| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.03 | Unknown | . |
| 00:00:04.54 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. I get so that they still need to get the difference. I think that's a great question. Thank you. |
| 00:00:14.07 | Unknown | Recording in progress. |
| 00:00:16.50 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. Good evening. |
| 00:00:19.71 | Unknown | Oh wait, hold on. I gotta pull up. |
| 00:00:25.24 | Walfred Solorzano | I'll start off, I'll see my piece and then, |
| 00:00:27.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:28.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Sorry. |
| 00:00:34.73 | Unknown | it's been long enough |
| 00:00:38.84 | Steven Woodside | been long enough. I'm ready. |
| 00:00:40.02 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:00:41.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Good evening, Mayor Blasden and Councilmembers. This regular meeting of October 3, 2023 is being held in Council Chambers located at 420 Little Street. Staff and members of the public are also participating through Zoom. This meeting is being broadcast live on the city's website and on cable TV channel 27. |
| 00:00:57.46 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, city clerk. I will now call the meeting to order at 6.01 p.m. Would you please call the roll? |
| 00:01:02.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox. Here. Councilmember Hoffman. Here. Councilmember Kelman. Here. Vice Mayor Sobieski. Here. And Mayor Blossin. |
| 00:01:03.36 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Here. Here. |
| 00:01:10.58 | Steven Woodside | here. Okay. The first item on the agenda this evening is closed session. This evening's closed session discussion is just one item conference with Labor Negotiator, Government Code Section 54957. agency representative Charles Sikai, Deborah Muchmore, management and confidential employees. So I will now go ahead and open that up for public comment. |
| 00:01:32.25 | Walfred Solorzano | We don't have any members of the public in an audience and live, but if anybody would like to comment on Zoom, which we don't have anybody in yet, actually, we'll have to let a person in. We're letting Leonard Frank in. If you would like to make a comment for closed session, please use the raised hand function. |
| 00:01:57.90 | Walfred Solorzano | And seeing none, no public comment. |
| 00:02:01.90 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment and adjourn to closed session. We'll return for open session at 7 p.m. Thank you. |
| 00:02:16.30 | Steven Woodside | All right, we're going to go ahead and get this meeting called back into order at 7.03 PM. And we are returning from closed session. Before we get started, we're going to begin the meeting. with the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Who would like to lead it this week? I led it last time. So let's get Stacey Gregory. I would like for you to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Got Chief Gregory in the back. |
| 00:02:38.03 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:02:39.01 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Sure. |
| 00:02:43.99 | Unknown | of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America |
| 00:02:45.22 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:02:45.24 | Unknown | Good flag. Love you. |
| 00:02:48.71 | Unknown | and to every part of the pilgrimage |
| 00:02:49.00 | Unknown | because of the Thank you. |
| 00:02:50.71 | Unknown | Lord. What? |
| 00:02:51.51 | Unknown | one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:02:52.66 | Unknown | Honor God. |
| 00:02:59.48 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Chief Gregory. I appreciate it. We have no announcements from the closed session, so I'm going to go ahead and ask for approval of this evening's agenda. So moved. |
| 00:03:11.63 | Unknown | you |
| 00:03:13.55 | Steven Woodside | Do I have a second? Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, motion carries five zero. Okay, the next item on the agenda here is mayor's announcements. So in light of some of the alarming hate speech incidents, as we've seen in recent council meetings in Marin and the Bay Area, I just wanted to make a statement about our city and its values going into the meeting. So the city of Sausalito strongly denounces hate speech and does not tolerate disruptive behavior in our meetings. We pride ourselves on the rich diversity of our residents and are committed to creating a culture of belonging where members of our community feel included, safe, and respected. We ask for members of the public to refrain from making disrespectful and hateful comments. As a reminder, comments must be within the jurisdiction of Sausalito and related to the agenda item. So that concludes that part of the announcements. And the other mayor's announcement is that we have officially welcomed Sergio Rud as our city attorney so he is we're very happy to be able to keep him on board he has joined a new law firm bbk who we have entered into an agreement with and so he'll be staying on as uh our city attorney sergio you want to say hello or most of us know you by now but welcome |
| 00:04:26.00 | Sergio Rudin | Hi, folks. Thank you. I'm glad to be serving the city of Sausalito, and I enjoy continuing being able to serve you. |
| 00:04:33.08 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. We're very pleased to have you, Sergio. Thank you. And a big thank you to the team that worked on making that happen. Councilmember Hoffman and Vice Mayor Sobieski spent a long time behind the scenes making sure we got to keep you around. So Big thank you to them as well. And just one more thing, which is that on Friday, we honored Monica Finnegan. She was our award winner for the Spirit of Marin Award. And she does a lot of work for our community. So I wanted to make sure that folks were aware of that as well. Okay, so now we'll move on to action minutes from the previous meeting. And I will ask if we have any public comment on those minutes. |
| 00:05:05.40 | Walfred Solorzano | If any member of the public would like to comment in-house, there are speaker slips over by the television. You can fill those out and bring them back over here. If you are on Zoom, you can use the raise hand function, and we will call you. If you're on the telephone by Zoom, you can press star 9. So any public comment? See none. |
| 00:05:26.02 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I will then ask for a motion to approve the minutes from the September 19th meeting. |
| 00:05:35.34 | Melissa Blaustein | So moved. |
| 00:05:38.59 | Steven Woodside | Thank you all in favor. Say aye. Aye. Fantastic. Motion carries unanimously. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is number three, 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. There will be no separate discussion of consent calendar items. However, before the council votes on a motion to adopt the consent calendar items, council members may request that specific items be removed from the consent calendar for separate action. Items removed from the consent calendar will be discussed later on the agenda. When public comment will be heard on any item that was removed from the consent calendar. And before I go through and list items 3A through 3J, I do want to take time to read each of the proclamations that we have this evening because we have three very important ones. So I am going to start with the proclamation honoring October as Hispanic Heritage Month. |
| 00:06:21.22 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:06:21.24 | Melissa Blaustein | Bye. |
| 00:06:37.86 | Steven Woodside | just pull it up. |
| 00:06:41.23 | Walfred Solorzano | It goes from September to October. |
| 00:06:42.85 | Steven Woodside | Oh, thank you. September through October. September 15th. September 15th through October 15th. |
| 00:06:44.63 | Walfred Solorzano | 7.15 to 9. |
| 00:06:53.25 | Steven Woodside | Sorry, technical difficulty. |
| 00:07:11.39 | Steven Woodside | Are you able to get it to load on your end, Wilfred? I can't. I got it, it worked. Whereas during National Hispanic Heritage Month, we honor the diverse history of generations of Latinos whose aspirations and achievements have shaped the soul of our nation. And whereas during National Hispanic Heritage Month, we salute the vital contributions of these public servants and of the more than 62 million Latinos who help make our nation stronger every day. Latino history is American history. It is a story of hard work. family, faith, pride, and possibility. And it is proof that there is nothing we cannot do when we do it together. And whereas September 15th to October 15th is Latino heritage month. which honors, remembers, and celebrates the contribution of Latinos in California. This year's theme is Unidos, Inclusivity for a Stronger California, is meant to inspire and celebrate the concept of unity and strength in representation. At 15.6 million, Latino Californians are the state's largest ethnic group with roots that can be traced across the Americas, indigenous communities of Latin America and Africa and beyond. And whereas Latino Heritage Month began 55 years ago in 1968. September 15th is a significant date because it is the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Mexico and Chile also celebrate their Independence Days on September 16th and 18th, and Dia de Arraza is on October 12th. And now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the city of Sausalito Hereby proclaim National Hispanic Heritage Month. And then we have another, and thank you for bringing that forward and being a part of making that possible, Walford. I truly appreciate it. And then we have another proclamation denouncing anti-Asian sentiments and violence. Unfortunately, we received an email from a tourist who had a negative experience in our community and we reached out to them. And I wanted to note that we are including more conversations around... DEI for Asian Pacific Islanders in our DEI trainings. And we're also including our Chamber of Commerce chair in those trainings. So I'll go ahead and read this as well. Whereas the city of Sausalito is inclusive and has acknowledged issues related to anti-Asian sentiments, and whereas we have witnessed the dangers that xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian American and Pacific Islander families, individuals, businesses, and communities at risk, And whereas such rhetoric has coincided with a shocking rise in racial profiling, discrimination, microaggressions, and even hate crimes and violence directed toward Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities. And whereas ongoing and detestable displays of hate have gone unreported, perpetuated by the model minority myth that Asians are complacent and will remain silent even as Asian Americans are too often targeted and violated, including our most vulnerable children and elderly individuals. And whereas today, The Cultural heritage of Asian American and Pacific Islander community enhances Sausalito. And whereas numerous organizations serving the diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander communities throughout the Commonwealth assist individuals, families, and organizations in celebrating their cultural heritage and educating the greater public about the many contributions of Asian and Asian Americans to Sausalito. And now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the city of Sausalito hereby denounce intolerance, anti-Asian sentiment, and call for the well-being and safety of the Asian American and Pacific Islander individuals and communities throughout Sausalito. Thank you very much for... sharing, allowing us to read that. And then I have one more proclamation. I believe we have these folks here with us this evening. Thank you for joining us. The volunteers and public safety VIPs of Sausalito are celebrating 20 years of service to our community this year. So we have a proclamation for them as well. honoring the volunteers in public safety vips, whereas the volunteers in public safety was program was officially launched in the spring of 2002 in support of police and fire departments. And whereas the vips for in their own 501 C three nonprofit organization and became a standalone entity. They felt it was important to create a stable organization where they could assist the community in conjunction with the City of Sausalito's police and fire departments, And whereas over the past 20 years, the VIPS have volunteered more than 20,000 hours of service to the community. They are the group that always say yes to helping with any event within the city of Sausalito. The VIPS care deeply about making their community a safe place for all. And whereas the VIPS assist in the office tests that help make the police department run more efficiently, the assistance they provide saves time for staff members to work on their main assignments and projects. The VIPs are an enormous resource which can be called upon at any time, especially when there are large projects that require many hands. And whereas the VIPs assist in the field and other capacities such as vacation house checks, traffic control, crime scene stabilization, natural disaster support, special events, town and parking lot patrols, and Enforcing Handicapped Parking. And whereas the existence of VIPS has made the Sausalito Police Department and the overall community a better place for the last 20 years. The volunteers serving alongside the department staff and officers have created friendships and memories that will last a lifetime. And now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the city of Sausalito hereby honor the volunteers in public safety for their anniversary of 20 years of service to the city of Sausalito. So we would love for you to come up here so we can take a picture with you, VIPS, and your proclamation since you've joined us. So please, come on up. Give him a round of applause. |
| 00:12:50.68 | Babette McDougall | Can you smile? Yes. |
| 00:12:50.88 | Melissa Blaustein | Are you in a sparkle? |
| 00:12:57.48 | Babette McDougall | Ms. Chris Gallagher. |
| 00:13:00.40 | Steven Woodside | We also wish Chris Gallagher could be with us, who's the founding member of VIPs. |
| 00:13:05.31 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you Everybody in. was so tall. |
| 00:13:11.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:13:13.51 | Unknown | . |
| 00:13:14.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 00:13:17.73 | Unknown | Come on. |
| 00:13:18.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:13:23.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you very much again for your service. Thank you all so much. |
| 00:13:24.17 | Unknown | Thank you very much again. |
| 00:13:25.58 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:13:30.25 | Unknown | Good to see you, Tom. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:13:34.74 | Steven Woodside | Do you want to say it? |
| 00:13:35.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:13:35.97 | Steven Woodside | Would you like to say a few words? Yeah, go to the mic right there. Perfect. |
| 00:14:19.98 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. Okay, so I'll return to the consent calendar and read the items this evening in case there are those that may want to be pulled by council members. So 3A. the proclamation honoring National Hispanic Heritage Month, 3B proclamation denouncing anti-Asian sentiments and violence. 3C, Proclamation Honoring the Volunteers in Public Safety. 3D, Saucedo bike return monthly report. 3E, adopt a resolution declaring the city's 2016 GO4 interceptor surplus. 3F, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the professional services agreement with CSWST2. 3G adoption of a resolution approving an encroachment agreement for exterior improvements in the public right of way at 46 Curry. adopt two resolutions to authorize the city manager to execute an amended professional services agreement with OptiCoast Design. 3I, second reading and adoption of zoning ordinance number 05-2023, ADUs, and 3J, adoption of a resolution to amend Consultant services agreements for completion of the general plan amendments and rezoning and preparation of the EIR for the 2023-2031 housing element programs. Are there any items that council members would like to see pulled from the consent calendar? |
| 00:15:29.30 | Melissa Blaustein | I don't know that I need to see it pulled, but since the chief is here, I'm wondering if 3D, the bike return report, if we wanted to know how many bikes are actually the usage of bike parking. Do we just divide total sales by three or by five. by five. So there's nothing else in total sales except the $5. Okay, in the future, maybe you could just put bike numbers in there too. Just the bike usage is helpful. Thanks. |
| 00:16:01.26 | Steven Woodside | Are there other items? |
| 00:16:01.97 | Joan Cox | that council members would like to comment on? I would like to make a comment on item, |
| 00:16:10.99 | Joan Cox | you Ah, three F, but I'm not asking to pull it from consent. Okay. So 3F concerns, may I make that comment? Yes, please, by all means. 3F concerns paying 50,756 for design build services to facilitate the Alexander Beach Sewer Improvement Project. |
| 00:16:20.82 | Steven Woodside | I'll meet. |
| 00:16:31.08 | Joan Cox | I um, believe that it will Right now, there has not been buy-in from the 16 affected property owners for that project. And so I think that investment of these monies by the city will need to be carefully um, interfaced with, um, ensuring that the city, avoids liability from the property owners and from the Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District in connection with the work that it's undertaking Um, to address these issues. I trust the public works director is in ongoing communication with the 16 property owners, but I believe this is a. a path that needs to be carefully navigated to ensure that this $50,000 is well invested and not... and doesn't ultimately support an infeasible project. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:17:41.67 | Steven Woodside | you. Any other comments from council before we open this up for public comment? Okay, I'll go ahead and open the consent calendar items up for public comment. |
| 00:17:52.25 | Walfred Solorzano | any members of the public would like to Oh, by the way, you can just go up to the stack. Yeah, we'll be there later. That's all. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about that. |
| 00:18:00.01 | Bill Hines | Don't worry about it. |
| 00:18:09.94 | Steven Woodside | Rebecca, can you move the mic down a little bit? Because we can't hear you. Okay. Thank you. |
| 00:18:17.83 | Unknown | you |
| 00:18:19.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Hold on. One moment before I start. I just want to check the mic, sorry. |
| 00:18:26.47 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:18:26.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:18:26.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:18:26.91 | Steven Woodside | We're not hearing, it's not an elevated noise here. Oh. |
| 00:18:32.85 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 00:18:32.87 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 00:18:32.92 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. Oh, there you are. |
| 00:18:35.59 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:18:35.60 | Babette McDougall | Thank you all for... Oh, now I can hear it. All right. Thank you. Babette McDougall. Thank you. I bet. McDougal 115 Girard Avenue. Um, Let me just point out that these items under Section 3 of the consent calendar that relate to the housing element. I re-sent my more recent, I call it letter number three to you folks, because I have subsequently learned, through the point people, thanks to Walford, that I've been assigned over at ABAG and now also with MTC. that the contract that when I clicked on that half a million dollar figure in that budget box for the Bridgeway Improvement, project. It led me to an agreement that showed that it had been signed by a representative from the city, as well as a representative from MTC. And the terms and conditions outlined in that letter were rather shocking. So the question is, you know, where is that document now? The link got scrubbed rather quickly. which is not an unusual thing in today's world. But in tracking it down, what I've learned Is that. the kind of terms and conditions that were outlined in that particular document, for example, giving the Metropolitan Transportation Commission exclusive decisioning rights over future development projects in Sausalito, I have been told now That that in fact is normal language for MTC. with regard to the housing element. I've also been told that the other two stipulations, that there would be no input from either the citizens or the city on any decision that they, might enter into on a future development project in Sausalito of their choosing to be announced at a later time. is also normal language for their housing element programs. And then finally, the third element, which was, and if Sausalito doesn't do exactly as we state, then they are obligated to return all the money to MCC that one might expect to spend of that half million dollar grant in particular, which was my assumption at the time, Thank you. But I've since learned that all three of these items are relevant to the housing element. So for your consideration, that's why I've asked you to strike them from this for later consideration. Thank you, Babette. |
| 00:21:00.59 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. Next speaker on Zoom. Do we have anybody else? No. On Zoom, we have Eva. |
| 00:21:10.25 | Unknown | Thanks, I wanted to recognize the item on, can you hear me okay? |
| 00:21:15.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, sorry. |
| 00:21:16.24 | Unknown | Thanks. I wanted to recognize the item on anti-Asian hate. I wanted to just remind people because I think that the media, especially TV news has, has really kind of, twisted some of the reality, but you know, the vast majority of anti-Asian hate acts have been enacted in the state of California, up and down the West Coast and throughout the American West. not by black people in urban areas, but by white people. white politicians specifically the Chinese Exclusion Act, was accompanied, was preceded by an enormous amount of violence, pogroms, massacres, lynchings, shootings of Chinese people, burnings of their villages. all up and down the state, all up and down the coast, in fact. and some of those family fortunes that engineered a lot of the anti-Asian hate are still intact. There's some local fortunes. I.W. Hellman's fortune, which is the Wells Fargo fortune, lives on. Hellman is still a big name in the Bay Area. More locally, Chuck McClashen, who used to be the supervisor, his ancestor pioneered the Truckee method of... Starving out and restricting water from Chinese labor after they, you know, ceased to have done like the most dangerous and brutal work. um, in the mines and on the railroads, um, McGlashan came up with a plan that basically restricted any food or water into their areas. There are entire towns like Antioch where Chinese had to build serious underground tunnels because there were sundown laws. And if you were, |
| 00:23:19.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much. |
| 00:23:26.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, we have Leo Frank. |
| 00:23:45.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Neil Frank |
| 00:23:52.14 | Walfred Solorzano | Is he there? Okay. He's still there. All right, we'll go on to the next person then. Can you mute them? We'll go with June Amor. |
| 00:24:06.61 | Unknown | Hello, my name is Jew Namer. And speaking of the Asian hate and all that, and considering we had internment camps in the US during World War II where the Japanese were locked away You know, just to keep everybody safe, because I guess the politicians didn't really know what was going on. Yeah. Speaking of that, that was the real camps at the time. You know, the camps in Germany... Why would gas chambers have |
| 00:24:36.31 | Walfred Solorzano | Sorry, as the mayor had stated earlier, we've been getting the county has been getting a lot of hate speech related that are anti Semitic and so we'll go on to the next person. |
| 00:24:54.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, remove. |
| 00:24:55.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:24:55.68 | Walfred Solorzano | Say hello. |
| 00:24:56.03 | Unknown | Thank you. Can you hear me? |
| 00:25:01.91 | Unknown | All right. I mean, I guess the issue I'm kind of having |
| 00:25:03.46 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. |
| 00:25:05.30 | Unknown | is who determines what is hate speech and what's free speech? If someone's not cussing, if somebody's not swearing, making threats, then why do you guys have the right to cut them off? But if somebody wants to name or belittle white people or Christians or Catholics, then that's fine. but the moment somebody says anything about Jews or anything like that, I'm not even saying it enough. |
| 00:25:30.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, next person, we're going to go with Jim Conley. |
| 00:25:39.81 | Walfred Solorzano | 9-11 missing links.com Jews did 9-11. |
| 00:25:41.97 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. 9-11. Mary, on a point where we just end public comment. I think we've heard everything. Yeah, I think the recipe is important. I think we can, Joan. That's my proposal, just to cut it off at this point and move on with our agenda. |
| 00:25:46.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, I think the recipe can. |
| 00:25:52.60 | Joan Cox | I object to that proposal. I don't know who else is in the queue for public comment. But... Um, I, you know, |
| 00:26:02.72 | Melissa Blaustein | We're not under an obligation to take public comment. The people can come to the room. |
| 00:26:04.61 | Joan Cox | about the challenge. |
| 00:26:07.97 | Melissa Blaustein | you Uh, So this is a |
| 00:26:09.71 | Joan Cox | This is a Zoom bombing. We have the city attorney weigh in on this. |
| 00:26:10.27 | Sergio Rudin | you're going to be |
| 00:26:10.33 | Melissa Blaustein | you're right. |
| 00:26:10.42 | Sergio Rudin | We have to. |
| 00:26:10.81 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:26:12.97 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I mean, my recommendation would be that, you know, we continue with public comment. However, if, you know, members of the public are not speaking to an item on the agenda, and presently, those items are the items on the consent calendar. then as a point of order, the mayor or the clerk can cut them off. And that would be consistent with the city's adopted rules and regulations for public comment. |
| 00:26:36.76 | Joan Cox | I like that approach. I think within a few words, the city clerk can ascertain whether a comment is is germane to the items on the consent calendar or not. |
| 00:26:49.10 | Melissa Blaustein | We have a technological problem that anyone, we have literally 8 billion people around the earth have access to this meeting. Some small fraction, even a few seconds can add up to quite a Zoom bombing. So we can keep this way, but when we're at one remedy is we're under no obligation to take Zoom comment. There's a public comment lectern right here. People can come in person. Hopefully you don't have to go that far. But we are under attack, a technological attack. And so we can see how it goes. But this may be an issue we need to agendize and deal with in the future if it continues. |
| 00:27:19.15 | Joan Cox | I agree. I would like to agendize whether we're under the obligation to take Zoom public comments. Since this meeting is being made available via both in-person and Zoom, I don't know that we can discriminate against who gets to comment in one forum or the other. So I would like to consider that further. |
| 00:27:35.25 | Steven Woodside | Just to weigh in, we've had a number of conversations with the Anti-Defamation League and also the Jewish Community Relations Council with regards to recommendations. Different municipalities are taking different approaches, some of which are completely ending public comment on Zoom altogether and notifying the public that they... should appear at the meeting in person, I think if people like Bebet can come down here, then Folks who want to hate speech at our meetings, if they are so inclined to do so, maybe would need to show their face. But this is not on our agenda right now. Please let me finish my comment. |
| 00:28:02.84 | Jill Hoffman | This is not on our agenda right now. And that's it. But okay, but we're still going down the road of, you're addressing something that's not on the agenda and we're talking about how to address this, right? So we can agendize it, but we need to adhere to our current practice. Unless someone is on Zoom and they're violating our hate speech rules, then I think it's important to adhere to our current policies and certainly agendize this for a future discussion. Absolutely, I 100% agree with that. |
| 00:28:39.86 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. |
| 00:28:39.90 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 00:28:39.96 | Melissa Blaustein | Hey. |
| 00:28:40.03 | Ian Sobieski | Bye. |
| 00:28:40.98 | Melissa Blaustein | My position still is I would end public comment at this point and take the lawsuit if the people can get organized enough to sue us. |
| 00:28:47.07 | Ian Sobieski | May I also... Thank you, Vice Mayor. |
| 00:28:47.88 | Melissa Blaustein | advice, Mary. |
| 00:28:48.61 | Ian Sobieski | May I ask the city manager a quick question? That's the part of the city attorney. Is it possible to move all public comment tonight to the end of the meeting? as to every item on the agenda. I object. |
| 00:29:01.97 | Joan Cox | to moving public comment about every item we are required to consider public comment in making decisions on items and if we move all public comment to the end of the meeting we are a letting ourselves be held hostage by hate speech and be. Failing to comply with brown act requirements that we actually consider the public's feedback as we make decisions on each of the items on our agenda. |
| 00:29:27.38 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I will. I will say that Council member Cox is correct with respect to the Brown Act issue. And the Council is supposed to allow for public comment before it takes action on an item. So. |
| 00:29:37.68 | Steven Woodside | I would at this time ask them that the city clerk follow our Brown Act rules of making sure that if it's not relevant to items on the consent calendar, which none of these comments that we've just heard are that they would be cut off. So thank you for that. |
| 00:29:48.92 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you for that. And I just have a technical question, Sergio, on public comment. Just does public comment have to be verbal or could it be constrained to be written? |
| 00:29:57.83 | Melissa Blaustein | No. |
| 00:30:00.39 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, we cannot limit people to submitting only written comments, unfortunately. |
| 00:30:05.34 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:30:07.36 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll continue accepting public comment on items that are relevant to the consent calendar discussion. |
| 00:30:17.47 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, Chuck Lindberg. |
| 00:30:23.11 | Steven Woodside | we have any further public comment at this time? |
| 00:30:24.42 | Walfred Solorzano | We do Chuck Lindberg. |
| 00:30:29.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Your time is going. |
| 00:30:30.66 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:30:35.44 | Walfred Solorzano | Looks like he's not available. We'll go to the next person. Gabe Stutman. |
| 00:30:45.16 | Unknown | Hello, counsel, Gabe Stutman here. Jewish. SF. Um, |
| 00:30:49.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:30:49.90 | Unknown | No. |
| 00:30:49.99 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 00:30:50.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:30:50.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Hold on. |
| 00:30:50.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:30:50.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Chris, please. No, I'm sorry. |
| 00:30:55.18 | Unknown | Is that muted? |
| 00:30:56.37 | Walfred Solorzano | Sorry, you can continue. |
| 00:30:59.62 | Unknown | you know, the reason are these callers are doing this is to test the Brown Act. Ms. Cox is very wise in recommending that you don't shut it down. And it's also fascinating that the Jewish mayor and this other guy who's, Obviously it has a Jewish name. rather just take a |
| 00:31:18.12 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. Well, yeah. I think that's it for public comment. |
| 00:31:22.79 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll close public comment at this time and we will now ask for a motion to approve the consent calendar. Some of second, THE END OF All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item four, which is public hearing items of which there are none. And now we'll move on to business items. The first item on the agenda is accept the report on the pavement management plan and provide direction to staff regarding the allocation of additional funding to support roadway. |
| 00:31:51.70 | Kevin McGowan | Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council. I'm Kevin McGowan. |
| 00:31:53.64 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. |
| 00:31:54.26 | Kevin McGowan | Public Works. |
| 00:31:54.60 | Chris Zapata | Kevin, if I can. Kevin, city man, if I can. give a little prelude to this. I'd like to do that before you jump into your PowerPoint. Is that acceptable, Mayor and Council? |
| 00:32:09.05 | Steven Woodside | Can you hear me? |
| 00:32:09.11 | Chris Zapata | Can you hear me? |
| 00:32:09.94 | Steven Woodside | Yes, we can hear you. I'd like for you to, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, city manager. |
| 00:32:10.01 | Chris Zapata | Yes, we can. |
| 00:32:13.84 | Chris Zapata | Great. So thank you very much for considering this item on the agenda tonight. As you know, one of the things that we talked about three years ago almost was the idea that we need to focus on our basics. And the basics involved our personnel bandwidth, our finances, and certainly our infrastructure. In the past, the city has done some things related to infrastructure that are important for the community to know. in completing and borrowing funds for a police and fire station in 2010-ish, you committed $39 million public dollars. In fixing your park infrastructure, you committed another $10 million. In thinking about your employee infrastructure, you put aside $5 million through various councils and administrations. And tonight, we're very, very pleased to bring you some discussion about what we call most important in basic infrastructure, which are roads. I'd also like to acknowledge that the city council of the past, past Measure O, the city councils that sits here tonight, extended and expanded Measure L so that infrastructure could continue to be addressed. And so one of the things that we wanna talk about is the condition of that vital infrastructure, which everybody uses and everybody complains about, which are roads in Sausalito. And just to be clear, we're not talking about a financial decision tonight. What we're suggesting is that we would do some more work after we provide this information to you and the public about what we do in the 24, 25 and beyond budgets. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. McGowan. |
| 00:33:52.71 | Kevin McGowan | Great. Thank you, Chris. So I do have a presentation this evening. I have added one slide to the handout that you have, and I'll identify that. as I get to it. Item 5A before you this evening is a report and a request for council direction regarding the allocation of additional funding to support roadway treatment. for public roadway systems. And I'd amend that based off what Chris just said. We simply want to have a discussion about this at this point in time. Next slide, please. |
| 00:34:25.14 | Kevin McGowan | There we go. Thank you, Noeli. The city of Sausalito has 26 centerline miles of roadway. These roads are developed at various times, with some being constructed of concrete and others being constructed of asphalt. Approximately every two years, our roadways are reviewed through the Pavement Management Technical Assistance Program. We're going to get a few acronyms tonight, so my apologies. That's called PTAP. This program is administered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, while other roads were assessed in 20 well other communities were assessed in 2020 ours were reviewed in 2022. the 2022 PTAP, which is the acronym for the pavement management, excuse me, the, yeah, Pavement Management Program, that report is included with your packet. Next slide, please. |
| 00:35:28.76 | Kevin McGowan | Okay, thank you. The PTAP program develops a rating for each road within the city called a Pavement Condition Index, or PCI. The roadways are rated from zero being the very poor condition to 100 representing a newly resurfaced or replaced roadway. The average PCI in Sausalito in 2022 It's 58, based on the report. Our PCI over the last 13 years has decreased from 69 to 58. Generally speaking, other cities in Marin and other places around the Bay Area They strive to maintain a PCI of approximately 70. Next slide, please. |
| 00:36:14.85 | Kevin McGowan | I believe this is my additional slide, so I will update it for the record. There are many benefits of having well-maintained roadway systems. Obviously, benefits include better drivability, and in many cases, there are safety benefits to having updated striping and signage on some of the more heavily traveled roadways. In addition, having new roadways and having newer roadways improves the overall aesthetics of the community and is generally more inviting to visitors and can be attributed to increased property values. Some less noticeable improvements include limiting the amount of water infiltration into the sub base of a roadway, which can add to soil instabilities and lead to landslides. Next slide. Great. Attachment two in your packet This is Sausalito's 2022 PMP update. This report documents each roadway And is, Sorry. is and it's repra. respective pavement condition index. In addition to the report, in addition, the report provides additional information estimating what funding is necessary to maintain or raise the city's current PCI rating. That's this chart in front of you. At the time of the report development, the city was allocating approximately $1.4 million each year to the treatment and upgrade of our roadway systems. That included the soft costs. The report provides several scenarios which estimate how additional funding applied to surface treatments could impact the city's PCI. The Council allocated approximately $1.6 million in construction funding to support roadway treatments in the 2024 resurfacing project, approved in the CIP. Based on the report, 1.8 million is needed annually for the next five years to maintain our current PCI rating of 58. Next slide. |
| 00:38:25.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:38:26.57 | Kevin McGowan | The report. The report has five scenarios, which was the previous slide, and we'll look at that in a bit. Scenario two, of the report. estimates an allocation of $2.9 million annually for the next five years will increase the city's PCI to 63. Next slide. |
| 00:38:48.11 | Kevin McGowan | There are many factors that impact roadway deterioration. Some factors are obvious, such as the increased level of vehicle traffic or heavy loads on roadways that were not designed to sustain such weight. There are less obvious impacts as well. Rain, drainage, and water pooling on roadways can impact the surface and subsurface of a roadway. This coupled with subsurface issues such as springs, which we do have a lot here in town, can accelerate roadway deterioration. Sausalito has concrete roadways as well. Bless you. These roadways can last more than 40 years and do tend to perform well but are also more expensive to install. Asphalt roadways tend to last 20 to 25 years before needing replacement or resurfacing. However, there are certain surface treatments that can extend the life of an asphalt road. And within the report, it does distinguish some of those. I don't think I'll go into that detail this evening, but it is important to note that there are such other treatments. Next slide. There are quite a few concrete roads here in Sausalito. Many were built at a time when there were less vehicles in town and the standard width of a roadway was much less than what it would be today. That's if we built the brand new road in the same area. The city addresses this The city addressed this in the past by leaving some current concrete roads in place and paving shoulders. to accommodate parking, And two lane roads, traffic or two lanes of traffic. In this picture on the left hand side, you'll see that I think I have Pine Street shown here, which shows that you have a main concrete area and then on the side of it, you have asphalt. So that kind of shows how the city has developed its roads over time. Concrete over time continues to gain strength, but it also cracks. Having a cracked concrete roadway is not a cause for a complete replacement. In many cases, crack sealing the concrete roadway will extend the lifespan. However, we do have some roadways in which the displacement vertically is a hazard. And in these cases, replacement is necessary. One of the pictures there on the right hand side is a picture of a section of Easterby. And a portion of that has some subgrade water that's percolating up, which causes that vertical displacement. Next slide. Unfortunately, state and federal funding is not readily available for most all local roadway treatments or resurfacing projects. This place is the responsibility of funding this maintenance up to the local jurisdiction which is challenging for a small community such as Sausalito. identifying roadway projects that can that can address multiple issues, such as bicycle and safety improvements, can be supported by grants. Staff continues to include resurfacing and roadway treatments in these projects with the intent of addressing multiple issues at the same time. Other municipalities have addressed roadway deterioration by passing ballot measures or additional tax on their residents to fund resurfacing and repairs. This funding mechanism may be considered for the city. Next slide. |
| 00:42:26.52 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. The cost associated with developing plans and specifications and estimates for roadway resurfacing and treatment projects tends to be less than a detailed capital project. A contractor generally needs minimal detail to place a micro seal on a roadway. or to place an additional two-inch overlay on an asphalt road that needs to be repaired. There are exceptions to this, such as Edwards Avenue. which has steep slopes, many driveways, and a retaining wall, which all need details for the contractor to bid and construct. Typically, a brand new capital project requires a soft cost of at least 35% of the construction cost, while the resurfacing projects are closer to 23%. Both of these percentages include contingencies for the construction, which is about 10%. So just so that I clarify the numbers, I'm kind of pushing out. Next slide. |
| 00:43:31.17 | Kevin McGowan | All right. If additional funding is available, Council may choose to assign funding to roadway maintenance and roadway treatments. In 2022 pavement management, the 2022 pavement management program denotes several alternatives to with scenario two, of an allocation of $2.9 million annually for the next five years, equating to a Pavement Condition Index increase to 63. We were having a little trouble with the numbers in the staff report, and I think that if we were going to try to achieve that $2.9 million, an additional $1.5 million is needed for our 2024 budget. I also forgot to mention a section of the road to be treated is not solely based on pavement management report. Staff utilizes the pavement management program report as a starting point. We also receive input from the public and review specific roads to be selected before we actually put together a actual plan for a contractor to bid. So the report you have is just a starting point. Our staff goes out and reviews every road, including those that are flagged by our residents. So we want to go take a look at everything. And I think that's all for my presentation right now. And I welcome your discussion and your comments on how to proceed. So thank you very much. |
| 00:44:57.31 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much, Director McGowan. I have a few questions, but if there are others who have questions on the dais, I'm happy to entertain those first or I can get started. Okay. Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:45:08.18 | Joan Cox | Thank you. And thank you for the thorough report. I was really disappointed to see our trajectory over the last 10 years and the fact that we're down to 58%. percent PCI. and that our five year goal is only to get to 63 and not 70, which is the sort of the gold standard. I understand your recommendation that we not only this year, but annually for the next five years, increase our commitment. to our streets from 1.5, 9, 5 million to 3.5, million And I read in your staff report that we cannot reliably rely on grant funding to make up that shortfall. While I know this year, We may have the ability to do that and still preserve our 10% plus 5% emergency funds. I wanted to know the plan over the next five years for how we can spend an additional 7.75 million especially with the impending escalation in pension obligations. So I understand the proposed use, but I'm also interested in the proposed source for those funds that you're recommending we use. commit to. |
| 00:46:33.62 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, let me jump on that one if I can. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the question, Council Member Cox. And Chad can jump in and help me at some point as well. Again, I think the important thing is to highlight a need in the community. This is certainly a need. Our roads, as you noted, Council Member Cox, are getting worse. So to understand the problem is critical. And I think, you know, as Bob Dylan said, we don't need a weatherman to tell us it's raining. We got some roads that need to be fixed in a lot of areas of the community. So understanding the problem is key. And I think it's apparent we have a need. And it's time to address this critical infrastructure that everybody uses in our community, whether it's a visitor, a resident, a motorist, a bicyclist. So the question then is, you know, at what level as a council do you believe you want to have roads in your community? If you're saying it's the average in the Bay Area of 70, then we can figure out a number. As it relates to paying for them, there are various ways to do that. The obvious one is borrow. and figure out if, in fact, you know, by borrowing, you're saving money in future costs and rising costs. The other one is use some of your reserves, which are possible. And I keep telling folks that there is, you know, a significant amount of money beyond the 5% and the 10% unassigned resources in the budget that's been audited of $10 million. And I understand the trepidation about getting too low or too close for future obligations, unforeseen emergencies, etc. But to sit on $10 million when your roads are trending down the way they're trending down is not a recommendation that I would make. So I think there's an ability to take a step back. A portion of that, and I've mentioned the number $2 million. So as it relates to the $7 million that you characterized as part of the fix that's needed, there's five now. If you talk about the idea that we passed Measure L, with a doubled our infrastructure money. And in years four and five, when we have a new capital improvement program, if you wanna allocate $1.4 million of that to a road program, that could be a way to fund some of this. If at the end of every fiscal year, you have some type of, you're finishing in the black and you wanna allocate that to roads, that could be a potential fix as well. And then I think clearly for me, the idea that we have, uh, pension obligations and landslide obligations and employee obligations. I want to point out that when we start looking at our pensions and the rise as we've done last year and saw 26, 27 and 28 as years where we would see spiking, you have set aside $3.2 million for that. And so I'm less concerned about pensions than I am about roads. So I think it's really a policy direction that we're going to need in terms of what level of that infrastructure do you want for our residents, our visitors, our businesses, our property owners, our bicyclists, our people that walk and jog on roads, et cetera. So I think it's good to have a discussion. I don't have all the answers about how to fund that because I don't know if you're comfortable with what's happening. I don't know if you want to go more aggressive. Maybe you want to go 90 PMI. Maybe you want to go 65 PMI. But depending on your appetite for what condition you want to see the streets in Sausalito, that's going to drive a lot of the financials that we would have to come to you at a later date. And that's why I'm suggesting tonight is not the night to make that decision. It's to be more aware of what your questions are. And so the council and the public know that we are concerned about our street infrastructure. It's something that's been important to all of Sausalito for a long time. And like I said, it's time to start focusing on as you've addressed the public safety needs infrastructure-wise, you've addressed the parks needs infrastructure-wise and you have a real desire to make roads better for everybody. So I will tell you that I think we can get to half of a 70 PMI. or 64 PMI, $7 million, pretty simply. The other three and a half million probably is going to be a little bit of a challenge, but that's what we're here for, is try to work on that. So Chad, if you have any other insight that you'd like to add to it on the financial end, please, please, please let them know. |
| 00:51:16.33 | Joan Cox | Can I just clarify my question? So my question was not about this year. So I understand we have 10 million And maybe you're looking for us to take 1.9 million of that this year, but the staff report talks about making that commitment for each of the next five years. And so if we take 1.9, if we take 2 million from our reserves for each of the next five years, that's 10 million. Now our reserves are exhausted. And so I'm looking to understand what the sources of funding might be for years two through five. And listen, I totally agree. Our three-legged stool is finances, people, and infrastructure. So I totally agree on the urgency and importance of infrastructure. I just want to make sure that we are even-handedly addressing these three priorities. |
| 00:52:10.29 | Chris Zapata | uh, I don't believe we're in alignment on what the staff report says. I don't know that we're asking for you to commit, you know, 1.9 million for the next five years. I think that's aspirational. So maybe there's some miscommunication there. And Kevin maybe can clear that up. But I don't believe we should exhaust all $10 million to pay for road needs. That's not what I'm suggesting. |
| 00:52:38.41 | Joan Cox | City manager, I'm just going to read you a sentence from the staff report that says, quote, this is on page... 129 of the overall packet. Based on this analysis, a total of 3.5 million is needed each year for the next five years to increase the city's PCI 263. |
| 00:52:56.87 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, that's analysis in the report. That's not in the staff report. The staff report has alternatives and recommendations that don't suggest that. |
| 00:53:03.55 | Steven Woodside | It's on page five of the staff report. |
| 00:53:05.95 | Kevin McGowan | I think I reiterated what the with the P tap report actually said. So, Chris, I think that the report did kind of state what the the P tap report recommended. |
| 00:53:06.10 | Steven Woodside | I think. |
| 00:53:06.44 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:53:18.87 | Chris Zapata | I stand corrected. We're not asking for that tonight, Council Member Cox. |
| 00:53:20.46 | Joan Cox | out. |
| 00:53:22.65 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:53:22.92 | Joan Cox | Okay. That was my concern. And obviously, I do believe we do need to plan for the we can't just do one year and then say, well, let's ignore the other four years. We'll never get to 63 so I'm looking for guidance, maybe not tonight. This is just the feedback you're seeking tonight. for what the use, what the sources of that funding that you deem necessary are. |
| 00:53:48.39 | Angeline Loeffler | you know. |
| 00:53:49.33 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:53:49.40 | Angeline Loeffler | I mean, |
| 00:53:49.43 | Joan Cox | I'm trying to... |
| 00:53:49.69 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:53:49.72 | Angeline Loeffler | that play I way in rock |
| 00:53:50.14 | Steven Woodside | And, |
| 00:53:50.23 | Joan Cox | with. |
| 00:53:50.43 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:53:50.46 | Joan Cox | I'm not sure. |
| 00:53:50.53 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I'm not going to be able to do that. Oh, go ahead. And then Councilmember Hoffman has her hand raised as well. |
| 00:53:54.60 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes, Council Member Cox. I just want to bring forward that I am currently developing a multi-year plan. I'm developing a 10-year plan that's going to help us map out The next 10 years, when we start looking at pensions, we start looking at people, we start looking at infrastructure. It's not fully developed. I had to set it aside and continue to focus on the audit work at hand. We have our financial audit coming up the end of October. But that plan, that 10-year plan will help answer that question on how are we going to fund this. And we'll build it in a way that will enable you to choose different scenarios or different variables on how much funding do you want to allocate. Do we want to fund the 3.5? Do we want to fund a little bit less or a little bit more? So that tool will help answer that question. And I think we're just a little premature to say how we do it at this point. |
| 00:54:50.69 | Jill Hoffman | Councilmember Huffman? Yeah. So my follow-up question is actually to some of the points that Councilmember Cox raised, because I was looking at the staff report as well. And page five, So that's for 3.5 million annually over five years. That's 17.5 million total over five years. just to get us to 63. and 36.5 million over five years, which is 7.5 annually to get us up to 81. And so. those seem to be aspirational numbers. Like, I don't know how we would ever pay for that with our current budget and with what we're seeing with regard to what we have you know, a surplus. or not surplus, if you're talking about going into our 10 million reserve. And so one of the You know, one of the things we also need to discuss as part of this, and I hope we are. is what we want to approach as an adequate reserve for Sausalito. I think a 15% reserve is ridiculously low for a small town like Sausalito and not, does not give us the stability that we need. So we have a $20 million operating budget right now. I lean more toward a 30% hard reserve to help us with our, you know, just the stresses that we've seen in the last five years with landslides and, um, you know, financial issues, yeah, pandemic, but that, you know, It seems like it's a one-time thing, but I doubt that it is. And we need to be able to weather these. storms with our small budget. So I would hope that we agendize that as well. And that's going to be part of our discussion. Interestingly, What I'm interested in, Kevin, is on our September 19th agenda. Item 3G on the consent calendar is the actual roadway resurfacing, um, report for 2024 and the pavement management program update. And it lists in the executive summary of that report, $106 million as a total replacement cost for our streets. And so I guess I'm, you know, a three-year or five-year just to get us up to a reasonable level. you know, number is fine, but Also, the added you know, how do we address that, that total number of 106 million or how do we even address that in our conversations, right? When we only have a $20 million operational budget annually. and some very small factor of that, you know, that we can, you know, relate to. capital improvement projects overall. Rose is just one of our capital improvement, right? as so. Do you have a comment on that or? |
| 00:57:31.88 | Kevin McGowan | Yeah, I do. |
| 00:57:32.79 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, go ahead. |
| 00:57:33.38 | Kevin McGowan | I do. Sorry. So the report itself is basically based off of data. So they take a look at the PCI and they estimate, okay, it's going to cost you this much to do to replace this road, to replace this road. I think the a hundred million dollar number came from, the, the, person who developed the report simply looked at the data and said, okay, you got 26 miles of road. These are center line miles. How much is it going to cost to replace all of these just based off of, let's say, asphalt or concrete? And that's where they just roughly came up with that number. And that's also true with some of the other numbers in the report as well. they're extrapolating from PCI numbers. And so I am sometimes a little bit hesitant to take those PCI numbers as gospel. And so that's why I suggested in our September report that it's important to know what our process is internally to go out and evaluate these roads. We may find out that and I'll just pick on Easterby because I showed a slide of Easterby where there's an intersection of one road. |
| 00:58:35.40 | Jill Hoffman | That's my street. So I don't know. |
| 00:58:36.39 | Kevin McGowan | Oh, okay. |
| 00:58:37.09 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:58:37.17 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Should I pick another street? |
| 00:58:38.77 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:58:38.79 | Steven Woodside | I just want to close my ears. |
| 00:58:39.13 | Melissa Blaustein | I don't know. |
| 00:58:41.32 | Kevin McGowan | No, no. Okay. I'll pick another street. Let's try. Edwards. Yeah. Let's try tourney street. Here we go. So Turney Street is a concrete street most of the way as well. But there may be one intersection at Girard that's completely busted up. that's completely busted up and only that intersection needs to be replaced. However, the report that you see that is in your packet may have diagnosed the entire road as replacement. And so that way, some of the numbers may be a little bit off. Remember, we're extrapolating the numbers that this document is telling us. So over the next five years, let's just say for the sake of argument, we... We increase the budget for next year, and we accomplish much more than what we thought we could. So we may not need as much next year. I think that's one reason why Chris is suggesting let's take your thoughts and regroup in the future as well to say, okay, next year, We may not need as much money to accomplish what it says in the report itself, or we might decide to use the same amount next year and accomplish more. It all there's many more steps in front of us. So my comments are. Let's be careful of taking this report as gospel. especially for the predicted numbers. The idea is tonight is to have a discussion. And I think Chris brought it up. Infrastructure is very important. Roadways are important. And it's important to have that discussion of, we know we need to assign more money to it. Do we need to decide tonight on applying for the next five years? Maybe not. But we need to at least know that we need to set aside more money for this. |
| 01:00:21.64 | Steven Woodside | I just have to follow on to council member Hoffman's points here and city manager. I think this question is more for you, but given that the staff report does outline specific asks. And so it's a little bit unclear to us exactly what the direction is. Could you just clarify what, what you would like to get from each of us? Because I think we all still have outstanding questions about, about what budget you'd like, how we're going to use the budget. I know that there was a interest in making sure the community is chiefly aware of our, slightly embarrassing pavement index as it exists now, but I would like to make sure we're aware of exactly what you'd like as direction so that we can effectively use our time. |
| 01:01:00.24 | Chris Zapata | I like direction tonight that you'd say that this is a priority. that you want staff to come back with an approach and a plan based on various, is it 65, 64 or 70? If you believe that that's out of the realm of possibility because it's too much, we can come back with alternatives, you know, status quo. slightly better. or, or much better and give you numbers attached to them. and figure out if there is a there to pay for these things. But What I really like is more conversation and budgeting focus on spending more money on the streets in Sausalito. and if it's, you know, a slight improvement that's better than what we have going on now, which is trending downward. And for five years, you've seen your payment management index. go down, we want to reverse that. We think that's the right thing to do. It's a critical infrastructure. And so give us the direction to bring back an approach that involves streets as a priority. just like you did with pensions. Pensions are a priority, just like you did with personnel. We've gone through three labor negotiations, almost three. They've been your priority. So now this is the third priority. In parallel with that, Chad will do his 10-year outlook. I think the one thing that we know is in 2030, the pension or the park debt gets paid off. We also know that in certain years after 2028, 2029, our pension obligation should go down. And so if we do a 10-year plan, we can kind of show you a long-term view of how this can all be funded so that you're giving due attention to your infrastructure, due attention to whatever emergencies you think. But I really want you to have the discussion that Council Member Hoffman asked for, which is what's the appropriate level of your reserve? She mentioned 30%. Well, that would put you at $6 million. That means you've got $4 million to do other things with if you choose to, including roads or some other priority you have. But I want to go back to... We need to focus on this. You as a council need to tell the city staff, this matters, just like the housing element did, just like, you know, the pensions have and other things that we've been doing. But it's time to talk about our roads in Sausalito and figure out what we got to do. That's what I'm looking for. |
| 01:03:31.93 | Steven Woodside | there. Yes, of course, Councilmember Cullen. |
| 01:03:34.61 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. I know we're still in the question mode, and I won't repeat the excellent financial questions from my colleagues, but mine is around more prioritization and more holistic planning. So I noticed in pages four or five of the staff report, we talked about the difference. Concrete can be twice as expensive as asphalt or road resurfacing. How do you extend the life of asphalt versus concrete? But you also mentioned in there the interplay of other factors like runoff and climate change and where storm drain is located. Is there a way when you return at the next meeting to have a more holistic point of view around the roads themselves? And what I mean by that is, this is a road immediately adjacent to a storm drain. This is a road that is, like, as you mentioned earlier, not just the entire Terny Street, but the intersection by Girard. That's the part. Is there a way to be more specific? Because the data we have right now seems to be an extrapolation, not a specific assessment of where we stand in the community. Is that possible? |
| 01:04:33.67 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, we can look at the current road list and get into some of the details. The recommendation in the report for the next cycle is to concentrate on something called micro seals as well, which is you look at roadways that haven't reached the end of their lifespans. and resurface the top of them so you extend their life. Thank you. So yes, we can take a look at that. We will need a little bit of time to look at all the roads, but we'll do our best to look at some of the details. |
| 01:05:02.21 | Ian Sobieski | Because one of the things I'm trying to get at is that I don't want to fix a road if the real problem is the storm drain. right, or the runoff or the way the gutter is angled. I mean, I do want to fix the road, but I also want to make sure that then the accurate financial assessment is we also have to fix the gutter. We also have to fix the sidewalk. |
| 01:05:18.03 | Melissa Blaustein | Nope. Jill, just a point of order, if I could. Sorry to interrupt. I've gotten two texts from residents that say, Walford, that they cannot get into the meeting, and they're alarmed. So Damian Morgan and Morgan Pierce both got kicked out of the meeting and are trying to get back in. |
| 01:05:34.42 | Walfred Solorzano | They're in the meeting. |
| 01:05:36.14 | Melissa Blaustein | So it might be late news, but Damien Morgan also |
| 01:05:39.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Um, everybody should be in. |
| 01:05:41.39 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. Sorry to interrupt. It's not a problem. Just wanted to make sure that... |
| 01:05:42.66 | Ian Sobieski | not a problem just want to make sure the public uh yeah be involved thank you um Then a sort of a related question to that. We have, I think it's slide two, that shows the map legend, the different categories. Has that map legend been Um, It's like cross-reference with disaster preparedness, either the police chief or the fire chief. And because I am very interested in the way you will prioritize the road repavement segments, right? And so if I looked at this and I knew which of these were also our main ingress and egress in case of disaster preparedness that might change my assessment of which one we should prioritize. Is that possible? |
| 01:06:20.98 | Kevin McGowan | It's possible. So in other words, remember, we're just looking at the first step from the report. They give us a list of what they think we should deal with first. We go on the field, we take a look at it, but we can also include emergency services with that to see if they have any input in which of these roads should be addressed first as well. |
| 01:06:38.31 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:06:39.49 | Kevin McGowan | In other words, we're not there yet, but we can. |
| 01:06:42.04 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:06:42.05 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:06:44.08 | Kevin McGowan | I can wait. |
| 01:06:44.62 | Steven Woodside | Go ahead, Vice Mayor, and then I have a couple questions, then we'll go back to you, Councilman Hoffman. I just want to give everyone... |
| 01:06:48.50 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. So my question. Hi, Kevin. I had director McGowan. My question is, I'm not sure if it's to Chris or to director McGowan. And it's about, I work to Chad. It's about this 10 year plan. |
| 01:06:48.64 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:07:01.58 | Melissa Blaustein | So, The Council Member Cox said we're managing our people, our finances and our infrastructure that how Chad, how are you getting the infrastructure numbers into your 10 year plan that you're working on. |
| 01:07:15.22 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, so I'm looking at various funding sources that we currently get. So Measure AA, which is from Marin County, looking at our gas tax revenue, looking at Measure L projections. Those are going to be the primary sources of road funding or infrastructure funding. So in addition to that, what I plan on doing is taking those special revenues or those revenues that are dedicated to roads. And then what we'll do is we'll determine what is that level of investment that we're after. And then we can figure out what type of transfers from either the general fund or mainly the general fund would be required to meet that level of investment. Um, |
| 01:07:55.53 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:07:55.80 | Angeline Loeffler | So we'll have our base that's established and then it would be general fund transfers. |
| 01:08:00.20 | Melissa Blaustein | My question in your 10-year model is the expense side. How are you accounting for the expenses in your model? What PCI are you modeling? What are the expenses for our buildings? What numbers are you putting in to maintain and improve our stairs? Are you including reconstructing the pier next to the Trident? Are you including the costs of refurbishing uh the fenced in area dumpy park or the fenced in area of marineship park are do those have a schedule where are you getting all those numbers from |
| 01:08:33.90 | Angeline Loeffler | That information would be housed on the CIP schedule. So the document that Director McGowan maintains, that will be an input into this. When I look at his schedule, he estimates out costs for a number of years. And it's going to be a work in progress. We're gonna forget to include things and then we'll have to go back and add to the list of potential infrastructure projects. It's gonna be a collaborative tool. The way I envision it is there will be variables that we can change, little sliders that we can adjust to see the impacts of that decision that we're we're looking at making. So as far as the facilities, we have facilities assessments that we're working on. Those will be inputs on the expense side. Um, Director McGowan will have to provide information on various capital projects. So it'll be right now I'm focused on building the operational side. The infrastructure will come next. |
| 01:09:32.46 | Melissa Blaustein | So who, thank you very much, Director Hess. And so Director McGowan, who is doing this condition assessment? |
| 01:09:40.32 | Kevin McGowan | Condition Assessment of what? All the buildings? Director Hesse. |
| 01:09:42.82 | Melissa Blaustein | Director Hess mentioned something about a property condition assessment or. Thank you. |
| 01:09:46.99 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:09:47.02 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:09:47.06 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:09:47.16 | Angeline Loeffler | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:09:47.21 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:09:47.24 | Angeline Loeffler | and stuff. |
| 01:09:47.58 | Melissa Blaustein | but facilities or something. |
| 01:09:49.39 | Kevin McGowan | There is a facilities assessment on the current capital improvement program. We haven't started that yet at this point in time. |
| 01:09:55.93 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. Do you know when that will be completed? |
| 01:10:00.17 | Kevin McGowan | No, I don't at this point in time. We haven't started. We don't have the staff. So as soon as we get our project managers on board, we should be able to get going with that. |
| 01:10:08.72 | Melissa Blaustein | So if we got them on tomorrow, when do you think, if you had them on tomorrow, how long do you think it would take? Not sure. Like six months? |
| 01:10:18.88 | Kevin McGowan | Let's just say we'll try to get it done by the end of this fiscal year. |
| 01:10:19.19 | Melissa Blaustein | just. fiscal year, so next, the end of 2024. So we won't have a 10 year model with numbers from the facilities assessment until next year, until June ish of next year at best. |
| 01:10:36.69 | Kevin McGowan | Well, I'll amend that. We'll try to see if we can get something in place to identify some of the costs that we have in the CIP for next year. That's generally March. |
| 01:10:47.16 | Melissa Blaustein | Will the facilities assessment do things like maintenance, improvement, maintenance of our stairwells, the sidewalks, for example, those two things. |
| 01:11:00.78 | Kevin McGowan | No facilities assessment is just for our facilities specifically. |
| 01:11:04.88 | Melissa Blaustein | So do we have any project that's going to come up with the numbers for our stairs, for instance, or our sidewalk? |
| 01:11:09.85 | Kevin McGowan | We have a stair program right now where there's money assigned to it from the Capital Improvement Program. We haven't done the assessment of all the stairs in the city yet. |
| 01:11:19.09 | Melissa Blaustein | but is there an intention to get that number? |
| 01:11:22.08 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 01:11:22.52 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. And is there a schedule for that? |
| 01:11:24.83 | Kevin McGowan | No, I don't have a schedule right now. |
| 01:11:27.07 | Melissa Blaustein | Would it be on a similar schedule to the to the other thing that will be done by June. Thank you. |
| 01:11:34.08 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 01:11:34.45 | Melissa Blaustein | It would be. So would we get all the input? And this is being done internally here by our own staff. |
| 01:11:40.27 | Kevin McGowan | We will have to hire somebody to help us with some of this stuff, especially the facility assessment. |
| 01:11:44.98 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. And does that need further city council authorization then? |
| 01:11:48.61 | Kevin McGowan | I can't answer that yet. We don't have a proposal in hand. |
| 01:11:48.77 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. Okay. All right. I have some other questions, but let me pause for now. Thank you. |
| 01:11:58.21 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. I wanted to, and I appreciate the questions about our fiscal response and how we're going to prioritize this. And I also just wanted to note, since there was a lot of questions about specific areas that if you do dig into the report on page 35, 36, there's an alphabetical listing of every street. So if you're watching at home or in the chambers and you want to see what your PCI, your pavement index is, you can do that. It might be helpful for some of those neighbors who are wondering. And the reason I bring that up is because on page five of the staff report, it says this listing, which is the listing of the report and the score coupled with public input and input from our maintenance division is a starting point for staff's review of roadways and ultimately the identification of which roadways are to be treated in the next few years. So I'm curious when you mentioned public input, how are you expecting to receive public input as we decide how we might prioritize what roadways and how can members of the public who may be particularly concerned about their pavement index weigh in? |
| 01:12:58.49 | Kevin McGowan | Any way they'd like. Usually it's either a phone call or an email. Hey, can you come take a look at my roadway? Can you include it on your evaluation? And we do. |
| 01:13:09.07 | Steven Woodside | And is it based on the number of comments or? |
| 01:13:12.10 | Kevin McGowan | No, we'll take a look at every road that we get a comment on. We'll go take a look at it, starting with the report itself and see where it lands. |
| 01:13:19.18 | Steven Woodside | Okay. And then back to the fiscal point again, in the report, it says that It says that other cities in Marin establish a goal of 70 as an attainable level. In general, federal and state grants are not available for standard resurfacing and maintenance of roadways. I have to say, given the work that myself and Council Member Kelman have done with our grant consultants this year and getting creative and looking at IRA funding, that there is indeed funding available for roadways, but we need to approach it more creatively. For instance, advocating for safe routes to schools or advocating for smart use of pavement, maybe sensors that determine when roads need to be serviced or address the pavement index. What work is the department doing to look into these grants? And do we have any leads or any ideas how that might be able to supplement the cost, which are clearly quite high? |
| 01:14:07.79 | Kevin McGowan | So I think I covered that in my slides as well. I said that we were looking for other funding sources to couple with resurfacing itself. And we've done that in the past with the Nevada Street Project. And that's safe routes to school. So I'm not saying that Um, I'm assuming you're contradicting me at this point in time, and I don't think that's necessarily true. |
| 01:14:32.65 | Steven Woodside | Oh, I wasn't trying to, it's just the staff report says they don't usually fund it. So I just wanted to clarify because I know that we have gotten funding for projects like Nevada. I would apologize to Director McAllister. |
| 01:14:41.29 | Kevin McGowan | I apologize, Dr. McAllister. It's coupled with Safe Routes to School. |
| 01:14:43.97 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. |
| 01:14:44.19 | Kevin McGowan | And so there are specific requirements associated with those grants that aren't specific to the roadway and the resurfacing project by itself. You have to do other things in order to receive that funding. |
| 01:14:55.92 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Thanks for clarifying. I did not mean to contradict you. I appreciate your work on this presentation and on getting that grant as well. So I just wanted to make sure we were exploring all of those avenues. I think that's it for my questions. |
| 01:15:08.41 | Unknown | I have some more. |
| 01:15:08.90 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, Councilor Hoffman. |
| 01:15:08.93 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:15:09.28 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yeah. So thank you for that. And, and we saw that also with the gate six, you know, intersection, right. Yes. Which is fabulous right now. So an incredible improvement, but also included repaving and a whole bunch of other stuff that you can't see, but it's underground. Okay. So I think first off, you know, I'm glad that you take calls from people around town, but just to be clear, You may think your street's the worst in South Dakota, but we have objective criteria, right, that we go out and that's how you come up with the payment index, you know, and then it's assigned in the priority list. Yes, absolutely. So just so everybody's clear on that, it's not up to the public works department. There's actual criteria that you use to assign the number. |
| 01:15:46.97 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, absolutely. |
| 01:15:57.02 | Jill Hoffman | And they might even direct you to streets that are much worse than your street for analysis. I think so. Giving you feedback about approach, right, which is I think why we're here, it brought to mind a few years ago, we had a presentation about upgrading the sewers, right? And it was like, it was an 80 year plan. And it was a certain amount of money that was assigned every year. And then with the understanding that, once you finish 80 years, you need to start all over again, right? Because we fixed one street doesn't mean that that street's fixed forever. It's a rolling need that's always gonna be there. And so I think perhaps an approach might be, or at least to consider and I'm asking your feedback on it, is more of a long-term plan. Like we have, we want to get the index up to a reasonable number, but it's not just a five-year plan. It's an ongoing assessment of our city streets. And so perhaps we do need a longer range plan that gives us annually, this is what we're doing on our streets, knowing that it's a never-ending ongoing process. Do you think that might be an approach or a way to assess this $100 million, you know, Thank you. Yeah. |
| 01:17:16.66 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, that's a great idea to make sure that each year you are trying to address the PCI and the deficiencies. Another thing your counsel could consider |
| 01:17:16.72 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, that's a good question. |
| 01:17:26.95 | Kevin McGowan | is that the PTAB reports come out every two years. So maybe there is a necessity to go ahead and put in additional funding for the next two years. and find out what the assessment comes back before you decide on putting more funding into it for a five year period so that you get an assessment again from MTC and those who are doing this to see, OK, did our PCI go up two points like we expected, or maybe it's more based off of what we are doing with the funding that's allocated. |
| 01:18:00.40 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thank you. That's a good suggestion. Vice Mayor, I know you had more questions. |
| 01:18:07.01 | Melissa Blaustein | So we approved the CIP with the budget, but we weren't doing it in light of this new report that shows our PCI conditions, nor with the benefit of Director Hess's tenure, plan, which hasn't been developed yet. It sounds like we may get something preliminary before June of next year. And I'm wondering if we could bring the CIP back. as part of that discussion, since our prioritizations about where to deploy money may shift in light. of the new learnings from his model and your assessments. |
| 01:18:42.72 | Kevin McGowan | Which CIP, the one we currently have? |
| 01:18:44.76 | Melissa Blaustein | the one we approved in |
| 01:18:45.93 | Kevin McGowan | Sure. |
| 01:18:46.15 | Melissa Blaustein | for the fiscal year. Many of those projects, I imagine, haven't been bid out yet or started, yeah. |
| 01:18:53.57 | Kevin McGowan | There's no problem. Not at all. |
| 01:18:57.43 | Steven Woodside | Was that it, FaceMir? If we have any further questions from the dais, Okay, seeing none, I will go ahead and open it up for public comment. |
| 01:19:08.56 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, we'll start. We'll start off with Ray Withy. |
| 01:19:22.68 | Unknown | Hi, Ray. |
| 01:19:23.47 | Ray Withey | Hi, good evening, Ray Withey. Resident. |
| 01:19:27.37 | Unknown | Um... |
| 01:19:28.67 | Ray Withey | I, my prepared remarks on this have had to be sort of modified a little on the fly in light of the discussion. The staff report asked for the use of Fund balance. as a one-time expense to supplement the roads budget, the streets budget. That's what the staff report asked for. I'm not sure that's maybe what's on your agenda tonight, and that's okay, but that's what it asked for. I wanted to make two points, which was about context. The first context is the capital improvement plan. And I think I'm gonna echo what council member Sobieski is asking for. The last time you addressed The capital improvement plan was in the connection with the budget last year. You had no strategic discussion whatsoever Thank you. about the capital improvement plan. You had no discussion about capital allocation among different capital groups, such as streets being one. Instead, the whole of your meeting was sidetracked by discussion of bike lanes on Bridgeway. That was the extent of your strategic discussion on the capital improvement plan. That needs to be rectified. I believe you need... Council Member Sobieski has argued, you need to bring the capital improvement plan back. for discussion and for a strategic discussion as to what you dollars you want to allocate to different groups. With regards to this, and I realize I only have 20 seconds left, if you are going to use current fund balance, of extra fun for streets, you have to determine... As Councilmember Hoffman has indicated, what your preferred Appetite for risk and what your reserve allocation is, dedicated reserve allocation is going to be. That's going to determine how much money you have to spend. If you have any questions, be happy to answer. |
| 01:21:35.32 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, member of the public, Ray with you. |
| 01:21:38.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Anybody else then? |
| 01:21:39.62 | Steven Woodside | other further public comment in the chamber. |
| 01:21:42.27 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. So we'll go over to Bill Hines on Zoom. |
| 01:21:47.33 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Bill. |
| 01:21:49.26 | Bill Hines | Hey, everybody. Can you hear me? Thank you. |
| 01:21:50.62 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 01:21:51.18 | Bill Hines | All right. Great. Appreciate the comments about prioritizing and being strategic. You know, there aren't really any sections in this report that address these priorities and whether all the pavements in the city and that the city maintains are essential and if any alternatives exist. This is basically design. A lot of the city seems to be paved for lack of a better thought or with a mind to reduce maintenance. Examples of this are the striped parking spaces under the trees along Bridgeway. Sausalito Street Network represents the biggest opportunity to reduce the quantity of stormwater, improve water quality, and slow the release of water into the bay. The Impervious Street Network is the biggest contributor to urban stormwater. And that's what allows stormwater to concentrate quickly during storm events. This is what overwhelms the system and creates catastrophe. Sausalito can continue to maintain its critical road network, but should be thinking about what opportunities it represents to enhance safety, sustainability, and resiliency of this community. As sea level continues to rise and major storm events occur with increasing frequency. and higher magnitude considering the design of streets may be one of the most impactful ways to manage stormwater and reduce potential risk. Complete Streets is a movement that considers rethinking our streets and putting priorities on who uses them and how they're designed. resulting in better, safer, and more sustainable design to roads. A more basic approach to this is looking at a road diet and trying to decide if all the roads that you currently maintain are absolutely critical and therefore you should continue to put money into them. Stormwater management is going to be a huge component of Sausalito's sea level rise adaptation plan. Cities all over the world are embarking on programs to take back paving and restore green space within the city. The question about what to repave is not strictly about implementation, but it's about careful design exercise that should examine the community needs, infrastructure improvements, careful review of circulation, parking, and marry them with long-term planning and goals around sustainability. |
| 01:23:58.59 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much. Next one, Morgan Pierce. |
| 01:24:00.20 | Bill Hines | Thank you. |
| 01:24:00.27 | Melissa Blaustein | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:24:00.36 | Bill Hines | spell. |
| 01:24:08.32 | Unknown | Morgan. |
| 01:24:08.68 | Morgan Pierce | Good evening, Mayor Blaustein, Vice Mayor Sobieski, members of the City Council, City Manager Zapata, City staff and members of our community. Let me begin by saying how much I regret that attendees to this meeting had to endure hateful, ignorant rhetoric from unwelcoming individuals, and I applaud the maintenance of your composure through that reprehensible diatribe. Moving on. You know me, Morgan Pierce, local architect, landscape architect, community volunteer. This evening I'm speaking as an individual who cares deeply about our city. As a design professional and community volunteer, I have great respect for the diligence, planning, and execution that you have employed in the maintenance and improvement of Sausalita's public thoroughfares, especially through recent challenging times. |
| 01:24:19.06 | Melissa Blaustein | that you've been |
| 01:24:52.40 | Morgan Pierce | We are now at a point in our city's evolution where we uh, possess the combination of visionary leadership and appropriate finances to move beyond a simple approach to planning and maintaining these critical circulation elements, and now have the ability to plan and execute projects for a vibrant, sustainable, and safe future that addresses the needs of automobiles, bicycles, pedestrians, and our environment. We're able to embrace and employ progressive concepts managing solid as infrastructure and one of these is known as complete streets as Bill Hines mentioned. There are unique approaches to this that will benefit our community and additionally a heightened design approach will allow for the introduction of permeable paving to assist with stormwater management and reflective paving to assist in the mitigation of heat island effects. We now have the opportunity to create the sociative streetscape of the future through comprehensive planning and mindful execution. A design-based ethos for any community to imagine and construct streetscapes that solve multimodal challenges while creating welcoming and safe environments. is critical. I ask you to please consider design as a vital element in envisioning Sauceta's future. Thank you. |
| 01:26:03.06 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:26:06.99 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker we have is Senator Bushmaker. |
| 01:26:12.39 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Sandra. |
| 01:26:14.36 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi, everybody. Good to see you. I'm kind of smiling tonight because 25 years ago we instituted a pavement management system called PMS. And we always chuckled when we said this, but it gave us some relief because each street was rated at the time. and we did make some progress on our streets. What I'm having trouble with, and this is a very practical point of view, is with this rating system. What I don't understand is if you have an intersection that's a 20, and the rest of the road is 90. You've got a 55 on that whole street if you were to average it out, but I'm not sure that that's the, That's the technique that's used. But it seems to me that What? To help you make your decision on what work needs to be done, you need to get those critical areas like those intersections that have a 20, for example. Or you might not need to repave the entire road. You might just need to deal with those critical areas to start. And I think then you can start looking at a longer term plan to get the roads roadways way above 70. I would love to see our roads above 70 in Sausalito. But to get us to 70, we might need to start working with those critical areas first. So that's what I would like to see because the data that comes from these rating systems is very difficult to manage and translate into decision making from your point of view. Um, And of course, perhaps it's cheaper to do an intersection than it is a whole road. And that will help with your fiscal decision making as well. Thanks. |
| 01:27:59.07 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thanks, Sandra. Do we have any further public comment at this time? Thank you. |
| 01:28:05.16 | Walfred Solorzano | none. |
| 01:28:05.82 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment and bring it. Oh, yeah, I was just gonna say I'm gonna bring it back up to the dais. Just keeping in mind that the request from city manager for direction was essentially whether or not we wanted to prioritize this. Although I heard a number of really excellent ideas from the commentary here. So I will try to summarize as you each weigh in here. Go ahead. |
| 01:28:24.81 | Melissa Blaustein | I just wanted to ask two more, three more questions before, if you don't mind, it came out of the public comment for Director McDowen, if you don't mind, sir. On the basis of the public comment, I'm just wondering because I didn't see anything in the staff report about it, this idea of designing complete streets. I saw that not doing design is cheaper, that I believe. But in fact, I had one resident email me to say on this issue to say, Why do we want to fix our roads? That will just make people drive faster. So their concern is not about the quality of the roads as much as their fear on many of the roads that double as sidewalks that making some of them better might actually decrease the sense of safety, at least for pedestrians. So this notion of complete streets and design where we think of the roads as serving pedestrians, deliveries, as well as residents driving, is an approach to the roads. And I'm wondering how that factored into your estimates for the road repair. Was your estimates just based on PCI, or did it include this idea of implementing complete street concepts? |
| 01:29:26.94 | Kevin McGowan | The estimates come directly from the report. And they are just about the roadways themselves. It doesn't have anything to do with sidewalks or complete streets. |
| 01:29:35.70 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, so presumably then to do a complete streets would be more expensive. |
| 01:29:41.10 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 01:29:41.37 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Okay, and that includes this idea of stormwater thinking anew about the impermeable surfaces we have in town. with an eye towards attending to the stormwater consequences. That also would increase the cost, presumably. |
| 01:29:57.72 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 01:29:58.73 | Melissa Blaustein | And then the last question is just to... get an answer to our resident Sandra Bushmaker's question about this PCI averaging thing. Is that the way it works? If you've got 20 in the intersection and and 80 on the road. Does it average together into some middle number or? |
| 01:30:14.31 | Kevin McGowan | Well, she, sorry. She has actually hit the nail on the head as far as some of my concerns about the report itself. Does the report actually average these numbers? I don't know. That's why we go out and we look at it and we say, okay, Is a PCI of 20 throughout the entire road appropriate? Let's say on, what did I use? Tourney Street. Probably not. And so that way we can identify specifically which intersections might need to be replaced or what sections of roadways. It needs more study. |
| 01:30:45.86 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Cox had a follow-on. |
| 01:30:48.12 | Joan Cox | Thank you. In connection with the Complete Streets conversation, I seem to recall back in 2020 or thereabouts that as part of, and this is funny, as Beppe McDougall likes to make reference to, as part of our acceptance of Measure A funding, we enacted a resolution agreeing to undertake complete streets wherever feasible, whenever undertaking road repairs or revisions. I wanted to be sure you're aware of that or... And that as we devise our plan, are you you know, will you be including that as part of any construction plan? |
| 01:31:35.26 | Kevin McGowan | So we want to be careful using those funds on specific projects. For example, we would want to use those funds on Coloma Street, which is a complete streets project. However, on just resurfacing specific streets that don't have a complete streets approach, we couldn't use those funds. So we have to be a little bit careful on where we actually expend that funding. |
| 01:31:55.94 | Joan Cox | So we actually revised the proposed resolution in order to ensure that in areas that such as Richardson Street, where it was not feasible to undertake a complete street. We were not obligated. to undertake the complete street, but my understanding and now, we can check the record to be sure was that we had adopted this not just with respect to projects specifically funded by Measure A, but as a part of accepting Measure A funding throughout the city. |
| 01:32:27.89 | Kevin McGowan | I'll be glad to look into them. |
| 01:32:28.97 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:32:29.07 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:32:29.17 | Joan Cox | I appreciate that. |
| 01:32:31.38 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I think we're ready to bring it up to the diaspora direction. Unless to city managers, you want to add something you just came up. No? Yes? No. Okay. So Councilmember Kelman had some remarks. |
| 01:32:42.00 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, great thanks everybody um so the question is do we want you to prioritize this the answer has been and continues to be yes, for me for sure. Thank you former mayor with you for your comments about the capital improvement program you're right we needed to do that we didn't do that we did however have a robust conversation around the budget. I remember the conversation was if It requires fewer staff members to handle street projects, and you can actually turnkey several of them. Doesn't that make more sense for us financially to prioritize them? So I want to make sure that thread, thank you for reminding me, that thread comes back to us in terms of the overall cost and how easy it is, or easier comparatively, to perhaps move forward on streets projects. But I want to offer up four different buckets of comments. I already mentioned prioritization and project selection. That's my first one. So anything that comes back, I need to see the proposed criteria for prioritizing the roadways for resurfacing. I also need recommendations on the specific roadways to be included in the capital improvement program based on that criteria with some of the overlays that were mentioned tonight by myself as well as my colleagues and some members of the public. Part of that is number two, the impact and the better. PB, Sarah Silver PB Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB Not all our roads are the same as our communities quite diverse. I think that type of local knowledge would be very, very helpful for us. The third is, and the mayor alluded to this, is sustainability and long-term planning. I will just say yes and to everything that Bill and Morgan commented on. A lot of opportunity here. We've talked about rubberized asphalt and other things that could be carbon capture as well as more impervious when it comes to flooding. I know we've gone a little bit back and forth. You know about it better than I do. But other innovations like that that make it easier or maybe more long-term resilience. So what do we need to do to consider the long-term maintenance and durability to maximize our investment? I want to know what those opportunities are, and I want to know what they are when it comes to sustainability and stormwater management planning. I mentioned those in my questions, but Bill's absolutely right. Maybe an area is better suited as a bioswale for long-term planning. And that actually ends up saving us, you know, a million dollars down the road because it prevents flooding on a street that's adjacent to it. I don't know how you bake all that in. I know I'm, Suggesting a very heavy lift it's not without my knowledge of that, but this is sort of my my wish list of a holistic look at this opportunity, and I think that leads us to. Potential funding sources, because then we can start looking at climate resilience funds, we can start looking at smart cities funds and there's a whole bunch of. Department of Transportation has a smart funding program that wants to look at that. That's a whole new bucket for us if it's a resilience project. And then the last part that I really want to see is the public engagement and community involvement portion of this. How do we bring the community to the table? How do we hear back from them beyond a meeting like this that may or may not? show up on somebody's calendar, and then strategies for engaging the community. during the implementation phase. So I know I said those quickly. I actually had emailed them to you if you need them again. But thank you. |
| 01:36:02.99 | Steven Woodside | That's great. Thank you so much. Who would like to go next? Doesn't ever happen? Great. |
| 01:36:09.51 | Jill Hoffman | Uh, I don't disagree with the comments that have been made before. I certainly agree if there's economical ways to obviously increase the sustainability of our efforts, then I think that's something that we want to consider. I'm trying to think in my head when when the comment was made, do away with roadways. I'm trying to think. Are there any roadways in Sausalito where they don't have residences? And I don't, I can't think of any of my head other than down in our industrial area, but that's not owned by the city of Sausalito. So. or most of it's not. I mean, that analogy, Unless somebody can identify some roads that don't have residents to live on them, I would I can't imagine that we would have residents that would want to do away with their road that goes to their house. So by having to consider it, but Mr. Hines and Mr. Pierce, who suggested that, I, Thank you. would be interested in them providing information and also information, any assessments they have already have and have already done, I think would be helpful in this. But getting back to. the budget and actually moving forward with, you know, with our efforts to increase the uh, the status of our streets. Um, I, I 100% agree that the capital improvement project list needs to come back married with the budget. Otherwise it's nonsense. If you, you can't just say everything's a priority without looking at what's the money, how are you going to pay for it? And where's that money going to come from? And what's the allocation? Projections in the future are always projections and they change almost immediately. You know, I wouldn't, we would have to look at this and assess it every year as we move through this project. And that's the other reason why you know, I was thinking it might be valuable for us to have a long-term A long-term, you know, how long, how many years will it take for us to completely address every street and town. And then we start over again because the streets are naturally going to deteriorate. So that might help future. If we start on that kind of a pro project project, and adopt it, it may help future councils from digressing away from a plan to ensure that our streets continue to be maintained in a certain way. So that may be actually EFFICIENT. and economical going forward because we have a long range plan and we've adopted that. I completely agree that, Kevin or Director McGowan with your assessment that let's look at the highest numbers, the highest critical numbers and go out and look at those streets and see if we can attack them in an efficient way to increase our overall number and decrease that risk factor on that street. So I think that's a great, that's something that we can do pretty much off the bat to help direct our efforts. when the CIP comes back to us and we look at this effort in the context of all the other priorities that we've already laid out, and are already included in our CFP. So I would say on the order of priorities, that coming back to us against our current budget is of highest priority moving forward through this fall and helping us prioritize. So those are my, I think those are my, yeah, OK. |
| 01:39:29.77 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Bye, Sam. |
| 01:39:31.59 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Just one example, it's not doing away with the roadway. but rather just a design detail that was new to me. All I learned about it today is that some roads can, instead of being designed concave where the water runs off to the side into the storm drains, they can be convex and you have bioswale in the middle. which is a way of still having a road, but it's an environmentally better road, apparently. Not in my wheelhouse, but this is what I sort of learned. These are examples of things I never occurred of. And of course the easy thing to do is just to pave something over again, the way it's been for 80 years. And the thought is, about whether to do more than that. And so I would love, I'm thrilled to hear Council member Joan Cox alluded to, which is this complete streets resolution, this already matter of city policy. So my ask is that we find that document. If that's not the city policy, I'd be in favor of making it city policy and would love to see that on a future agenda that we have a design step on this to look at a complete streets concept. Of course, you can have design that's modest cost and big cost. What I just described with the changing the roadway, that's a big cost design change, but changing painting stripes that make it better for pedestrians, Safer for walkers is not very expensive, but that's a complete streets concept. So there is a range of tools in that toolbox that I think should be part of any money we spend. The. Thematically, though, let me just back up because I know there are a lot of ideas that are coming from us, and I would like to support the city manager and staff's recommendation that we have enough cash on hand that's unassigned that we could put some points on the board without the long term plan. I'm going to advocate for long term plan in a second, but I would be supportive of just. putting the ball in the net and Thank you. to score a point on the board. So I would be supportive of spending more money on the roads without a longer term plan yet, so long as, and this is the second part, I would love a policy statement from us, a consensus from us that is at the top of our list. So I'm asking my colleagues if they agree. that, and it sounds like you do from the comments you've made that this 10 year model shouldn't be The first time we see it shouldn't be June. the end of the next fiscal year. David Miller- Like that model is critical it's part of the Council member Hoffman said it's part of our ability to make short term plans as well as long term plans, and I would like to see that as. an urgent priority, if not number one priority. And for that model to be dollar, I know that Chas, that Chad Hess can make the mathematical model. And the revenue side in some ways is easier. than the infrastructure cost side as, One of our residents, Tom Clark gave me this book. |
| 01:42:28.12 | Chris Zapata | This thing. |
| 01:42:28.54 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:42:28.56 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:42:30.19 | Melissa Blaustein | This is a property condition assessment just for buildings in the city of Garden Grove. Look at that thing. That's like the part of the federal budget. That is a property condition assessment. It's done by an outside firm. And the meat of it is that there are tables in there that show you the immediate needs, life and safety. costs. They have to be spent right away. And then there's, in this case, the next five years, but you could have the next 10 years of costs for buildings, for roads, for sidewalks, for stairs, And when you pull all that together, you're going to have the cost just to maintain our infrastructure, just to maintain it as is. And we don't know what that is. We currently don't have a model like that. And without that model, we don't know if we're rich or poor. We don't know if we need to find other revenue sources or if we've got money to double our fireworks budget. So we need that model. And I would love to see if my colleagues agree that this should be an RFP that we put out immediately and it should be on a fast track and we should get such a document as soon as humanly possible for all our infrastructure expenses, not just our roads, but our sidewalks, our stairs, and other infrastructure expenses. And if you have that, And you have Chad's model. Then it informs the second discussion we're going to have today. which is how urgent is finding other revenue sources. And what do we get for the cost of whatever those revenue sources are going to make somebody unhappy. And the only way you justify it is if you have somewhere for the money to go. without this book, which isn't going to come from our staff. We don't know where we're going. |
| 01:44:15.48 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Cox. Sit up there. |
| 01:44:17.87 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. That's it. Exhibit A. |
| 01:44:21.10 | Steven Woodside | You've been carrying it around with you all week. I saw it at three events with you, vice mayor, over the weekend. So go ahead, Councilmember Cox. He has read it, most of it. |
| 01:44:31.66 | Joan Cox | So I endorse the comments of my fellow council members regarding the process by which we need to assess current conditions and identify and prioritize streets for repair. and choose low-hanging fruit in terms of identifying the streets that we can repair with a minimum of staff and overhead and prioritize those repairs. I want to just circle back to you know, the funding and maintaining our three legged stool in terms of finances, people, and infrastructure. and be sure that We are. as we are making our long-term plan, that we are relying on reliable sources of funding like Measure L, as opposed to devoting one-time you know, depleting our reserves in an unsustainable manner. So, Um, I appreciate the city manager's comment that the plan was to propose a one-time expenditure as opposed to making a five-year commitment. I just want to be sure that as we assess our long-term needs as we did with our sewer system, that we, and as the vice mayor proposes we do for our streets, that we Similarly, ensure that we have properly identified reliable sources of revenue to address those without making a commitment that is unfunded. Because the last thing we want to do is commit ourselves back into a structural deficit. And so I'm very interested to hear the outcome of Chad's 10-year plan and analysis. |
| 01:46:43.76 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. So again, we weren't being asked to make any specific decisions tonight, but rather provide comments and I very much appreciate the wise comments of the members of the Council so I'll just reiterate these for staff for return for direction. The four items mentioned by Council Member Kelman prioritization and project selection, which I've heard unanimously from all of us that we really do want to prioritize this the question is more about how the second around impact and benefits. So what are the benefits of these resurfacing projects? Then I would highly echo the sustainability and long-term planning, especially as it relates to disaster preparedness and climate. I think we've all also asked about public engagement and community involvement and how will the community be able to weigh in on what projects? Then there was an emphasis on the economical ways we can increase the sustainability of our efforts. I think we all called for and would agree with Council Member Hoffman's suggestions for this longer range plan and having a long-term understanding of how many years will it take to address every street and then start backwards because the streets will deteriorate. And also looking at the highest critical number of those and seeing what the best way to start there is in the context of the CIP. And then I count Councilmember Vice Mayor Sobieski mentioned, and I think we also all agree with, the complete streets resolution document finding it and seeing what our existing policy is in the context of this conversation. And then Councilmember Cox mentioned identifying the lower hanging through its firsts and perhaps prioritizing those, thinking about our finances and infrastructure and a reliable strategy. And the two items that we didn't have necessarily full consensus on, but I believe will be re-agendized based on the context of this conversation, was the question about having enough cash on hand to put forth right now. Because there wasn't a direct ask for a specific cash amount, I think in the context of immediate need or what that prioritization looks like, we can absolutely look at that because that is a real possibility. And I appreciated the prop that the vice mayor brought. And I think that it makes sense for us to put into future agenda items and RFP for those costs of infrastructure, but we can also discuss that later on. And the only thing I would add that has not been mentioned surprisingly is I would really like to see some of this conversation in the context of the impacts of bike safety on these roads, because we are seeing a real return from bike rental companies and more and more bikes coming into our town. And I've been hearing a lot of comments and concerns, especially from our seniors. You know, there was an incident where a senior was run over by an e-bike in our community. And so thinking about how we can design these roads with that bigger picture in mind and as much safety as possible for both pedestrians, bikes, and then the folks who are using the roads for their cars. So I think that wraps it Yes, Councilmember Hoffman. I'm sorry. |
| 01:49:28.44 | Jill Hoffman | I wonder. |
| 01:49:28.88 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:49:28.96 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, please. With regard to the property condition assessment or our facilities assessment, I believe Director McGowan said that was already in the pipeline. Okay. I don't, with regard to do we need to come back with an RP for that, I think that's already in That's already in play. Is that... |
| 01:49:48.98 | Kevin McGowan | You approved the budget for it. We just haven't initiated it. So we haven't reached out to get the consultants to start that process. Okay. |
| 01:49:56.74 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:49:56.77 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:49:56.81 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 01:49:57.24 | Melissa Blaustein | It doesn't include sidewalks. It doesn't include the stairs. It only includes the roads. So there are a lot of infrastructure. We cannot build the 10-year model that I know you want to see to make the rarities if we don't have a good number of our infrastructure liability. We have a hidden infrastructure liability. |
| 01:50:08.96 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:50:16.48 | Jill Hoffman | So let me ask a follow up. Do we need to come back? Do we need to agendize that? Or can you include that in your RFP? Can you include a holistic? facilities assessment because I think Also, we're talking about our buildings as well, right, that we own. Is that part of your assessment or no? |
| 01:50:39.87 | Kevin McGowan | My original understanding of what the council wanted was a facility assessment study of our buildings to find out which parts need to be replaced at what point in time. Can we bring back these other portions of our infrastructure, such as sidewalks? Yes, but we'll need to do some more investigation on what that's going to be. So I think we'll need to return to council with that item. |
| 01:51:00.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Absolutely. |
| 01:51:01.12 | Melissa Blaustein | So, I mean, this is the point I appreciate that so much that you highlighted. But I kind of, you know, it's agendized today. we can kind of set expectations and there's a very long list of feedback. when I'm a little worried about our relative priorities. maybe not being emphasized. So tell me if I am wrong, but I thought from what I heard, getting this a model with integrity, this 10 year model is critical. And for that model to have integrity. We need to have accurate numbers of our hidden infrastructure liability. And that's only going to come from a professional assessment. that measures the needs over five to 10 years. |
| 01:51:38.33 | Steven Woodside | I don't think anyone disagrees with that I think there's a lot of support for infrastructure assessment in fact Council member Hoffman just made sure that it was included, so I think we do need to see that and I think everyone agrees that there's a need for a 10 year plan. So I think that staff has direction and I would reiterate your comments vice mayor and support them as top of the list of 12 points that I just reviewed. |
| 01:51:55.59 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, I think it came up when we looked at Bob Silvestri's component in phase three was in infrastructure assessment. And I said, go with this is what we need. So I completely agree. Right. |
| 01:52:04.99 | Melissa Blaustein | You have strong support from everybody. I just want to make sure it's under, triple underlined. |
| 01:52:05.49 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:52:05.65 | Ian Sobieski | . |
| 01:52:05.73 | Steven Woodside | or. |
| 01:52:05.78 | Ian Sobieski | Sure. |
| 01:52:05.80 | Steven Woodside | for the first time. |
| 01:52:05.97 | Ian Sobieski | from everybody. |
| 01:52:06.44 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:52:06.46 | Ian Sobieski | or, you know, the Thank you. |
| 01:52:07.52 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:52:07.54 | Ian Sobieski | the right. I'm going to go. |
| 01:52:08.24 | Steven Woodside | It's a blind. |
| 01:52:09.76 | Melissa Blaustein | or our staff. |
| 01:52:10.86 | Steven Woodside | It sure is. I think our staff has clear direction. Let me know if anything needs additional comments over there. You guys good? All right. Perfect. Thank you very much. So I appreciate that really robust, long, but very important discussion that we had about our roads. And you will be hearing more about them from us. This is not the end of the conversation on roads. So now we'll move to our second business item, second and final business item this evening, which relates to revenue generation. And I believe the presentation will be coming from our city manager, our finance director and NHL associates. Is that correct? NHA advisors. Hi guys. Hello. Welcome. |
| 01:52:50.82 | Sergio Rudin | evening. |
| 01:52:51.40 | Steven Woodside | Wait, we're going to take a five minute pause. Actually, we need a break. Just a sec. Thank you so much for your patience. We're going to go ahead and. Return to the meeting and we will bring back our friends from NHA Advisors and continue or begin the conversation on revenue generation. Hi, Greg and Leslie. How are you? Craig and Leslie, excuse me. |
| 01:53:14.24 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | Good evening. |
| 01:53:14.80 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Denise. |
| 01:53:17.70 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | Have the city managers kick this off. |
| 01:53:22.26 | Chris Zapata | If I may, Mayor, I'd like to... give a little Brief introduction and then I have two slides to run through before. Craig and Leslie, come on board. That's okay with you and the public. |
| 01:53:33.02 | Steven Woodside | Yes, please. |
| 01:53:34.24 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, first of all, I want to thank you again. Can you put up the first slide, Walford, Noelle? |
| 01:53:47.12 | Chris Zapata | While they're doing that, I can kind of walk through some of the bullet points in that slide so we can hear them and then you'll see them. I wanted to make sure that I thank the full council for their continued focus on the basics. October of 2021, after four months at Sausalito, my advice to the city council was to focus on your finances, and your infrastructure and your personnel, and you continue to do that. So I thank you for that. So next slide. So in order to work on your finances, there are a few things that have to happen. And obviously, before you start talking about revenue, you need to talk about cost containment and efficiency. And some of the things that have happened in the past two years, besides a focus on the finance department is you got an audit done, which is critical. You hired new auditors, which was a direction you were given. We've rebuilt our entire finance department. There is nobody in the finance department that is there now when I got on board. And we have a new finance director by the name of Chad Hess. Yes. And some of the rebuild or reorganization that saved us money, significant money. In finance, we cut a $1.3 million virtual gov contract in half. We took a quarter of a million dollars off the parks and recreation administrative budget, and we've gotten rid of some expensive consultants in community and economic development. And in addition to talking about efficiencies, the idea of how we get to a better financial position, the city council a year and a half ago asked for a plan. A three-year plan was presented to the city council in years 22, 23, and 24, which outlined some strategies that the city council could take so that they could in fact help staff, help us help the community with services projects and sustainability. As part of the idea of looking at financial stability, obviously efficiency is important and cost cutting is important, but revenue and revenue diversification and strengthening of that revenue is extremely important as well. So we retain NHA advisors to assist us. Next slide, please. |
| 01:56:12.04 | Chris Zapata | And last year we held a planning and priority session to talk about those revenue streams. I wanna point out that my firm recommendation that was pushed back on by the council, which I respect was to look at some type of predictable sustainable revenue stream, which I was told is a non-starter because it was a tax on the residents and that was a utility users tax. So that one was something that I listened to that direction. It's not part of the future discussion that we're having now, but I wanted to point out that I thought that it was a way to strengthen your revenue, create a predictable revenue stream and diversify your revenue stream. So what you came about with was some general agreement on four areas. I'll start with development impact fees. As you know, the city of Sausalito has been involved in this housing element process for cycles. And in the last cycle, you know, the state and the associated Bay Area Association governments gave us a 724 number to provide all levels of housing. residents that are in the future and growth that is planned is something that the existing residents should not bear the burden of. So if there are going to be new residents building homes in your community, they ought to pay their fair share. And that's what development impact fees provide for, is that growth pays for growth, whether it's in parks, whether it's in streets, whether it's in other areas of impact that you believe makes sense. And so that's in the report. The other one that came as an interest area of the city council was that, you know, vacant buildings are bad for Sausalito. They're bad for the community. They're bad for adjacent businesses. And they're just not a thing you want to see. So you asked us to look at a vacancy tax. |
| 01:57:58.91 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. |
| 01:58:09.96 | Chris Zapata | so that, you know, key properties in our community don't remain fallow because property owners, you know, you know, are sent on, you know, they may sit on for various reasons and valid reasons. But I think what you're trying to do here is incent people that are holding on to properties to actually work with them, work on them, and make sure that if they don't, that there is some type of reckoning. The third one is a hotel concept. Sausalito has one of the most beautiful locations in the world. If you ask Travel and Leisure magazine, Sausalito was one of the 16 most beautiful coastal communities on the planet. And so the idea of more hotel rooms is something that I heard from the city council is of interest. We know what the current hotels do for our community. They're small but mighty. They generate almost $2 million in hotels tourism occupancy tax over the last year. There are some ideas of maybe adding more rooms that could generate more revenue and support the existing hotel bed count that we have. So that's something we have, I wanna talk about tonight. And then the idea of the waterfront and monetizing the waterfront to support not only a healthy bay, but to provide funding so that we can in fact take care of that bayfront infrastructure, whether it's a bulkhead, whether it's a pier, whether it's a dock, all those things, along with making sure that the bay is maintained in an environmentally ecologically sound way, could benefit from some revenue streams that would come off the water. So those are the four things we wanna talk about tonight. So in terms of the specifics of it, I'm gonna turn it over to Craig and Leslie, and then we'll take some questions and public comment and see if we can get some direction from you. Thank you. City manager. |
| 02:00:02.67 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | Great. Thank you, Chris. All right, next slide. |
| 02:00:09.84 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | So as the city manager mentioned, we were tasked with originally, when we started working with the city, looking at all, from an academic perspective, all potential new revenue sources that may be available to the city. We certainly met with council in the spring. We refined it down to these four that the city manager just left off with. And so we're going to get into a little bit more details on this item. So next slide, please. I think the big takeaway for everybody and the community watching is that with development impact fees, this is certainly a structure that most cities in California have. You can see from the table that there are... potentially significant number of identifiers that you can have impact fees for. Certainly for Sausalito, some of these do not apply. FIRE, for instance, because you have that provided by a special district. But it is something that we believe from a policy perspective makes a lot of sense to certainly not burden existing residents with the costs or the impacts of new development that occurs. And it doesn't necessarily have to be just residential, right? It could be even commercial reuse or a higher and better use of some of that property. So as you can see, there's the, in order to do a development impact fee, there is a very methodical process. This isn't something where you just arbitrarily set a fee. We do calculations or you have a consultant establish the mathematics and the analysis behind it. It's identified by what do we think the actual costs are, certainly to the item that we were just discussing or you all were just discussing earlier with streets and sidewalks and all of those pieces. So if this is something that you want to pursue, the next step is really to do a fee study where working closely with city staff, a fee study consultant would come in and look at what costs you would try to capture through any potential future development. And that would quantify what those fees might look like. Next slide, please. It should be noted that you have a very old development impact fee right now. The dates back now, just right at 20 years. It was intended really to deal with construction traffic. So it's a very specific and very limited fee. This dollar amount has not been updated. So you can see from the last bullet that, It's really only been generating a fairly small amount of gross revenues for the city. If should you have a new fee structure that looked at a number of other impacts, you could only anticipate that that number would would grow substantially with the idea that those are dedicated revenues to fix some of this infrastructure or maintain the infrastructure that was part of your robust conversation that you were having earlier. Next slide. |
| 02:03:16.33 | Melissa Blaustein | you could only |
| 02:03:34.77 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | The second... potential revenue source that could serve multiple purposes for the city. We had a good conversation with the council earlier on this, looking at both San Francisco, which established one primarily around the policy of housing, and then Oakland around the vacancy for properties that otherwise could have a higher and better use. So what you have here is what the real example for Oakland, which is going on, we do want to bring to everybody's attention that while it did get approved, and it had some pretty significant tax implications, you know, $6,000 a year per parcel, 3,000 for other types of residential parcels and undeveloped. was also, and this could have been just the timing of the pandemic, the council in Oakland did reduce this once they identified the parcels due to the economic impacts of the pandemic. So the original anticipated number of annual revenues that they expected to receive, which then they were going to use for homeless services and some other pieces, they really haven't been meeting their number, but that's more a function of them electing to not tax at the maximum amount. So these are not recommendations for what the dollar would be. Our recommendation would be, should you want to pursue something like this, to really look at what your property profiles are and what could potentially be the target properties that may be subject to a tax and then try to maybe quantify what that rate may look like. Next slide. |
| 02:05:32.74 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | The third option, as the city manager identified, is really looking at the waterfront and looking at the uh, the marinas that you have, um, the vice mayor had, had brought this up during our last conversation is, you know, there's almost 2000 slips in the city of Sausalito. Uh, there's an existing license, a business license tax that is generating only about $22,000 a year for the city. So, uh, Whether you consider that significant to the marinas or not, that's really the gross number. And I think the objective of our work with the city is to try to identify from a magnitude, you know, what options do you have that could generate a new ongoing revenue source to fund some of your infrastructure needs or your other needs. So in this case, you can see that it is, you know, you are collecting about two and a half million dollars across all of your business license or your businesses in town. But you can see that the marina itself is an insignificant piece of that amount for right or wrong, not suggesting that your business license structure is incorrect, but you can just see from this what it really means. One of the things, and I'll talk about this on the next slide, is next slide, please. Oh, sorry, I'll stop and move on to the fourth one. As the city manager mentioned, The idea of the impact of hotels is significant. And we see this in a number of communities, especially destination places such as your community. The idea of having, and this isn't particularly suggesting that you increase your TOT rate as much as it is you could potentially expand your universe of rooms that you would have subject to the tax. What we are seeing in a lot of other communities where those hotels are going up market in terms of what their nightly room rates are, it has a significant impact on what the gross revenues are. This is to say that you don't really control uh, new development, right? That this is going to be a private party wanting to move on. You could certainly encourage the existing hotel developers or owners to look at expanding their facilities or potentially a new one. But this is the ongoing piece that would be different than just the one-time impact fees that you might get from a project that is, you know, occurring in 2025 as an example, but we wanted to just give you a theoretical on what, even 40 rooms might mean to the city in any capacity with an average room rate of about $400, you can see that it's almost $600,000 a year to the city manager's comment earlier of approximately, I think, Chris, you said about 2.3 million. This is a, you know, it moves the needle quite a bit for what is not a large number of hotel rooms. Next slide. Oh, I guess that's... |
| 02:08:58.97 | Unknown | That's a great story. |
| 02:09:00.04 | Steven Woodside | I do. |
| 02:09:00.46 | Unknown | you |
| 02:09:00.71 | Steven Woodside | you Thank you. Thank you very much. That's an excellent presentation. We appreciate the deep dive, both from you and from the city manager. And it should be noted, as the city manager mentioned, that these recommendations came from the council after a robust conversation about where we might look for revenue. And these are areas that we all agreed were critical to explore. So with that, I'll just bring it back up to the dais for potential questions. Yes, please, city manager. |
| 02:09:22.85 | Chris Zapata | Yes. if I can. |
| 02:09:25.48 | Steven Woodside | if I can. You can. |
| 02:09:27.73 | Chris Zapata | Craig had more information to share that I think is missing. I'd like him to go over it if he's comfortable about the Marina side of of the, um, the city. Obviously, when you talk about $21,000 from the marinas and then you want to have bang for your buck, We have looked at other ways to create more revenue. on the waterfront that I thought we were going to talk about tonight. So, Craig, can you touch on that, please? Yeah. |
| 02:10:02.96 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | Thanks for the lead, Chris. I think, you know, one of the things that that we looked at and there certainly was this was brought up as part of the conversation with the Council about six months ago was. you know, what are the options around the waterfront? And we look at this really two different ways, right? The first one is from a policy perspective, should activities along the waterfront really in effect pay for their portion of the needs, the facility needs along the waterfront, right? you don't want to necessarily have a disconnect there. So one, do we believe that there's significant improvements that are needed or maintenance that is needed along the waterfront, whether it's for climate change, sea level rise, or whether it's just deferred seawalls and things like that. The second piece, besides the policy, is then the quantitative, right? What can we do that could potentially raise revenues off of the waterfront? And one of the ideas that was discussed with council prior that we had some further research done and talking to the city attorney as well was this idea of potentially not looking at it as a business tax, but having a slip fee, right? Or a slip charge that would be again, charged to the marina itself that would have been and then be passed through to the individual boat owners that may have their boats in each particular slip. We understand that by definition, I think the city has just inside of 2000 slips. So as a quick example, if you were to do some kind of a And this would be subject to community support, obviously, going out to the vote of the people. But what would be contemplated would be potentially a special tax on a per slip basis. I'll make my math easy. If it was $100 a year, that would generate about $200,000 to the city in terms of gross revenues. We can get into the specifics and the mechanics of that, but the idea is that you would look at something that would specifically be charged to the marinas that would kind of be a pass-through, almost like a utility to the tenants or the |
| 02:12:19.18 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:12:19.40 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:12:34.87 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | those that are putting their boats into any of these slips. And you certainly have some unique situation where you have the houseboats and the residents that are living on the water versus the recreational that may just have their boats in some of the other slips. I'll defer to others who are more knowledgeable about the the characteristics of the different marinas, but that's the general idea that we have been contemplating is this idea of a special tax that would be specific to just the marinas and we would have the ability to potentially have different tax rates depending on either length of the slips or i guess if you have designations for liveaboards versus maybe those that are just storing their boats and other slips so I think with that, happy to get into the conversation. And I know the city attorney, along with this working group, has been talking about this also for the last couple of months. |
| 02:13:37.02 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, and I'll just supplement something that Craig said, you know, in terms of taxing marinas on a per slip basis. That doesn't necessarily have to be a special tax within the meaning of you know, Prop 218, that could still be a general tax One of the ways that, you know, I believe NHA looked into this and, you know, we had thought about it is, You know, the city has a business license tax that's based on a, you know, per gross revenue basis. There are some business license taxes on marinas that exist that are based on a per slip basis. So that could still be a general tax. That's a business license tax. And instead of being. David Miller, You know $3 per thousand you know dollars of gross revenue, it could be you know X number of dollars, based on the number of slips so that that's something that would be an option for the city potentially as well to consider. |
| 02:14:38.19 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Thank you very much. Do we have additional? Yeah. Okay. I'll start with you, vice mayor, please. By all means. |
| 02:14:43.78 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. So, uh, I guess I have a few questions there, Craig. One is... The report is inconsistent in my view in that you And with a lot of specificity on the hotel. You have an exact number. It's a, of course, pro forma, but you're saying if we added 40 hotel rooms, we would get half a million dollars. but we don't have similar numbers for the other three categories. So I'm wondering what it takes in terms of authorization to you. to get a report that where we are empowered with, a bunch of scenarios and the community understands what the potential impacts of the effort of inquiry here is. |
| 02:15:27.77 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | Great question. So if we go through the four real quick, we could certainly talk about that. I think that the development impact fee is analysis to determine what kind of revenues you would generate would be a function of going through and having a a fee study done specific to the select types of impact fees you wanted to collect. So that slide, which had the list, right? Yeah. What are the process that we would do was work with city to engage a consultant who would do the quantitative analysis that would not be NHA. There are more experienced experts in that particular space, but it would start with council policy on what do we believe are the types of impact fees that we want to Um, collect, right? That is also gonna be a and difficult pro forma in terms of projecting cash flow, because that's all going to be a function of any project that would trigger the impact, right? So we could go through, we can quantify it and say, well, we know all of these facilities or these, you know, there are all of these impacts that we absolutely want to capture for whether it's new housing that projects come on or redevelopment of existing non-residential. That's great. We know that the rate needs to be, again, my numbers, I'm going to throw out. It's going to be, you know, a thousand dollars per square foot. And because that's what. to be, again, my numbers, I'm going to throw out, it's going to be, you know, $1,000 per square foot. Because that's what we know the impact is going to be on the community for streets and everything else. Well, we don't know when we're going to get that $1,000, right? We only know that it's going to be triggered the next time there's development. We can't really give you a, well, this is going to generate $10 million a year by impact fees. That's just number one, right? So the second one, which is... |
| 02:17:29.26 | Melissa Blaustein | I think I got your, I just want to be mindful. I think I understand your answer, but I'm just, if I might just ask a follow-up to that question, which is to be useful to us in making our decisions to fit into, I don't know if you heard about the earlier discussion, but to fit into a 10-year financial model. Mm-hmm. What you're saying you might have trouble doing is exactly what we need to have done. So I don't know if you can do it or if someone else can, but I'm wondering who in the room can actually take these concepts and put them into a timeframe. So we understand if, if they provide resources to do what my colleague, Jill Hoffman was talking about, which is, could we ever have a 90 PCI? Sandra Bushmaker would like to have a 90 PCI to have a 90 PCI costs tens of millions of dollars. It's not at all feasible in our current financial structure. The only reason we're looking at these things is to understand if there are ways that we could find other sources of revenue to actually up-level the infrastructure and services to the city of Sausalito. So we kind of need to know what the magnitude of the number is, and kind of how it would roll out in time. Can we get that information? |
| 02:18:38.85 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | So I think of the four buckets that we're looking at, two of them, the answer is yes. Two of them, the answer is no. |
| 02:18:46.63 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:18:46.65 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay. |
| 02:18:46.68 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | So certainly the TOT that we're talking about for a hotel, right, that's going to be dependent on somebody else triggering, unless you're right now restricting new hotel rooms, right? We have to assume that that's going to be a market decision that's going to either increase the number of room counts or potentially the rates, the hotel rates, the nightly rates. And the impact fees, as I mentioned already, are going to be a function of what we're identifying and then how quickly people are actually pulling permits for projects. I think the other two, you have a great |
| 02:18:46.90 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:19:20.02 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | you know, the question is a solid question. And I think you can actually quantify a vacancy tax, right? We could work with, city staff to identify you know, non-residential, buildings that are either being, they're vacant right now, or, you know, we have enough information about square footage that we could come up with some very high level, estimates of what that kind of a revenue would generate. Whether we use Oakland's number of $6,000 a parcel or not, we could do maybe a square footage tax. We can come up with a couple of different scenarios that to the city could be, you know, theoretically, you know, a million dollars a year, $2 million. We can work backwards into what that tax, that vacancy tax needs to look like. And then, so that's, I think the answer is that one, yes, could be quantified in fairly short order. I think the last bucket obviously is this Marina concept that the city attorney mentioned as well. We could, whether we do it through a business license process or whether we do it as actually some kind of a tax, that would be, you know, we can pick a number, right? Whether it's $100, a slip which generates $200,000 or $1,000 a slip which generates $2 million. So that one's almost the easiest of all of them, right? |
| 02:20:46.00 | Melissa Blaustein | Well, thank you. And then just my last question on the vacancy tax, aside from potential revenue gathering, a real motivation of that is to kind of crack a conundrum in town about the standoff between some landlords and useful businesses that want to occupy that space, but they have a disagreement about what market rate is. And that disagreement leads to vacancies that we see in industrial space in the Marinship. We see in the former theater building on 101 Caledonia, and we hear complaints of by many of our businesses. So what we really care about there also is will the tax change property owner behavior, to rent to useful businesses at a lower price. And are you able to do that kind of analysis and tell us and design such a tax to achieve that societal |
| 02:21:38.42 | Craig (NHA Advisor) | Yeah, that's... That's a hard question. I don't know... David O' That there is enough market data, I certainly understand the question, and I think you're right that the idea behind the vacancy tax is to change behavior as well as generate revenues right so in theory. you could quantify a, what would, the way I would think about this is you could quantify a lower tax that may not be as punitive So it's a consistent revenue stream to the city because it's not changing behavior, right? And then you would have the extreme, which would be a much higher tax, which the city from a projection perspective might anticipate will decrease over time because property owners are going to be more inclined to activate the property, right? So we can, assuming we can get the data set on the underutilizer, the vacant properties that are out there, we can certainly run some scenarios that would give you that, extreme, you know, the bookends to what that might look like under a couple of different taxes. And that's, I believe, similar to what Oakland did when they were looking at trying to find a. you know, an activator for their vacant properties that they, knew were Thank you. property owners were just absolutely doing nothing with, right? They were empty. |
| 02:23:03.89 | Steven Woodside | That was one more coming. |
| 02:23:05.10 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Thanks, Craig. Nice to see you again. Thank you, city manager for the introduction. I have a lot of comments, but I'm sort of limited to questions and carry on with what the vice mayor had to say. So it seems like these can be divided into things we can do and things we need other people to do. One of the things that we can do, and the city manager got a heads up on this, is rent our own property. The task tonight is to look at new revenue sources. What is... what effort, if any, did you guys do to look at the vacancies on city owned property and run an assessment of the value of those vacancies and sort of the impact on those vacancies by just simply hiring a, not simply, but hiring a property manager, making sure MLK, um, their leases are up to time. Um, that we're extending a good opportunity right there. I mean, that's something we control. What we have here tonight are so speculative. I'm wondering why that bundle is not included in your presentation. |
| 02:24:05.90 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:24:05.92 | Chris Zapata | speculative. |
| 02:24:11.71 | Chris Zapata | I can answer that, Councilmember Kelman. We didn't ask them to do that. We've been in the process of trying to figure out our property portfolio and getting a database built of all of our leases. We hired a property management consultant to help us with leases. We involved ourselves in what I call the biggest lease in our portfolio just last month. And so the idea of having an assessment of what we have vacant at MLK, I believe, check to give you that data and that square footage and some of the things we need to do to tighten that up. We thought about hiring a property manager. We actually did an interview. for property manager positions. And then we decided to go with a trial pilot program with Cushman Wakefield to do the complicated one. In the meantime, you know, we have vacancies at MLK. We have also occupancy at MLK. And we have other leases that will come up at different points in time. Yeah, there's some real need to address that. But we did not ask NHA advisors, Craig and his team, to do that. We're doing that on a peaceful basis. And if you want to see that sped up, I understand. And therein lies getting the big one out of the way first, which was the big school lease. And now we have a second big one where there's a pending request from the other school at MLK to look at the rents and reduce the rents. And so ultimately, you know, I've been having conversations with some of you and I would get to all of you on what your philosophy is for renting the properties that the city has in its portfolio. Is it all market-based? I've heard yes from one. Is it a case-by-case scenario? I've heard that probably a good way to look at it too. So we need to come back with our own little work before we ask someone like NHA to come in. And I don't believe we would need them to do that kind of work. It's just something we have not gotten to yet, but we're sequentially ticking things off. |
| 02:26:15.66 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you, city manager. And just to kind of put a wrapper on that, the reason I bring it up and ask NHA is because when you're presenting us with options around revenue, I would have thought you maybe would have said, you got to really look at this at some point. And here's some other suggestions we have. And it wasn't included in your suggestions. And so I was curious as to why. And then the other question I have, I guess, is around the hotel and TOT. Also very speculative. if we have to trust that somebody wants to go ahead and do it. What work, if guess, is around the hotel and TOT. Also very speculative. We have to trust that somebody wants to go ahead and do it. What work, if any, or conversations have you had around a larger master plan process for that, for certain areas? And the city manager and I and our community development director have talked about the area down by Bridgewood Marina, extending down through Dunphy and Galilee. There's an area there that is underdeveloped. Is that part of your purview as well? Are you Because what I'm trying to do is get these away from a textbook speculative, here's a litany of revenues sources you could activate and really apply them to our community. And that's kind of what's missing for me in the presentation. And so I'm wondering what type of due diligence you did around being able to activate that. |
| 02:27:21.26 | Chris Zapata | Let me answer that as well, Council Member Mayor. |
| 02:27:23.81 | Ian Sobieski | I give you a heads up. |
| 02:27:25.70 | Chris Zapata | And that was outside of the scope of what we asked Craig to do. What we asked Craig to do is essentially look at existing revenue streams in other cities, other like cities, and provide information. What you're referring to is a strategic opportunity that, you know, I think it makes sense to talk about in terms of that being an area of Sausalito that needs new attention. Some people call them specific plans. Some people call them specific plans. uh other things, but the idea of looking at the area from Galilee to the joinery and the boat harbor as one area where maybe mixed use development could go or something is ripe for discussion. So in talking to yourself when you were mayor and talking to our new community and economic development director, and asking some presentations to be made. One of the things that was asked by EDAC and the Chamber folks is, where does Sausalito as city staff see |
| 02:28:17.10 | Melissa Blaustein | and ask them, |
| 02:28:27.25 | Chris Zapata | future investment and future growth. And obviously it's in the Marin ship. It's downtown with the heart of your city, which is the Dunphy park area needs a plan and it needs to consider, you know, the opportunities there, whether it is, you know, more housing or more commercial or hotel or more recreation, but it needs a plan. So thank you for bringing it up. But it was not part of Craig's purview or scope that he was asked to do. |
| 02:28:53.25 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, State Manager. Other questions from the dais? I just had one for the city manager. Again, there's a lot to consider with these four items and it's not clear exactly what direction you're looking from us. So as we engage in discussion, after we take public comment, could you just provide what sort of answers you'd like to hear from us? |
| 02:29:14.48 | Chris Zapata | Sure. First of all, I appreciate the discussion that was had in the spring, as Craig referenced. And I appreciate, you know, the opportunity to bring this forward today because it's in alignment with Back to the Basics. You know, if you're going to talk about infrastructure and finances and people, as you've been doing for the last nine months, I think that's right on target. but to also talk about ways to strengthen and diversify your revenue without frightening the community to say tomorrow the city council is going to impose a tax on boats. Tomorrow the city is going to impose impact fees. This is that second step of what's your appetite. If in fact you believe that some of these have merit, then we can do more work on them and there can be more community discussion about it. You can take community input tonight. But the last thing I would like to do is bring something forward that's baked in such a way that the community thinks that it's a done deal, that you're going to raise taxes or you're going to implement certain fees. You need to have a discussion like this before any of that direction is given. So if you have an appetite and an interest in looking at a vacancy tax, tell us or any of the other three. We are already getting requests about hotels in Sausalito. You know, the question is, is that of interest to you? We believe that there is a need to really look at impact fees, but do you believe that? And will you commit funding for a Nexus study? All of those things that we're talking about are very, very much a sequential process where you've got to broach what you think makes sense, which we did in the spring. And you windowed through that and said you didn't like some of the things that were brought forward. These are the things that met some of the interest areas that you all discussed with me. So we brought these four forward. And now we want to see what your real appetite is. If you think that we should come back and have more detail about impact fees and what a study would cost or more detail about what a vacancy tax could look like or the idea of some type of fee on the waterfront. We need to have that conversation in a staged sequence, not in a complete sequence, because, again, that's being presumptuous on the part of staff to think that the council's ready to implement taxes. I got that pushback in the spring when I said, you know, you should look at utility user tax, and you all told me we don't want to tax your residents. We don't want to consider that. So we winnow down to what we think are the four potential ones. and if these four all make sense and meet mustard then we can bring back more detail and have more dialogue of that. So we winnow down to what we think are the four potential ones. And if these four all make sense and make muster, then we can bring back more detail and have more dialogue with our community and some of the stakeholders. Because obviously, if you're a person that owns a marina, or you're a person that owns a vacant building, or you're a person interested in a hotel, you're going to want your day in court. You're going to want your say. So we're not asking for a firm decision on anything other than to resurface this discussion that's been held in advance for almost nine months. Because part of the fix in the city to create sustainability is not just cost cutting, but is revenue. And diverse revenue, I think, is really part of what Saito needs, given some of the decisions that we've made to make our revenue stream more volatile. The property taxes, the secure source of revenue that we have that we can count on. at 55% of what's assessed in the city. But our TOT is volatile, our sales tax is volatile, our parking is volatile. So we need to look at other revenue streams to create that diversity you need in there. And then hopefully provide for an ability to fund programs and services that you want in this community, as well as infrastructure and projects. |
| 02:32:56.67 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thank you very much. All right, so there's no further questions from the dais. We will go ahead and open this up for public comment. |
| 02:33:03.25 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, first thing we have is Ray with you. |
| 02:33:13.14 | Ray Withey | Good evening again. And yet again, I've had to tear up my prepared remarks. |
| 02:33:18.12 | Melissa Blaustein | It lighted the door. |
| 02:33:18.49 | Ray Withey | in light of the discussion and the presentation. Um, So. You've had a number of options presented to you for revenue options. And coming into this, I was of the opinion that you're somewhat put in... The cart before the horse. You need to be asking what your needs are. And in particular, you need to see some of the output from the work product that Chad's preparing in terms of a 10 year financial model. I didn't know that it's so moving along aggressively. And I'm very pleased to hear that. I think the city council needs to be on top of this and actually set some deadlines. So for example, I would like to start seeing some outputs from a 10-year financial model in connection with the planned a mid-year budget review near the end of the year, for example. Now, I was I'm glad that there's a focus on this and that the council doesn't need to prod anybody to do it, but I would like to make a suggestion, which is, and this is to the mayor. You have the opportunity and perhaps you should correct create. a informal working group of two city council members. And if you want to invite some residents to participate, that's great. That working with the finance staff to actually figure out what is the design of a financial model that can answer the strategic questions and decisions you need to answer in the coming months. So of course, I'd be willing to volunteer. |
| 02:35:18.95 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. Any further public comment on Chip Babette? |
| 02:35:25.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 02:35:31.45 | Babette McDougall | Like Mr. Withy, I too have to sort of revise what I would like to have said, but In keeping with all of that, I would just like to say for the record, when it comes to these business sectors, these numbers do not operate in a vacuum. We don't just arbitrarily come up in the hospital. Let's just take hospitality. You don't just come up with TOT numbers in absentia of the data for the region. Everything has to comport with where we are. And we happen to be at a very tenuous moment. regionally. for a lot of factors, socially, economically, San Francisco was suffering. Sausalito traditionally has its wagon hitched to Sausalito. That seems to be upside down at the moment. We have to regroup on all of that. And only by having, it's unfortunate that you don't have your hoteliers here offering you direct input. It's unfortunate that they weren't personally invited, whether you're in the hotel business, some other aspect of hospitality. But let me just say that this is a very important area. The other thing I want to throw in is the idea that you think that by developing the waterfront, you're doing this town a favor. If you heard today's news, you know that China, which is hyperdeveloped along its waterfront, has actually begun to roll back its cement. have you heard about this? They're actually rolling back anything that's cemented that either, touches a waterfront directly by the sea through wetlands. And they're introducing now more wetlands. They're calling it sponge shoreline. because they have found that there has been so much destruction by fronting, doing what I call the Monte Carlo precipice, where you can't possibly put your toe in the water if you're in Monte Carlo, unless you're on a yacht and have your own dinghy. I mean, you can't get to the beach. You have to go to France, Nice or something to get into the water. Monte Carlo doesn't permit that. So that's what I mean when I say don't let us become the Monte Carlo precipice. Don't let us become... Marina Del Rey. Because the more we hit hard against the shore, the more we lose. I was in the north end of town today, and it was amazing. Oh, are you going to beat me, but you didn't beat him? Thank you. I'm just saying. how quickly that tidewater rose. my guest was shocked at how quickly that water rose when the tide came up. So the sponge concept is something we should be considering. Thank you. |
| 02:38:00.00 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 02:38:02.68 | Steven Woodside | Okay, any further public comment in the council chambers? I don't care. |
| 02:38:07.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none, so we'll go to Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 02:38:10.24 | Steven Woodside | Hi, Sandra. Welcome back. |
| 02:38:20.03 | Babette McDougall | I mean, really. |
| 02:38:22.75 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:38:22.82 | Sandra Bushmaker | you're muted we can't hear anything I know it's it's taken me a while I wasn't allowed to unmute myself a couple things I hope we don't turn into Marnie Carlo and I agree with that image that that would be really ghastly for Sausalito a couple quick points |
| 02:38:24.35 | Babette McDougall | I know. |
| 02:38:38.71 | Sandra Bushmaker | On the hotel issue, I understand the city has been approached by a business who has a floating homes with an engine, so they're technically a boat, to place them at the city dock at the foot of at the joinery. And I understand that there's been no response to that person. I believe it was Annabelle Joy that contacted the city. and that the builder of these votes is ready to put. these and make them a hotel or a floatel, if you will. in that particular area. So there's an immediate source without having to build a grand hotel. We've got an immediate source of some floating TOT tax revenue. The per slip fee, I am a boat owner. I pay unsecured property taxes. My rent goes up consistently over time. And I basically want to say enough already for the slip owners. the slip renters, shall I say. I would like to see us encourage people to keep their boats in Sausalito and not vacate the marinas because the costs are getting so high. Um, Now, on the other hand, if you had an exemption for locals who have their boats parked or berth in Sausalito slips, that might be agreeable or a discount for seniors who have their boats docked in Sausalito. But I want to see our maritime world encouraged And I want to, uh, enhance the maritime model for Sausalito. And accordingly, I don't want to see any hotels in the Marineship. We have already fought that battle. that should be off the schedule for any kind of hotels in the future. |
| 02:40:24.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:40:24.05 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 02:40:24.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you, Sandra. Do we have any further public comment at this time? |
| 02:40:32.36 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none, none. |
| 02:40:33.97 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I will go ahead and close public comment and bring it back up to the dais for council direction and... I think what we heard the city manager say is that he would like guidance on next steps, considering we've already waited in last spring on these four approaches. What and how would we like to put at the forefront of that? Who would like to get us going? I'd like to get us going. |
| 02:40:53.29 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, please. Councilor Kelman. So |
| 02:40:54.35 | Steven Woodside | I'm not sure. |
| 02:40:55.96 | Ian Sobieski | on paper, it's nice to see a list of ideas and opportunities. I am continuing to struggle with the applicability to Sausalito specifically. So I'll run down what we've talked about tonight. So the development impact fees. it is hard for us to know who gets charged. It's hard to know how disincentivizes future development. On one hand, we want to do We're talking about TOT on the other hand. We're talking about an impact fee. I just need to understand how they might interplay and interrelate with one another and Maybe we're creating incentives in one direction and disincentives in the other. And so It just needs to get spelled out much more. And like you said, it's tenuous, it's speculative. We don't actually know that we would benefit from that or in what timeframe, so it's hard to pack into any type of 10-year plan. On a vacancy tax, I think this is an excellent idea, but I don't know how we monitor it. So I'd be interested to hear some granularity around that program, how we monitor, what we might be able to expect. Maybe even an initial, we should be able to have some initial numbers, I'm sure, EDAC or the chamber would have a list of vacant properties that exist right now. I'd like to see if this comes back to us, something more concrete so we can understand what the impact would be to our community. Because I'm not sure if we're just picking from a list or if we're supposed to be, you know, projecting what we think would be most beneficial, but we just don't have enough information at this time to do either one of those things. On the hotel concept, again, I think I like to see our community development director here in the room with this conversation. In addition, as Babette mentioned, the hoteliers, I mean, I think there's a lot more information here that we're missing. I, as many of you know, do a lot of work around sea level rise and coastal adaptation. And that the idea of putting something on our coastline is going to require a lot of ingenuity and a lot of innovation in terms of what might float, what might not float, where would we put it? And so sort of a feasibility study on something like that before we start talking about it in town, because these things have a way of taking off on themselves on themselves and all of a sudden everybody thinks we're building a hotel on the waterfront and we have never said that um and so really a lot of these things need to come back to Sausalito and then the last one on the marina taxes I appreciated Sandra's comments I'd like to understand that more you made the distinction Craig about the slip fees versus some wholesale fees on the marina and I I wasn't quite sure how that would end up for us as a community, but I do very much like the idea of encouraging people live in Sausalito to have their boats in Sausalito. that also requires an understanding of of the 2000 slips that we have in town, how many people live in Sausalito, then how many don't. So there's some more knowledge sharing here so that we can really understand if these apply to us or not. Yes, they are interesting ideas, but there's still just concepts for me at this time. |
| 02:43:48.98 | Steven Woodside | Can I just ask for clarification for the purposes of providing direction? Would you like to see us pursue all four of these for further investigation? |
| 02:43:57.58 | Ian Sobieski | I'd like to have a conversation with my colleagues about that because I'm not sure that this is the exact group to pursue each and every one of these. There's missing information here and I don't know how we get to it. And so I think when you need some feedback. from the city manager and from Craig and his team about this is what we can do. This is what you can expect of us. Because I don't want to assign you a task or have an expectation and then you're not the right group to perform on that. And I just don't know enough. It's kind of the questions that the vice mayor had earlier. Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Cox. |
| 02:44:29.42 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 02:44:30.88 | Joan Cox | I will endorse the comments of Council Member Kalman. I wanted to add a couple of thoughts. In terms of development impact fees, in order to assess those fees, you have to do a nexus study that tells you, okay, for, and it is unfair to burden our current rate payers, for example, of our sewer system with the, added impact that the development of 724 units will have without exacting fees against that new development for the impact of that new development. How you determine that is through a nexus study. So it's not uncertain. what will be. at what it will cost, we have to validate what it will cost in order to assess it. That's a built-in protection. under Prop 218-4. impact fees, whether it be for sewer, water, storm drains, or other infrastructure components of that new development. The reason I think that's an important Um, concept to further investigate, is that if we indeed do come anywhere close to developing the 724 new units required by HCD. there will Absolutely be. um, large impacts to our existing infrastructure that we have to plan for, pay for, and properly collect for. Um, The vacancy tax, I strongly endorse this concept and I endorse it for residential and Commercial. We have commercial properties throughout town whose unrealistic rental aspirations have resulted in lengthy vacancies that create an eyesore and a misperception regarding this town's viability. And so I'm very interested in incentivizing Um, commercial and residential property owners to to avoid. long-term vacancies. And then in terms of Marina taxes. If you ever played Monopoly, you know that a boat is a luxury item on which a luxury tax is sometimes exacted. That being said, I do think it would be important to explore the concept of discounts for seniors and locals and particularly liveaboards, since liveaboard Sliver boards are the, the, a key component of our affordable housing here in town. For our liveaboards, I would not like to see that, but for out-of-towners who store their luxury boats here, I think a modest tax may be appropriate. And so I'm in favor of further exploring all of these concepts. Thank you. |
| 02:47:36.86 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Vice Mayor. |
| 02:47:40.06 | Melissa Blaustein | Thanks. Yeah, I think the starting point should not be forgotten. The starting point of this conversation is that our current financial model for the city, that's the taxes and fees that we currently generate on parking, hotel, and the businesses we have, and the property tax, pays for a certain level of service, and a certain quality of our infrastructure. So, We can expect that to be sort of the same if we manage it prudently. or depending on what comes out of Chad's model, we may find that, and the condition assessment of our infrastructure, we may find that just to keep things steady, we need additional sources of revenue. 10 years from now. that we need to start planning for today. We don't know that yet. So the key thing, I think the emphasis is this conversation just emphasizes how important, how urgent. It is. to get that 10 year plan and that property condition assessment of not just our roads, but all our infrastructure done Immediately. urgently. It's only then we know if we're rich or if we're broke. If we're rich, we probably are not rich. We know we're not rich, but we know, we can find out if we're poor or not. and whether we can meet our needs. But then we may have a luxury of a choice, which is that some of these mechanisms can afford us residents the ability to up-level our service or up-level our infrastructure, in a way that doesn't affect us as much, right? After all, the $2 million we get from hotels are mostly from visitors. So I can't help but note, look, I have a boat, so I hate taxing myself. I'm sorry, Sandra, I don't like taxing myself either. The hotel tax is 10% on the average hotel room. That means that if you park your body in Sausalito, you pay $48 a day to the city of Sausalito. If you park your car in Sausalito, you pay $35 a day. If you park your boat in Sausalito, you pay three cents. A day. presets. Sure, you pay property tax on your boat, You pay your property tax on your boat, but you're going to pay your property tax on your boat wherever you put your boat. You put it in your driveway or you put it down in Redwood City, you're going to still pay your property tax. But Sausalito gets three cents. So look, I don't want to pay tax either. But I go to more cocktail parties than I want to in Los Altos and I'm tired of hearing. tech bros and rich plastic surgeons tell me about the big boat they have in Sausalito that they spend one night a month in. So it has an impact. We charge for our parking and the marinas pay a total of 21K in BLT. So, there is a balance to be struck. And again, not because the goal isn't just to go hunting for money. I want to start with the beginning of the subject is do we need money and for what purpose is it good for the residents. That's the justification, not is it just good to raise money for money sake. So let's start with that, but these are answers to potentially meet that question. So I appreciate that there's some interest in looking at it, but this is in terms of direction to city staff. Nobody likes to pay taxes, but the goals are... to help finance the, or potentially finance the capital requirements of the town. So, Without taking away the emphasis that we need that 10-year plan and the property condition assessment, I would echo Councilmember Cox's emphasis that we should absolutely get these development fee structure studied and put to bed. We're going to have a lot of construction in town if we're building any fraction of the arena numbers. And that will have a negative effect on the town. Just as a defensive measure, we should actually get the appropriate recompense for that impact. The vacancy tax is not to me a revenue issue. That really is a market failure issue. I'm as much, I'm more of a free capitalist than anybody up here, I'm sure. Cause that's, you know, vulture capitalist. But the thing is that the vacancy tax is an example of a market failure. You have property owners who, will value their building based on the pro forma of the rents they can get. And if they rent it for less, they actually have to mark down the value of their building. So they are incentivized under the current structure, just to keep their buildings vacant. And we see examples around town of just vacant buildings. I don't think this is a panacea. And as much as I would like to apply it to residences, I think that complicates it dramatically in terms of an enforcement mechanism. I think starting, I'm all for thinking big, but let's start with something that's easily motivational to get some of our vacant properties to break the logjam. on some of our vacant properties. It would. What the current situation is, it has a cost failure because the societal costs are imposed on all of us of these vacant spaces, and we need to help the free market. by having such an effort. And on the vacancy tax, I mean, on the marinas, I think that's key to study with an eye, again, of putting it in the scale of the hotel tax in terms of its potential revenue to Sausalito. It could be a potential tool to help up-level our infrastructure. And then finally is the... What is the last one? The hotels. The hotels, yeah. I think it's a policy statement, you know, or Councilmember Kelman. I don't know if we wanna make that policy statement or not. |
| 02:53:10.41 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. |
| 02:53:10.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:10.73 | Melissa Blaustein | Bye. |
| 02:53:19.76 | Melissa Blaustein | a lot in this town is that people come to you with a proposal and we lean back and decide whether we'd like the cut of their jib. It's different if we invite something. So the question is for my colleagues, I'm just one vote. Are we going to just casually invite solicit? proposals for a hotel in town. If the answer is no, then a hotelier will know that this is an unfriendly town for hotels. If the answer is, we would like to hear what you have to say, please bring us your proposals. At least they know there's a request. |
| 02:53:49.73 | Ian Sobieski | So, Vice Mayor, do you have a location in town? No, no, no. Do you think it would be important to have some diligence around a location before we open up that conversation, or is that not important to you? |
| 02:53:51.99 | Melissa Blaustein | No, no, no. |
| 02:54:01.35 | Melissa Blaustein | I don't know. It seems like it's just a proposal. So like to me, the, it's just inviting people to make a proposal, but Do you think, I'm going to turn it around. Do you think it's, I guess you think it is important. |
| 02:54:14.01 | Melissa Blaustein | I think it's true. |
| 02:54:14.26 | Melissa Blaustein | And Councilman Cox thinks it's important. I mean, I'm not pressing the point. It just seems as though if you don't put an invitation out then it won't be there. So if that's the process, that's helpful. Cause it sounds like we have two people that say that. And if they're more than then maybe that's the process forward. And the direction is to direct staff to do some kind of inquiry on a specific location, like wherever you have in mind, but that'd be a path forward there. I'm amenable to that. I just wanna move the ball forward. So yes. I would agree with that. Um, That's it, I think. |
| 02:54:46.34 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And I'll just start with the hotel. This is where anybody at. So one of our public comment, I believe was Ms. McDougall, wondered why we didn't have hotel operators here when we're talking about this. And so to the point of where's the hotel, then yeah, of course, that's gonna be impactful for whatever neighborhood you're talking about. But one method we might wanna think about is asking our current hoteliers if they have an idea for expanding the number of rooms that they currently operate. And so we would have the same operator, Perhaps they might have an idea about where they could expand their current operations. to increase the number of hotel rooms in Sausalito without necessarily having a new operator in town that would compete with the current hotel operators. So that's one thought I had on the hotel issue. I agree with regard to the issue that we should explore with regard to slip fees. I agree with our city attorney that probably the best way to do it is look at that in the context of our current business license tax. I agree with comments about residents and liveaboards. I think that in the context of our current business license tax. I agree with comments about residents and liveaboards. I think that anybody else, if you have a need or you can make some sort of, you know, whatever objective criteria we might have for you know, waiving or reducing the increase in, you know, the slip fee via the business license tax, that that might be something we want to explore, but somebody that can afford a 75-foot boat in Sausalito probably is not going to need a break on their, an increase of a nominal amount for them. Development impact fees. Yes, I think we absolutely need to look at that in the context of our housing element and our 724 units. Of course, that's going to have a significant impact on our... on our infrastructure. agree with a vacancy tax issue, not necessarily for the revenue source, but also driving positive outcomes One thing I think that we need to look at in the global context of new revenue sources is the corresponding discipline of reducing expenses. So. increasing a continual increase of revenues means nothing if you're continually increasing your expenses. And so when you look at that side of our balance sheet, I would expect that if we're talking about our budget and the need for you know, ever increasing revenue to fund these things that we're looking at. So I mean, we had an excellent example, our prior our prior business item, which was 3.5. to have a nominal increase in our index for our streets or 7.5 annually. to increase the index for our streets. So these are significant numbers. My fear is that we're talking about small incremental increases in revenue And that we're trying to avoid going to the taxpayers, doing a parcel tax, doing some sort of bond debt service. effort to pay for these large, uh, large expensive items. without, like I said, the corresponding discipline of reducing our expenses. So I think that's not in our conversation right now. I think that needs to be part of the conversation. And when we look at our budget for the next year, that's something that I'm going to continue to message. |
| 02:58:18.48 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Mayor, can I make a, just a, caveat. Um, I'd like to hear from our city attorney when appropriate, because I don't think we can tax residents differently from non-residents on the marina tax. So that was something I had raised, and I'm not sure that's feasible. So I just wanted to make that caveat. |
| 02:58:39.77 | Melissa Blaustein | think you're right, but you can do things for liveaboards, for instance. You can provide a grant program to subsidize them. So it's not in the tax that they're exempt, but they get the money back in a different way. |
| 02:58:51.75 | Joan Cox | I just wanted to correct the record since that was something I had raised. |
| 02:58:54.22 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 02:58:54.30 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF |
| 02:58:54.37 | Sergio Rudin | Right. |
| 02:58:55.30 | Steven Woodside | THANK YOU. |
| 02:58:55.58 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:58:57.32 | Steven Woodside | So Joe, do you still want to add something? No. |
| 02:58:58.94 | Sergio Rudin | No, no, I think the council has addressed that issue. |
| 02:59:04.72 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. All right. So I think that we are all very much in alignment on the need and interest to explore each of these topics and I appreciate everyone's feedback on them. We all seem to be in agreement about the development impact fees and taking a closer look and doing a Nexus study. I will just add one thing that wasn't mentioned is in 2018, when I was on then Mayor Cox's Blue Ribbon Committee on Housing, we actually explored a development fee for not developing when you had a multifamily lot. So choosing to build single family when you're zoned for multifamily communities like Mill Valley. have pursued this development impact fee and cost. And we actually ordered a nexus study at that time. And I don't believe that the nexus study was ever conducted. So I would like to direct staff to find out what happened with that as well. And consider that in the context of these discussions around the impact fee and their implications for the housing element, because indeed there will be quite a bit of impact. And if we have property owners who choose to not develop where we've allocated housing and we don't make our numbers, then we are subject to regulations like the builder's remedies. So doing what we can on both sides to incentivize the right kind of housing and also to balance that development is really critical. On the vacancy tax, I think we're all on the same page here in wanting to support and endorse this concept. It sounds like there is more support at this phase for beginning with commercial and then looking into residential and exploring what the enforcement mechanisms might be for that. I do have to point out just a concern with regards to the amounts for the vacancy tax. I feel like it needs to be a lot higher than was suggested or than Oakland is considering because many of the landlords will often just use the loss as a tax benefit and the $6,000 that was suggested or that was being used by their communities is not going to disincentivize them from wanting to leave it vacant. So just take that into consideration and maybe do an assessment for tax losses and how those impact the willingness to rent or not when we're considering that cost is something I would add. On the hotel concept, it sounds like we |
| 03:00:29.83 | Melissa Blaustein | mechanism. |
| 03:01:06.03 | Steven Woodside | Definitely need more information, but there is interest. I love Councilmember Hoffman's idea to consider expanding the number of current rooms from those operators. So I would direct staff to start there and ask those questions. And then potentially also, it sounds like we need to determine feasible sites and have a discussion about that before we set it out. But it seems like everyone is in favor of that. It also seems like everyone is in favor of getting a better understanding of what we can and can't do around marina taxes with regards to the business license tax and potentially with regards to something like our parking fee, but for those slips and what we can and can't do. And I just also want to add, it also sounds like all of us are incredibly supportive of this 10 year plan for what our budget looks like and how we stay whole. And I really appreciated resident Ray with these consideration and suggestion that we have a smaller working group that focuses on that and works on that with. |
| 03:01:33.18 | Melissa Blaustein | to, |
| 03:01:56.18 | Steven Woodside | Um, Chad, so I'm, I'm gonna appoint a working group and it's, I think I'd like to, it seems like everyone's interested. I don't know where everybody, everybody wants in on the working group. Um, the vice mayor and council member Hoffman, I'd love for you guys to both work on that if you're open to it. Councilmember Hoffman doesn't look that stoked, but I know she is. You don't want it. There's somebody else down there. I can throw the ball. I just, you want me to throw the ball to Janelle? Just say the word. You gotta be excited about it, but Councilmember Kelman's excited. |
| 03:02:28.04 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 03:02:28.06 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:02:28.14 | Melissa Blaustein | Oh my gosh. |
| 03:02:30.22 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Okay, but the only condition is that I'm also appointing council member or resident Ray Withey as a volunteer resident to participate. So you can think about what that looks like. And yes, vice mayor. Okay. |
| 03:02:44.60 | Melissa Blaustein | I just wanted to make one comment to triply emphasize this. because I hate taxes. I would have zero taxes if I could get away with it. So this is really the caboose. The train is the need. Start with the need. So we need this. I know you've already said it, but I just want to say it because we're talking about taxes and I don't think anybody wants to be associated with taxes and we all lower taxes and it's it's follows from the need, not the other way around. |
| 03:03:12.24 | Steven Woodside | Well, I would just add that we all vehemently oppose the idea of a utility tax or any direct tax that would have a critical and clear impact on residents. So I think we're in agreement with that as well. So none of us are hoping to tax our residents to solve our problems because we are where we are because of decisions that have been made by, even if it wasn't us sitting at the dais, the dais. So we're- I'll just reassure you guys. |
| 03:03:30.23 | Ian Sobieski | I'll just reassure the vice mayor. I think we, I at least took your comments is to say let's plan ahead for the future. We don't know what we don't know. Let's do some due diligence around it. So not necessarily going to enact these taxes, but we need more information. |
| 03:03:42.75 | Steven Woodside | I'm just going to put on the record that you're a tax loving communist vice mayor. I'm kidding, obviously. We know that you hate taxes. Okay. All right. So I think that the direction is clear to counsel or to staff. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. So we that that ends that agenda item. There's no direct action beyond that to staff. So now we are on to item six on the agenda. 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, The city clerk will call on individuals who have raised their hand in the order they were raised. After you are called on, you will be unmuted to allow you to share your comments. Remember public comments are each allowed a total of two minutes to speak. And I will just add that I believe that hate speech is disruptive to my ability and our ability to conduct our work as council members. So I will just note again that even within the bounds of the Brown Act and the law, I don't think that hate speech will be tolerated by any of us. So I would hope that our commenters will be respectful as we open it up for public comment |
| 03:04:50.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Do you have anybody? |
| 03:04:57.20 | Alice Merrill | Hello, everybody. I really wasn't planning on saying anything, but I did the census whenever the census happened recently. And I was quite amazed by how many houses, homes, big ones, don't have anybody living there except for two months, two weeks, you know, three weeks out of the year. And I don't know if that's what you're talking about when you say empty houses, but there are a lot of them. from that point of view. |
| 03:05:28.45 | Steven Woodside | Thank you for that, Alice. Do we have any other public comment from the chamber? Yes, Mrs. McDougal. |
| 03:05:36.96 | Babette McDougall | I've always got an opinion. What's up? Thank you. |
| 03:05:43.08 | Babette McDougall | All right. Thank you, Babette McDougall. So I just want to circle back out of all the things that I could say something about here, but it has to do with the housing element. And that is I, had a wonderful meeting yesterday with many of the city people here who went to a great deal of effort on my behalf, which I appreciate. And I know my neighbors appreciate it too. So first of all, in my neighborhood, I'm the oldest person residing in this neighborhood. We have young families. Moving in, which I see as a very positive thing. And these people are just starting to really learn how the city comports itself. How, you know, what are the issues, the hot button issues? And I know I'm going to go past two minutes here. But here's what I found out just by sitting in that room yesterday. I realized that there's a great comfort level that's in play working with MTC by virtue of this ongoing relationship with the organization of Bay Area governments, which is responsible for transferring these infrastructure funds throughout the state and to this Nancy McNeil, municipality included what has changed in that relationship, and we have to be mindful of this to protect ourselves is that that same group is now in charge of our housing element and that's new news. That wasn't before the situation. But that is the situation now. So not only they are in charge of the housing element, they have the right to impose restrictions. And they intend to maintain that right. I was told that specifically by MTC. So those terms and conditions that I spoke about earlier, We need to pay attention. Now, maybe we need to make a policy that we just refuse to acquiesce. I don't know. We need to figure that out. The other thing we need to be mindful of is that as we go forward, Our only best possible sites for building happened to be the parks that you guys threw on the opportunity site list. This is frightening, especially if they decide to claim that they want a site to develop in the future, which they say is their standard M.O. |
| 03:07:47.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:07:47.43 | Babette McDougall | Thank you very much. |
| 03:07:47.98 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:07:47.99 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 03:07:48.02 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Do we have any other public comment from the chamber? |
| 03:07:53.26 | Walfred Solorzano | in the chamber. No. No, nobody from the chamber, just Eva on Zoom. Thank you. |
| 03:08:01.41 | Unknown | Thanks. I want to recognize how difficult it was for council to hear the comments that were anti-Semitic. and I also want to, point out that back in 2017, It was announced that Nazis, neo-Nazis would be marching in San Francisco and in Berkeley. I was living in Sausalito and on both days, Saturday for San Francisco and Sunday for Berkeley, I rode my bike from Sausalito to the BART station to get to Berkeley. And on Saturday, I rode to San Francisco to march against basically these fascists. And on Sunday in August of 2017, I marched behind Ben Stern who is a Holocaust survivor. He's now 101 years old. very hot day, a very tense day in Berkeley, 800 people marching against the Nazis. And it was really moving. I was behind Ben Stern and in back of me was Pastor McBride, Pastor Mike McBride, one of the great black pastors of Berkeley. And that's the kind of solidarity you need to push back on this. And I respect... Jill Hoffman's comments and Joan Cox's comments on this, but, you know, everyone should be standing up against this in the same way that everybody should be standing up against, you know, the way that black residents are treated by the police here in the county. I mean, we need to have solidarity and to, you know, separate it into these different little parcels. No, that's not how it's done. That's that's not how we that's not how we fight this successfully. So you got to have some balls. And you got to get out in the street and you got to show these people that you're strong. So I urge you to have more courage. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:10:10.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:10:10.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:10:10.97 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:10:11.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:10:11.28 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 03:10:11.48 | Unknown | I appreciate it. |
| 03:10:12.04 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:10:12.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:10:12.36 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:10:12.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:10:12.56 | Walfred Solorzano | See no further comment. |
| 03:10:14.11 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment at this time and I will bring it up for Councilmember Committee reports who wants to get us started. |
| 03:10:23.36 | Ian Sobieski | I'll offer one. So apologies that I missed the, the awards ceremony for Monica Finnegan on Friday. I was at an all-day MCE retreat. Many of you may know that the state of California has an ambitious plan to go 100% carbon-free by 2045. And so we as Marine Clean Energy spent the day discussing how we might do that, looking at the health and opportunity of the organization, and then weighing some options around further community engagement. So it was pretty in-depth. We went into all the finances and the... |
| 03:10:52.67 | Unknown | And... |
| 03:10:56.37 | Ian Sobieski | new programs. We talk a lot about storage, the need for more storage, the need for more distributed generation. We talk a lot about equity. MC does a really phenomenal job of offering equitable resources across different communities. So if anyone is interested and wants to learn more, feel free to reach out. Happy to send you more information offline. |
| 03:11:14.81 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Yes, Councilman Robinson. |
| 03:11:17.66 | Jill Hoffman | at the last meeting. We mentioned that Councilmember Kelman and I were going to be at the Cal Cities Conference. It's an annual conference in THE COUNTRY IS GOING TO BE It rotates between Northern and Southern California, but anyway, this year it was in Sacramento. And it's basically two days, about two and a half days worth of. presentations that are relevant to all cities and things that all cities are grappling with. And so with various panels. So I don't want to talk about all the panels we went to, but. This is one that I think is relevant to Sausalito and very interesting to some of the public emails that we've received on fire insurance rates that have gone up dramatically in Sausalito. There was a presentation by the fire chief from the Moraga or Rendo Fire Department, and they had really attached or really focused in on, you know, why the rates were going up. and the criteria used by the insurance companies and how they could respond to that and encourage people to. react to that criteria. So they had a whole program of hardening various you know, hardening areas around homes and following, you know, things that were required by the insurance company. And they were able to dramatically reduce, by working with insurance, main insurance companies, to dramatically reduce the insurance fire rates for Orenda and Moraga in their district. thought that was a very interesting approach and proactive approach by their fire chief. My plan is talk to them more in depth about how they did that and then approach Chief Tubbs about what how our fire district might be able to do a similar thing, because we have gotten emails from residents about the exponential growth of their fire. insurance in recent years. So I just wanted to report on that from the Cal Cities Conference. I thought that was probably one of the most relevant presentations. you |
| 03:13:14.81 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, and they also talked about the fair plan, which as you might know, provides access to basic property coverage when it's needed at lower rates and minimal opportunity. Yes, you're right. It's not that low. And I think Commissioner Lara just recommended with Governor Newsom's help a change to Prop 103. I wish they talked about a little bit to allow the, uh, to keep the wildfire coverage, but also allow them to raise the rates. And then also became the VP for North Bay for Cal City. So we have representation here in South Dakota. through. |
| 03:13:46.70 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:13:47.67 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:13:47.70 | Steven Woodside | Any other committee reports? I have a bunch of Okay. So on Wednesday, we had a Marine County council members and mayors committee meeting in Fairfax. They hosted us and we heard from the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Anti-Defamation League about the ongoing problem around what we experienced tonight with regards to hate speech. And they suggested some path forward. We had a really robust, great conversation. We also heard from BCDC Director Larry Gold's plan. Thank you. who was fantastic and gave a sort of 101 on the history of BCDC and was really charismatic and fantastic and everyone learned a lot. I asked him about housing, um, on the waterfront and our 10% exception. And I. |
| 03:14:27.44 | Melissa Blaustein | and, We'll be right back. |
| 03:14:34.31 | Steven Woodside | you know, didn't get a great response, but I'm going to keep pushing. And we're also, you know, going to push on things like getting the sea lion statue. I was not able to attend the Cal cities conference because I was in New York for some climate week events and for the strong cities conference, which is a US EU collaborative partnership to combat hate speech with mayors from all over the world. And we actually had a lot of conversations that are relevant for what we're seeing this evening that I can bring back in South Salido's officially a member of Strong Cities, which is free because it's supported by the Department of State. I also attended an interesting session on electric mobility through climate week, which was really, it was actually hosted by Lacey, which is an organization that Council Member Kelman has interacted with in her blue economy work. And the mayor of Phoenix and a counselor from Los Angeles were talking about different approaches to electrification of mobility and having different curb zones that are totally zero emission zones. So it gave a lot of interesting ideas. So that was exciting as well. And then, of course, I attended a Transportation Authority of Marin meeting, which was really robust. There was quite a lot of updates. quite a lot of updates. Um, yes. For those of you that tuned in, in your spare time, um, there's a new system that's being, these are some of the things that I think are most relevant for our community, but there's a lot to cover. Um, there's a new system that's being updated with Clipper. So the way your Clipper cards work and how you access them will be changing soon. So just be prepared and ready for that. Also, um, there is going to be through Tam, a, um, a fee exemption or a fee forgiveness essentially. So if you cross the bridge without using fast track and missed a toll, that's a program that's going to be available for all residents. We are, we have good news is that TAM we're being awarded $520,000 for development of a vehicle miles traveled toolkit for Marin County. So we'll be able to look more closely at that. That was a highly competitive grant that TAM won. So that's really exciting. The Safe Routes to School program grant funding will start up again. So we should have a conversation with our DPW to think about what projects we might want to apply. and put in there. Um, I mentioned the penalty waivers for fast track, which we've all, we've all been through that. Um, of course, um, and some members of smart to corridor tours of highway 37 route 37 is being updated as I'm sure many of you are aware. Um, and let's see. And we also heard about, um, interestingly, the Bay trail program and the fact that one of the largest Bay trail grant gaps is actually here in Sausalito. So if we want to apply for a grant, there's a lot of consideration around filling the gaps in the Bay Trail program. |
| 03:16:54.98 | Melissa Blaustein | There are many. |
| 03:17:15.16 | Steven Woodside | Um, and I won't go over everything. I'll submit a written report so everyone can see some of the things that we discussed at Tam. Um, and then finally. Um, myself and Council Member Cox have been in an informal working group exploring the corporation yard as a potential location for 100% affordable housing. And we had an opportunity, I had the opportunity to walk the site with Jason Kinney from the state department that handles these projects. And he had a lot of great information to share, but essentially, there are no decisions that will be made without the council. And I think it's reached a point where we would want to hear about the opportunities. So I've introduced Brandon Phipps to Jason Kinney, and that will be heard soon. Just our opportunities because there are state programs, but actually the state also offers quite a bit of technical assistance and we wouldn't have to lease the property and we would still have full oversight over what the development of the property looks like because as I think the community is familiar rotary housing is a fantastic local affordable housing developer that has expressed interest and and so that's very exciting for us so that's it for committee reports sorry that they were so robust but there was a lot happening do we have any others before I move on to the next item item 8 |
| 03:18:16.28 | Melissa Blaustein | interest and out. |
| 03:18:27.91 | Steven Woodside | Okay, item eight is city manager reports, city council appointments and other council business. And we'll begin with public comment on items eight B through eight E, which is city manager information for council appointments to boards and committees, future agenda items and other reports of significance. Chris, you got anything for us over there? |
| 03:18:47.23 | Chris Zapata | and, Not on this one, Mayor. |
| 03:18:50.17 | Steven Woodside | Just one? No, not on this one. Oh, okay. All right. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Okay. Yeah, please. |
| 03:18:51.53 | Chris Zapata | No. |
| 03:18:52.04 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 03:18:57.96 | Jill Hoffman | to go back to the corporation yard. Because we, you know, we've explored this a lot. My understanding is if you partner with the state on any program, regardless of driving what is developed there, once the state takes it over, you completely lose local control and management of that property. It becomes a property of the state. So is that your understanding too? So, so, so this is a different program, a new program. |
| 03:19:19.53 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Oh, wow. |
| 03:19:20.84 | Joan Cox | understanding too? And it's on the agenda for November 21 for full council consideration. |
| 03:19:25.42 | Jill Hoffman | Right, Jen. |
| 03:19:27.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:19:27.85 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:19:27.86 | Steven Woodside | All right. Thank you. |
| 03:19:28.88 | Jill Hoffman | So, |
| 03:19:28.90 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, and there are programs where we don't have to give it over to the state at all, but they'll still provide technical assistance with things like making sure the affordable housing developer will get all of the tax credits that they're afforded. So, and all of those questions will be answered and that's why it needs to come before the council before any decision is considered or brought up. So. |
| 03:19:49.53 | Babette McDougall | clarification, is it also relevant to low income as well as affordable |
| 03:19:56.08 | Steven Woodside | Well, Rotary Housing has all of those clarifications, but we can't talk about it in depth until it's agendized. So it will be on the agenda on potentially on November 21st. So, Yes, I'm getting a text from Sergio about that now. Yes, I know. We will not continue to talk about it, I promise. I promise. Okay, and then we'll go on to appointments to boards, commissions and committees. I wanted to make a point here. I don't think we have any specific appointments. But just to note that we have several vacancies and I think that this is being sent out in currents and we're going to agendize all the interviews in one shot. And so if you're interested in being involved or engaged. Yes. |
| 03:20:37.19 | Melissa Blaustein | Mayor, on that point, I just learned from the head of the planning commission that his term ends on December 31st. And so does one of the other commissioners. So. To avoid what happened earlier this year, we need to figure out, are we going to interview people and consider the current incumbents? in the context of new applicants for this reappointment. We're seeing heads nodding yes. So if that's the case, then we need to agendize that as well. |
| 03:21:10.99 | Jill Hoffman | I'm more in favor of if a current sitting planning commissioner wants to extend for another term. We would do it the way we've done in the past, which is that that member indicates that they want to be extended. Normally that's extended and absent some other sort of circumstance as a courtesy to that person, they're, they're automatically extended. So if we're going to deviate from that, then, then we probably had need to have a discussion on why we would do that. |
| 03:21:37.85 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:21:37.89 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:21:37.90 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I think we had a robust discussion and decided that we weren't going to, that we were going to create it. We didn't have a formal practice and we in fact didn't create a formal practice going forward. If we went back and watched the minutes, it was something that you specifically said at that meeting. |
| 03:21:50.59 | Jill Hoffman | Which is, yeah, the formal practice would be that you extend them |
| 03:21:50.69 | Steven Woodside | Cheers. |
| 03:21:54.34 | Jill Hoffman | via an action by the council, which is a resolution on the consent calendar So there's no discussion or confusion about whether or not that person was extended for a second term. |
| 03:22:04.40 | Melissa Blaustein | Right. You know, I think... I think Councilmember Hoffman is saying not to interview anyone new. |
| 03:22:11.18 | Steven Woodside | That's right. Yep. |
| 03:22:12.48 | Melissa Blaustein | And are you saying we are going to interview new people? |
| 03:22:13.76 | Steven Woodside | Well, we had a meeting where we said we weren't going to do that and we were going to continue to extend when people wanted to extend. |
| 03:22:19.10 | Melissa Blaustein | wanted to. |
| 03:22:21.05 | Steven Woodside | Okay, well, if we need to agendize this, we can agendize it, but I would direct staff to go back and look at the minutes from, from the meeting where we talked about that because we did as a courtesy extend since then we have extended the commission posts of a couple of commissioners in different capacities, not on the planning commission, but we did for sustainability commission, I believe for another position as well. So. Yes. |
| 03:22:44.29 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:22:44.42 | Melissa Blaustein | You're going to... |
| 03:22:45.20 | Steven Woodside | what app. |
| 03:22:45.98 | Joan Cox | I just think we can't abdicate performance in, in, in favor of process. And so I think anytime someone wishes to extend, we have to consider whether, We agree that they should extend Prior to this council's becoming council members, prior councils did decline to extend housing element committee members and other posts if someone was exceedingly absent or, you know, for other reasons. And so I don't think we can just abdicate. Our role. in ensuring that we appoint and reappoint competent available. personnel to these important boards and commissions. |
| 03:23:29.92 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, we need to agendize this because that's not what we decided. Let's just agendize it because I remember that meeting. Okay. |
| 03:23:30.66 | Joan Cox | Yeah. that's not what we're doing. |
| 03:23:32.84 | Babette McDougall | Oh. |
| 03:23:32.86 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:23:32.98 | Melissa Blaustein | TODAY. |
| 03:23:33.02 | Steven Woodside | We need to look at it. I'm not eating. |
| 03:23:36.49 | Jill Hoffman | What we need to do is decide whether or not the action, the council took action by consensus and whether or not if we're revisiting that we need to have another vote by I think it's two thirds or three fourths to correct or change a prior action by the council. So I think that's the question. that we need to review what our direction was, either by consensus or by |
| 03:23:59.03 | Steven Woodside | vote. I'm happy to, I think we should agendize it then, given that there's any sort of lack of feeling about consensus. So that's fine. We'll plan to do that. |
| 03:24:08.55 | Jill Hoffman | not it's not whether or not right now we've Right. The council has changed their mind. That's why we need to have a review of the tape to decide what action the council actually took. |
| 03:24:12.40 | Unknown | Right. |
| 03:24:19.36 | Jill Hoffman | If we took an action by consensus, Whether or not we voted, if it's by consensus, I believe that then you need to have a motion for reconsideration. of our actions. And then, um, and then it's agendized and then we decide how we're going to move forward. I don't We're, The issue isn't whether or not we're advocating, abdicating our duty. The issue is, the, the, courteous extension of people who give a significant amount of time absent some reason why we would deviate from that. Now, if there's a reason why we deviate from that, then that's a different issue than reopening every time we have to extend somebody, you know, for further, you know. disruption of that body. So anyway, I think that's what we need to do. |
| 03:25:11.09 | Ian Sobieski | Something that has to get agendized. Yeah, I think it just needs |
| 03:25:13.01 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I think it just needs to be agendized and we'll have a robust discussion then. I don't want to move outside the realm of what's on the agenda for this evening, but that's fine. Okay, which is timely because our next item is future agenda items. So I guess we'll start with that. Thank you. for the rest of the day. |
| 03:25:25.24 | Ian Sobieski | I'm going to go. |
| 03:25:25.43 | Steven Woodside | about the |
| 03:25:25.97 | Ian Sobieski | list. So I see on the 5th of December, it's a presentation from cfutures.org. I checked in with them and they weren't aware of that. I don't know if |
| 03:25:35.37 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 03:25:36.62 | Ian Sobieski | If you don't, I don't know. |
| 03:25:36.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Sorry, we don't have any dates locked in. I'm just showing like the left side just shows the meetings that are coming up. Oh, okay. Just a list. |
| 03:25:40.95 | Ian Sobieski | Oh, okay. |
| 03:25:45.02 | Ian Sobieski | Oh, okay. Got it, got it. Okay. I thought it was so well-organized. I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like, we know exactly what's coming when. I was going to applaud. Yeah. |
| 03:25:47.92 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 03:25:54.44 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. |
| 03:25:54.74 | Ian Sobieski | Bye. |
| 03:25:54.89 | Joan Cox | It's like a great job, right? |
| 03:25:55.10 | Ian Sobieski | Just like a French child. |
| 03:25:56.01 | Steven Woodside | I know. Thank you. |
| 03:25:56.43 | Joan Cox | to dates because these are all such important items that we've been waiting to hear. And so I was so pleased to see this allocation of various items to various dates. |
| 03:25:57.66 | Ian Sobieski | because- |
| 03:25:57.97 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:25:58.07 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:26:09.19 | Steven Woodside | Well, the agenda setting committee will do what we can to keep this going. |
| 03:26:15.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Part of what's been brought up by Vice Mayor Sobieski and the agenda setting committee is that this is also the time where council, if they so choose, can kind of like work with each other to, that's why that graph is in there, to maybe put one in at a future meeting. So there's some conversation about it. That way it gives the agenda setting committee an idea of what to prioritize. |
| 03:26:43.27 | Ian Sobieski | Can I maybe try to reframe that? So I'd be interested to see if colleagues would like to have an agendized open conversation around which of these we really want to get to by the end of the year. And I'm open to hearing if somebody has something they really, really want to have for the end of the year, I'd like to know it, but we have 25 future agenda items and we need some prioritization here. And I think that'd be helpful with, in light of all the conversations we've had about budgeting, long-term planning. They're not all the same here in terms of that. So if folks are willing, I'd be very interested to hear other people's thoughts about what we should be prioritizing here and hear what everybody would like to see come through before the end of the year. |
| 03:27:19.83 | Steven Woodside | Do you want to agendize that at the next meeting or should we on the spot? Because I'm not really ready on the spot at 1030 PM after this meeting to present |
| 03:27:24.84 | Ian Sobieski | you have after this meeting. I think we have to. I don't guys it. I think we have. Okay. We can do. |
| 03:27:28.01 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we can do that at the next, that's fine. |
| 03:27:29.88 | Ian Sobieski | I just... Can I move up the agenda, though? |
| 03:27:31.37 | Steven Woodside | Bye. |
| 03:27:32.89 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. Yeah, that's true. And also the ambition has been, and Councilmember Cox's, uh, Thank you. compliment is the ambition is I know Walford is working toward and staff is working toward having visibility on agenda items, not, three days ahead of time, but three months ahead. |
| 03:27:48.14 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. Yeah. |
| 03:27:49.14 | Melissa Blaustein | That's, you know, they've got a lot going on. I wish it had happened three months ago, but that's the direction I know you're taking the organization. So I think you have... unanimous support in trying to do that. |
| 03:28:02.32 | Jill Hoffman | Great. Yes. One, one future agenda item that's not on there. I don't think is the appeal of the ferry landing project. Yes. Commission. |
| 03:28:10.08 | Joan Cox | Yes. because that should be a special meeting, I think. |
| 03:28:13.15 | Jill Hoffman | I disagree. Well, I think. Oh, go ahead. I, I don't see any reason why that can't be a regular meeting. And we have a lot of things on our agenda coming up, but we have to prioritize everything. I think that we need to keep to a regular schedule and nobody gets special treatment or a special meeting because we have an appeal. We've done appeals at the city council level. We usually clear the agenda of other items because we know it's going to take a long time, but That's my feeling. |
| 03:28:43.93 | Joan Cox | So we have frequently scheduled special meetings to hear appeals, particularly an appeal such as this, where 42 people funded the appeal. So if each of those 42 people desires to testify regarding this item, that's 84 minutes there alone just to hear their testimony. And so I think to give short shrift to the other priorities on our agenda, we're going in favor of an appeal on a single item. Especially as we approach the end of the year and we're trying to accomplish various priorities, I think it would be important. that we invest the time to this. as required and Councilmember Hoffman, you'll recall, prior hearings regarding the ferry landing had to be held at iDesk Hall because the number of people who wanted to weigh in exceeded the capacity of these chambers and of the overflow. |
| 03:29:34.40 | Steven Woodside | And there were two special meetings for the fair landing in the IDES Hall. And I'll also add that the planning, the agenda setting committee has talked about this and we think a special meeting makes the most sense. And I will also add that respectfully, I think that we have hosted fewer than five special meetings in my tenure as mayor, perhaps three. And so I've done everything I can to work to keep our meetings and agendas to those that are calendared. And when there are 42 people who would like to make public comment, plus additional folks who will make public comment, I would like to allow the proper time for that meeting without derailing our other priorities. And I agree that it is frequent that we have a special meeting. Happy to work with everyone's schedules to find a time that is acceptable to everyone, but I think occasionally you know, during Other times where in the prior years on council, we had something like 20 plus special meetings. So this is a request that I think the community would appreciate. We'll advance notice it when it's a special meeting with ample time for the public to be able to contribute. I'd be happy for us to host it at IDESC Hall if there's that much interest in the meeting. But I think at this point, we'll send a doodle for a special meeting for that. Yes, specifically. |
| 03:30:41.70 | Ian Sobieski | I know I should know the answer to this, but do we normally have two meetings in December? |
| 03:30:46.10 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 03:30:46.86 | Ian Sobieski | No. |
| 03:30:48.11 | Jill Hoffman | We absolutely do not have two meetings in the House. |
| 03:30:49.46 | Ian Sobieski | We had a second meeting. |
| 03:30:50.54 | Steven Woodside | THE SECOND. |
| 03:30:50.92 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:30:52.52 | Steven Woodside | We have. We typically have. We have. And we did it that way because we're doing first and third meetings. We're not adding extra meetings. |
| 03:30:58.46 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, I was just trying to free up a meeting and say, oh, we have an extra meeting. Might as well use that meeting. Okay, thank you. |
| 03:31:05.97 | Steven Woodside | And we all voted and agreed to the agenda of when we were going to have meetings at the beginning of the year. So I would like us to be respectful and consistent. And I'm just asking for the special meeting so that we can effectively engage the public. You should all expect to doodle on that. Go ahead. Did you want to, anyone want to add anything? Okay, great. |
| 03:31:25.15 | Jill Hoffman | So, you know, to respond to the ferry, the last time when we had a ferry, when we were trying to deal with the ferry landing in the context of the Golden Gate Bridge District, who denied and tried to not go through Sausalito. pursuant to our lease, yes, we had to have many meetings on that. And that was because we were dealing with a state agency, sorry, an independent agency who was trying to say that they did not have to follow the lease and obtain Sausalito's permission to build an enormous, robust, very landing for their new ferry operations. So yeah, that took a lot of This is an appeal from a planning commission meeting I agree that there were 42 people that signed on. to that, the people there's a process for the appeal. will follow the process for the appeal I would suspect that the people who signed the appeal they won't be saying new things. Their, their representatives will be through the process. So I understand you guys want to have a special meeting. I, Thank you. |
| 03:32:27.42 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:32:27.44 | Jill Hoffman | Anyway, I guess I'm in the minority |
| 03:32:28.33 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, I guess I'm |
| 03:32:29.99 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:32:30.14 | Ian Sobieski | I'm the middle ground here in that nobody wants a special meeting, I'm sure. Probably, right. But I do want to recognize, because I do tend to agree on this, that it's an appeal of a decision. We are saying, we are reprioritizing and saying that is more important than these 25 other items that are on this, none of which seem to warrant a special meeting. And I just want to acknowledge that. I think that is a very fair and valid point. I'm not going to oppose a special meeting, but I just want to give that its due airtime. And so let us know when the doodle goes out. But it is something to consider when we take the time to reprioritize this list. |
| 03:32:48.09 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 03:33:06.30 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Well, if you have requests for a special meeting from that list, if we don't manage to get to it, I would be happy to entertain that. But we've done everything we can to minimize the number of special meetings. There have been fewer than five special meetings this year, which is quite good considering our prior few years. And I've made an effort to be very respectful of everyone's time while appropriately engaging the members of the public so they have an opportunity to make comment on issues that they are passionate about. So I will continue to push for a special meeting on this topic. And I think if we all reviewed together the amount of correspondence that the Planning Commission received for that meeting, we would understand why it's critical that we have a special meeting if we intend to take public comment and if we intend to take this issue, which I personally have received at least 50 letters on seriously. I would like to dedicate my entire evening to this and I would not like to do that at the compromise of the other items that are future agenda items during and before the end of the year, which is again why I think it's important we have that meeting and the December 19th meeting. So that's where I fall out on that. |
| 03:34:04.08 | Ian Sobieski | Understood. We will look for the doodle. |
| 03:34:05.69 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. Any other notes of significance? Okay, thank you very much. We'll adjourn the meeting at 10.40 p.m. Thank you. Recording stopped. |
Eva — Neutral: Commented on anti-Asian hate proclamation, noting historical context and that most anti-Asian violence has been perpetrated by white people, referencing historical events like the Chinese Exclusion Act. ▶ 📄
Gabe Stutman — Neutral: Noted that disruptive callers are testing Brown Act compliance and advised against shutting down public comment, referencing council members' backgrounds. ▶ 📄