeline Loeffler | balance. |
| 01:04:04.73 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:04:05.14 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. No. |
| 01:04:06.32 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:04:06.47 | Angeline Loeffler | I can provide that, though. |
| 01:04:08.39 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I would like to see that either, whatever. follow up our next meeting because I, you know, I'm looking at what the projections should have been by now. And I think they were... should have been somewhere for 2023, 24. depending upon which, I mean, these are from 2018, right? But these are different scenarios that we were going to invest in it. And they should have been from Um, And this is item 6A on the 6-26-2018, June 26, 2018, City Council meeting. So it should have been $5 million. 5.9 million, either 5.1 million or 4 million. based on different. scenarios that we looked at at that time for investment. And so I recall Um, And again, I apologize. I didn't preview this question due to my own schedule, but I recalled last, at the last city council meeting, the city manager's recommendation was that we invest depending on how you slice it, there might've been a surplus of around a million or million one, Chris, you could refresh my memory. And then your recommendation was to invest that in the pension trust fund, but I don't, I see. |
| 01:05:20.40 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:05:20.41 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 01:05:20.50 | Chris Zapata | THE END OF |
| 01:05:20.58 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. |
| 01:05:20.94 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:05:26.74 | Jill Hoffman | here on this that it looks like we haven't, we didn't invest anything this year in the pension fund. |
| 01:05:32.39 | Angeline Loeffler | We did not make any contributions to the Section 115 for pension or OPEB in fiscal year 23. The balance of the section 115 for pensions is right around 250,000 or 200, 2.5 million, sorry. 2.5 million. and some change. And then for the OPEB trust fund, it's, it's under, It's under 2 million for the OPEP trust. |
| 01:05:59.45 | Jill Hoffman | So if you could send us a summary. I'll send you, yeah. Yeah, thank you. That's disappointing news. Can you follow up on that? |
| 01:06:00.56 | Angeline Loeffler | I'll send, yeah. Yeah. |
| 01:06:02.15 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 01:06:06.06 | Joan Cox | No. |
| 01:06:06.08 | Jill Hoffman | No. So I thought, |
| 01:06:06.97 | Joan Cox | It gave direction for that 1 million to be invested. So why was it not? |
| 01:06:08.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:06:11.53 | Joan Cox | Yeah, I recall that as the direction as well. |
| 01:06:12.34 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:06:12.36 | Angeline Loeffler | So our fiscal year hasn't closed yet. So I want to make sure that we invest just the surplus into that section 115 trust. So that contribution will take place in fiscal year 24. So we're not gonna make it in 23. We're gonna make a contribution in 24. |
| 01:06:26.18 | Ian Sobieski | Amen. I think you'll simplify it if you just tell us what calendar day in the next 30 days and how much approximately do you think is going to go into that 115 trust? |
| 01:06:31.59 | Angeline Loeffler | Um... |
| 01:06:36.55 | Angeline Loeffler | approximately a million dollars and it would be towards the end of July. |
| 01:06:41.28 | Joan Cox | But I thought that we wanted to make it for this fiscal year. That was my understanding. It was for this fiscal year, and there was no proviso. We have to have a completely balanced budget. I thought our direction was to make it for the 2023. |
| 01:06:52.64 | Angeline Loeffler | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:06:56.84 | Joan Cox | fiscal year. |
| 01:06:58.04 | Angeline Loeffler | And if that is the direction of council, I will wire some dollars to PARS tomorrow. |
| 01:07:03.67 | Joan Cox | but was that not the direction of counsel? |
| 01:07:05.97 | Angeline Loeffler | I guess my understanding was whatever surplus we have, invest. So I misunderstood that it would be whatever the final number was. that would be what was invested. My projections could be wrong, but again, if we could invest dollars, we could invest a million dollars tomorrow. And if we have a $750,000 surplus, I mean, at the end of the day, we've invested a million dollars. It's up to you. If you want me to buy your money tomorrow, I certainly will. I- |
| 01:07:34.93 | Joan Cox | I... I apologize. If there was concern that your projections could be off by a quarter million dollars, I would have wanted to hear that. They won't be. But I thought that our direction was – and I don't mean – I'm surprised, and so it's being reflected in my tone, and I apologize for that. |
| 01:07:36.58 | Angeline Loeffler | I apologize. |
| 01:07:53.05 | Joan Cox | but I thought it was our clear direction to make this investment for the 2023 fiscal year. |
| 01:08:00.73 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay. I apologize for my misunderstanding. |
| 01:08:03.75 | Joan Cox | The manager can weigh in on what you're |
| 01:08:05.86 | Ian Sobieski | Can I just ask you a clarifying question? Does it make any difference in our accounting at all? It doesn't seem like it does, whether it's |
| 01:08:05.91 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:08:11.32 | Angeline Loeffler | It's not going to change our fund balance because the section 115 trust and the general fund are combined. So it's basically a... |
| 01:08:11.73 | Ian Sobieski | So, Thank you. Thank you. It's not going to happen. |
| 01:08:22.68 | Angeline Loeffler | Asset for asset transfer. We're gonna take it out of our operating account and put it in our PARS trust account. |
| 01:08:24.05 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah. |
| 01:08:24.10 | Joan Cox | . |
| 01:08:24.23 | Ian Sobieski | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:08:27.49 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:08:27.54 | Angeline Loeffler | It doesn't change our fund balance. |
| 01:08:29.65 | Joan Cox | I'm just but back in 2018, we made a commitment to make certain investments every year. And now we're going to skip 2023 if we don't carry out the council's direction. |
| 01:08:36.33 | Angeline Loeffler | THE END OF |
| 01:08:36.53 | Chris Zapata | Okay. |
| 01:08:36.59 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 01:08:41.04 | Chris Zapata | So if I can weigh in, I'd like to do that, Mayor and Council. I'm not sure what years you missed or held to that to get to the target that was stated earlier. My understanding was we were going to have a better year this year. We were going to close out the year with approximately a million in change. And the recommendation was that we would take that money and not put it into the general fund next year, but that we would put it into the 115 trust. And so I'm apologizing if I didn't hear do it now, because that's what I'm hearing today, do it now. And it can be done now if that's your direction. If we wait seven more days, we'll have closed out our book, so to speak. But it's up to you. |
| 01:08:41.48 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:08:41.60 | Angeline Loeffler | My apologies. |
| 01:08:42.02 | Joan Cox | like. |
| 01:09:22.82 | Joan Cox | Thank you. It's up to the Council. My understanding and preference was it for it to be that we were dealing with the 2023 fiscal year and I should have asked the clarifying question sooner. I didn't understand the mechanics. |
| 01:09:38.96 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, at the end of the day, It could be there tomorrow or it could be there in 30 days. it doesn't really change the math, But if you want it in 23, we can certainly make that happen. I guess I don't know if we need to Take a vote. |
| 01:09:56.93 | Steven Woodside | Can we just get a quick consensus from all the members of the council on whether or not you have – |
| 01:09:57.27 | Angeline Loeffler | So. |
| 01:10:01.70 | Steven Woodside | a preference with that regard. I mean, I understand the commitment made in 2018 and the urgency in that, but also what I hear Director Hess saying is, that it won't have an impact on our overall budget. Are there feelings either way on the dais? I want to be respectful of what the council would like to see reflected in fiscal year 23. |
| 01:10:28.84 | Jill Hoffman | Let me ask another clarifying question. investing in the pension trust fund before the end of this month. Would that change your calculations on... our budget. |
| 01:10:42.00 | Angeline Loeffler | No. It changes the fund balance designation. |
| 01:10:43.55 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:10:46.46 | Angeline Loeffler | from unassigned to restricted. So it'll change the balance sheet presentation on our audit report and that's it's really the only, the only thing it changes. It doesn't change our pension liability because it's, it's, it's, There's different types of trust funds. This is like a secondary type trust, so it doesn't affect our net pension liability. It's just a fund balance classification for our audit. |
| 01:11:12.31 | Jill Hoffman | Does it change the bottom line calculation for our |
| 01:11:16.27 | Angeline Loeffler | For a general fund? Yeah. No. |
| 01:11:17.45 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. No. So it still remains at $863. |
| 01:11:22.10 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. Yes. |
| 01:11:23.99 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. what I would like to see is whatever the council decides to do about. this month or next month. is a reconciliation of that chart from 2018. you |
| 01:11:38.68 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 01:11:38.94 | Jill Hoffman | and how we've complied or performed with it. So I can forward it to you. Yeah. You don't have to dig for it. I mean, but it is item 6A on June 26, 2018. And it gives the three different scenarios and anticipates. |
| 01:11:44.05 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. |
| 01:11:54.61 | Jill Hoffman | what years we're going to fund at what level, and then it gives a projection, understood as a projection, out to the year 28-29, actually, about what our pension trust fund should be at, and you know, all of those, well, the lowest scenario from 28, 29 was 10 million. One was $9 million, and the one was $8 million. So I'd like to know how we're tracking on that. |
| 01:12:25.31 | Jill Hoffman | You know, kind of neutral whether or not it's now or in a month, but I'd really like to have it in this year, fiscal year. I think that's important. That would be my preference. Yeah. |
| 01:12:35.57 | Steven Woodside | Vice Mayor. What does this mean? |
| 01:12:39.87 | Ian Sobieski | I think there's a, I mean, I'm with Chad and just knowing that makes no difference materially to how much money we have. But I think there's a desire that we make a contribution every year according to the schedule that you helped establish. I think we knew we were both on the council. And so I think that's the goal. It's this qualitative thing. Did we make the contribution in the fiscal year or not? So what you could do is just. contribute the safe number, the million, a million dollars, right, or whatever, brown number. before the end of the month. Thank you. |
| 01:13:07.78 | Steven Woodside | Sure. I think there's consensus to do that. And I'm hoping that that's not too much additional work for you, Chad, but. No. |
| 01:13:09.71 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:13:09.76 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 01:13:13.18 | Angeline Loeffler | Do we need anything formal from a legal perspective that maybe be a question? |
| 01:13:18.45 | Steven Woodside | That's a city attorney question. Sergio Reddin. |
| 01:13:18.90 | Angeline Loeffler | Bye. |
| 01:13:22.33 | Angeline Loeffler | Call a friend. |
| 01:13:23.16 | Steven Woodside | Phone a friend, Lifeline. Where is Sergio? |
| 01:13:26.67 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 01:13:26.68 | Sergio Rudin | Okay. |
| 01:13:27.06 | Steven Woodside | Hi. Thank you. |
| 01:13:27.90 | Sergio Rudin | Short answer is if you need something formal, then this should be agendized as a separate action. So I don't think that you do if it's just a accounting, um, |
| 01:13:36.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Did you? |
| 01:13:40.08 | Sergio Rudin | you know, designation that the finance director can do. And so I think as a practical matter, If that's the direction you guys give the staff and Chad feels he can accomplish it, then no, you don't need anything else. |
| 01:13:54.11 | Steven Woodside | Great. Okay. Thank you for that, Sergio. Thank you. |
| 01:13:56.44 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay. I will wire dollars tomorrow. Great. And then I will provide an accounting of what we actually did. Great. Compared to our projection as a one-way communication. And then I will put it as a, as a receive and file. for our next council meeting in July so the public can view it as well. |
| 01:14:14.93 | Steven Woodside | And Councilmember Hoffman will forward the 2018. Okay, perfect. That would be very helpful. Okay, Vice Mayor, did you? |
| 01:14:18.98 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 01:14:19.00 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, Vice Mayor. question. |
| 01:14:20.28 | Steven Woodside | questions. |
| 01:14:20.58 | Ian Sobieski | I do when the conference is finished. Okay. |
| 01:14:23.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:14:23.40 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:14:23.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:14:25.22 | Ian Sobieski | See, I knew you had more questions. |
| 01:14:27.16 | Steven Woodside | I'm not sure. |
| 01:14:27.23 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:14:27.38 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:14:27.42 | Ian Sobieski | Go ahead. |
| 01:14:29.75 | Unknown | Thank you. Oh. Thank you. And somewhere in the annual budget, Thank you. that this project is not included in Thank you. Indeed, that increased labor cost |
| 01:14:52.76 | Angeline Loeffler | So, so... So yes, yes, it is true that this is this, the wages that are in here are based upon our current step scale at the highest step. for all positions at full staffing. It does not include any adjustment for labor negotiations. And I looked today trying to find that notation where that was. I remember it somewhere, I just don't know where. trip. Yes, yes. |
| 01:15:27.10 | Unknown | And so, you know, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:15:40.13 | Angeline Loeffler | Correct. To some degree. Yes. To the negative. Yes. Depending upon where those negotiations fall. Yes. Yep. |
| 01:15:50.27 | Steven Woodside | Okay, vice mayor. |
| 01:15:53.94 | Ian Sobieski | You were mentioning wiring money makes me just ask, in that account, wherever you're wiring it to, what's the pro forma expected return in that account? |
| 01:16:03.62 | Angeline Loeffler | Um, I don't know off the top of my head, it hasn't been performing well. um, So I don't have a Performa available today that I can share with you, but it's... It hasn't been doing great. |
| 01:16:20.21 | Ian Sobieski | So we have more than $10 million in unrestricted cash in various different accounts bearing different kinds of returns. We proved an investment policy that |
| 01:16:26.91 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:16:29.54 | Ian Sobieski | just now on the consent agenda. The one-year treasury bill, which in the financial world is the definition of what's called risk-free return, risks-free. the standard for zero risk is earning 5.33%. So that's half a million dollars. I don't think we have all our cash in that. kind of yield. And I'm just wondering, do you need city council to formally consider making direction to do something like that? Or do you feel like you and the city manager have the latitude currently? to do that at your discretion. |
| 01:17:02.99 | Angeline Loeffler | So if we were to invest our idle reserves that are in the Bank of Marin, we have the authority under the investment policy to invest in treasuries. As it stands now, I'm in the process of setting up a treasury direct account for the city, but it takes some work because I wasn't an authorized signer on the account to start with. I have been added. So now I can move forward with that process. An alternative is with the Bank of Marin, they have a wealth management group that could purchase treasuries on our behalf. I have started to explore that as well. My intent is to invest in treasuries. |
| 01:17:42.32 | Ian Sobieski | Is it the case that, I'm sure you don't have the number right off the top of your head, but the blended yield that we're currently earning on our unrestricted cash is something less, I assume, than 5.3? |
| 01:17:53.04 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes, the bulk of our cash is sitting in the Bank of Marin earning 4%. |
| 01:17:53.55 | Ian Sobieski | you |
| 01:17:57.27 | Ian Sobieski | And so any additional interest income we make that will be accretive to this budget. Correct. Correct. Sorry? |
| 01:18:07.52 | Unknown | Thank you. Is it still on? Thank you. |
| 01:18:18.65 | Babette McDougall | Okay. |
| 01:18:20.63 | Ian Sobieski | So any additional interest income that we received from better cash management will be accretive to the revenue top line of the, |
| 01:18:30.08 | Angeline Loeffler | That is correct. Based on, in this budget, I based upon the 4% that we were currently earning at Bank of Moraine. If we, invested in, in, Treasuries that are earning 5% that would be an additional. |
| 01:18:42.60 | Ian Sobieski | We do have some cash even less than 4%, if I recall the acronym. |
| 01:18:46.62 | Angeline Loeffler | A leaf. Thank you. |
| 01:18:47.58 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:18:47.60 | Angeline Loeffler | So there's a. |
| 01:18:48.07 | Ian Sobieski | two point something. |
| 01:18:49.08 | Angeline Loeffler | And, was like 2.5. It varies. The last time I looked at it, |
| 01:18:51.97 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:18:52.00 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 01:18:52.03 | Ian Sobieski | So it's possible we might have an extra couple hundred thousand dollars of interest income just from that move. That is correct. |
| 01:18:58.77 | Steven Woodside | Could I follow along on that question? And where is that reflected in the budget? Because I know that you and the city manager did a lot of work. to improve the interest rate that we were accruing on those dollars. And I'm wondering where Yes, show up because it seems like our revenue projections are conservative with regards to that amount. So I just wanted to get a sense of where we might see it. And perhaps when we prepare the projections for our investments in the pension 115 trust, we can also have projections for each of those different scenarios with how much we make on those dollars. And because that shift was really substantial since we were earning zero dollars on it. Now we're earning 5%. |
| 01:19:12.25 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 01:19:37.23 | Angeline Loeffler | We're currently earning four. We could earn five in treasuries. On page nine, you will see some of the interest earnings. So interest earnings on page nine under the interest earnings grouping. You can see there's an account for general fund 100, 390,000 for fiscal year 24. If we look back to 21, it was 60,000. If we look back to 22, it was 182,000. Fiscal year 23 budget is 130. Are you guys seeing that? Yeah. So, so it, that's a, that's, that's a portion of it because our cash is dispersed amongst all of our funds. I allocate interest to each of those funds. So throughout the pages of this book, you're going to see interest earnings in each fund. I don't have the aggregate amount. It's around 800,000 that comes to mind. crossed all of our funds. I can provide that summary if that would be helpful. |
| 01:20:28.39 | Steven Woodside | It would be helpful just to see how our money management has improved and the steps that we've been taking because that's a significant increase of as vice mayor pointed out potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars so I think we should be showing that and I had a couple of additional questions unless you want to follow on on that point vice mayor. |
| 01:20:43.73 | Ian Sobieski | I had a follow-on on that point. Exactly. You're highlighting something which I've... |
| 01:20:44.99 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:20:48.98 | Ian Sobieski | asked before. And it's that you just said our interest income is spread across all our funds. So you have a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit somewhere else. It's easy to both miss. And as we, and not add all those numbers up in our head. So we don't have it here in the budget book, but I'm wondering if either with this one you could add, Maybe in this one add. A snapshot, much like what the mayor just highlighted. really are total resources. It's total revenue, total expenses. total interest income, so on and so forth, so that we have kind of a snapshot of the whole, of all the funds underneath the hood. snapshot of them all put together. |
| 01:21:28.80 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. Yeah. That the, the, the, Yes, I can do that. It is still draft. So I will include that analysis before we make it official. But yeah, I think that's a great point. What I'm envisioning is taking that citywide funds concept that we have on the last page and just showing it as, instead of by fund, show it as revenue type, expenditure type, so you could see the aggregates of all. line items. Yeah. Easy. Thank you. |
| 01:22:01.14 | Steven Woodside | Great. So I had a couple of questions I wanted to follow along on Councilman Burke-Hellman's comments about the sustainability and resiliency department, which is really exciting that we now have that in our budget, and I think it will expand and evolve in terms of how it looks and how we report. And beyond just the amounts of grant funding that are available through federal programs and through state funding climate and resiliency programs, There's also dollars saved from things like our energy bills if we make HVAC adaptations or fuel costs if we switch to electric. Is there a way that in the future, when you're putting together these types of reports, you can demonstrate dollars saved as well so that we can really reinforce the investment that we're making in these resiliency measures. you |
| 01:22:42.87 | Angeline Loeffler | Short answer, yes. There's ways we can do additional analysis after we make an investment like that. |
| 01:22:50.63 | Steven Woodside | Okay. So that's something that you could look at. And then on the miscellaneous, well, I think we kind of went through this of where the revenues are coming from. So I won't I won't spend too much time. on that, but I also want to point out that we've received quite a bit of grant funding This year, we now have a dedicated grant writing team. We're spending much more time seeking out a lot of these available dollars in particular for sustainability and resiliency, but also the COPS grants, We've applied for a lot of grant and we'll see what the outcome of that is. How are we going to demonstrate and perhaps going forward in the budgeting book, it's important to do that just to show. because there is a lot of hard work that's done by people like our staff who work hard to get these grants together, what they are and where they are. I would love to see a page in a future budget document that just says, these are all of our grants and these are what they're for, and this is extra money that we went and found for the city. |
| 01:23:43.18 | Angeline Loeffler | yes, I love that vision and, and it, it will get there. Um, the, the, the, The tool that I built here is very focused on the numbers and the performance of it. But I agree on each of these, you know, on the title pages where we describe our special revenue funds. You know, each of those funds has a unique and distinctive purpose that we could explain. We could have a page dedicated to why that fund is important and what makes it special. It takes time. Yeah. So the way I built this, it's really easy to update. It's really easy to roll it forward for mid-year review. I'm going to bring this forward for our mid-year budget review. So you'll have more information available. And yeah, I'll partner with our department heads and our sustainability manager who is not here behind me anymore. She was here. She was here. Yeah. So I love that. There will be additional narratives and future editions of of this new budget book. |
| 01:24:40.39 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I think that will just help us to Councilman McKellman's point about making this more of a planning document and not just a budget so we can look at it more holistically. And then one more specific point on the budget is in your general fund revenue accounting detail, you show a decreased amount of fines for the fiscal year of 2024 from 2023 and 2022. But we now have an enforcement officer who, from my understanding, has been working quite effectively in closing a number of open cases and perhaps bringing in more fines and fees. So why was the projection lowered so much? |
| 01:25:11.86 | Angeline Loeffler | So which department is he, is that like building codes? |
| 01:25:15.60 | Steven Woodside | Community Development. |
| 01:25:16.43 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, so that may be just where things roll up. That could be coming in under like building revenues or it's probably coming under building revenues. I don't know. I don't know for sure. There's a lot of revenue sources that I haven't I've dug into the big ones, but I haven't dug in deeply to all of the revenue sources. I can do some additional analysis and look. |
| 01:25:40.29 | Steven Woodside | I just know he's been really aggressively working to pursue a lot of open cases and we've probably received revenue and fines from a result of that. So I would see that number going up rather than going down. And that was a positive hire for us. So I wanted to make sure that was noted. |
| 01:25:44.65 | Angeline Loeffler | Uh-huh. |
| 01:25:52.66 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. So I think mid-year we'll have a lot more information that we can compare what was our initial projection to where are we at halfway through the year for 24. |
| 01:26:01.15 | Steven Woodside | Okay, great. |
| 01:26:01.77 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 01:26:02.75 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Well, thank you so much, Director Hess. I really appreciate it. Do we have further questions from the dais? OK. |
| 01:26:09.03 | Ian Sobieski | I guess I did. Please, Vice Mayor. |
| 01:26:09.13 | Steven Woodside | I guess I did. |
| 01:26:10.72 | Ian Sobieski | just since it has been a carbuncle on our accounting, this interloan transfer, the wart on our toe, it serves, it does not actually, does it have any purpose in actually serving the interest that my colleague outlined, which is, there's a legitimate interest in, knowing what the future liabilities are of the business unit that is generating the revenue. But the interloan transfer itself was an accounting relic. Yes, it serves no... It's our left pocket paying our right pocket. Yes. We have an expense in our left pocket. And a revenue in our right pocket. And we have exactly the same amount of money, but we have many more lines in our accounting books that everyone has to ask you questions about. I'm wondering how much. |
| 01:26:41.58 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. Yes. and a revenue in our house. |
| 01:26:51.27 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. |
| 01:26:54.35 | Ian Sobieski | time you spent answering the question for all of us, what it's all about. |
| 01:26:57.97 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. I get that question every time we have an audit report or a budget report that people are just curious on what it is. It has no effect on the on our fund balance because it's it's right. It's a liability in the in the MLK fund. It's an asset in the general fund. Um, It doesn't change the fund balance. It just changes the cash balance. in the two funds by an offsetting amount. it can stay there. We can, we can, |
| 01:27:27.70 | Ian Sobieski | And I guess just generally, since we're talking about the fund issues and it'll come up again, Is there a process in the city I don't know about where the liabilities anticipated in the various funds are professionally assessed and there is a policy or direction made about how much money should be retained in various funds for various specific business-related items? Or is it rather that we just have a habit of leaving money in these funds and transferring them out from time to time as we see fit? |
| 01:27:58.48 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. As it stands now, it's the later. But as we go... In fiscal year 24, we have facilities assessments lined up for MLK, for Spinnaker, I believe for Old City Hall. So that will give us some additional insight on what are those liabilities or those deferred maintenance costs so we can do a better job of planning. To your point, yes, it's very ad hoc, but I think we can be much more intentional in coming years as we continue to develop better tools, better frameworks around how we manage and plan our finances. |
| 01:28:36.69 | Steven Woodside | City Manager Zapata, this might be a good time to give your comments with regards to our questions. |
| 01:28:42.56 | Chris Zapata | If I can respond after the public comments, I'd like to do that. Absolutely. |
| 01:28:47.10 | Steven Woodside | Absolutely. Okay, great. Well, then at the end, this time, I'm going to go ahead and open it up for public comment. And city clerk, if you want to remind members of the public, how you might make comment at this time. |
| 01:28:57.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:28:57.81 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:28:57.93 | Walfred Solorzano | If you are in council chambers, there are speaker slips over by the television. You can fill one out and then bring it over here and we'll call you. And if you're on Zoom, then you can use the raise hand function. Or if you're on telephone on Zoom, you can press star nine. And at this moment, seeing no public comments. |
| 01:29:19.97 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll go ahead and close public comment then. And I guess it's back to you, city manager. |
| 01:29:29.72 | Chris Zapata | I'd like to say a few things and then thank some folks. But first of all, I want to say our goal here is continuous improvement. And I believe that if you look back to the pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic budgets that have been part of Sausalito's business, they've been difficult. Today is a good day in that we have a budget that is balanced, and I'd like to speak to that. First of all, we know budgets are projections. We know that things change. Obviously, they changed positively for Sausalito. It didn't happen by accident. Some of it was not by the city's actions or the city council's actions. It happens, you know, happens as a result of us being a part of a larger economy. So we had some really interesting times here when I arrived two years and 20 days ago. And so now I would like to say that some of those projections that we have had that were conservative in nature, the Times required them to be conservative budget. We did not know what was going to happen COVID, post-COVID. We obviously have a strong reliance on volatile revenue like TOT and sales tax. So those projections were conservative for a reason. Understand that now we will continue to be conservative. I think that that's the right way to go. You don't want to overestimate aggressively, guess on revenues, projections, and then come back and say, oops, we have a shortfall. One other thing that I want to note is that obviously budgets get audited. Last year, our audit was completed at the end of March. This week, we've had our new auditors, which you asked us to contract with in our building today working with us. And those auditors are going to ask a lot of questions because what they know about Sausalito is new. But our goal is to get the audits done by the end of the fiscal calendar year so that we can kick off our budget process without guessing so much. The other thing that was mentioned earlier is the idea of a balanced budget not being balanced because we still have labor negotiations that we're in the midst of. We understand that. That's where cities make what we call mid-year adjustments, whether it's revenues, expenses, and that's when we would try to do some things that would make sure that we don't end the year where we're more in the red than we would want to be. And overall, what a budget does is it reflects the values of a city council and a community. When you adopt a budget, you're telling the community what matters to you, whether it's public safety, whether it's parks, whether it's internal accounting, whether it's other things. You're basically telling them these are the things we care about. And so when you look at the breakdown in the new budget book, you'll see, you know, they're broken up by departments and you can see how much money has been invested to provide those service, complete those projects. So one of the things I know is that this budget, which we said is balanced and which you adopt today will be balanced as required by law, but will change. But in this budget, you know, some of the things that you've called important to you and to our community, like infrastructure. Infrastructure implementation is all throughout this budget, including two new positions to manage projects, get stuff done, help stuff stay moving. So that's important. The idea of the sustainability and resiliency push that the city council has had, you know, that implementation is in place and ongoing. The idea of making sure that we're mindful of our pension obligations, the conversation around investing in 115 Trust tomorrow or next month was really helpful. But that's in play as well. And Mayor Blasin mentioned how active we've been with grants. We started this process over a year and a half ago, got someone on board, have applied for many grants, have built relationships with our grants consultant and with some of the agencies. And, you know, sooner than later, they will start to happen, more importantly. And then I think the idea of taking a hard look at, you know, transparency and what it is that the city council is putting out, the city staff is putting out, and the residents can access. It's really important to make sure that what we do is understandable to the public. So these long conversations are extremely important because, again, this is governmental accounting. It's not your household budget. So there are some complicating factors. And so we like to make sure that we provide as much information as we can. And I'm pleased that this is happening as we speak, in particular with the revival of a budget book that shows where you're spending your money. It goes without saying that without prior councils and prior administrations making decisions, saving monies for pensions, putting up 115 trusts, passing infrastructure measures like Measure O, investing in community facilities, whether it's your police and fire stations or your parks. You've done a lot of that, and prior councils did that. And the one thing they did is they put money in your... the contingency amounts that involve at a minimum that Sausalita would have 5% for emergencies and another 10% on top of that for economic emergencies. And then there is a savings of approximately $7 million in addition to that that we talked about as part of the audit. So in reserve, you have over $10 million that you would use to deal with anything that you think is important enough to spend some of that money on. So the question then becomes down the road, you know, how do you maintain good stewardship of those funds that were set up there for you, granted by the community, and, you know, prepared or gained by prior administrations and counsel? And I think we have been good stewards. We've made some difficult decisions to get to this good day. You know, we've cut some executive folks. You know, we streamlined some programs. You know, we've tried to make sure that we hired internally as opposed to hiring consultants. All of those things are starting to bear fruit, and you see that. And some of the things that were big challenges, like an unfunded mandate of a housing element, you know, spending huge money on that, that's more or less behind us now. So that's important, you know, making sure that Measure O continued through Measure L, that's behind us now, that's important. So, and we're still chasing money from 2019. As we chase those funds and better our financial positions, that gives you more options to provide directions to us, to provide services to the community. And so I really want to thank the departments that work with the finance department. It goes without saying that Chad jumped in the deep end of the pool. You know, this thing started in December. went through January, we hired him in March. And here we are today with the work that he's done. I know that the cash management is going to get better working toward those things. I know that, you know, the simplification of the budget, the transparency of the budget, our audit process will all get better under his leadership. And I really think that, you know, it's really important to know that, you know, the city council has made the decisions over the last three years in the worst pandemic that I've seen in 30 years as a city manager. where you have come to a point where today you have a balanced budget. Today you have $10 million in the bank. Today you have money set aside for pensions. Today you have a grants consultant. There are a lot of things that you have done that have really put Sausalito in a place where the next five years, which will be challenging with pension infrastructure and labor costs, but when you get to 2030, a lot of that debt goes away. And when you get to 2036, all of those pension costs start to cycle downward pretty quickly. So the challenge for this council and this organization, this city manager, is to get to that 2030 date to be responsible with the community's funds in a way that allows us to bridge these next four or five years. so with that again I thank you for your leadership I thank the community for their attention to this and we'll be bringing back stuff to you as directed in the coming weeks, months. But I really just want to state that this is a quantum or 180 degrees change from two years ago when we had meetings up to the end of the time when we could adopt a budget to to get ourselves an adopted budget that was you know essentially the best we could do at the time this is a much better project or product and i project that the next product the budget you adopt will be even better in terms of how you can understand it what it includes but just doing uh this today to me is uh it's me is a reason to be grateful to you and grateful to Chad and grateful to the departments, but most of all, grateful to the community and people that paved the path before us to put money in the bank so that we wouldn't be operating in a crisis mode. We actually are operating in a very reasoned approach and asking a lot of good questions so that that can continue into the future. Thank you. |
| 01:38:35.92 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, city manager. So I'm going to go ahead and make a motion to approve the resolution of the city council for the fiscal budget for the fiscal year 2023 2024. |
| 01:38:47.68 | Melissa Blaustein | I'll second. You can do it, Vice Mayor. |
| 01:38:47.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:38:51.39 | Steven Woodside | Okay, there's a motion on the table. Is there a discussion on the motion or can we go ahead and take a vote? I have some comments. Okay. |
| 01:38:58.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I'm not sure. So obviously my mic was off earlier, apparently. |
| 01:39:05.65 | Steven Woodside | It might still be off. Are you sure? Because the video is not turning to you. |
| 01:39:05.68 | Jill Hoffman | I think it might still be. |
| 01:39:10.16 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know. It's just not all things. Am I, can the staff tell me if I'm, okay. Okay. So, yeah, great work, obviously, by the staff and great work by Chad and our city manager to get us where we are right now. Great work this past year. in all the hard work that we've done with our budget. But I just wanna, my mic was off. So let me just say, my concern is, you know, Spoiler alert, we show a balanced budget right now, but on our it's clear from our closed session agendas that we're currently negotiating with labor groups and so. any increase in labor costs is going to have a corresponding effect on our budget. you know, for people who are doing high fives about a balanced budget, you know, stay tuned until we factor in those, whatever is gonna flow from our labor negotiations. Overall, I'm As I said, I'm very pleased with this budget, but I am keeping a sharp eye on the actual bottom line as we move forward through our fiscal year. So thank you, and thanks to everybody who did such a lot. hard work on this. |
| 01:40:25.72 | Steven Woodside | That's Member Cox, go ahead. |
| 01:40:26.73 | Joan Cox | Yeah, and I endorse everything that Councilmember Hoffman said. I do want to also remind the community that we are embarking on exploring various additional revenue opportunities. We started that at our workshop on a Saturday. Various council members transmitted to the city manager our respective lists for what we would like to see the city pursue as additional revenue opportunities, and since then, We've learned. that we are the recipient of some grant funding that were not JoAnne Hanrahan, Ph.D.: folk factored into our budget yet, and that will be reflected in our mid year adjustment, so I just want to speak on behalf of myself and other Council members to assure the Community. that all of the decisions we make regarding All of our expenditures and all of our revenues are made in a responsible manner with the best interests of the community as at the forefront of our decision making process. |
| 01:41:28.92 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much for those comments, Councilmember Cox. Okay, well, we have a motion on the table, and I think we're ready to go ahead and take a vote on that. So do we need a roll call vote because it's an adoption of a resolution, or are we just good to say? City Attorney, can you weigh in on this? |
| 01:41:45.91 | Sergio Rudin | You can just vote aye or nay. |
| 01:41:49.69 | Steven Woodside | All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. I'm going to use the gavel for this one because it's a big deal that we passed our budget. |
| 01:41:51.78 | Sergio Rudin | Hi. |
| 01:41:55.16 | Angeline Loeffler | you passed by. |
| 01:41:56.65 | Steven Woodside | Sarah Silver, yay motion carries five zero okay great so we're going to move on to item five B, which is affirming boards, commissions and committee protocols to reflect those established by the city council city manager city attorney and. So why don't we go ahead and have the city manager present this item? |
| 01:42:16.25 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor and Council and members of the public. This item was requested by Councilmember Cox, either last meeting or the meeting before. And so it's been brought forward by the agenda setting committee and city staff. So one of the things I want to talk about is boards and commissions and committees should mirror what the city council has in terms of operating protocols. Let's just say that not all operating protocols are stagnant. You can see by this chart that the operating protocols that were set forward before May 2010 have been amended, amended, affirmed, amended, amended multiple times, even affirmed as late as last year in April 2023. So what are operating protocols? Next slide, please, Noelle. And basically what they tell the city council is telling itself is this is how we run our city. Obviously, there's a municipal code, there's state law, there's federal law. But how we work amongst ourselves is an operating protocol. It's how we place items on the council agenda. It's how council generates staff work. It's how you give direction to the city manager, how you communicate with the city manager and city staff, how you do this with the city attorney, and as an individual, as a council member, how you respond to public complaints or inquiries. Next slide, please. So additional items in the operating protocols include how you are representing the city on regional boards, how you represent the city council on council subcommittees, how we respond to the press, how we make decisions and consensus, how the council monitors and actions of a subcommittee, how we make meetings more efficient in management, managing them. And last but not least is the council operating protocols have the statement that the city council choose civility. And so next slide, please. So today, next one, please. we're looking for some direction and some discussion from the council, not related to your operating protocols, but to provide those as a backdrop as to what it is that you do and how those could align with boards, commissions, and committees. So Wofford has a brief little report to make, but I wanted to provide that as a backdrop so that the public and the council saw that there is a transition from what the council does to the people and the volunteers that they appoint to these various boards, committees and commissions, and there's expectations in these appointments, and you know they should mirror or align with what the city council expects of itself. |
| 01:45:11.33 | Walfred Solorzano | So as a city manager mentioned, the big ones in the staff report that we have pointed out are section J, consensus and decision-making, section K, action of council subcommittees, section I, meeting management, and I think might be the biggest one, section M, to choose civility. We've already affirmed this on April 25. And what we're really asking to do is to affirm this for the boards and commissions. And before we do that, we can take some direction as far as what you saw in the staff report. And either we can do this or make something a little bit, compose something a little bit different that's just related for boards and commissions. But if there's any other further notes that we'd like to bring back. I guess right now is the time that we're looking for direction. |
| 01:46:01.96 | Joan Cox | Can I just clarify? You said section I, meeting management. It's actually section L, meeting management. Yeah, I typed it out. |
| 01:46:11.19 | Steven Woodside | Okay, does the council have questions on that? |
| 01:46:17.30 | Walfred Solorzano | So the staff recommendation is just to simply affirm the boards and commissions protocols to reflect those established by the city council, by the city council, city manager, and that way it applies to them too. So that's a recommendation. |
| 01:46:32.89 | Steven Woodside | I wonder if we might add, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt if you were going to weigh in, but there is clear direction for us on on giving direction to the city attorney or to the city manager. And I think it might be good to return with clarifying information about the role of these boards and commissions and that they, provide recommendations to the city council, but they're not to direct staff beyond the direction given in meetings. Because I think that's something that's come up where members of boards and commissions have asked things of staff without city manager approval. And I just want to be mindful of staff time. So I don't know how we would write that as a section, but since it's written for us on how we give direction to staff, perhaps there should be a clarifying section about that the roles of boards and commissions is not to direct staff. |
| 01:47:20.38 | Joan Cox | Thank you, Mayor. I actually had made that same comment in my own notes. Under K, action of council subcommittees, Thank you. Um, It says, It says council subcommittees. I would say boards, commissions, and committees cannot take action on behalf of the council. They can only make a recommendation to the city council for action. But then I was going to recommend adding to that |
| 01:47:38.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. But that's not true. |
| 01:47:41.57 | Joan Cox | It is the role of boards, commissions, or committees to carry out the direction of the Council and the role of their charter, if any. It is not the role of boards, commissions, or committees to give direction to staff. |
| 01:47:54.43 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I like that text. |
| 01:47:56.62 | Joan Cox | And then another recommendation I had was under K. is that the municipal ordinance already lays out situations it lays out some scenarios that members of boards, commissions or committees cannot attempt to utilize cannot attempt to influence on behalf of a client or others. an upcoming matter. I was going to recommend we add to that. that no member of a city board commissioner committee shall attempt to utilize their vote on an upcoming matter to influence a decision before another board Commission or committee or the city council. |
| 01:48:41.97 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I think that's great too. I mean, I... I don't know if we want to have discussion now or open to public comment and then continue with discussion. |
| 01:48:49.12 | Joan Cox | I had one more suggestion and then maybe we open it up to public comment. Okay. They can comment on my, this is for, for M. Thank you. where it says treat everyone courteously, I would just clarify and say, including staff, fellow board commission members, council members, applicants, and the general public. Oh, applicants and their representatives and the general public. |
| 01:49:21.00 | Steven Woodside | Anyone on the dais have further recommendations for that? OK. So I'll go ahead and open this item up for public comment. |
| 01:49:29.76 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Biggie Nichols, our first public commenter of the night. I was worried we were going to have none. |
| 01:49:39.61 | Vicki Nichols | Vicki Nichols, 117 Caledonia. I wasn't going to speak on this, but I think now is the time to mention something that, came to my attention a while ago, and I think you might want to either know about or discuss about committee responsibilities. I have been the receiver of several emails from various committees that the individuals who are on those committees have written out to public speakers criticizing what they said in public because they did not agree with what that committee's position was, which I find highly inappropriate. And I've also received emails from people on commissions that may be paid employees of either nonprofits or other organizations that are writing out about their positions using trying to get the city's involvement. So I think you wear a certain hat when you're on the committees, you don't get to use the email lists or anything else. So if you could add something like that, I think it'd be helpful. |
| 01:50:38.54 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vicki. That's a great comment. I appreciate it. Okay, so do we have any further public comment online? |
| 01:50:46.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:50:46.82 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:50:46.87 | Walfred Solorzano | See you then. |
| 01:50:47.38 | Steven Woodside | Wait, wait, okay. All right. Okay, so we'll bring it back up to the dais. I really appreciate all of Jones Councilmember Cox's recommendations here and I would uh, like to see those enacted, but I wanted to see Councilmember Huffman. |
| 01:51:03.01 | Jill Hoffman | you Yeah, I do have a – that public comment we just had brings up a point that has been discussed, I don't think at the council level in the past, but it's been brought up to me. Do we want to have some sort of – as part of the commission protocols and ethics and bias element to it. Because as council members, obviously, we have ethical rules that apply to us with regard to our business dealings, and we have reporting requirements with regard to our investments in order to maintain the independence of our actions so that they don't personally enrich us. And that's just sort of a bedrock of ethical them. laws that were subject to as council members. those don't necessarily apply to, in fact, I don't think they do apply to people that we appoint to boards and commissions. One of the things that I believe I've been talked to from the public is that we have some sort of ethical, you know, pledge, I suppose, that people that are on our boards and commissions and make it very clear that you don't serve on a board or commission to you know, garner THE END OF THE END OF THE assets for your neighborhood or your business or any other, your position on a board is to serve the council and serve the people of Sausalito. I'm wondering as part of these protocols, if we want to issue or add a sentence or two the ethical standards that we expect from the people that act at the behest of the city council. |
| 01:52:42.33 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:52:42.35 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:52:42.72 | Melissa Blaustein | Go ahead. |
| 01:52:43.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:52:43.21 | Steven Woodside | Anybody, we're all excited about ethics. |
| 01:52:44.38 | Melissa Blaustein | WE'RE ALL IN THE I would absolutely agree with that. Yeah, 100%. Without a doubt. |
| 01:52:47.77 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, 100%. |
| 01:52:48.63 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Yeah, and I would like to just point out that our municipal code section 2.58. Um, 080 entitled influencing city decisions says no member of a city board Commissioner Committee on behalf of a business client or customer shall attempt to influence a decision before such board commissioner committee. by any means, including but not limited to contacts with or appearances before such body or before the city staff assigned to such board commissioner committee. So I believe that. ordinance could actually be expanded to address the point that Vicki Nichols raised in the Council Member Hoffman just addressed. So that's a good basis. Yeah, that's a good basis. |
| 01:53:34.46 | Ian Sobieski | I hate to be there. |
| 01:53:35.32 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:53:36.59 | Ian Sobieski | monkey wrench in this discussion, but when I think about practicalities, If you had... economic development advisory committee. And you have, let's pick on our friend Cass Green, who's a member, has a clearly a vested interest in the in above tides. Would that particularly exclude her from weighing in on economic development for Sausalito, even though her hotel would obviously benefit hotel does well. Would it interfere with someone who, well, I do want to answer, but just a couple examples, just to broaden the scope so that we don't pick on Cass. If you have an effort for, we had an old undergrounding committee that's defunct, but presumably a lot of the people that volunteered for that might be particularly animated by the fact that they have power lines in their views. And so they clearly have a vested interest. That's what motivates them. If you live in Galley Harbor, you may have a very different idea of tidelands and and what the waterfront should look like. And you're very much going to benefit personally from your vision being enacted. That's why you volunteer. So I'm wondering if this actually, while it sounds well intended, couldn't be a cudgel to delegitimize the people that we disagree with in these circumstances on a basis of ethics, instead of really celebrating the fact that we always have mixed motives. And the real goal is just to keep really... newer, you know, monetary interests out that are really revolved and clear, but I'm worried about the languaging here. Peace. |
| 01:55:07.68 | Joan Cox | So I saw that the city attorney had his mic turned on. So just preliminarily, I would say that how we guard against that as city council members is we recuse ourselves from matters affecting property within 500 feet of our residence. you know, that could render a benefit to us or that, in which we may have a common law conflict of interest. As you've seen, I've recused myself from all decisions concerning my law firm. So there is definitely a method by which Cass could recuse herself from a decision specifically affecting in Above the Tide, on the other hand, We are not required to recuse ourselves from decisions affecting all of Sausalito or all of a particular area in an equal way. So that's the balancing act, but I would love to hear from the city attorney. Yeah. |
| 01:56:02.44 | Melissa Blaustein | I'd also actually like to chime in. So my understanding of the ethics, the FPPC, PPC is about transparency. And so the ethics violation inures to the person who's willing to take it on. And so it's about making the declaration so where if you are within 500 feet, you actually don't have to recuse yourself if you choose to take on that potential liability. The risk is to you as an individual. And so what this does is it urges anyone to disclose any potential conflict. It doesn't mean they have to recuse themselves. And that's the intention here is to be able to facilitate people with a with knowledge, specific knowledge as to areas, but to let the public know that they're the thing. have some type of interest and they don't think the risk is big enough to them to remove themselves from the decision. |
| 01:56:45.69 | Ian Sobieski | I love that clarification. Thanks. So I mean, but then that languaging would be more along those lines, which is to be sure to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. |
| 01:56:47.44 | Melissa Blaustein | Sorry. |
| 01:56:55.63 | Melissa Blaustein | That's why everybody has to do a form 700, right? So the boards and commission members do. Planning commission does. Yeah, commission. Planning does. That's a statutory commission. |
| 01:56:59.00 | Ian Sobieski | the boards and commission members. |
| 01:57:00.42 | Unknown | Planning conditions for us. |
| 01:57:01.65 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:57:01.72 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:57:01.90 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:57:04.81 | Ian Sobieski | the other ones like Parks and Rec. Only if they're designated in the city. |
| 01:57:08.98 | Sergio Rudin | if they're designated. |
| 01:57:10.07 | Melissa Blaustein | So that's why they're on part two. To have this language. |
| 01:57:12.42 | Ian Sobieski | That's what I'm asking. |
| 01:57:12.92 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, so that they would disclose it voluntarily. Thank you. Yes. |
| 01:57:17.02 | Ian Sobieski | you So yeah, I think that's a different, I heard something different, which is an ethical tar pit that could be used as a cudgel is different than an encouragement to declare your conflicts of interest, which just seems like good, open, communicative practice. |
| 01:57:30.78 | Joan Cox | Carrying that to Vicky's scenario... a lobbyist, for example, on behalf of a committee. would have to disclose, hey, I'm a lobbyist for this committee, and I'm advocating blah, blah, blah. I'm a paid lobbyist for this committee. Sorry, Sergio. |
| 01:57:51.06 | Sergio Rudin | So yeah, to answer the vice mayor's question, generally, members of boards that are purely advisory. do not have to file Form 700 unless the city has designated those boards as being required to file them under the city's conflict of interest code. Um, So, but... In general, there are various provisions in the Political Reform Act, Government Code 1090, etc., that may apply to even advisory boards and commissions. So... again, under state law. our volunteer volunteers who volunteer on city boards and commissions also have their own requirements under state ethics rules that they have to comply with. |
| 01:58:37.48 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes, Councilmember Kelman. Sorry, just overall question, if we're done with the ethics question. I think just on the ethics piece, |
| 01:58:41.38 | Steven Woodside | I think just on the ethics piece, we're all in agreement that something like Councilmember Hoffman suggested would be required and helpful and that perhaps we can do it as an amendment to the 2.5. 58080 section of our municipal code go ahead councilman we're coming |
| 01:58:57.16 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm curious as to how much of this template provides us in the SAP report. Do we want to adopt and maybe we can give some clear direction because, you know, for example, Section 8 giving direction to the city attorney, I would think that no member of a board or commission would ever give direction to the city attorney, right? |
| 01:59:13.12 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:59:13.21 | Melissa Blaustein | The recommendations are for three sections, not for those. |
| 01:59:13.34 | Joan Cox | Thank you. The recommendations not for score. |
| 01:59:16.48 | Melissa Blaustein | four sections, sorry. |
| 01:59:16.97 | Joan Cox | J-K-L-N-M. |
| 01:59:19.05 | Melissa Blaustein | Right, thank you for that, however, with that in mind I wanted to raise the question of there are communication sometimes between members of committees with the city manager. Both as members of the community and then as partly as part of committees, do we want to also look at other sections, are there anything else here besides those that we want to look at. |
| 01:59:40.28 | Steven Woodside | I think Councilmember Cox outlined an important potential text language for communications with staff and what direction is allowed to be given to staff, which I think is important and addresses. Can you read that line again? |
| 01:59:51.90 | Joan Cox | Line again. |
| 01:59:52.66 | Melissa Blaustein | I can't remember. |
| 01:59:54.43 | Joan Cox | Yes. Okay. It is the role of boards, commissions, or committees to carry out the direction of the council and the role of their charter. It is not the role of boards, commissions, or committees to give direction to staff. |
| 02:00:08.54 | Steven Woodside | including the city manager. |
| 02:00:09.88 | Joan Cox | say, including the city manager. |
| 02:00:11.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:00:11.29 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:00:11.31 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Okay, so from what I understand, the direction then is to following staffs considerations have those four sections, but then have the clear. amendments, each of those sections as written by Councilmember Cox. So do you want to repeat those for staff or provide them to staff separately in an email? |
| 02:00:30.46 | Joan Cox | I can hand this to staff, but I would like to also recommend right now it says council meetings. City Council agendas. |
| 02:00:39.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:00:39.25 | Joan Cox | that language all needs to be adopted to reflect Agendas of boards committees and commissions or you know, Boards and commissions cannot. So we need to substitute out the word city council and substitute in the word boards, commissions or committees. |
| 02:00:56.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Understood. I got the direction. So what I can do for the July 18th meeting, I can put all the changes and add it to consent calendar and we'll have a separate protocols for the boards and commissions. |
| 02:01:11.87 | Steven Woodside | For the question of amending the municipal code with regards to ethics, would that be a future agenda item, city attorney, or would that just be an addendum to the protocols? |
| 02:01:19.96 | Sergio Rudin | If you need to modify the city code, that is not something that you can do via the protocol. So yes, we would need to do a separate ordinance and a separate agenda item. |
| 02:01:28.21 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so we'll be sure to add that to future agenda items also. We'll take a public hearing, correct? Thank you. |
| 02:01:32.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 02:01:32.71 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:01:34.33 | Sergio Rudin | No, it would just need to be a new business item. Okay. |
| 02:01:38.30 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. I have a follow-up on that. Yes, please. Can we add that? Sergio, can we go ahead and just add that language to the protocols before we change the codes? |
| 02:01:48.14 | Sergio Rudin | You can add it to the protocols right now, yes. |
| 02:01:51.34 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE Okay, so Walford, do you have direction? Is it clear enough? |
| 02:01:56.10 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm confused on the ethics part. So are we going to start asking people to do others to start filling out statements of economic interest? No, no. Okay. |
| 02:02:02.95 | Jill Hoffman | to it. No, no. We're just going to point out that they need to adhere to the same ethical standards and conflicts of interest. Understood. I think – is that clear enough? Yeah. |
| 02:02:13.21 | Walfred Solorzano | Right. |
| 02:02:13.53 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Yeah, and I think perhaps that they need to announce any conflict of interest. So if they are being paid by a lobbyist to take a position, they need to announce that. If a property they own is affected by a decision, they would need to announce that. |
| 02:02:21.85 | Jill Hoffman | So. |
| 02:02:33.06 | Steven Woodside | So Councilman McCox, since you've made specific written edits, can you just provide those to Walford along with what we just discussed on the ethics piece? And we'll review that and future consent at the July 18th meeting to make sure we get that right. |
| 02:02:44.42 | Joan Cox | you And, Walford, you'll provide that in red lines so we can just see what the changes are? |
| 02:02:48.94 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:02:48.97 | Jill Hoffman | that. Sorry, one more. No, no, it's very important. So I think we might not want to have a corresponding at some point addition to the website, the city's website, that when we call out, we're going to be staffing boards and commissions or maybe on the boards and commissions page that they're the same ethical or whatever our ethical requirements are with regard to boards and commission members need to be called out there. So it's not a surprise when someone ends up on a board or committee and they're expected to make certain reporting. So thank you. |
| 02:02:50.96 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, sorry, one more time. |
| 02:03:26.74 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, so just for clarity for Walford and I to help prepare the follow-up agenda item. Um, So typically with advisory bodies that don't have any sort of decision making authority, they can only make recommendations to the city council. They're excluded from the Political Reform Act in terms of the definition of a public official for the purposes of conflict of interest requirements. And additionally, they're typically not required to be included in the city's conflict of interest code with respect to who has to file form 700s. So Is the direction of council to modify that to basically set an expectation that Okay. It sounds like you folks do want some sort of expectation that these people behave ethically. |
| 02:04:15.42 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:04:15.66 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:04:16.20 | Sergio Rudin | but you're not requiring them to do any sort of code filing or modify those requirements. Exactly. |
| 02:04:21.75 | Steven Woodside | Exactly. Yes. Okay. |
| 02:04:22.66 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. Okay. |
| 02:04:23.54 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Okay. Great. I think we're all in agreement then on this. Is direction clear, city clerk? Okay, so Councilmember Cox will get you the detailed language and then we'll get a red line version on consent at our next meeting and I really appreciate everyone taking this item up and putting such an important emphasis on transparency and ethics because I know this council cares deeply about those issues. Thank you. |
| 02:04:44.40 | Joan Cox | Okay, same. Thank you. you |
| 02:04:46.40 | Steven Woodside | Yes. And we'll move on to item six, which is communications. This is the time on the agenda. For members of the public to provide any public comment for items that are not on the agenda. If you would like to provide a public comment, fill out a speaker slip or raise your hand in the Zoom application. City Clerk will call on individuals who have raised their hands in the order that they were raised. After you are called on, you will be unmuted to allow you to share your comments. Remember, public comments are each allowed a total of two minutes to speak. |
| 02:05:14.23 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:05:14.25 | Steven Woodside | With that, I'll open up. public comment. |
| 02:05:18.86 | Walfred Solorzano | See none. |
| 02:05:20.09 | Steven Woodside | Where is everybody tonight? I'm at a loss. Okay, fine. I guess we'll go ahead and close public comment at this time, and I'll move on to item seven, which is council member committee reports. Anyone have anything they'd like to share out? |
| 02:05:38.09 | Steven Woodside | No? Okay. |
| 02:05:39.16 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:05:39.34 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:05:39.36 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:05:39.46 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:05:39.53 | Joan Cox | I'll share a couple of things, I guess. Yes, please. I figured others. There is a meeting of the MCC MC tomorrow evening at the Spinnaker. |
| 02:05:39.60 | Steven Woodside | I'll go ahead. I'm sorry. Yes, please. |
| 02:05:49.38 | Joan Cox | that the city of Sausalito is hosting, and I believe our city manager is planning to attend. I hope all of us. are planning to attend. that meeting. We did hold an MCC MC legislative committee meeting on Monday. we did not change any of our positions from our |
| 02:06:09.21 | Jill Hoffman | fire. |
| 02:06:09.63 | Joan Cox | meeting in terms of positions being taken by Thank you. the committee, but we are closely monitoring several bills and we expect to return with some recommendations as the bills continue through their process of being analyzed by the League and other agencies. |
| 02:06:27.98 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:06:28.01 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:06:28.03 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE Councilman Robin. Yeah, can I follow up for that with the MCC legislative committee. You know we get the the alerts right of calls for action from Cal cities and stuff. At some point, whenever the next legislative committee, I think it'd be helpful if you gave us an update on where the housing laws are and where the you know the. the oppose or support is, and especially in the context of the housing element law and what's going on with those additional changes. I've seen a lot of alerts come through, and I'm just curious. And I think it'd be helpful for other people, too. So thank you for that. Absolutely. Happy to do it. |
| 02:07:07.77 | Steven Woodside | So I have a couple of reports. I attended the Association of Barrier Governments General Meeting, which is their annual meeting where they approved their overall budget for the year and their strategic plan. I was really impressed by the leadership that they have. The Berkeley mayor is doing a fantastic job of balancing and bringing strong representation for that organization. And our representative from Novato for MCC MC Pat Eklund was there, who has represented us at a bag for I think over 20 years and had quite a lot of perspective to bring there were a number of really interesting speakers and it was a great opportunity to interact with other. Bay Area government officials so and I think we'll be seeing and hearing, of course, more from a bag going forward. And I also had the opportunity, while I was on a work trip in Washington DC to meet with members of housing and urban development, the Department of Energy. And environmental protection association, as well as the National League of cities to talk about how we can pursue. further budget grant opportunities for Sausalito. So I'll be working more aggressively to provide more grant funding for us in partnership with those federal agencies and the IRA dollars that are available, and also hopefully borrowing best practices from some of the ideas at the National League of Cities as well. So I wanted to share that out. Anyone else have anything on committee reports? Okay. All right. So I'll move on to item eight, which is city manager reports, city council appointments, other council business. So the first item here is public comment on these items, 8B through 8E. So I will open it up for public comment. See you then. you Okay, I'll close public comment at this time and I'll move on to the city manager information for... for counsel. City Manager? |
| 02:08:59.04 | Chris Zapata | Are we on AB now, Mayor? |
| 02:09:00.86 | Steven Woodside | We are. |
| 02:09:01.66 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Yeah, I provided the update on the water. There are a couple of things on HC that I think need action, but that concludes everything I have. Looking forward to the action on HC to appoint me and Katie to the Zero Waste Energy JPA. |
| 02:09:17.74 | Steven Woodside | Okay, great. So then the next item on here is appointments to boards and commissions and we did have an opportunity to interview candidates for the sustainability Commission as well as the disaster preparedness committee. Could you remind us Walford of the vacancies on each of those? |
| 02:09:32.18 | Walfred Solorzano | So the vacancies for the sustainability commission, I think it's two alternates. And then for the disaster one, it's three vacancies. |
| 02:09:42.88 | Steven Woodside | Are you sure it's two alternates for, I think typically we have one alternate, no? |
| 02:09:45.62 | Walfred Solorzano | It was one. Well, we heard from the chair and I think it was from last time I spoke to Katie and I was looking up on our. Thank you. Sorry, I don't have, we don't have much history on how far it is, but initially we thought it was one alternate, but today we're hearing the discussion about two alternates and I couldn't find definitively whether it was one or two alternates. Thank you. Thank you. So, |
| 02:10:06.47 | Steven Woodside | So then maybe we appoint one at this point. And then at the next meeting, if we hear that there's a second, we would appoint a second alternate. |
| 02:10:11.22 | Walfred Solorzano | Sounds good. And I think at the same time, let me see one more thing. Sorry. We need to re-appoint who is going to be. |
| 02:10:23.52 | Steven Woodside | members of disaster preparedness, which was Thomas Perazzo and |
| 02:10:27.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, and along with Lauren Wiley in the Sustainability. |
| 02:10:31.31 | Steven Woodside | because their appointments had |
| 02:10:32.75 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 02:10:32.97 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we need to automatically reappoint. Okay. Go ahead. |
| 02:10:36.06 | Ian Sobieski | Just a question. Can we just appoint, can we increase the size to appoint the two people that we interviewed today? |
| 02:10:44.31 | Steven Woodside | I don't know if that's a change in municipal code or not. If we decide to increase the size of our boards and commissions, that's a city attorney question. |
| 02:10:48.95 | Joan Cox | Thank you. And it's not. |
| 02:10:51.56 | Steven Woodside | and it's- |
| 02:10:53.44 | Joan Cox | It were not noticed to do that today. |
| 02:10:57.52 | Ian Sobieski | It doesn't seem likely, but Sergio, are you here? |
| 02:11:00.93 | Sergio Rudin | Correct. I agree that it was not noticed. It is something that you can direct staff to do and to prepare. These are. Sustainability Commission and the Community Safety and Disaster Preparedness Committee. if I recall correctly, are not ones that are created by municipal code, but I'd still like the opportunity to review the resolutions creating those because we may need to modify them if they set limits on the size of the committee. |
| 02:11:29.28 | Ian Sobieski | Sergio, could it be direction from, if we chose to go that route, could we just give direction so to end up on the consent calendar on July 18th? Thank you. if we wanted to. |
| 02:11:40.43 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. |
| 02:11:45.31 | Joan Cox | I would just comment that it is already a large body with numerous members. And therefore meeting the requirements for a quorum is more challenging sometimes because of the large number of members required. So that would be my... Feedback. |
| 02:12:10.77 | Steven Woodside | perhaps we might encourage the candidate that we don't necessarily appoint to the sustainability commission or ask them if they'd be interested in disaster preparedness, as we only had one candidate show up for their interview for disaster preparedness. And we don't like to discourage participants in our community. |
| 02:12:25.03 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:12:25.44 | Steven Woodside | And there's definitely. |
| 02:12:25.96 | Joan Cox | Definitely a tie over between resilience and sustainability. And so there is a nexus there. |
| 02:12:28.44 | Steven Woodside | Absolutely. Absolutely. |
| 02:12:32.88 | Joan Cox | you |
| 02:12:32.93 | Steven Woodside | Absolutely. Okay. All right. So I think generally, do we need, do we need, Wilfred, it's difficult for us to name all of the commissioners who need to have a term extension without having that in front of us. So I don't know if you want to provide that at the next meeting. |
| 02:12:46.38 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 02:12:46.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 02:12:49.13 | Steven Woodside | This is to prevent a situation where it's not clear if someone's been reappointed. So we need to officially do that at each meeting. Cause there are several members who had whose term had technically extended without official reappointment. So perhaps at the next meeting, you could have a list of those. Cause I don't want to miss. I don't want to do it piecemeal at every. at each appointment. |
| 02:13:07.27 | Walfred Solorzano | Can we, for the second part, there's on the language, appoint Chris Zapata city manager as the, so can we do that? |
| 02:13:13.92 | Joan Cox | Well, I would still like to appoint one person as... Yeah. |
| 02:13:18.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:13:18.63 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:13:18.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Got it, got it. I understand. |
| 02:13:20.50 | Joan Cox | Personally, I would, given the work she's already invested in the town, I would support Michelle or for the Sustainability Commission. |
| 02:13:29.61 | Melissa Blaustein | I would second that. |
| 02:13:30.71 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:13:30.81 | Steven Woodside | Bye. Do we have to take a roll call vote or can we? |
| 02:13:34.07 | Walfred Solorzano | you can say hi. |
| 02:13:35.62 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. I'm abstaining because I was not able to make it here in time. So apologies to those who showed up to be interviewed, but I'll abstain because I wasn't able to interview. |
| 02:13:46.68 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 02:13:46.79 | Babette McDougall | Okay? |
| 02:13:46.86 | Walfred Solorzano | And for clarification, she'll be an alternate. |
| 02:13:49.09 | Steven Woodside | Okay, great. Okay, and then we had another candidate who we interviewed for disaster preparedness. Guniao Kaman. |
| 02:13:58.27 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:13:59.18 | Melissa Blaustein | So I'll make a motion that we appoint her to disaster preparedness. Second. Thank you. |
| 02:14:03.41 | Steven Woodside | Okay, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, great. And so if we could circle back with Mark more to see if he had interest in serving on the Community Safety Disaster Preparedness Committee, and also circle back with the candidates who did not show up to see if they still had interest and wanted to be interviewed. that would be great because I know disaster preparedness has had issue with gaining a quorum. |
| 02:14:25.62 | Melissa Blaustein | Would you like a motion to a point? City manager. as the South Dakota Zero Waste Moran JPA board member. I would like that. And Katie Tag Garcia as the alternate. |
| 02:14:30.57 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Yeah. And |
| 02:14:34.11 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:14:34.16 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:14:34.40 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. |
| 02:14:35.21 | Steven Woodside | All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, motion carries. Unanimously. All right, we'll move on to future agenda. Thank you. |
| 02:14:43.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:14:45.52 | Steven Woodside | Sorry, did I have to abstain? |
| 02:14:46.55 | Jill Hoffman | Did I have to abstain? |
| 02:14:47.65 | Steven Woodside | to that? No, you don't have to, because that's not something we interview. |
| 02:14:48.74 | Jill Hoffman | because that's not something we interviewed. You know, Christopher. Was that part of the- Are you familiar with- |
| 02:14:52.17 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Are you familiar with our city manager, Kristen Hata? Sorry. |
| 02:14:56.89 | Jill Hoffman | I just said, |
| 02:14:57.64 | Steven Woodside | I didn't know what, sorry. On top of ethics here, everybody. Full transparency. We're all about it. We're all about it. |
| 02:14:57.97 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sorry. |
| 02:15:01.06 | Angeline Loeffler | . |
| 02:15:03.81 | Steven Woodside | Okay. So now we'll go on to eight D future agenda items. Anyone have future agenda items they'd like to bring up this evening? |
| 02:15:10.97 | Joan Cox | um, Oh, no. I saw the one I was looking for. |
| 02:15:16.52 | Melissa Blaustein | Nothing new. |
| 02:15:19.27 | Steven Woodside | Okay, well, I'm going to adjourn our meeting in a very somber. |
| 02:15:23.59 | Chris Zapata | Very somber. Yes, if I may, before you adjourn, I'd like to notify you that we have a citizen that's sending me messages saying she's trying to couldn't get the public comment. I'm not sure what's going on. Her name is Miss Babette McDougall. So I'm not sure why she can't get on or hasn't been able to get on. |
| 02:15:48.34 | Steven Woodside | I'm not sure how we usually proceed when there's a technical difficulty, but I would be very- |
| 02:15:52.28 | Chris Zapata | THE END OF |
| 02:15:52.33 | Joan Cox | There's a phone number. |
| 02:15:53.17 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:15:53.20 | Walfred Solorzano | For the record, |
| 02:15:53.26 | Chris Zapata | of. He is on Zoom right now. She says her hand is raised, but no one's paying attention. |
| 02:15:58.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Uh... Okay, sorry. I don't know if I missed it, but yeah, usually I catch them all. So I apologize. Do we wanna do open public comment? |
| 02:16:11.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Uh-huh. |
| 02:16:11.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:16:12.44 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Yeah. I mean, we haven't heard much this evening, so yes, please. |
| 02:16:12.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:16:16.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Babette McDougall, were you unmuted? |
| 02:16:20.19 | Babette McDougall | Am I unmuted? Yes. Oh. Well, good evening. Well, gosh, you guys have already blasted through your agenda and I'm impressed because these are I'm so used to seeing these meetings go on to the wee hours of the morning. So I had hoped to speak with you a little bit about the budget, but I see that we're still working on the budget, so I don't mind. delaying that question for another time. probably would have stood up and made a similar comment regarding the question of conduct for commissions and boards, because I've served on the telecommunications And I know that the first thing that I was contacted by the city and I was told that that in order to start as a new member, that I would be briefed on the protocols of these meetings. And that turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. That's when I was hounded my first version of the Brown Act, in fact. and was told to study it thoroughly. But they had also ticked a couple of pages that specifically addressed the legality of how a commission member or an elected official may even meet with the public. As you know, there are protocols around that. And I'm a real stickler about the Brown Act now. I find it's a really useful document. Nice roadmap for conducting business. And since you guys have made it very clear that you're all about ethics and transparency, and this is my chance to plug the Brown Act. Thank you. |
| 02:17:59.63 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Babette. We love enthusiasm for government. So appreciate that you're as excited as we all are. We appreciate it. And thank you for reaching out to the city manager so that you could make that comment. I'm sorry that you had technical difficulties. We appreciate hearing from you. |
| 02:18:04.39 | Unknown | as we all are. We appreciate it. |
| 02:18:13.92 | Steven Woodside | So I am going to adjourn the meeting on a somber note. I think that we, by now, many of us in the community have heard the tragic news of the passing of a highly valued and truly one of a kind, incredible Sausalito resident Susan Shea, whom when I was looking for a bio so that I could read some of the phenomenal work that she's done in the city out this evening as we close the meeting in her honor, had trouble coming across one because she was just such a not a showy person. She didn't do any of it to get credit, but she really showed up. Um, And some of the things that she worked on that I had the opportunity to engage with her around. And I know all of us here on the council have had a chance to work with her. And whoever's had a chance to work with her and see her passion has been really touched by her in a special way. But I know she was very deeply involved in preserving the Varda Mosaic. She's very involved in the Sausalito Foundation, a passionate advocate for the unhoused, really always helping those in need to the best of her ability, speaking up for housing, speaking up to support the community. And one community member whom I reached out to said to me, and I thought this was so appropriate that, you know, hearing this news, the fabric of Sausalito has really ripped with the passing of Susan Shea. And I just wanted to share this one line of poetry from Mary Oliver that I thought really described her beautifully in the situation, which was, Mm-hmm. Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me. What is it you plan to do? with your one wild and precious life. And I think we know that Susan Shea lived a truly wild and precious life in our community, and we are all at a loss. So I just wanted to. adjourn in her honor and maybe we can take a moment of silence before we officially close the meeting to think about our favorite memory. of Susan Shea. And I'll just say, of course, we'll be hopefully doing more to honor her, but wanted to make sure we close the meeting in her honor too. So let's just take a moment of silence before we adjourn, if we could. |
| 02:20:11.90 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 02:20:43.28 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, everybody. And then I'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting at 9.11 PM. |
| 02:20:50.54 | Unknown | Recording stopped. |