| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:10.78 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:00:10.80 | Sandra Bushmaker | you. |
| 00:00:10.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:00:10.98 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:00:13.94 | Walfred Solorzano | Good evening, Mayor, Councilmembers. The special meeting for today, for November 13, 2023, will be broadcast live on cable TV channel 27. It's also live on the city's website and also available through Zoom. If we can... there. |
| 00:00:32.78 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you very much, City Clerk. Good evening, members of the public, City Council, and staff. We will now call to order this special City Council meeting at 6 p.m. And our first item on the agenda, we're going to begin with closed session discussion, but let's first take the roll call, please, City Clerk. |
| 00:00:48.75 | Walfred Solorzano | Chancellor Cox. you |
| 00:00:49.69 | Mayor Blachstein | THE END OF |
| 00:00:50.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman? |
| 00:00:52.41 | Mayor Blachstein | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:00:52.72 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member coming. you |
| 00:00:53.84 | Mayor Blachstein | Here. |
| 00:00:54.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Vice Mayor Sobieski and Mayor Blachstein. |
| 00:00:58.00 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you very much. And this evening on closed session, we have conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation in pursuit pursuant to section 54959.9. So we will now open up public comment on closed session agenda items. |
| 00:01:12.12 | Walfred Solorzano | If any members of the public would like to make a comment, there's speaker cards over by the table. You can fill those out and bring them back over here. Or if you're on Zoom, you can use the raise hand function. Seeing none right now? |
| 00:01:22.73 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, we'll go ahead and close open session at this time, adjourn to closed session. And this is just for members of the public who are here to make comment this evening. We will return at 6.30 p.m. |
| 00:02:15.18 | Mayor Blachstein | Yes. Okay, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:25.63 | Unknown | Oh, it's so great to see a full room. This is the busiest I've ever seen it. |
| 00:02:36.80 | Unknown | Great, stupid notes. And Lobo, come here, underneath. |
| 00:02:38.42 | Unknown | Thank you. Then... |
| 00:02:43.94 | Unknown | I hope it tooks. Right. |
| 00:02:51.35 | Unknown | I'm sorry, excuse me. |
| 00:02:51.40 | Unknown | first because I said this. |
| 00:02:55.56 | Unknown | Oh, God. |
| 00:02:56.32 | Unknown | No. |
| 00:02:56.88 | Unknown | made it. |
| 00:02:57.29 | Unknown | you Okay. |
| 00:03:03.66 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah, that's great. |
| 00:03:06.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:03:06.13 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:03:06.15 | Unknown | I'm sorry. Thank you. What's your plan? So, thank you. It's a trapdoor that's having it out. |
| 00:03:12.56 | Unknown | It's a and coming it out. |
| 00:03:14.65 | Unknown | That's how we get out. |
| 00:03:17.97 | Mayor Blachstein | It's on, my mic's on, everyone knows. Okay. All right, welcome everyone we have no announcements from closed session and we will go ahead and open up the open session of this official meeting at 6 36pm and I will begin with the pledge of allegiance and i'm going to ask our city manager to lead us in the pledge of allegiance this evening. |
| 00:03:43.91 | Unknown | Ready to begin? |
| 00:03:44.86 | Mayor Blachstein | I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands. one nation, under God, indivisible, |
| 00:03:53.58 | Mary Griffin | There are. |
| 00:03:55.44 | Mayor Blachstein | you with liberty, justice for all. Thank you very much. Okay. And I will now ask for a approval of this evening's agenda. |
| 00:04:07.23 | Babette McDougall | So moved. |
| 00:04:08.36 | Mayor Blachstein | Do we have a second? Secondly, All in favor, say aye. Aye. Fantastic. We also have one item on the consent calendar this evening, which is authorize the city manager to sign the amendment to the 1996 revised hazardous and solid waste joint powers agreement County of Marin items on the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial and can be passed in one consensus vote. With that in mind, do members of the council have any comments on the consent calendar item this evening? Okay, seeing none, I will open up the consent calendar to public comment. |
| 00:04:41.27 | Walfred Solorzano | Members of the public, if you'd like to make public comment on this item, please people on Zoom, use the raise hand function. And if you're in the House and Council Chambers, fill out one of these speaker slips. Seeing none for this item. |
| 00:04:55.24 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. I will go ahead and close public comment on the consent calendar and ask for approval. |
| 00:04:59.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:04:59.14 | Jill Hoffman | So moved. |
| 00:05:00.62 | Mayor Blachstein | Do we have a second? I'll be second. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. |
| 00:05:06.53 | Jill Hoffman | I. Thank you. |
| 00:05:06.92 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. Thank you, so this is a public hearing on the fairyland size improvement project dpw project number 301.001 and anticipated format for this evening's hearing, we will ask city staff, which is the Community development department. To present a report on the planning Commission decision and the city council's role in the repeal. After that report is provided, DPW staff will be allotted 15 minutes of time to present on the project in their role as project applicant. The appellants will be provided 15 minutes to present their case. Following appellants' case, the council will receive public comment. Appellants will be provided no more than five minutes to address any issues that were raised during public comment. The applicant or appellants may waive any extra time or may reserve time to speak. I want to make a note that due to our limited time this evening, We may vote to limit the period provided for public comment. We do have to end the meeting at 9 p.m. because one of the council members will have to leave at that time when we'd like for everyone to be present. So in making your remarks or asking your questions or making your public comment, please be as precise as possible and be aware of our timeline. At this time, I would invite the council to make disclosures of any ex parte communication regarding the project. |
| 00:06:22.55 | Councilmember Hoffman | I have spoken to some members of the community. I've spoken to one appellant at her request, Sharna Brockett. Um, where I received her concerns and spoke generally about my own concerns, but not specifically about the project. I sent out, I do want to note that I sent out an analysis this weekend to my private email list. referencing this hearing and my preliminary assessment much like a tentative ruling in a court setting based on the written materials received. to that point. Um, that I wrote the email, which was sent out, I believe Saturday morning. I want to say unequivocally that I continue to have an open mind on this project and have continued to review and evaluate public comments that have been submitted throughout the day and we'll have an open mind in evaluating all additional information we received tonight. including the arguments to be presented by staff, the appellants, and during public comment, all of which I will factor into my decision making. I, do want to note that I spoke to Mr. Rex about not this particular project, but about the additional project that he was thinking about or advocating for with regard to matters outside of this project. And so we specifically did not talk about this fairylanding project. So with that, thank you. |
| 00:07:47.84 | Mayor Blachstein | Any other... |
| 00:07:49.11 | Councilmember Kelman | Sure. I didn't realize we were doing detailed ex-parties. I'll just mention, I also had spoken with Michael Rex, Peter Van Meter, and Sharna Bruckett, and I'm sorry I didn't get to email all of you back, but I tried very hard to email many people in this room back who had questions. So, that's our report. Thank you. |
| 00:08:07.70 | Mayor Blachstein | Anyone else? |
| 00:08:08.88 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I spoke with various people who signed the appeal. There were 42 people who signed the appeal, and I've spoken with many of them, as well as people in favor of the Planning Commission decision. I've also answered at least 100 emails so far, but still haven't been able to answer all of the emails. Listened to the Planning Commission meetings and the City Council that occurred in when I was not a member of the council, just to be sure that I had all of the background. Thank you. |
| 00:08:42.78 | Vice Mayor | I have assiduously avoided talking to any of the appellants since the appeal occurred, though I did read every one of the public comments and add a... fall party last evening. I spoke with one of the appellants, Peter Van Meter, who approached me and made generally positive comments in favor of the virtues of the appeal and the demerits of various alternatives. |
| 00:09:07.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:09:08.28 | Councilmember Hoffman | Oh, go ahead. |
| 00:09:08.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:09:08.87 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:09:10.97 | Unknown | I did. |
| 00:09:12.30 | Councilmember Hoffman | I also watched the two planning commission meetings |
| 00:09:17.28 | Mayor Blachstein | Great. Thank you. I also have had received a number of public comments, and thank you very much for your active engagement on this policy issue. And I have had casual conversations with a number of the folks who are in favor and against the appeal, although none at length about the details of the appeal. Although I will note that this is a unique hearing in that the project applicant is, in fact, the city of Sausalito, and I on a regular basis, as do all of us sitting on the dais converse with director McGowan and director Phipps so we should disclose that that is a unique provision to this hearing. So thank you very much for that and now I will begin the proceedings and hopefully we will first hear from our Community Development Director Brandon Phipps. Oh, there you are. It's a nice suit, Brandon. Good evening. |
| 00:10:03.48 | Brandon Phipps | Good evening. And thank you very much, Mayor. Happy to be here as always. And good evening to council members, members of the public. Great to see such a turnout this evening, as well as staff. Again, happy to be here to kick off this public hearing as related to an appeal of a planning commission approval of a capital improvement project that has been in the works for a number of years. That project is the Ferry Landside Improvement Project, which makes landside improvements to the plaza and parking lot area adjacent to the city's ferry terminal. I will start with a little history on this project. In 2017, City Council accepted grant funding pursuant to an agreement with the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway Transportation District to pass $2.4 million in federal transit agency funding to the city of Sausalito to develop improvements in the ferry landing area. In 2019, City Council instructed staff to work with the local professionals group to assist with the development of the project. In March of 2022, City Council received a presentation from staff regarding the reference project and provided direction for staff to move the project forward with construction-level designs. As part of that direction, Council also recommended seeking input from the Planning Commission as well as the Historic Preservation Commission. And I'll just note, throughout this period and process, the Public Works Department, particularly Director McGowan, has presented the project multiple times, giving updates to city council at city council meetings to keep both the council and the community updated on their progress and to solicit feedback from the public via public comment. In May of 2023, the Public Works Department began coordinating with the Community Development Department and myself on a formal presentation of the Ferry Landside Project for design review permit approval as required under Sausalito Municipal Code Section 10.54.050. The project was heard by the HPC, the Historic Commission, in June of this year, which concluded with the commission providing input on the project, primarily including a recommendation to relocate the Sally Stanford fountain closer to El Portal, as well as the existing information kiosk structure. Following that hearing in July of this year, the project was first heard by the Planning Commission at a public hearing where the Planning Commission voted to continue the matter and directed staff to prepare several changes to the project, which included recommended changes in connection with the project's pedestrian and bike queuing plan. And those changes are summarized on the staff report and will certainly be dug into a little bit deeper in Kevin's presentation. On September 13 of this year, the revised plan, as directed by the commission, was presented to the commission again for a design review permit. Same findings. At the end of that hearing, the commission voted 3-2 to approve a design review permit in connection with the revised design, subject to certain conditions of approval. So shortly thereafter, a timely appeal of the planning commission decision was filed with my department by Michael Rex and 41 other signatories requesting that City Council overturn the decision of the Planning Commission and approve the project plans dated June 2023, as initially presented by the Public Works Department. And that appeal is why we are here this evening. That appeal is the basis for the council hearing this evening. So regarding a summary of staff's analysis of the project in general, this project and this appeal is a bit unique in the sense that it does not request denial of the project approved by the Planning Commission. Rather, it's an appeal which requests approval of the original design that was initially presented to the Planning Commission, and that project is shown on Attachment 8 with project plans dated June 2023. This appeal is also unique in that it concerns a public works project for open air facilities, as opposed to development of a building and related elements, which are generally the case for designer view permit. As a result, many of the required design review findings simply don't apply or are not germane to this project. And much of the comment and issue raised in connection with this project is largely focused on various preferences regarding one aspect of the project or another, and the various tradeoffs between the original proposed plan versus the revised design. and staff note that there is no express argument that the appropriate findings for a design review permit cannot be found for this project. While not initially approved by the commission, staff believe that the original proposed design remains consistent with the general plan policies and programs, the city council strategic plan, as well as the findings for approval for a design review permit. Staff also believe the planning commission has properly made the findings for approval of the project as revised by the Commission. So in short, staff feel both projects are compliant with the required findings for design review permit. Regarding recommendation. The item before Council this evening is a public hearing to consider approving a design review permit for the Ferry Landside Improvement Project. As part of this item, staff recommend city council conduct this hearing, of course, review record of decision, hear testimony of the appellant, city staff, and other interested parties, and make a determination on the following two items. Number one. Will city council approve a design review permit for the project at all? And if you do, number two. For which project does that approval relate? Is it for the version of the project originally presented to the commission? The project approved by the commission or some other version. As stated, staff believe the required findings for approval for a design review permit can be made for either design alternative. Staff has provided a draft resolution which allows the council to vote to approve a design review permit for the alternative that most strongly meets the required findings for approval under SMC 10.54050. And again, those are the required findings for design review permit. So to clarify, when I say either design alternative, I am referring to the project plans dated June, 2023. That is the version of the project originally presented to the commission or the project plans dated September, 2023. That is the version of the project which was ultimately approved by the planning Commission. And of course, Council may take alternative actions which include approving a designer view permit for a modified design, not necessarily associated with one or the other. Council may continue the matter. to consider additional information. they may remand the matter. Back to the Planning Commission. or they may deny the issuance of a permit altogether, which would terminate the project. Thank you for your time this evening. And with that, I will pass the mic to Public Works Director Kevin McGowan and his team to provide a more detailed overview. And there will be a questions for staff portion following Kevin's presentation. |
| 00:17:43.49 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, I think we'll wait then just to move ahead and we'll reserve questions for all of staff at the completion of the Department of Public Works presentation. Thank you, Director Phipps. |
| 00:17:51.20 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you, Kevin. |
| 00:17:51.61 | Mayor Blachstein | Appreciate it. All right, Director McGowan, thank you very much for being with us this evening. |
| 00:17:58.63 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. I'm Kevin McGowan, Department of Public Works. waiting in the wings over there. And I'm hoping that Noelle can start our presentation and we can get started. |
| 00:18:16.75 | Kevin McGowan | There we go. One more click and we should be off and running. Okay, great. Thank you so much for letting me speak this evening. With me this evening is David Parisi of Parametrics, formerly Parisi Consulting. He's our transportation engineer on the project, and I will be presenting a... the Ferry Landside Improvement Project this evening. Next slide. Our consultant team is composed of Becky Dower from BKF Engineers, David Parisi, as I've mentioned before, and Barbara Lundberg from RHAA, an architectural firm, landscape architectural firm. We have also worked closely with the local professionals group to develop the original plan that was presented to the Council in 2022 and later presented to the Planning Commission on July 26, 2023. There have been many meetings and significant efforts made by all those involved to develop this project, including subcommittee meetings with the planning commission, as well as many other meetings with interested parties, including the pedestrian bicycle advisory group, as well as the local professionals group multiple times. Many thanks to all those groups for participating in this process. Next slide please. Tonight, my intention is to provide the Council with a clear understanding of the plan approved by the Planning Commission, as well as the original plan presented to the Council in 2022. As noted in the staff report, this project is fiscally supported by a pass-through grant from the Federal Transit Agency. The current budget project budget is 2.5 million. Next slide, please. |
| 00:19:58.26 | Sunil Raj | Thank you. |
| 00:19:58.31 | Kevin McGowan | We go. Several key components were included in the original plan that were developed by the local professionals group. Specifically, the original plan was developed to have patrons boarding the ferry with their bicycles staged on the northeast side of parking lot one. This is shown on the plan in front of you in blue dashed lines. In addition, pedestrians boarding the ferry without a bike would stage or queue in the plaza area. The planning commission on July 26, 2023 voiced several concerns regarding this plan, including the possibility of ferry patrons blocking the entrance to the Sausalito Yacht Club. Ferry patrons blocking the access to Gabrielson Park as well. and excess impacts to parking in downtown caused by the size of the proposed plaza expansion. and impacts on businesses. Next slide, please. |
| 00:20:57.98 | Kevin McGowan | No, I think we're off on what there we go. The planning commission requested that the plan be revised to include reducing the parking impacts to not exceed 14 spaces removed from lot one and decrease the size of the Plaza expansion. A quick correction for you in attachment five of your packet, which are the plans presented to the planning commission, shows parking on the east side of lot one is being parallel. Based off of the Planning Commission's comments, we have changed those to perpendicular. So on your slides that we see here in the presentation, those parking spots on the east side are perpendicular. The plan included directing ferry patrons to queue and line up towards the west side within the plaza and closer to El Portal. A sidewalk was added on the east side of Lot 1 per the district's recommendation to facilitate patrons from the north accessing the ferry. Tracy Way is to be permanently closed pending Council's approval. An additional drop-off area was also added to El Portal. |
| 00:22:04.67 | Unknown | I'm sorry, Director McGowan, do you have a laser pointer so you could help maybe guide? |
| 00:22:04.80 | Kevin McGowan | THANK YOU. |
| 00:22:11.05 | Kevin McGowan | Maybe. I have more details which we can show in the presentation. |
| 00:22:13.14 | Unknown | I have. |
| 00:22:17.88 | Kevin McGowan | Maybe not. Why don't I keep going? Because I'm on a timer at this point. Next slide, please. |
| 00:22:22.32 | Unknown | based on |
| 00:22:23.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:22:27.58 | Kevin McGowan | Based on this direction, the approved plan directs patrons boarding the ferry towards El Portal. The approved plan, as noted by the appellant, has tradeoffs, including congestion in the plaza. with ferry patrons and access through the plaza. possibly being constrained. Additional wayfinding and signage is needed for this option. Installation of removable signage was discussed at the Planning Commission, which can also help define how patrons are to line up to board the ferry during the summer months. This option also modifies the current use of Tracy Way, as noted before, as being permanently closed for vehicles. Next slide, please. |
| 00:23:15.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:23:15.10 | Kevin McGowan | The Planning Commission also added a few conditions to the approved plan, which include a drop off area on El Portal, which is shown in yellow on the above plan. The removal of trees in the plaza and an additional signage to direct patrons or pedestrians towards Gabrielson Park to access the ferry from the north side of lot one. Next slide. |
| 00:23:40.27 | Kevin McGowan | Both the original plan and the plan approved by the Planning Commission are in compliance with Ordinance 1128 and comply with the FTA grant criteria. Additional memos regarding the approved plan are included in your agenda packet, which addresses this compliance. Next slide. |
| 00:24:00.38 | Kevin McGowan | All right, as part of this, I do want to thank the appellant for all their work on this project and agree with many of the points brought up. However, we do not agree that the approved plan is unsafe. David Parisi from Parametrics will speak to this specific item, and so I will step aside quickly for him to step in. |
| 00:24:21.09 | David Parisi | Thank you, Director McGowan. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. David Parisi, Civil and Traffic Engineer. And I've also had the pleasure to work with the city and the groups on this project. Regarding this slide, from a multimodal perspective, I can't really say that one plan is safer than the other, Both have designated queuing routes, as Kevin mentioned before. the original plan with the, have the separated pedestrian bicycle flows. Folks with the bicycles would queue up as shown on the west side in the blue line. They would cross the Sausalito Yacht Club driveway. Recent counts have shown that on a daily basis, up to two over 200 cars a day can cross that driveway. And during the peak hour, about 25 cars in and out that driveway. Slow moving vehicles. It's a small parking lot, but there is that potential for conflicts nonetheless. The Planning Commission version on the right, soon after we heard from the Planning Commission, we spent some time Also coming up with a plan that we felt could really mitigate any potential safety concerns for pedestrians and cyclists. That's shown on the right. And this version queues them up in two different lines to the west. And you can see the red line for pedestrians, blue line for cyclists. And as Director McGowan mentioned previously, temporary signage and wayfinding markers can be used. to mitigate this as well. There certainly would be the potential for some conflicts within the raised bike and pedestrian plaza zone. And that's shown in circle there also. So just to tie it back, driveway crossings versus some dual lines. Queuing lines is the different shoes we see here. And of course, there are trade offs along those lines. So back to you, Kevin. |
| 00:26:21.44 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. All right, next slide, please. All right, staff would like to address the advantages and disadvantages of each plan with the intent of assisting Council's understanding of both designs. Next slide. |
| 00:26:43.09 | Kevin McGowan | we go. The original plan splits the flows and allows more space for the for ferry patrons to board and depart from the ferry, which decreases the number of parking spaces available. The reduction in the number of parking spaces may also have an impact on businesses and parking in the business parking in the area. The larger plaza allows for more space for the public. with the trade-off of impacting parking and the current parking impacts. on businesses. The Planning Commission voiced a concern that this plan may impact patrons at the Yacht Club entrance. Staff believes appropriate signage and wayfinding can be installed to mitigate this concern. The regional plan exceeds the estimated construction budget. Keep in mind that the original budget was set up seven years ago. when costs were much less as they are compared to today. Bicycle queuing may exceed, excuse me, bicycle queuing may extend downspinnaker during the heavy tourist season. impacting the use of Gabrielson Park and possibly Spinnaker Drive. There are other advantages and disadvantages with this plan, but we wanted to capture the larger issues. I'm sure there are some smaller ones. Next slide, please. All right. The plan approved by the Planning Commission reduces the size of the plaza expansion and redirects ferry patrons to board from the plaza area. This can add congestion to the plaza area, may add conflict points for those boarding and exiting the ferry, and may have other congestion impacts on El Portal. The reduction of the plaza size has less impact on parking lot one with a reduction of only 13 parking spaces. That's our plan, even though that the planning commission said we can remove up to 14. An additional 11 spaces are lost by closing Tracy way permanently. However, this road is closed for at least six months of the year, such that the loss of parking on Tracy way is much less impactful than closing parking spaces on lot one. The clo... Let's see, I think I finished that. The closure of Tracy way eliminates a vehicle conflict point on anchor as well and allows the use of the roadway for bicycle storage and pedestrian use. Additional landscaping can be added to the area. Improvements on Tracy way add costs to the project for raising the roadway elevation. No trees allow no trees allows more view of the bay and less maintenance, but also eliminates shade in the summer. which has been noted by the district as a problem in the past. Parking in the downtown is reduced by 24 with this plan, and the construction costs are closer to the original budget, which is $1.85 million, somewhere in there. Next slide, please. |
| 00:29:52.41 | Kevin McGowan | All right. Again, we believe that both plans are compliant with the grant and both plans address the concerns originally identified with the project. However, both plans have impacts. This project has specifically noted this project was specifically noted in the city's strategic plan as a 2.1, which denotes an implementation step of completing the construction on the ferry land side improvement project. in the promenade area. There is a potential for the city to lose the grant funding for this project, such that proceeding with selecting a design, bidding and awarding the project is recommended as soon as possible. The district has submitted two addendums to FTA in order to extend this grant already. And they are concerned that submitting another one possibly in February will cause additional impacts. This concludes staff's presentation, and we look forward to receiving Council's comments and direction on this project, and I'm two minutes and 14 seconds ahead of schedule. |
| 00:31:00.94 | Mayor Blachstein | Fantastic, Director McGowan. Director McGowan, you can reserve that time for your rebuttal or additional comments later. |
| 00:31:09.33 | Kevin McGowan | Okay, if that's necessary. |
| 00:31:10.98 | Mayor Blachstein | And so now we'll bring it back up to the dais for questions. And I know Councilmember Cox wanted to get us started. Director Phibs, would you come back in here? We'll probably have questions for you too. Thank you very much. And Mr. Parisi, you'll be available for questions as well. Thank you. Thanks, all of you, for being here. And I know there has been a lot of time and effort put into this project in particular. So thank you very much to staff for all that. Go ahead, Councilmember. Thank you all. |
| 00:31:33.96 | Jill Hoffman | much for being here. It is amazing to see our chambers filled up again for once. It's the first time they've been filled up since COVID. So it's really great to see all of you here and thank you for participating in this very important process. So Director Phipps, thank you for your overview of the timeline. I just wanted to be clear from a process perspective that once the plans that went to the Planning Commission and the HPC in June were finalized, they never came back to the applicant, the city for approval before going to those bodies. Is that right? |
| 00:32:09.91 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you, council member for the question. My understanding is that Kevin had brought this project before you prior to the initiation of the design review process. |
| 00:32:20.99 | Jill Hoffman | So I've been on the council again since December of 2022. I've never seen the plans. So they were never brought back to us since the plans were finalized. Or am I wrong about that? |
| 00:32:39.45 | Brandon Phipps | . So what I have on my history is this project has been in the works with council and staff since prior to 2017. 2017 was when the grant agreement was approved. 2019, there was some instruction, direction from council for staff to work with the local professionals group. that work occurred over a period of around three years, when in March 2022, City Council received a presentation from staff regarding the reference project, at which point Council recommended seeking input from the Planning Commission and the HPC. So it may have been before your time that much of these machinations occurred. |
| 00:32:42.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:33:21.64 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, no. I was on the planning commission that first approved the ferry project. So I chaired all of those meetings. So it's not before my time, but... |
| 00:33:31.48 | Unknown | Ah. |
| 00:33:32.31 | Jill Hoffman | what I'm referencing is the City. Council gave direction to staff. in March of 2023, after which further refinements were made to the plans. My question is, did those plans ever come back to the City Council for approval, since they're the applicant, before they went to the HPC and the Planning Commission? Thank you. |
| 00:33:57.27 | Brandon Phipps | I suppose the answer is no. Okay. |
| 00:33:58.77 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, I just wanted to confirm that. Okay, thank you. A couple of things. The timing of the award, and this is for Director McGowan, you said we have to move with all due haste in order to not lose the grant. And I certainly understand we have to make a commitment to the project, but isn't it true that we do not want to award the project and actually start work on the project until after the Golden Gate Bridge District has performed its work on the water side improvements since they're going to bring all of their heavy equipment in and out of lot one. The last thing we want to do is install a brand new concrete parking lot and have it destroyed by heavy equipment. |
| 00:34:41.04 | Kevin McGowan | Right. I would not like that to happen. That would be a bad thing. So I've had quite a few conversations with the district themselves. I believe that we can move forward with the fairy land side hardscape work. What we would do is we would want to make sure to include some of the work that the district has to do. For instance, they have to put in electrical systems across the parking lot in order to connect to more power. We would do that now. so that we would not have to dig up the parking lot later on. So that would be the intent is to try to do as much as we can so that whatever the ferry district does in the future, doesn't impact what we install in place. In addition, sorry, we would want to make sure that whatever heavy vehicles are brought into this site, they do not damage the parking lot and everything else that goes along with it. Sorry. |
| 00:35:27.50 | Jill Hoffman | So wasn't it the district's plan back in 2017 to actually accomplish all of this work within two years? |
| 00:35:34.33 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, they wanted to do their doc work first, and that didn't work out that way. |
| 00:35:39.01 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. And so we're kind of, they're the cart and we're, they're the horse and we're the cart. Um, |
| 00:35:45.49 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:35:46.57 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, in a matter of speaking, that's true. Okay. |
| 00:35:49.26 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:35:49.75 | Jill Hoffman | um, |
| 00:35:50.48 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:35:50.95 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:35:50.99 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:35:51.02 | Jill Hoffman | You spoke about a budget and thank you for your emails to us earlier today regarding the budget, but the grant is $2.4 million. How much of that have we spent on design thus far? |
| 00:36:03.29 | Kevin McGowan | I think we're about 360,000, somewhere in there. I can get an exact number if we need to. And your construction cost estimate for the project? |
| 00:36:11.84 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:36:11.93 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:36:11.95 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:36:11.96 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:36:11.99 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:36:12.01 | Kevin McGowan | as well. |
| 00:36:12.33 | Jill Hoffman | What? |
| 00:36:12.55 | Kevin McGowan | you |
| 00:36:12.57 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 00:36:12.96 | Kevin McGowan | Our construction cost estimate, like mentioned in the presentation, is $1.85 million. And is that for concrete or for a slurry seal? No, I'm just basing that on. |
| 00:36:13.26 | Jill Hoffman | The construction construction. |
| 00:36:23.01 | Kevin McGowan | General rule of thumb for a budget for a construction project. So we kind of back into the numbers saying, all right, we have about 10% associated with construction management, trying to get 10% for contingency, and 12% to 15% for the design. And so I backed into it that way. |
| 00:36:40.41 | Jill Hoffman | But you don't actually know what it, because we had a cost estimate done in 2018, which put it at 1.8 million for the parking, just to repave and stripe the parking lot. Since 2018, that price has probably gone up, wouldn't you say? Oh, yes, it definitely has. And so we're short right now of the money needed just to re-stripe and repave the parking lot. |
| 00:37:04.85 | Kevin McGowan | What? |
| 00:37:04.93 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:37:05.03 | Kevin McGowan | you're mixing apples and oranges. So what you're suggesting is that this original estimate was probably to grind and resurface the entire parking lot. What we've been presenting as far as this project is simply a micro seal. It's simply going across the top of the parking lot, no grinding, but we do put stripes back in. |
| 00:37:24.71 | Jill Hoffman | So are you aware of the three parking spots, for example, across the street from the Sausalito Yacht Harbor that are right now unusable because tree roots have grown up under them? And so a micro grinder seal would not work for those spaces, right? Yep. |
| 00:37:41.55 | Kevin McGowan | We have quite a few parking spots throughout not just lot one, but lot two, three, and four that have the same problems. So we would want to definitely grind as much of those roots out as possible. The intent would be to not have to take down the tree. But, If that happens, that happens. |
| 00:37:57.60 | Jill Hoffman | And what is the expected life expectancy of the process you propose to simply |
| 00:38:04.03 | Kevin McGowan | reseal the lot. Micro seals add probably five to 10 years onto the life of a roadway itself. If you do a resurfacing, that's a 20 year, 20 year surface. |
| 00:38:14.42 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, we got correspondence from the appellant regarding the firetruck turnaround, and I believe staff's opinion was that there was room for the firetruck to turn around, but does that take into account adding five feet of sidewalk in front of cultivar on El Portal? |
| 00:38:32.39 | Kevin McGowan | No, it doesn't. Our designer took a look at it without that additional widening. |
| 00:38:36.78 | Jill Hoffman | Isn't the designer the one who also is designing the cultivar? |
| 00:38:40.68 | Kevin McGowan | Yeah. |
| 00:38:40.83 | Jill Hoffman | storefront. |
| 00:38:41.80 | Kevin McGowan | Yeah, unfortunately. So if that does come to fruition, I still think that it is able to, we are able to make something work down there with a hammerhead, as the appellant has noted before. I think that would be good for us to take a closer look at that, at the details. |
| 00:38:57.34 | Jill Hoffman | And my last question for now has to do with Tracy Way closure. You mentioned that we already closed Tracy Way. for six months of the year. But don't we still derive revenue from Tracy Way during that closure? through the bicycle return program. |
| 00:39:11.61 | Kevin McGowan | So that might be a key question for another department at this point, since Public Works doesn't manage that specific program. If our city manager might know a little bit about it, it's run through the police department. |
| 00:39:25.43 | Unknown | Yeah, we can get that information if you had a later date in terms of the actual number and revenue that that impacts our budget through the bike return program. |
| 00:39:33.08 | Jill Hoffman | But it is true that we do get revenue from Tracy Way when it's closed to public parking. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Those are my starting questions. Thank you so much again for all of your effort on this. |
| 00:39:43.61 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 00:39:43.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:39:43.71 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:39:44.03 | Councilmember Kelman | Remember Cox, others? |
| 00:39:46.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:39:47.00 | Councilmember Kelman | Sure, I'll jump in. Hi everybody, good to see you all in person. |
| 00:39:51.03 | Unknown | Thank you for making the time. |
| 00:39:53.12 | Councilmember Kelman | Dr. McGowan. A couple questions I'll run through. Is this project currently on our capital improvement program list? |
| 00:40:02.24 | Kevin McGowan | It has been on the capital improvement program list since before my time. So... |
| 00:40:07.43 | Councilmember Kelman | How high up on the list is it? |
| 00:40:09.31 | Kevin McGowan | I have spent more time on this project than anything else. So it is way up there. |
| 00:40:14.12 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay, I'll let the mayor comment on the timing of the funds, but I want us to go back on 1128. So you and I had a correspondence around the number of spots that we have in the area. And you've said that you think Tracy way is covered by 1128. So I believe you told me that the police department counted 189 spots. And that includes Tracy way, but the total spaces in lot number one proper is 178. 1128 says you can't lose more than 5% of your parking spots. So on either one of those analysis, whether it's 189 or 178, we still come out around eight to 10 parking spots. How does 1128 not get triggered here under your assessment? |
| 00:41:03.44 | Kevin McGowan | So on my analysis, taking a look at the language in 1128, it says the area associated with parking in downtown. All right. So that's not just lot one. It's lot two, three and four. In addition, it's a specific area in downtown. Now, not knowing how 1128 was originally set up in 1997, in other words, what area they looked at. I simply took the general plan that says this is the downtown and I counted parking areas down there as well as the area of the roadway in order to establish a baseline and having the removal of, let's say, the first analysis, excuse me, the original plan, which was 38 parking spaces. I did an analysis on that as well as an analysis on the planning commission plan or the approved plan. So with both of those in place, looking at not just lot one, but everything around it, You try to come up with a percentage. And the original plan was closer to 5%. In my analysis, I came back with about 3% for the approved plan. |
| 00:42:08.14 | Councilmember Kelman | because you looked at the parking lots in aggregate. You did not just look at parking lot one plus Tracy way. You looked at all the parking lots downtown. Okay. So let me go. We'll come back to that in a second, but let me go over to budget for a second. So I think you mentioned that we have $2.4 million from the federal government to pass through grant that goes through the Golden Gate Transportation District and the city was chipping in. Um, Can you break down for everybody, and you sent this to me in an email, the original plan construction, versus the additional amount that the city would need to chip in and maybe way. Tell us what with the planning commission approved how much more would the city have to chip in to complete that project and then the appeal if approved how much more the city of need to chip in to complete that project. |
| 00:42:59.80 | Kevin McGowan | Okay, those are quite a few questions. I'm trying to find all the emails that we had floating around today. So bear with me for a second. But I believe that the approved plan by the Planning Commission, that estimate came in at about 1.9, somewhere in there. So that would mean that we would need about another 110,000 for that project. Pretty close, but remember, we haven't bid this thing yet, so you never know where this is going to come up. And then the next plan, the original plan, came in at about $2.4 million as far as construction. And simply subtracting out the $1.85 million that was originally budgeted for this, or how we laid it out, we'll need about $550,000 for that specifically. Again, I want to caution the council that I don't have a bid in front of me yet. I never know where this is going to go. Oil prices could go up or down and you never know what's going to happen. |
| 00:43:47.40 | Councilmember Kelman | I know. |
| 00:43:52.45 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. I think you told me that the original bids that you got were six years old because we started looking at this. one might think that they've increased. Okay, so 550K, versus $110K coming up with those monies. Okay. And then I just wanna clarify because we got so many emails talking about council approving a design in March. Can you just clarify, the council provided direction to staff to prepare construction drawings. There was no approval in March, is that accurate? |
| 00:44:21.66 | Kevin McGowan | That's correct. We were always anticipating bringing it back to you at some point in time, especially before we go out to bid in order to say, here it is, we're ready to go. But we got direction to prepare those final plans. |
| 00:44:32.73 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay, and I think maybe every email that I got in support of the appeal also was concerned that we would lose this would not comply with the grant money. Can you just share with everybody we share with me today that the letter from the district says that both plans are in fact compliant. |
| 00:44:48.40 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, we have we have three letters from the district original letter said that the original plan that was presented to the planning Commission that is in compliance. We also shared the revised plan from the planning Commission with the district that is in compliance as well there's a letter in the file for that, in addition. I think that covers it. Yes. |
| 00:45:09.84 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay, and then the last thing is BCDC. |
| 00:45:09.87 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Okay. |
| 00:45:12.76 | Councilmember Kelman | I get it. You haven't gone to them because we don't have something to show them yet. But can you confirm we need a permit from BCDC to move forward with this project? |
| 00:45:20.35 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, there are portions of this project that are within 100 feet of the high mean height, high level. I always get this wrong. So bear with me. But yes, portions of this project are within their jurisdiction. And regardless, we would probably want to reach out to them anyway, even if they weren't because it's so close to the Bay Shore. |
| 00:45:38.20 | Councilmember Kelman | Sure. And in your experience, on average, how long does it take to get a permit from BCDC? |
| 00:45:42.37 | Kevin McGowan | You know, it can vary depending upon the complexity of the project itself. So I'm anticipating that this is a hardscape project. It probably doesn't have much to it. I'm hoping we can move it along fairly quickly, probably within four months. |
| 00:45:54.99 | Councilmember Kelman | I'm sorry, I do have one more question, Mary. We recently, as a council, approved a facilities infrastructure assessment And we also have about to hire a sea level wise vulnerability engineering consultant, in your opinion, is it makes sense for us to learn anything from those two assessments to apply to this project. |
| 00:46:15.09 | Kevin McGowan | In my opinion, no. As your city engineer, this is a hardscape project. We don't have any structures here that are going to be impacted by flooding. If we are going to move forward, if the two were closer together, in other words, if you were close to finishing the sea level rise study and this project was getting close to finalizing the designs, we could incorporate two things. But at this point, We're kind of balancing between what the district says we're running out of time versus trying to input something related to sea level rise. To me, this is a hardscape project, and we should move forward with that. Even if there are improvements that are needed in the future for, let's say, a small wall out in front in order to protect against sea level rise, that could be added later on. |
| 00:47:02.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:47:02.91 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, thank you very much. that's what we're doing. Okay, well, to give other folks an opportunity, I have several questions as well, but- Vice Mayor. |
| 00:47:13.48 | Vice Mayor | Hi, Director McGowan. Just following up on my colleagues' questions, are you saying in March of 2022, the City Council authorized the development of construction level drawings? on a design we weren't aware of. |
| 00:47:28.24 | Kevin McGowan | No, you were aware of a design. |
| 00:47:30.74 | Vice Mayor | I was just wondering what it means that we, the assertion that we did not approve a design for which we authorize the development of construction level drawings. |
| 00:47:39.75 | Kevin McGowan | As I recall, your counsel had suggested that we comply with the code. The municipal code states that we should bring our capital projects to the planning commission. Councilmember Kelman was the one who brought that up, and we moved forward with that in order to make sure that we were all on the same page. |
| 00:47:56.73 | Vice Mayor | I'm just trying to level set what we did in March of 2022. So we authorized BKF to develop construction level drawings. Can you just say what that means exactly? What are construction level drawings? |
| 00:48:09.50 | Kevin McGowan | are drawings that we can go ahead and bid this project. |
| 00:48:12.51 | Vice Mayor | of a complete design. |
| 00:48:13.89 | Kevin McGowan | Pretty much, yes. |
| 00:48:15.51 | Vice Mayor | So. If I'm building a house, I have a lot. Presumably if I'm going to do construction level drawings, it's of a design that I have reviewed and authorized. I'm not saying to my architect, just build me any old house, just bring me the construction level drawings or Are you saying we did that or did we actually look at the design that we approved the construction level drawings of? |
| 00:48:35.10 | Kevin McGowan | So I'm confused on your question, council member, is at that point in time, this is my recollection that you said, go ahead and proceed with developing construction level drawings. However, you said, receive input from the Planning Commission, because that's part of our code. We have to make sure to comply with that. In addition, we had mentioned, at least staff did, that we would prefer to bring this back to council before we actually go out and get bids on it. |
| 00:49:00.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:49:00.77 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:49:00.80 | Unknown | Thank you. Yes. |
| 00:49:00.92 | Kevin McGowan | So we say, this is it. We're ready to go. And then it's not a surprise when we get prices back in that probably exceed the budget. |
| 00:49:08.41 | Vice Mayor | Exactly. But we did, you did at that meeting in March, presented design for which we authorized you to go forward. to get construction level drawings. |
| 00:49:17.27 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 00:49:17.46 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Thanks. On 1128 that my colleague brought up the question. So both this design that we approved in March of 2022 and the one that was modified by the planning commission are compliant with 1128. |
| 00:49:35.20 | Kevin McGowan | As far as my analysis, yes. |
| 00:49:38.57 | Vice Mayor | Could we get our city attorney to chime in on that? |
| 00:49:44.93 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. Short answer is I've looked at the analysis that was conducted by the Department of Public Works, and I do agree that it is appropriate to look at the amount of land, given the language in Ordinance 1128, and to base that on square footage. I also agree with the assumptions that were made by the Department of Public Works director with respect to looking that the relevant area should be considered in the aggregate and should be all of the public parking that is available in downtown for the purposes of determining whether the 5% threshold is met under ordinance 1128 so. Based on the analysis that was conducted by the Department of Public Works Director, I do believe that both of the proposed plans before you tonight would meet the requirements of Ordinance 1128. And I'm happy to answer any further questions. |
| 00:50:42.04 | Vice Mayor | Thank you, city attorney. Director McGowan, so how much money have we spent on developing the plans that the city council approved you to go do construction level drawings of in March of 2022? |
| 00:50:54.73 | Kevin McGowan | I think your other council members have asked that question. It's about 360,000. |
| 00:50:58.96 | Vice Mayor | And to develop alternate plans to conform with the suggestions of the three, two vote by the planning commission, how much would it cost to develop those plans? |
| 00:51:06.51 | Kevin McGowan | about $50,000, somewhere in there. |
| 00:51:09.19 | Vice Mayor | but we've already spent the $300,000 on the plans authorized in March of 2022. |
| 00:51:14.64 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, I do have a summary that I didn't bring it with me this evening. I'm sorry. Okay. |
| 00:51:18.99 | Vice Mayor | Bye. And obviously money that we don't spend on additional plans or changes is money we can use to spend on concrete and asphalt and other things. |
| 00:51:29.24 | Kevin McGowan | If we decide to take it out of this budget center, yes. |
| 00:51:32.80 | Vice Mayor | Thanks. Let's see if I had another question. I guess I had a question for Mr. Parisi, Hello, Mr. Parisi. Thank you so much. Sure. I'm just wondering if, is it possible to put those two drawings back up that show the city council approved construction drawing plan and the planning commission suggested changes? with the cueing lines. It had the one, one had the two lines going down and the other had the, yeah, there we go. Just on this, which is more likely in your professional opinion, to have people use the parking lot as transit when they're coming off of the ferry. Do you have a sense if you're coming off of the ferry and say you're wanting to go to any of our restaurants, Pojo and cultivars are going south on this drawing, which is more likely to have people or southwest or bottom left, I guess, have people entering the parking lot. |
| 00:52:37.16 | David Parisi | That's a great question. I think it depends if there's queuing and there's congestion in the plaza itself. If there is, look on the plan on the right. We have shown designated queuing lines for bikes and pedestrians, but also enough space for pedestrians. folks. you know, pushing their bikes to go along the curb line above the plaza. If it's super congested, People might go out into the parking lot like they currently do. On the plan on the left, which was the original plan, That does not show a widened sidewalk to the to the east So bicyclists could be queued up within that zone. So folks may spill out a bit onto the parking lot. On the other hand, if you're heading to the west of downtown, there's adequate space. So there's kind of pros and cons. Depends if there's folks queued up. which pattern that they are traveling in. |
| 00:53:41.91 | Vice Mayor | Okay. And then just the thing that looks like two strands of spaghetti in line down there on the bottom right, just how is that going to work? Practically speaking, when you have a bunch of people lined up like that, it just looks like they're literally entwined. So, and then you imagine people coming off the ferry, going to the bottom right-hand corner. So that's the vertical direction. Are they just going to sort of like we do in New York, just sleuth sleuth through the line and it'll be a little bit of New York City in downtown Sausalito or or is there some other circulation pattern I'm missing there? |
| 00:53:45.50 | David Parisi | You know. |
| 00:54:01.18 | Unknown | or, |
| 00:54:13.03 | David Parisi | No, you're not missing that. On the diagram on the right, showing a blue dotted line, which is the path for pedestrians and red for cyclists. Again, those are inbound to the ferry. Those will be divided by, as Kevin mentioned earlier, potentially temporary science in the summer. that. can point to the left and to the right, what direction that they should be queuing up on. It could also use attractive paving. things on the ground that show that as well. There'll be enough room to the left of the red line for the patrons who have just left the ferry to go past that line as well. There certainly will be, during the peak of the peak periods, queuing and a lot of people there. It's just. the way it is. Thank you very much. |
| 00:54:57.49 | Unknown | you |
| 00:54:57.51 | Mayor Blachstein | you |
| 00:54:57.52 | Unknown | Thank you, Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:55:00.49 | Mayor Blachstein | No questions. Okay, I had a few questions. While you're there Mr. Parisi, I'll start with you. So in your assessment, the closure of Tracy way is still a safe access path going forward for pedestrians and bikes as opposed to the original plan, which does not include a closure, but did you do any assessment of, for instance, walking traffic or increased number of pedestrians in town due to I don't know, a busier tourism weekend, just to understand, because the flow of traffic through Tracy Way as well has an impact, if you've noticed, when you walk downtown on the busy streets on the weekends, and I'm wondering if you looked at that. |
| 00:55:37.67 | David Parisi | the closure or trace way to vehicular traffic in other words. Yeah. |
| 00:55:40.32 | Mayor Blachstein | In other words, |
| 00:55:41.53 | David Parisi | We did take a look at it. The traffic volumes on Tracy way are very low. They're very manageable. So we think it's, it's a, Definitely. would not divert or cause any traffic effects. as well as provide a pedestrian and bicycle route. |
| 00:55:58.95 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, thanks for that. And then, Director McGowan, this question is for you. So I could spend a lot of time looking at a significant orientation of the structural engineering details, but I just wanted to get into that a little bit to have an understanding of whether or not those are identical with the two plans, if there are changes to those types, if you dig into the elements of the structural engineering plans, if that might impact the cost or if it's identical for both plans. |
| 00:56:24.16 | Kevin McGowan | Can you rephrase your question slightly? I kind of miss it because there really is, structural engineering to me is different than |
| 00:56:26.72 | Mayor Blachstein | You'd be like, |
| 00:56:31.45 | Kevin McGowan | Maybe what you're suggesting. |
| 00:56:32.02 | Mayor Blachstein | So in the planning, there's the engineering details that go into in detail about each of the different elements that repaving the parking lot will require, the types of paving that we have to use, the size of the piping underneath the parking lots. So will either plan have an expected fiscal impact with regards to the engineering details, or do you expect it to be the same? |
| 00:56:55.67 | Kevin McGowan | The plan will be the same as far as the parking lot. The intent is on both plans is to micro seal the parking lot and then re-stripe. |
| 00:57:05.15 | Mayor Blachstein | So you don't anticipate a change in a use of, for instance, if we, the planning commission plan and the original city council plan have the same cost with regards to the ceiling of the parking lot. |
| 00:57:15.01 | Kevin McGowan | Pretty much, yeah. I mean, there's slight differences there as well. Keep in mind that the... The approved plan by the Planning Commission closes Tracy Way, so that is an additional cost on top of it, but the same treatment is going into lot one. |
| 00:57:28.59 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, and I just with respect to Councilmember Kelman's question about sea level rise and the consideration of that. When you looked at the overall assessment of this project in the beginning, was there a consideration for erosion or sea level rise in general and in your assessment as the structural engineer for the city. We that won't be a difficult that won't be a problem with either of these plans. |
| 00:57:49.48 | Kevin McGowan | Not really. So I have additional slides, but I don't want to take too much time with it. We definitely take a look at the FEMA maps to find out where we are and where the special flood hazard areas are located in association with those FEMA maps. The improvements themselves for this project, which is stepping away from the existing plaza, are not within that flood zone. So this is higher than the elevation of, I think it's 12. And so we don't really have an issue here. So with FEMA maps and other things associated with structures, you have to make sure that if it does flood, that the water can get in and the water can get out. In this case, that's not a problem because we have drainage systems. We have all sorts of other things that are going on down here that if it does flood, the water can get out when the tide goes out. |
| 00:58:38.06 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, and then you made note of that both of the plans that were heard, both of the versions of this that were heard by the planning commission in the letter from Golden Gate Bridge District were in compliance with the FTA grant, but I didn't hear you say that about the original city council approved plan. So could you just clarify that that also is in compliance with the FTA grant? |
| 00:58:55.56 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, they both are. They both are. We do have an original letter from the district, and we've worked very closely with them over the last year or so on it. So it may not be included in your package, but I believe we do have a letter from them that says both plans are in compliance. |
| 00:58:57.27 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:59:10.51 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for your exhaustive presentation and the amount of time that you've put into this project and for keeping this at the top of your capital improvements project list. We truly appreciate it. |
| 00:59:21.65 | Councilmember Kelman | Oh, yes, you go ahead. Do you want to go, Joan? |
| 00:59:22.21 | Mayor Blachstein | Oh, yes. THE END OF THE END OF THE Go ahead. |
| 00:59:25.30 | Jill Hoffman | I wanted to follow up on the parking space question raised by Commissioner by. Council member like the olden days. I first met her when she was a planning commissioner. You said that you based your trap, your parking space count on the general plan. |
| 00:59:44.60 | Kevin McGowan | you |
| 00:59:44.77 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 00:59:44.96 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 00:59:44.97 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 00:59:45.02 | Kevin McGowan | No. When it came to assessing the area associated with downtown parking, I didn't have the limits in which 1128 was originally established. That's where I want to stop you. |
| 00:59:57.97 | Jill Hoffman | because I forwarded you today an email that provided you maps at the time that 1128 was established. |
| 01:00:05.34 | Kevin McGowan | which was very kind of you. If I would have had that when I was preparing the original memo, that would have been much better. |
| 01:00:05.51 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 01:00:12.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:00:13.24 | Unknown | But- |
| 01:00:13.26 | Jill Hoffman | But... And the number of parking spaces reflected in 1996 was 206. Isn't that right? Um, |
| 01:00:23.06 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:00:23.38 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE |
| 01:00:23.47 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. I don't know. So you've got me flamanced here. So I wanted to comment on what you had mentioned about the document you sent me today. The area associated with downtown in the general plan today is much smaller than the analysis that was conducted in 1997. What that means to all of us has to do with the percentages. When you increase that area and the amount of parking within that area, It's my... understanding that my percentage will probably go down. So if I'm at 5% with the first plan, it'll probably drop down to 4.5. But I haven't done that analysis yet. And I'd be glad to do that if the council would like me to do so. Thank you. |
| 01:01:10.78 | Jill Hoffman | And then I was curious to hear you say that review of the infrastructure analysis and sea level rise analysis were irrelevant to this hardscape project. And you said you assessed FEMA maps to, you looked at FEMA maps to assess sea level rise. For what period of time did you look at the FEMA projections? You mean |
| 01:01:35.03 | Kevin McGowan | me personally look at that or or |
| 01:01:36.97 | Jill Hoffman | What do you mean? What are the maps? No, but for what did you look at what would happen over the next five years, 10 years, 20 years in a set in determining that sea level rise was irrelevant to this downtown project? No. What period of time did you assess? |
| 01:01:38.66 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:01:38.76 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:01:38.88 | Kevin McGowan | . |
| 01:01:50.35 | Kevin McGowan | No. Yeah. So what I took a look at are the FEMA maps to see if the improvements that we are doing are within a flood zone. Right. Okay. We are finding that they're not. I did not step out of that realm and look at projections for sea level rise. I did not do that. Remember, it's a hardscape project. And according to the FEMA regulations... These improvements need to be able to drain That's really what they're there for. So as a hardscape project, It is in compliance with the FEMA regulations. There are a few things that we need to keep track of as far as improvements, such as the ticket kiosks. Those have electricity. The buttons and the electricity itself has to be up at a certain level. And just based off of the standard push button, they're going to be fine. But we do have to look at some of those improvements to make sure they are in compliance with FEMA. But I did not step out of that and look at projections. |
| 01:02:49.03 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 01:02:49.05 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:02:49.08 | Jill Hoffman | It's a great day. |
| 01:02:49.13 | Kevin McGowan | Isn't part of the |
| 01:02:49.70 | Jill Hoffman | of this hardscape project a bioretention facility that's proposed? |
| 01:02:54.65 | Kevin McGowan | We are proposing to put in a bioretention facility. |
| 01:02:57.36 | Jill Hoffman | And isn't the purpose of that to address drainage and stormwater and... |
| 01:03:04.33 | Kevin McGowan | sea level rise, perhaps? It's there to filter out contaminants that go into the bay, not necessarily filter out, let's say, high tide water that comes in and goes out. This is to catch all the cigarette butts and everything else that might be in the parking lot. |
| 01:03:22.22 | Jill Hoffman | And the bioretention facility is, is, shown to go into Gabrielson Park. |
| 01:03:27.99 | Kevin McGowan | Right. Um... I believe we've had a lot of discussions with your council before about what is the limit of Gabrielson Park. So there are property lines on a plan, not on a plan, but on Marin Maps. To answer your question, If I'm standing there today, it does look like it goes into what we understand today as Gabrielson Park. But that area doesn't necessarily comply with the property lines themselves. |
| 01:03:55.87 | Jill Hoffman | And is that why, Because a bioretention pond is obviously not a park use, right? |
| 01:04:01.71 | Kevin McGowan | No, I disagree with that. A park use has to do with landscaping and making sure things are very We like to see the right landscaping in certain areas. And this bioretention area can serve that use. You can put plants around it. You can plant plants in it. It still does the same thing as filter out a lot of these contaminants. |
| 01:04:21.71 | Unknown | Okay, fair enough. Thank you. Customer Kelman, did you have additional? Just one clarification. |
| 01:04:28.51 | Councilmember Kelman | when you came to us in March and we authorized construction drawings, right? We didn't approve a plan. We authorized construction drawings. That's what you use to get a bid, right? That's how much, that's what you would use. So we would know how much this would cost. So, Is that right? |
| 01:04:44.59 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 01:04:44.62 | Councilmember Kelman | Yes. Okay, so we needed that in order to understand and tell the community how much this project was going to cost us. Yes. Okay, that's it. Thanks. All right. |
| 01:04:50.65 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:04:52.93 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:04:53.09 | Mayor Blachstein | had |
| 01:04:53.31 | Councilmember Kelman | you |
| 01:04:53.57 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:04:53.70 | Councilmember Kelman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:04:53.74 | Mayor Blachstein | Please. |
| 01:04:54.19 | Unknown | you |
| 01:04:54.29 | Vice Mayor | I just got to ask a follow-up on that. I mean, if you build a three-story house, you get a set of construction drawings for a three-story house, and that's one cost. If you build a one-story house, that's a different set of construction drawings, and you know how much that is, right? And we were asking for one particular bid for one particular design. Presumably. for this back in March of 2022. Is that, Am I making this up or I mean, we had to, Is that your question? Yeah, my question is, did we have a design that we were asking you to come up with construction level |
| 01:05:20.41 | Kevin McGowan | I'm good. |
| 01:05:25.36 | Kevin McGowan | You had a concept that we were to put together a construction level drawings in order to go out to bed. |
| 01:05:30.99 | Vice Mayor | And how much money did you spend on that again? I'm sorry, I just wanna make sure I understand. The thing we authorized in March of 2022, how much money was spent on developing those? |
| 01:05:40.22 | Kevin McGowan | So if we are at about 360,000, the original professional services contract was 240. And I believe we're probably in the $300,000 range because there were changes to the actual design that were not part of what the city wanted. |
| 01:05:57.59 | Vice Mayor | In other words, the district wanted changes. So we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these construction drawings. So presumably we weren't out. I mean, how many times can you do that before you spend all the money? Right. So presumably this was the design that we were looking to have bid out. We may not have bid. |
| 01:06:09.20 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 01:06:14.63 | Vice Mayor | authorize it if it was $20 million to bid to build. But this was the design we were asking you to go out to get construction drawings on so we could get a bid for. |
| 01:06:24.98 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, and our consultant had a good idea of how much it would cost and that we were close to our budget at that point in time. |
| 01:06:33.03 | Mayor Blachstein | So I just want to follow on to that line of questioning because I think it's really important. So just to clarify, we engaged an engineering firm at that cost to put together those construction time, those construction designs. Okay. And how much staff time do you think you spent on this project and on those construction designs between March of 2022 and now? |
| 01:06:43.07 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 01:06:48.40 | Kevin McGowan | Absolutely. That's a trick question, isn't it? You know, as your public works director, I should be managing more of what happens in public works, but we don't have enough engineers to cover all of our projects. I spend most of my time on this project, to tell you the truth. |
| 01:07:05.90 | Mayor Blachstein | How many meetings roughly, and I don't expect you to have the exact number with the local experts group, would you say that you had? |
| 01:07:12.53 | Kevin McGowan | You know, I would suggest we probably work. We met every other week for about a year, somewhere in there. And I believe they have put in a heck of a lot of time in and above that as well. So, I mean, they've been very conscientious of my time and they have met probably weekly during that 2021, 2022, somewhere in there. |
| 01:07:29.96 | Mayor Blachstein | And these are all professional architects who are essentially offering their time for free to the city. |
| 01:07:33.98 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 01:07:34.49 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:07:34.52 | Kevin McGowan | you |
| 01:07:34.57 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. Okay. I just wanted to clarify that point. And then following the September hearing, how much staff time was required to improve on or make changes to the original design? |
| 01:07:34.74 | Kevin McGowan | Okay. |
| 01:07:46.60 | Kevin McGowan | So after the September hearing, I've been, like I said, I've been putting most of my time into making sure that this gets to your counsel. So a lot of my time, I would say, you know, at least 75% of my time is thrown into this for the last month or so. |
| 01:08:01.67 | Mayor Blachstein | But we would still need additional costs and an additional design if we decide to move forward with the Planning Commission approved design, correct? And more staff time. |
| 01:08:11.26 | Kevin McGowan | So I have two plans. Right. I have two plans in front of me. Both of those are really close to being able to go out to bid. Okay. You folks tell us what you would like, even if you mix and match things, tell us what you'd like. There may be additional costs if we start to mix and match too many things or start doing things that we may not have anticipated. So there may be additional costs there, but I'm anticipating that our next cost for this project will be bringing one of these to BCDC. That's where we're going next. |
| 01:08:44.38 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, thank you. Yes, Councilmember. |
| 01:08:46.44 | Jill Hoffman | All right. |
| 01:08:46.58 | Mayor Blachstein | Thanks. |
| 01:08:46.88 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 01:08:46.93 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:08:46.96 | Jill Hoffman | you again, I wasn't here in March of 2022. So when you brought the designs to the City Council, what level were they? Was it 60% design development drawings? Was it 30% schematic design? Closer to 35. So it's 35% schematic design drawings, and you went from 35% to 100%. with the level of detail of the final construction drawings. And the city council has not seen it since it was 35%. |
| 01:09:15.25 | Kevin McGowan | That's correct, because you wanted us to bring it to the planning commission who required 100% design drawings. |
| 01:09:20.34 | Jill Hoffman | Understood. I just wanted to clarify that what the city saw in March of 2022 was at 35% design drawings. not 100%. That's correct. Thanks. |
| 01:09:31.63 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. Okay. Do we have any further questions for director McGowan, Mr. Parisi or director Phipps before we move on to the appellants? Yes. Vice mayor, please. |
| 01:09:41.45 | Vice Mayor | Just on that point, the 35% drawings were at a level of detail. So the bird's eye schematics that we've been looking at, those would have been represented at that 35% level. |
| 01:09:53.00 | Kevin McGowan | Absolutely. Yeah. |
| 01:09:55.29 | Vice Mayor | So the issues of sidewalk width and all that would have been evident in the design that we authorize the spending of hundreds of thousands of dollars to take to 100%. |
| 01:10:06.48 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, sir. |
| 01:10:06.88 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:10:06.92 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:10:07.32 | Vice Mayor | Thanks. |
| 01:10:08.99 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, at this time we will invite the appellants to make their presentation. The appeal was filed on behalf of 42 signatories. Is there a representative who will provide the appeal reports? Peter Van Meter. |
| 01:10:26.71 | Peter Van Meter | Yes, thank you. Please bring up the R2. PDF. |
| 01:10:36.62 | Mayor Blachstein | If we could also start the timer so that we have a sense. Thank you. |
| 01:10:40.99 | Unknown | in a time Peter Van Duren time Kevin McGowan really come on |
| 01:10:46.93 | Peter Van Meter | All right. Don't start the timer till we get it up. All right. Okay, look, so you've- |
| 01:10:52.02 | Mayor Blachstein | We also time director McGowan. We, we, everyone has the appeal, the applicant and the appellant each receive 15 minutes to present their project. |
| 01:11:00.66 | Cass Green | Thank you. |
| 01:11:01.71 | Mayor Blachstein | And our questions do not count towards the time. |
| 01:11:03.99 | Peter Van Meter | All right. Dear city council members of staff and the public, pleased to be here tonight. You've heard a lot already this evening, so I'm going to just hit a couple of highlights through this presentation, you're not going to hear the whole thing. Next slide please. Well, this is the wrong set of slides, but anyway. |
| 01:11:24.93 | Mayor Blachstein | Yeah. |
| 01:11:25.25 | Peter Van Meter | Yeah. because the R2 has another slide in front of this. |
| 01:11:30.20 | Mayor Blachstein | Can you pause the timer for just a minute? Okay. |
| 01:11:37.06 | Peter Van Meter | It's this, has the same name as this, but it's revision number two, has R2 at the end of the title page. |
| 01:11:44.76 | Mayor Blachstein | Yeah, we'll wait for the appropriate presentation. |
| 01:11:46.68 | Jill Hoffman | I think we should start the timer over. |
| 01:11:48.39 | Mayor Blachstein | Yeah, I agree. Thank you. |
| 01:11:55.49 | Peter Van Meter | It's a PDF. It has a long title like Barry Landside Improvement Project Presentation R2. |
| 01:12:04.55 | Mayor Blachstein | You sure can and give some to Councilmember Hoffman as well. |
| 01:12:06.29 | Unknown | as well. |
| 01:12:08.13 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. Okay. |
| 01:12:11.47 | Unknown | I'm sorry. you for the time. |
| 01:12:15.88 | Mayor Blachstein | You should have some chocolate for everyone while we get the right presentation. |
| 01:12:25.01 | Peter Van Meter | This presentation. this. No, this was sent to Brandon three days ago. |
| 01:12:44.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:12:59.95 | Peter Van Meter | Well, I can tell you what's on the first slide. It's not gonna be nice to have it so people can read it. |
| 01:13:04.43 | Jill Hoffman | Well, are there other revisions to the presentation? |
| 01:13:06.52 | Peter Van Meter | one additional slide also that Just a picture of the Gabrielson Park boundary line. But we can go on. |
| 01:13:15.43 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. Well, we, |
| 01:13:17.40 | Peter Van Meter | can go without those. It's unfortunate, we've had a lot of trouble getting this presentation online and organized anyway. So. |
| 01:13:25.87 | Susan Rogier | If you don't mind waiting, we don't mind. |
| 01:13:28.44 | Jill Hoffman | We only have till 9 now. |
| 01:13:31.16 | Peter Van Meter | No, I'm not going to delay this hearing any further. We can just go ahead. The first chart that you're not seeing was basically a summary to remind us that this project is all about what is best for the long range future of Sausalito. and that we have an opportunity here with federal funds to accomplish two goals. One to make our downtown area more beautiful and welcoming to our visitors and residents, as well as satisfying the requirements of the bridge district, have a more efficient and productive loading of passengers on the ferry. We have constraints. Ordinance 1128 gives us some limitations. up until Recently, the Planning Commission was moving ahead with a plan that met all these requirements. That plan has been delayed. by some planning commission action. So tonight, Is it time to get this timeline back moving again and on track. Okay. Now, next slide, please. beyond this. Next slide. Okay. The grounds of appeal are based upon the federal transit administration grant requirements. And we use the word fail. We're saying that it fails in comparison with the first city council plan. The planning commission plan, when compared to the council plan, is where it is failing in meeting that criteria. We have two letters from the bridge district. One says that they will support the Planning Commission plan. The November 9th letter, which staff seem to be unaware of, was the most recent one from the British district that says they will support this whole original council plan. And actually they specifically say in that letter, that you must provide facilities for people to queue along the side of Gabrielson Park. as specifically mentioned in that letter. And so the council plan, in fact, does that. Next slide, please. So the key date here is November 15th, 2022. This relates to your question about when did the city council see a plan This was a, meeting. where the council reviewed the results of the 90% drawings that had been authorized back in March. And that's when the city council looked at those plans, which are actually the pictures we'll be showing you here in a moment, and said, let's go ahead with that. We have to do it quickly to meet the FTA grant timeline And- and take that to the planning commission. And so they have seen those plans at that time. Next slide, please. |
| 01:16:12.72 | Peter Van Meter | The design review by the Planning Commission was to look at such things as concrete color, texture, trees, planters, benches, that kind of thing. Instead of just doing that design review, they actually did a complete change to the plan. They completely changed it. All right, go ahead. Next slide, please. |
| 01:16:34.84 | Peter Van Meter | Skip, next slide. |
| 01:16:38.98 | Peter Van Meter | All right, what you're looking at here is, as you've seen a moment ago, the council plan on the left, the plan from the Planning Commission on the right. Now notice this picture does not show that parking that Director McGowan showed you a moment ago along the side of the park. The Planning Commission had never saw that plan with perpendicular parking beside the park. The public is seeing that plan that Kevin McGowan showed you a moment ago, the first time here tonight, And so the decision made by the planning commission was looking at this plan. where there's 22 spaces, And they're course of their meeting said, well, maybe we can do, you know, do something to make that go down to some smaller number like 14. But the point is, they have never seen that plan you saw a moment ago. Next slide. |
| 01:17:26.77 | Peter Van Meter | bicyclists never enter the plaza, We have to counsel a plan. That's the key factor here. Next slide. So the red line is where the bicycles are lining up coming in. The blue line is the pedestrians coming in. The green line is exiting passengers. They never cross. There's no conflict. As you've seen in excruciating detail a moment ago, there's all sorts of conflicts and congestion in the planning commission plan. Next slide. The plaza is 30% smaller. Next slide in the planning commission plan. All right, there's going to be infrastructure in place, you know, with the council plan. Go ahead. |
| 01:18:12.70 | Peter Van Meter | The council plan you're going to get a beautiful, larger plaza without a lot of congestion. If this is a gateway to Sausalito, this is what makes a difference in our town. Every beautiful town in the world, particularly in the European situation, you know, has some kind of central gathering space that is attractive. And we have a setting here with the Bay views that are extraordinary. We need to capitalize on that, the value to the town, long range thinking, this is what's important. Next slide. The Planning Commission ordered that all trees along Gabelson Park be cut down. People who've been in the park are gonna look out at asphalt. Next slide. |
| 01:18:57.25 | Peter Van Meter | All right, there's a lot of other things that are going to be in place for the council plan that is good for the future. Go ahead. Next slide. |
| 01:19:05.92 | Peter Van Meter | All right, we're going to recommend that you take the council plan, make some modifications that represent issues that have come up in the interim. Next slide. And one of those is a concern about queuing in front of the yacht club. All right, here's a solution which traffic engineers say is work. And you and I know from our common experience works. You put a crosswalk, with the handicap textured pads And people do not stand in the middle of the street in a crosswalk. They stop, they look both ways and so on. So this will be a smooth asphalt driveway, looks like a street, and it's going to behave like a street and people will not be standing there, period. Go ahead. Next slide. |
| 01:19:45.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:48.14 | Peter Van Meter | All right, you have to comply with Ordinance 1128. We've already heard tonight the confusion. This is about land area, not number of spaces. land area, not spaces, you must comply with that. And also you must comply with Gabelson Park. Now. The next slide was gonna be a picture of where is the boundary of Gabelson Park? There's no parcel line. It's what's on the ground that matters. What's on the ground is basically a wooden log. And that's what's going to be the issue. Now, that plan that you saw from The director a moment ago with a perpendicular parking Ask the question, does that move that path into this area? Does it in fact go into the park? So you need to ask the question, does that plan violate 1128? Now, when I spoke with uh, Thank you. Dennis Mulligan, last week, we were talking about timing, and as you know, the FTA grant is critical. And we agreed the obvious, and that is, if you don't comply with 1128, and you go to a vote, You're going to delay this. to the point that grant will go away, absolutely will disappear. So any plan that you adopt must comply with 1128. period. Next slide. So, We're saying, please go ahead with a modified plan. make some changes to the council plan, And the way you do that is to continue this hearing. and have the LPG and BKF come back to you with some of the compromise things we've talked about here just a moment ago, and then you can have an actual plan you can look at, and then you can vote. Thank you for your time. |
| 01:21:31.05 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you very much. Would you be willing to, oh, we have extra time and another appellant. Okay, perfect. Oh, we have three more people to come. Okay, perfect. I didn't, oh, okay. You have seven minutes. |
| 01:21:35.76 | Jock Ullman | Thank you. We want people to talk. I put my slide up. |
| 01:21:41.83 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:21:42.51 | Jock Ullman | Would you please? |
| 01:21:43.03 | Mayor Blachstein | former mayor van meter. Will you put my slider? Former councilor van meter. |
| 01:21:43.96 | Jock Ullman | Will you put my slider? And if the time is still going, then I'm going to have to start speaking. |
| 01:21:49.90 | Mayor Blachstein | Can we pause the time? |
| 01:21:50.89 | Unknown | time. |
| 01:21:51.57 | Jock Ullman | Okay. All right, hit my switch. |
| 01:21:54.28 | Unknown | Jinx. Jinx. |
| 01:21:56.36 | Jock Ullman | Not used to being so pressured. |
| 01:21:57.59 | Unknown | Okay, great. Thank you. Is this his slide? |
| 01:22:02.81 | Jill Hoffman | What is your slide, Jacques? |
| 01:22:03.09 | Unknown | What is your slide, John? |
| 01:22:04.29 | Jock Ullman | you |
| 01:22:04.97 | Jill Hoffman | Mm-hmm. Which is your slide? |
| 01:22:07.02 | Jock Ullman | the clerk know which slide to pull up? I talked to you about it when I first came here. I have it in my, if you want it again, I have it in here. |
| 01:22:15.12 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, if you can give it to us, please. Yeah, because we had the appellant slide, and this is the one that was up. |
| 01:22:23.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:22:25.52 | Unknown | and what would I do? |
| 01:22:36.84 | Jock Ullman | Okay, I can go. So you can see the circulation here. The red is the bicycles and the blue is the pedestrian. As you can see from the extensive green-colored area separating the bicycle and pedestrian circulation and relocating bicycle parking from Tracy Way, significantly enhances the public space and pedestrian circulation and affords an opportunity to create a waterfront plaza for all to enjoy. Director McGowan was the applicant at the Planning Commission Reviews and the design professionals were left out of the presentations. We were limited to two minutes of public comment and since our commentary came before the commission, we did not have an opportunity to respond to their concerns. We were left out of the loop from that point on with no input on how to address the commission concerns in the revised plan if given a chance we are confident that a solution could be arrived at that would reduce the loss of parking stay within the 1128 limitations mitigate concerns about the yacht club parking lot entrance reduce budget impacts and still retain the essential separation of bicycle and pedestrian queuing we regret that we were not given an opportunity to do so sooner. As a 53-year resident of Saucito and one of the oldest persons in this room, it breaks my heart that an opportunity for Saucito to finally have a beautiful downtown waterfront public space is being lost to a window-dressed version of the mess that it currently exists. It seems to me that an enlightened community like ours could overcome bickering about parking ordinance 1128 and budget and find a positive solution. Please give us a chance to help. |
| 01:24:35.46 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you, Mr. Ullman. Can we pause the timer again, make sure you have everything you need? Is this the correct slide? |
| 01:24:41.24 | Sergio Rudin | That'll work. |
| 01:24:42.07 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, we want to get this right, so. |
| 01:24:42.14 | Sergio Rudin | Okay. |
| 01:24:45.14 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. |
| 01:24:46.93 | Bill Hines | Great. I'm Bill Hines. The appellants have invited me to speak on behalf of this project. As you may or may not know, I have volunteered my time on this project since 2018 and have promoted, you know, moving forward in the right direction. And regardless of whatever you think about circulation patterns through the Fair Landing Plaza, you should consider leaving the flexibility to circulate in both directions. And this project obviously needs to incorporate bike parking. The slides that I put up here for you today, it'd be great if we could actually do this full screen. But these are some examples of bike parking areas that are screened with landscape so that they're not a front and central feature of the downtown. And there's an opportunity to situate adequately screened bike parking in an area that's not going to get in the way of the rest of downtown. And just to share some perspectives on the most recent plan, I personally feel that that plan could benefit from a few more trees in the plaza and it would go toward reducing the heat island effect and moving the needle toward further sustainability in Sausalito. Please look at my comments that I've already sent via email and watch my video if you have chance. |
| 01:26:07.46 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you very much, Mr. Hines. |
| 01:26:10.95 | Michael Rex | you. |
| 01:26:12.44 | Mayor Blachstein | Michael Rex, hello. |
| 01:26:13.79 | Michael Rex | Hello, Michael Rex. I've been an architect in town for 40 years. I've been trying to get a plaza downtown for over 30. We're still at it. I want to propose a path forward. Okay. You don't have a plan you can adopt right now. There's no definitive plan. The consul endorsed plan a year and a half ago removed 38 spaces. from lot one. There's a general consensus that that's too many. So that needs to change. The planning commission's plans, that they put together and never once asked us a question, okay, never once. I'm not sure. proposes only 14 spaces lost, and yet the plan doesn't show how. The Department of Public Works plan that you saw tonight that we just saw a few days ago. shows a side perpendicular parking that puts the path in the landscaped area. of the Abrelson Park. Sergio, the city's attorney, never opined on the plan that we just saw this week. from Department of Public Works, he opined on the Planning Commission's plan. What is needed is a modified plan And that does the four following things. It responds to all the concerns we heard. It reduces the loss of parking in lot one in a clear, defined manner. that it separates the bikes from the pedestrians by putting the bikes on the east side. We met with the property owners downtown, and the first thing they said is get the bikes away from El Portal. This keeps them there, okay? Um, and, um, The whole west side, El Portal, Vina del Mar, and the Plaza should be pedestrians, not a line of 300 bikes. The city attorney should opine on this modified plan once it's prepared. You have to approve a plan that's clear and defined. We don't have it. I recommend tonight you do the following three things. You direct the Department of Public Works to return to the project designers. The local professional group who studied this for three years You retain the services of SWA to prepare this modified plan on a fee basis of only $10,000, okay? So it'll be clear, comprehensive, and beautiful. And number three, that you require that this modified plan be brought to you promptly for consideration. by continuing this hearing to a date certain to December 19th, just one month from now, and we can meet that schedule. This is how a good project is planned. The designers propose a design, it gets reviewed, the feedback's provided, the designers go back to the drawing board and modify the design in response to the concerns raised. This tried and true process has not happened and it's still needed. Too much work has gone into this project. It's too important of an opportunity to be lost. The $2.5 million grant is too precious to forfeit or spend poorly by preserving the mess that's down there today. I am confident we can do this right if given the opportunity and the time to show you how. We can create a beautiful public space that meets all the many needs of our community in a way that will be enjoyed by all of us and our future generations. Please vote tonight. To continue this hearing, direct staff as recommended. Thank you. |
| 01:29:39.68 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:29:43.17 | Mayor Blachstein | I'm sorry. |
| 01:29:43.24 | Councilmember Kelman | Yeah. |
| 01:29:44.03 | Mayor Blachstein | Is that |
| 01:29:44.98 | Councilmember Kelman | Yeah. |
| 01:29:45.03 | Mayor Blachstein | end of the |
| 01:29:45.97 | Councilmember Kelman | She's. I have four things and I only got three. Thank you. |
| 01:29:49.87 | Mayor Blachstein | Bye. |
| 01:29:49.92 | Councilmember Kelman | book. |
| 01:29:50.14 | Mayor Blachstein | . |
| 01:29:50.18 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:29:50.28 | Mayor Blachstein | Well, we can open it up for questions from the Dias for the appellants. Okay. I mean, well, it's time now. We'll |
| 01:29:57.84 | Councilmember Kelman | Go ahead. Yeah, Michael, thank you for that. Sorry, you just said the modified plan to do four things and I only heard three. Reduces loss of parking, puts bikes on the east side, |
| 01:30:05.75 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 01:30:08.44 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay, yeah, I just want to make sure I got off four. |
| 01:30:18.09 | Michael Rex | Those four things, yes. |
| 01:30:19.44 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay, so reduces loss of parking, puts bikes on the east side, makes the west side more pedestrian on El Portal. What's the fourth? |
| 01:30:26.95 | Michael Rex | The first one, a modified plan that responds to all the concerns we've heard. |
| 01:30:31.86 | Councilmember Kelman | Got it. Okay. Thanks, Michael. That's it. Thank you. |
| 01:30:32.23 | Michael Rex | Okay. Reduces parking loss in lot one, separates bikes from pets, and the city attorney opines on the modified plan that it conforms 1128, because I think we all agree it must. |
| 01:30:45.51 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you, Michael. |
| 01:30:45.74 | Michael Rex | Thank you. Mm-hmm. |
| 01:30:47.28 | Mayor Blachstein | Do we have other questions from the dais for the appellants? Yes, Councilmember Cox. And let's try to be. |
| 01:30:53.96 | Jill Hoffman | mindful of time. I am. I just have one question. I don't know if people are aware of SB 272, which was just signed into law that requires cities like San Francisco and Strawberry and Richardson's Bay to develop strategies and recommend projects to address future sea level rise. |
| 01:30:55.50 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:31:17.56 | Mayor Blachstein | But we didn't like that comment about sea level |
| 01:31:19.46 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry. So I just Michael I just want to ask that if we send this back for re you know for reconsideration will someone look at the sea level rise maps because the one I looked at shows purple in halfway through the parking lot. in what, 10 years? Bill Hines has his hand raised and all of the appellants can answer the. Okay. It's just a concern. I was concerned to hear someone say it's not a concern. I think it is a concern. |
| 01:31:39.86 | Mayor Blachstein | Bill Hines has his hand raised. |
| 01:31:50.27 | Bill Hines | When my company and ISWA were granted the $25,000 to study the potential future visioning, we have looked at some sea level rise maps. So we have done that analysis that people believe has not been completed. Obviously, we still have to develop an attitude about what we want to do with it. But absolutely, this project has to consider the implications of sea level rise. |
| 01:32:15.50 | Councilmember Kelman | That's all I'm asking. That's awesome. |
| 01:32:16.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:32:17.04 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:32:17.06 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:32:17.26 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 01:32:17.29 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:32:17.33 | Councilmember Kelman | Thanks. I think Councilmember Cox is saying by law will be mandated to. And so I would add a fifth thing to your modified Itinerary. |
| 01:32:23.82 | Mayor Blachstein | THE END OF THE END OF THE And I had a question for Bill while you're over there, because Michael, you mentioned that SWA is willing to do all of the work that is required for $10,000. I just wanted to clarify, is that a done deal? |
| 01:32:40.12 | Michael Rex | I beat him up on that. |
| 01:32:41.44 | Mayor Blachstein | Oh, okay. I mean... Bill, you represent SWA, correct? |
| 01:32:45.32 | Michael Rex | Thank you. |
| 01:32:45.35 | Bill Hines | Yes, I do. |
| 01:32:46.03 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. So that, that is a viable number. |
| 01:32:48.86 | Bill Hines | I believe so, yes. Although we've been paid a small amount for this fee, I have donated well over that, several times over in the amount of time I've put into this project. And I continue to stay on it. |
| 01:33:04.64 | Mayor Blachstein | And I just like to, just so that the community is aware, could you all give an estimate of maybe how many hours of your time you've put forth to this project? I would estimate thousands in total for all of you together, but. |
| 01:33:15.78 | Bill Hines | That's probably fair. Yeah. |
| 01:33:17.44 | Mayor Blachstein | Yeah, I really appreciate all of the volunteer services. At 3,000? |
| 01:33:22.63 | Michael Rex | every week for three years. |
| 01:33:23.81 | Mayor Blachstein | Every week for three years, all of you met. And you are all licensed architects or designers offering the services. I'm a licensed landscape architect. Landscape architect. |
| 01:33:28.18 | Bill Hines | I'm a licensed landscape architect. Landscape architect. |
| 01:33:30.28 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. Thank you very much. Other questions for the app? Yeah, round of applause for the. |
| 01:33:38.88 | Kay Mitzel | Thank you. |
| 01:33:38.90 | Unknown | Any other questions? |
| 01:33:39.79 | Kay Mitzel | Thank you. |
| 01:33:40.69 | Councilmember Hoffman | Oh, go ahead. I actually have a follow-up question for Mr. Hines. I saw that you're, you submitted, um, |
| 01:33:41.63 | Kay Mitzel | Yeah, I do. |
| 01:33:48.53 | Councilmember Hoffman | I think I saw the plan tonight from Mr. Ullman. I didn't see that as part of an attachment. This is, I guess, a process question. an attachment to the appeal the appeal, the appeal papers that we received for this that were attached to the agenda. And I believe there was a. Also an amended presentation by Mr. Van Meter that also I don't believe that we've seen. And Mr. Hines, I saw that you sent in a plan 5, 420 this afternoon. So it, but I didn't see that presented this evening either. And I'm wondering, I have asked that that be attached to the agenda for tonight. |
| 01:34:25.93 | Bill Hines | Yeah, a couple of things just to respond to that. Yeah. I mean, I'm not one of the appellants, so I'm not, I was asked to speak to bike parking and screening and issues of sustainability and landscape around this plan. |
| 01:34:27.60 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:34:36.78 | Bill Hines | Thank you. |
| 01:34:36.81 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:34:37.17 | Bill Hines | Um, Because of the reasons that Michael mentioned, the fact that neither of the plans that have been presented today are approval, are approvable, I have submitted what I believe are the best two paths forward. |
| 01:34:51.46 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you for that. And so then another clarifying question. I'm sorry, I just can't recall. Mr. Ullman, are you an appellant? or your guest speaker. Thank you. |
| 01:35:01.81 | Jock Ullman | Well, I was one of the 40-some people who signed. |
| 01:35:03.75 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you so much, sir. I just couldn't remember. Thank you. Okay. |
| 01:35:10.02 | Bill Hines | I will clarify, I was a member of the local architects group that was invited to volunteer time to participate in this project. |
| 01:35:12.84 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:35:16.12 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yeah, I agree. |
| 01:35:17.62 | Bill Hines | That's how we all know each other. |
| 01:35:17.67 | Councilmember Hoffman | That's how we do it. |
| 01:35:18.85 | Bill Hines | Thank you. |
| 01:35:18.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:35:18.95 | Bill Hines | Yeah. |
| 01:35:18.97 | Unknown | Oh, my God. I think it |
| 01:35:21.58 | Vice Mayor | I think. |
| 01:35:25.58 | Vice Mayor | I just found your public comment and Right. So maybe you could just speak to that for a second, what you were referring to, Mr. Hines, about what Council Member Hoffman was mentioning. What is the idea behind the idea you have? |
| 01:35:46.22 | Bill Hines | You know, essentially what I've submitted assumes that the 14 spaces that are lost in this plan are not the right 14 spaces to lose. And I have submitted a proposal for the better 14 spaces to lose to facilitate better circulation and more flexibility downtown. and circulation around the east side of the parking lot. plain and simply, The best thing to do for parking and the parking area and the parking surface itself is to do as little as possible, because that will inherently allocate more money toward pedestrian and perimeter improvements and all the things that this plan hopes to facilitate. |
| 01:36:31.99 | Michael Rex | Thank you. |
| 01:36:34.74 | Mayor Blachstein | OK, do we have any further questions for the appellants? All right. Thank you very much for all of your time and for your presentation, for all that you've put forth on this project in your thousands of hours of work as well. |
| 01:36:49.16 | Unknown | you |
| 01:36:49.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:36:53.47 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. |
| 01:36:53.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:36:55.32 | Unknown | Yeah, just... |
| 01:36:56.40 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:36:57.50 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:36:58.40 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, so now's the time for members of the public to speak but given that we have a council member who does have a speaking engagement that they have to attend to. We want to make sure that we can take as much public comment as possible but be aware of our time constraints so could you just raise your hand if you intend to make public comment this evening. |
| 01:37:18.11 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:37:18.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor, for the record, I collected speakers from everybody in the room, except for minutes by Beth McDougal. They're in the order of first come first serve right here. So if you wanted to go that route as far as speaking order. |
| 01:37:33.41 | Mayor Blachstein | How many slips do we have? |
| 01:37:34.42 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm sorry. THE FAMILY. |
| 01:37:34.78 | Mayor Blachstein | So, |
| 01:37:34.83 | Walfred Solorzano | I've been. |
| 01:37:35.03 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. 27. Okay. So if we did 50 minutes of the break. |
| 01:37:38.49 | Walfred Solorzano | So if anybody would like to speak and didn't turn in a speaker's lip. |
| 01:37:40.03 | Mayor Blachstein | it. No. I think we should try to give everyone a minute because, and then that way we'll give everybody an opportunity to speak hopefully. And then, because we also have commenters online. So, but we will limit public comment to, 40 minutes so that we're left with at least 10 to 15 minutes for Yeah, no, we are. We have to take a vote. It's in my, we have to take a vote if we're going to limit the amount of time for public comment. Can you weigh in on that, Sergio? |
| 01:38:11.18 | Jill Hoffman | But I mean, can we prevent someone who came here to speak from speaking because we've hit the 40 minutes? I thought we had to hear public comment from everyone who had a comment. |
| 01:38:20.17 | Councilmember Hoffman | we would continue the hearing. |
| 01:38:21.30 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:38:21.98 | Unknown | All I think. maybe. |
| 01:38:23.40 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:38:24.29 | Unknown | Can you weigh in? |
| 01:38:29.00 | Sergio Rudin | So the Brown Act does allow for the agency to limit Uh, So the local agency may adopt reasonable regulations to ensure the intent of the public comment period is carried out, including but not limited due regulations, limiting the total amount of time allocated for public testimony on particular issues and for each speaker. So public agencies are allowed to limit the overall public comment period. Um, So that is something that the council can do. |
| 01:39:00.23 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, well, we'll limit public comment to one minute and that should allow us to welcome all 27 speakers and hopefully whomever we have online and we'll do an assessment of time if we need to take a vote to continue. So let's get started right away. |
| 01:39:11.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Mary Faust. |
| 01:39:14.51 | Mayor Blachstein | Hmm. |
| 01:39:14.83 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:39:17.45 | Unknown | Thank you. Right now. |
| 01:39:19.72 | Walfred Solorzano | All right, Mario Files followed by Adrian Brinton and then Dan Johnson in the hole. That's a baseball term. |
| 01:39:29.26 | Mary Faust | Has my minute started? Yes, it is. All right, thank you. My name is Mary Faust. I've been a 26-year resident of the city of Sausalito. |
| 01:39:30.57 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. Yes. |
| 01:39:37.07 | Mary Faust | I'm also the chair commissioner for the park and recreation department. which is volunteer position. And I'm also on the board of Sausalito Beautiful. I'm in support of the Ferry Landing Appeal. I urge you to proceed with the original design that was approved by the City Council. The sauce to waterfront as we've stated is our most important asset and a suffered deference to automobile special interests and piecemeal planning, I believe the most recent plan approved by the planning Commission is not the best plan. The plan looks like a design that has a short term remodel and does not address the future needs and the growth of our city. The plan does little to widen and improve access routes and depends on clutter of new signage. The original City Council approved design includes a more holistic future forward design that allows a future of growth. and ideas for more inviting downtown. and will bring and provide revenue to provide pride to our city. Thank you very much. |
| 01:40:40.61 | Walfred Solorzano | Adrian Brinton, followed by Jen Johnson and Sunil Raj in the hole. |
| 01:40:45.90 | Adrian Brinton | Hi, Adrian Brenton. I'm a South Slater resident and don't have the same credentials as our previous speaker, but I'm working on it. So the parking survey had some great news. Our revenues have recovered from pre-pandemic levels through a combination of raising rates and people returning to the city, which is wonderful. Utilization is low based on the parking survey. We see a lot of days where the lots are not fully utilized. and you know when we look at removing spaces the revenue loss is not that great because most days there's spaces available and people can go of days where the, where the lots are not fully utilized. Uh, and you know, when we look at removing spaces, the revenue loss is not that great because most days there's spaces available and people can go park in another space, either in lot one or in one of the other lots. So if the lots are totally full, they'll leave, we'll lose some revenue. We can also optimize our revenue by using technology, different things suggested in the report. There's a lot of opportunity there to raise our parking revenue, but what do we wanna be? Are we a city that just sells parking? I mean, this is our most beautiful place in our city. Do we wanna optimize by scratching out every last single parking place out of it? I don't, I think we can do better. And hopefully this plan, I think in front of the city council does a lot better. And I'd love to see it move forward. Thank you. |
| 01:41:49.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:41:49.91 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:41:50.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Dan Johnson next, Sunil Raj on deck, and Rachel Hunter in the hole. |
| 01:41:54.20 | Dan Johnson | Bye. Jan Johnson, 30 years resident. I don't like either plan. But I would just like to see the law. followed. 1128 is a current law. It has not been revoked. It's pretty clear to me I'm not an attorney. I don't agree with our attorney's position. But, Section one. Such parking lots should not be used for purposes other than public parking. Without voter approval, a plaza is not a parking lot or a parking space. Section 2, Gabrielsen Park and Viena del Malle, such areas should not be used for any purpose other than as public parks. A bioretention drainage system is not a park. Section 5, reparking. The amount of public land provided downtown for public parking would not be increased in any amount or decreased by greater than 5% from the existing level. The existing level in 1997 was 206 spots. This is way over that. Plus, we've lost parklet spots. |
| 01:43:02.19 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:43:03.27 | Dan Johnson | In addition, each spot provides $5,500 a year. |
| 01:43:03.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Each spot |
| 01:43:10.49 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:43:11.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Sunil Raj next, Rachel Hunter on deck, and Kim Fong in the hole. |
| 01:43:17.05 | Sunil Raj | All right, good evening everyone. My name is Sunil Raj and I strongly support the appeal for the Ferry Landside project. The Planning Commission plan fails to accomplish a safe, accessible, efficient, and enjoyable Ferry Plaza. The City Council's Ferry Plaza plan is my preferred plan. It would give us wider sidewalks and a beautiful plaza to entice more tourists and encourage more economic activities like maybe like a farmer's market or some other sort of art fairs or something like that. So I'm asking the city council to approve the appeal and the original city plan. Thank you. |
| 01:43:57.34 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:43:59.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Rachel Hunter next, Ken Fong on deck, and Martha Loftus in the home. |
| 01:44:04.20 | Rachel Hunter | Hi, I'm Rachel and I'm a resident of Sausalito. I strongly support the appeal for the Ferry Landside Improvement Project. I really think that it will be a preferred plan because it's going to be able to make a safety enhancements. It will solve congestion for bicycles and, you know, the environmental benefits of keeping the trees and adding more trees to the plaza, I think are going to be wonderful. But ultimately also, I just really think that we need to beautify this plaza and entice people to spend more time there. And, you know, whether it's the farmers markets or art fairs or other community activities, I think that the appeal will do that. So thank you. Thank you very much. |
| 01:44:49.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Ken Fong next. Martha Loftus on deck and Joe Cardinal. |
| 01:44:54.51 | Ken Fong | Hi, my name is Ken Fong. I'm a proud owner of Out. proud homeowner in Sausalito in the Spring Valley neighborhood. And I'm here to ask all of you to vote tonight to appeal the current plan. um, by the planning commission and approve the plan you previously approved or, um, with modifications that we heard tonight from the appellants. In my view, your plan is superior to the planning commission's plan. from a safety environmental and aesthetics perspective. And on another note, I've read through the 50 page to 50... 52-page downtown parking study prepared by the Dixon Resources and offers plenty of options. Revenue opportunities for recapture solutions from eliminating the parking lot in parking lot one. The current, um, Very plenty to be remediated now. And with the right solutions, I'm urging you to vote tonight to appeal and move forward so that it can be fun. Thanks. |
| 01:45:55.95 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much. you very much. Martha Loftus up, Joe Carr next, and then Scott Thornburg in the hole. |
| 01:46:05.28 | Martha Loftus | Hi, I'm Martha Loftus. I also am a homeowner here in Sausalito and a daily user of the Plaza and the Ferry. And I support the appeal of the Planning Commission changes. the congestion and the the, the, Congestion and hazards are terrible. And I've had several near misses from and mainly people in their cars not paying attention, going the wrong way in the parking lot, lots of times interactions with bikes and, just general Farrying running off the ferry and into the parking lot and you're caught in the crossfire. So I listening to the appellates comments about modifications to the original plan I sounds great, but I agree that I supporting the appeal of the planning Commission. Presentation, doctor, whatever. |
| 01:47:00.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:00.58 | Martha Loftus | Thank you. |
| 01:47:00.85 | Unknown | I'm just... |
| 01:47:01.24 | Martha Loftus | Thank you. All right. |
| 01:47:02.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Dokar up. Scott Thunberg next, and then Patty in the hole. |
| 01:47:08.60 | Joel Carr | Hello, my name is Joel Carr. I am also a homeowner here in Sausalito. I was formerly the managing principal of a San Francisco global architecture and planning firm, a $250 million firm. I strongly urge accepting the appeal without an extension, without a continuance, because that just kicks the can further down the road where we've kicked it several times already. I believe that the council should recognize the expertise of professionals who do this work. The team that has done the work on the council plan is knowledgeable and capable. And with all due respect to BKF, they are an engineering firm. The planning commission is not designers. An engineering firm and a planning commission is not designers. An engineering firm and a planning commission do not understand the importance of human and environment interaction and how to make it the best it can be. Thank you. |
| 01:48:07.02 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:48:09.33 | Scott Thornburg | up. |
| 01:48:10.86 | Walfred Solorzano | on deck, Skip speaks in the hole. |
| 01:48:14.36 | Scott Thornburg | Good evening. Scott Thornburg, Chair of the Economic Development Advisory Committee. While our EDAC doesn't officially have a position on this as a committee, I did want to, I personally support the appeal. And as the Chair of EDAC, I would just say that if this is something that the Council is concerned about, the cost for one of the plans or the loss of parking revenues and so on, I'm sure that at the head of the Council, we would be looking into that in the new year. In other words, EDAC would be very happy to put together some sort of business plan and recommendations for how we could make up for those costs or losses. So when it's offer that some ideas that come to mind, people have mentioned farmers markets and art walks and things like that that are a natural use for that space and I think there are a number of things that we could do to both make up for lost revenues pay for the space and I think the one thing that we would not want to do is be so short-sighted as to get caught up with the cost of today when we can plan for something for tomorrow so thank you thank you so much |
| 01:49:19.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Read bar ups, fix keeps next, and then Todd Wieland the hole. |
| 01:49:26.04 | Patty Bott | Hello, Mayor, Councilmembers. Thank you so much. My name's Patty Bott. I'm the vice commodore of the Sausalito Yacht Club. I'm a 20-year resident of Sausalito, and I commuted on the ferry for 20 years. So I'm very familiar with the... entrance and exit from the ferry. South Lita Yacht Club leadership opposes any plan that blocks the entrance and exit to the Yacht Club parking and further reduces the public parking in lot one. Our concern is for the public safety of the pedestrians, bicyclists, and our members, as well as the safety of all the trucks that do deliveries in and out of that parking lot. It's not really something that we're going to agree with to just have two yellow lines and a stripe across the road. Nobody ever adheres to that, even though it's an international symbol. As a reminder, I just wanted to say that Sausalito Yacht Club hosts many civic events, such as Rotary Club. Thank you. And thank you so much for your time. Thank you. |
| 01:50:29.27 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Skip Speaks, followed by Todd Wheeler and Bill Hines in the hole. |
| 01:50:35.03 | Skip Speaks | business. |
| 01:50:36.77 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:50:36.78 | Skip Speaks | Good evening, thank you for this time, Council. I am Skip Speaks. I'm on the board of directors of the Sausalito Yacht Club, and I've been serving there for several years now. I attended both of the planning commission meetings where the plans were presented as a civil engineer, and I've spent time in the highway department and I've been a county engineer in two different counties. One of the principles is to avoid conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles. And I have a single issue, and that is our driveway. Even today, even yesterday, I had trouble getting out of there because so many people were walking across it. The plans that route bicycles or pedestrians in front of that driveway are short-sighted and create a hazard that we don't think should be accepted. Thank you. |
| 01:51:26.40 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:51:28.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, Todd Wheeler next, followed by Bill Hines, and then Charles Mountain. Thank you. |
| 01:51:35.54 | Todd Wheeler | My counsel, my name is Todd Wheeler. I'm the Commodore of the Sausalito Yacht Club this year. I'm also a business owner in Sausalito. I own Bacchus and Venus Wines on Bridgeway. I just wanted to say that I'm supporting the planning commission's version. I don't agree with some of the things that other people have put forth as far as queuing and whatnot. I definitely, as part of the Yacht Club, I don't want to see anyone queued across our driveway. Also queuing across Gabrielson Park, out into the, on the Spinnaker Drive. Hundreds of bicycles are going to be somewhere. in town, but I don't think that's the place for them either. Down Tracy way may be a better plan. So if you want to make a compromise, I think there's other compromises that can be done, but whatever plan you pick, I would prefer to see them not be in front of the Saucyote Yacht Club. Thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 01:52:26.94 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:52:30.72 | Walfred Solorzano | Charles Welton next, followed by Merrick Griffin. And then we have... Sorry. and followed by Tad. Bill, you're sorry. I was just advised by the city attorney that you're, since you were speaking on behalf of the appellant, you'll have a chance, everybody. |
| 01:52:49.39 | Bill Hines | All right. I was gonna say it with the same. |
| 01:52:53.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. . Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:52:56.19 | Charles Melton | Sorry, Charles Malton. |
| 01:52:57.86 | Mary Griffin | you |
| 01:52:57.88 | Bill Hines | you |
| 01:52:57.89 | Mary Griffin | Love it. Good job. |
| 01:53:00.83 | Charles Melton | My name is Charles Melton and I strongly support the appeal of the Ferry Landside Improvement Project. I actively use the ferry to commute to work and I believe that City Council's original plans create a safe, accessible, efficient, and enjoyable ferry plaza. I also personally prioritized public space that's successful all over private parking, especially private access to a private club that's not accessible to all. I do believe that the Plaza or the plan put forward by a city council also allows for the Plaza and El Portal to be used for future economic development activities. This is something that personally excites me as a commuter. I cannot wait to get out of the Plaza at the end of a ferry be due to congestion and we can do the environmental aspects about it. And I cannot wait to see a beautiful plaza where I can go there and support local businesses after I commute home from work and enjoy the beautiful plaza there. We cannot let perfect be the enemy of good, but I do support the modifications that are being proposed by the appellates and encourage the city council to approve the plan with the modifications from the appellates today. Thank you. |
| 01:54:00.09 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:54:00.84 | Mary Griffin | Thank you. |
| 01:54:01.14 | Charles Melton | Mary Griffin up and cast me. |
| 01:54:03.97 | Walfred Solorzano | the whole thing. |
| 01:54:05.39 | Mary Griffin | Hi, my name is Mary Griffin, and I'm a 38-year resident of Sausalito and an architect. And this is an opportunity to be visionary, something we've heard from all of you when you've been running. We've got to take care. this opportunity to make this the very best it can be. We've waited 50 years to do it. So please let's be appreciative of these professionals who have donated so much time and vision and not undercut them and move ahead as quickly as possible. So please support the appeal. Thank you very much. |
| 01:54:40.96 | Walfred Solorzano | Kaspirine on deck and Therese Onkona and the whole. |
| 01:54:44.57 | Tad Thompson | Hello. My name is Tad Thompson, South Dakota resident for 48 years. I actually drive the ferry that lands there every day. I've been doing it every day for the last year. And I've watched, you know, just the craziness that happens there every day. And it's my opinion that having them separated, going in different directions is the way to go. It's, you know, I get the concerns of the yacht club and everything, but having everybody queue up on the other side, I really don't see that as being a good idea at all. So there's got to be some kind of compromise in there. |
| 01:54:54.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:24.57 | Tad Thompson | But I really think that having them go in both directions is the way to go, just my personal opinion. |
| 01:55:32.13 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:55:32.74 | Unknown | Thanks. |
| 01:55:34.78 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 01:55:36.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Cast screen up to Sean Conant Deck and Muriel Oman in the home. |
| 01:55:41.61 | Susan Rogier | where I sign up, but My name is Susan Rogier. I've worked in Sausalito starting in 1965, bought a house in 68. So I've been here a long time. I think Jacques Overop was one year before me. I would definitely like to support his program. I think it's excellent. And I can only give you the example of Dunphy Park. |
| 01:56:08.31 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 01:56:11.03 | Susan Rogier | Compare what he did with Dunphy Park. and what he's capable of doing. I think if you keep that in mind, There is absolutely no choice. Bye-bye. Thank you. |
| 01:56:21.79 | Cass Green | Thank you. |
| 01:56:23.68 | Walfred Solorzano | Cass Green up, Teresa on Kona on deck, and Mario Oman in the hole. |
| 01:56:28.63 | Cass Green | Hi, folks. I hope you're having a good evening. This is certainly interesting. I'm Cass Green. I'm one of the owners of the Interbottide. I own with my brothers, Willie and Mike. Last year in 2022, we were over $900,000 of your TOT tax revenue. We also pay for 23 spaces every day in the parking lot, whether we use them or not. |
| 01:56:32.52 | Walfred Solorzano | Um, |
| 01:56:49.70 | Cass Green | um, I support the original plan or we support the original plan and we support the appeal. We have 220 vehicles going in and out of the end above tide every single day. That's our guests, our trucks, our drop-offs every single day. So there's a lot of traffic there. That doesn't count the Sausalito Hotel. And Cultivar, when Cultivar opens up, which we are so happy about, Cultivar will have way more traffic. We've submitted a letter that details our concerns. And in a nutshell, we were We're afraid that the planning commission plan will create chaos on El Portal and in the parking lot. Thank you very much. |
| 01:57:31.37 | Unknown | All right. |
| 01:57:31.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:57:31.52 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 01:57:33.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Marissa Ankana up, Muriel Oman on deck, and Kay Mitzel on the hole. |
| 01:57:39.13 | Muriel Allman | My name is Muriel Allman, and I've lived in Sausalito for 52 years. I walk. And I used the town. And I support... the appeal and belief that the council should allow the design professional team to work with staff and the engineering consultant to modify the original plan to better address any issues. So that's it. Thank you very much. |
| 01:58:09.10 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm going to up. Jay Mitchell next. And then Alasimara on the whole. |
| 01:58:14.67 | Teresa Ancona | Good evening. Nice to see you all. I'm here, actually, my name is Teresa Ancona, and I'm the chair for the Chamber of Commerce, so I'm here representing the Chamber. And I'd like to let you know that, you know, we support the plan that reduces the least amount of parking spots. You know, parking not only affects directly into the city budget, it also affects every business in town here, you know, and the sales tax and the TOT tax. So, you know, parking is one of the most essential concerns for every business. You know, people still have to be able to get to uh, our businesses, to patronize, to support the town, to support everyone here. With that, with the visitor center also being located right in that same kind of juncture, we do see a lot of safety concerns, sometimes with fire trucks and ambulances unable to get down El Portal. Thank you. Thank you very much. |
| 01:59:18.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Kay Mitzel up, Ellis Merrill on deck, and Stephen Woodside in the hole. |
| 01:59:23.48 | Kay Mitzel | Okay, Kay Mitzel up. I am Kay Mitzel, and I have lived in Sausalito over 40 years. I have been involved in a lot of things in the city, mostly the ferry landing, which then is situation with this whole appeal is sort of reminding me of that. except for the fact that this meeting wasn't to me properly notified. This should be a bigger hall. We should have town hall. All the residents should have been receiving emails or mailings, actually. Not emails, because not everybody gets it on email. Not everybody gets it. I guess you can probably tell I am supportive of the Planning Commission. Proposal. which was approved in September. I'm also a Yacht Club member, and I'm concerned about the issues that were expressed by our leadership. And bottom line is I hope you will vote for the Planning Commission proposal and stay within the budget. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:00:20.03 | Unknown | very much. |
| 02:00:20.40 | Kay Mitzel | you |
| 02:00:21.52 | Walfred Solorzano | Ellis Merrill up, Stephen Woodside on deck, and Shelby Van Meter in the hole. |
| 02:00:27.95 | Alice Merrill | Hello, I'm Alice Merrill. Gosh, nobody clapped for her. I'd like to say all of the things she just said about better noticing. So we have more people here than the people who are the friends of. and that I'm feeling like this is a big push and that we're still not getting a chance for the bigger picture to speak. So I'm a member of the Yacht Club. I think... It's. scary to think about the way people don't pay attention. I don't believe that we're going to spend a lot of time down there in that plaza just because it's there. I would say that most people have We're not going to do that. And then if we have a farmer's market there, where are the bicycles going to go? So that's a great idea. So anyway, thank you very much. |
| 02:01:23.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:01:24.70 | Walfred Solorzano | Steven Woodside up. |
| 02:01:26.03 | Stephen Woodside | Shelby Van Meter on deck and Kieran Culligan in the hole. Mayor Blonstie, you may please the council. My name is Stephen Woodside. I've lived here for 10 years, but I can say that my family has been hanging out around Sausalito since my grandfather proposed to my grandfather, grandmother. on Richardson Bay about 100 and something years ago. This town is a great town. I'm here to speak because I believe in all the reasons for granting the appeal, but I wanted to speak to the procedure. I don't think the Planning Commission should be redesigning projects that |
| 02:02:02.80 | Unknown | THE PROJECT. |
| 02:02:05.98 | Stephen Woodside | That power should be held by you and never relinquished, because then we, the public, can comment and you can decide on a plan that. best meets the various needs that only you are capable of deciding. So thank you. |
| 02:02:22.46 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 02:02:24.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Shelby Van Meter up, Kieran Kulligan on deck, and Carolyn Revelle on Indahol. |
| 02:02:33.23 | Shelby Van Meter | Hi, good evening. I'm Shelby Van Meter. I've lived in this town since 1974, and I've been very actively engaged during that time. I'm here to urge you to focus on the long-term future and to not become overly involved or untangled in relatively small issues that can be worked through. I ask that you focus on what can be done rather than what can't be done. I feel sure that the improvements presented in your earlier authorized plan, including the expanded Shoreline Plaza, will end up benefiting our businesses. far beyond parking places and numbers of parking places, please take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to create something outstanding. Really, what an opportunity, and what a responsibility it is to ensure a safer, more vibrant, more beautiful downtown that will serve our businesses, our residents, and visitors for generations to come. I urge you to grant the appeal. Thank you for your consideration. |
| 02:03:39.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Pekong, Karen Killigan up, Charlyn Revelle on deck, and Rosalina |
| 02:03:43.02 | Kieran Culligan | So, of course, you know. |
| 02:03:44.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:03:44.86 | Kieran Culligan | Thank you. |
| 02:03:44.88 | Matthew Nathans | there. |
| 02:03:45.17 | Kieran Culligan | Kieran Culligan, Sausalito resident. I threw out the two-minute script. People think that climate change is being fought in science labs in Washington, D.C., and Davos. But in reality, we're watching it here tonight. These aren't popular decisions. They're not always going to be easy. But we are looking to you for your leadership. Are we going to prioritize cars? Are we going to prioritize people in transit? And you know what? Doing the right thing for the climate is also doing the right thing for Sausalito in the long term. Are we going to prioritize cars? Are we going to prioritize people in transit? And you know what? Doing the right thing for the climate is also doing the right thing for Sausalito in the long term. Better for people to come and visit, to buy a house, to go and have dinner, to take a ferry ride. It all works together. It's the big picture. I'm excited. I hope you're excited about what we're doing here. Let's make it work together. |
| 02:04:30.61 | Kieran Culligan | Hello. |
| 02:04:30.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Carolyn Revelle up, Russell Croce on deck, and Jeff Shrezo in the fall. |
| 02:04:38.46 | Carolyn Revell | I'm Carolyn Revell representing Sausalito Beautiful tonight. Our board unanimously supports the appeal, asking the council to proceed with modifying the plan that you originally saw. The Sausalito Waterfront is one of our most distinctive assets, as we've all said. Yet visitors arriving by ferry find not a welcoming place, but a parking lot. though the council plan loses some parking spaces, the loss of spaces and revenue can be addressed through the Dixon Parking Study recommendations. The benefits provided by the thoughtful and visionary plan Council plan. include a larger plaza for public gathering enhanced by new benches, shade trees that frame the view and screening for Gabrielson Park, improved and safer pedestrian bicycle and auto circulation, enhanced accessibility for the disabled, improved stormwater management to improve water quality enhanced pollinator habitat. as part of the future North South Greenway. And more. We trust that The city officials will imagine a future Sausalito that is sustainable, safe and welcoming, and we look forward to continuing our partnership. Thank you so much. |
| 02:05:44.17 | Walfred Solorzano | Russell Crowe's next. Jeff Schrader on deck and Babette McDougall on the whole. |
| 02:05:49.40 | Russ Proci | Hi, my name is Russ Proci. I'm a resident in Sausalito and a rear commodore of the Sausalito Yacht Club. I echo the concerns of the Yacht Club for queuing up on uh, on, Tracy way. as recommended by the Planning Commission. And I strongly support your efforts Um, to do the Planning Commission's recommendations. It is my understanding that the Planning Commission has diligently followed all guidelines set forth by the Bridge District Furthermore, I would like to emphasize that the Planning Commission conducted a thorough review specifically considering compliance with ordinance 1128. The meticulous examination of all relevant ordinances, including Ordinance 1128, demonstrates a commitment to legal and regulatory compliance. So I would seek your help. Thank you very much. you |
| 02:06:53.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:06:55.87 | Walfred Solorzano | Jeff Trazer next, Babette Bencudo on deck, and Matthew neck for in the hole. |
| 02:07:02.91 | Unknown | Bye, Jess. |
| 02:07:03.55 | Jeff Shirash | Hi, Jeff Shirash. I have a little restaurant, a Spinnaker restaurant in town here. Just want to talk about, of course, my initial thought coming in tonight was actually going for the Planning Commission. And after looking at things and listening to Michael Rex and the group, I feel that we do need to go back to the drawing board a little bit and look at both plans, from the council plan and the planning commission plan, to see what nexus can we make work. As far as not utilizing too many spaces, of course, 30-plus spaces is too many. 13 is, I think, the right number. But there were some comments about reconfiguring the parking lots what we can do differently um as well as adding some green space as well um we definitely parking parking is not going to go away we definitely have to have parking for the merchants a lot of merchants need that as a lifeblood um and we reduce parking not to we also reduce parking revenues but also reduce revenues in storefronts and also um other values as well. So ultimately, I think we need to relook at the plans. Thank you very |
| 02:08:05.19 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 02:08:05.83 | Jeff Shirash | Thank you. |
| 02:08:07.05 | Walfred Solorzano | back my do |
| 02:08:14.56 | Babette McDougall | Good evening. Thank you for acknowledging me. So- I'll bet you know what I'm going to speak about. And that is I'm going to ask us to just stand back from. the Sausalito view of the need for a new ferry landing, because we all know we need a new ferry landing. But there's something out there called a regional association Metropolitan Transportation Commission that has the power to by virtue of us redesigning for our own benefit, personally, a new ferry landing, and yet because we hit their tripwire, And we suddenly get designated, and apparently we already are designated, as a transit nexus. as a hub. And that gives them the power to come in and completely remake Sausalito, starting with the housing element and bringing in high density housing to house their workers near where they're going to work, like the ferry landing, for example. Well, how's that going to work? I don't know. Anyway, that's what they want to do. And that's another thing that we need to think about is what will MTC bring to bear to this party that will be beyond our production. |
| 02:09:19.71 | Walfred Solorzano | next and then Pat Zook in the whole deck. |
| 02:09:26.09 | Matthew Nathans | My name is Matthew Nathans, 50-year resident of Sausalito, 25-year member of the Sausalito Yacht Club. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, gang. It's a great city. I love being here. We have to... take the opportunity to go with the plan presented to you. And to my colleagues in the Yacht Club, we're sailors, guys, and ladies, we wear military uniforms. If we can't figure out how to sail into our home ports through storms and squalls, Surely we can figure out how to get into the parking lot. . |
| 02:10:03.42 | Matthew Nathans | I hope I can still hunt into more. But seriously, I mean, . It's a solvable problem. It's not the end of the world. We can do it. I've watched you dock your boats. We can do it. Anyway. Can I still have a drink at the bar? you |
| 02:10:24.72 | Unknown | You know? Thank you very much. Much needed left. Appreciate it. |
| 02:10:31.31 | Matthew Nathans | Thank you. |
| 02:10:31.36 | Walfred Solorzano | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:10:31.52 | Matthew Nathans | Thank you. |
| 02:10:32.81 | Unknown | Thank you. I bet. |
| 02:10:35.24 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 02:10:35.40 | Pat Zook | Hi, Pat Zook. I have some pictures if I can approach without getting shot. |
| 02:10:39.11 | Mayor Blachstein | I'll take the new procedures. They go to the clerk and then they go through. Yeah. Yeah. |
| 02:10:48.66 | Mayor Blachstein | Do you have one back as well? Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:10:56.54 | Mayor Blachstein | Can you pause the timer while we get these? |
| 02:10:57.86 | Pat Zook | Thanks for your... THE END OF THE END OF THE Well, my, my, I'm going to run out before I even open my mouth. That's all. |
| 02:11:03.36 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 02:11:03.61 | Pat Zook | Thank you. That's okay. Thanks. Thanks for starting it. I won't need the full minute. I gave you pictures. The bottom one of the bio retention facility and its chart is found in the report that was the plans that were presented. The top two are of what exists now in terms of screening at Gabrielson. I know I feel strongly that this is a major concern for the enjoyment of that park and our downtown. I know that people have said that some people have said that this is a rain park or an equivalent landscaping, just look at the picture. um, And I know people have said that they don't know where Gabrielson Park begins and ends. So maybe it's going into the parking lot. There's been a 50 to 70 year commonality of a wooden fence that Marks the end of Gabrielson and the beginning of the parking lot. I don't think it's a question. And I think this would be a travesty. |
| 02:12:11.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:12:14.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor, we have three people with their hands raised on Zoom. If anybody else would like to provide any public comments so the mayor and city council can assess how much more time we can give, can you please use the raise hand function? So far, we have three people with their hands raised on Zoom. |
| 02:12:31.36 | Mayor Blachstein | Let's continue with public comment. |
| 02:12:34.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:12:35.60 | Sandra Bushmaker | Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 02:12:37.71 | Mayor Blachstein | Hi, Sandra. |
| 02:12:38.23 | Carolyn Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 02:12:41.64 | Carolyn Gallagher | Carolyn Gallagher, Hi i'll be quick, since I only have a minute. Carolyn Gallagher, I think there's a solution in here somewhere, the process that got us here is really been bungled and I looked carefully at the 322 March 2022 city council meeting and nowhere in that meeting did the Council approve a design, so I think that. There's been a lot of problems with the rollout of this and the fact that most of the people in Sausalito did not receive notice on this particular meeting. The agenda with the attachments was not posted until after nine o'clock on Thursday night. with a holiday on Friday. I do disagree with the city attorney. I believe that there is an application of 1128 to this project. with taking park space and using it for something else, taking a parking lot and using it for something else. So I think that needs to be looked at again. Obviously, SB 272 with the sea level rise needs to be addressed. |
| 02:13:42.22 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you very much. Can we get Sharna Brockett, please unmute? |
| 02:13:48.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:48.21 | Mayor Blachstein | Hi, Sharna. |
| 02:13:50.35 | Unknown | you |
| 02:13:50.37 | Muriel Allman | Hi. |
| 02:13:50.89 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 02:13:53.07 | Muriel Allman | Hold on, can you see me? |
| 02:13:55.11 | Mayor Blachstein | So my name is Sharna Brock. Can you hear me? I just want to make sure we can take comment from signed appellants. We can, right? Sergio, can you wait? |
| 02:14:06.00 | Sharna Brockett | I think we've heard from other signed appellants. Yeah, I think if the council |
| 02:14:08.16 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I think if the Council wants to limit the appellants testimony, you know, to the appeal period. I think that's fine, but it's prohibited from taking public comment from them either. |
| 02:14:17.86 | Mayor Blachstein | You know, you did not for him. Okay, Councilmember Hoffman's withdrawn her objection. Okay, Sharna? Please. Yeah. |
| 02:14:24.97 | Sharna Brockett | Yes, I'm Sharna Brockett, I'm a resident of Sausalito. I'm also on the board of Sausalito Beautiful. Basically, this is the once in a lifetime opportunity for us to get free funding to create a fairy plaza that we can be proud of. That's why I support the appeal. The planning commission redesign, while I'm sure it's well intended, misses this opportunity we have and prioritizes parking over the greater benefit, a larger ferry plaza and wide sidewalk along the top of lot one has for the community, our ferry, passengers and pedestrians. Now, I want to emphasize here, too, that times are changing. You know, many people now are starting to walk more for health reasons. We have electric bikes. There's our ride-sharing services. And in the future, I can see that there will be more self-driving cars that can potentially drop people off. This is our future. So let's not prioritize parking over people and the greater benefits. A larger plaza will benefit our community and visitors alike. And I want to say a few things about climate change. You know, I really didn't, I was upset to see a lot of the trees I'm sorry. |
| 02:15:30.10 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Next person is Kirk and Nancy Hasson. Thank you. |
| 02:15:42.40 | Sandra Bushmaker | You're going to mute yourself? You started speaking. |
| 02:15:49.42 | Skip Speaks | Thank you. |
| 02:15:50.44 | Sandra Bushmaker | All right. |
| 02:15:50.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Rick and Nancy. All right. All right. I think that's it for public comment. |
| 02:16:00.36 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, I will close public comment at this time. And I am so thrilled to see so many people in the chamber and active and engaging. So thank you to everyone who came in. Hopefully we can get this kind of attendance for all of our meetings going forward. Um, So the next step in the hearing is if any of the members of the council have additional questions of DPW staff or the appellants based on issues that were raised this evening. No, seeing none. |
| 02:16:25.16 | Councilmember Kelman | Yes, Councilman McCommick. I have one clarification. Is Director McGowan still here? |
| 02:16:25.70 | Mayor Blachstein | for coming to the show. |
| 02:16:28.68 | Councilmember Kelman | I hear. I just would love if he could clarify. Yes, thank you, sir. The plan that I think some folks said they'd never seen around the parking spots in the east side of the lot. Can you clarify those spots or that plan? |
| 02:16:45.64 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, on the east side of the parking lot, the plan that you have been provided is the one that the Planning Commission reviewed. And so that specific plan shows parallel parking on the east side of the parking lot. And in my presentation, I noted that based off of the commission's recommendations of complying with no more than 14 parking spaces, we put those in as perpendicular spaces. And that plan has takes away 13 parking spaces, not 14. |
| 02:17:16.45 | Mayor Blachstein | We have further questions from council members for either the appellant or the staff based on what was just heard in public comment. Councilman Hoffman. |
| 02:17:23.62 | Councilmember Hoffman | This is another just clarification procedural thing. As I understand it, this is either for McAllen or CDD director or our city attorney. Based on the comments by Mr. Rex and the other representatives for the appellants, they're not asking us to vote tonight. They're asking us to take a continuance and to consider new information. |
| 02:17:44.09 | Mayor Blachstein | That's something we can ask the appellants to respond to right now. because that's a question for the appellants. So yeah, let's just want to be sure the minutes and the record's clear. Yeah, sure. That's what they said. But if Michael Rex wants to go ahead and |
| 02:17:48.86 | Councilmember Hoffman | So yeah, I just want to. |
| 02:17:50.15 | Mary Griffin | Yeah. |
| 02:17:50.62 | Councilmember Hoffman | You should. |
| 02:17:50.86 | Mary Griffin | I'm not sure. |
| 02:17:51.02 | Councilmember Hoffman | Right. |
| 02:17:51.58 | Mary Griffin | THE RECORD SOME OF THE REC |
| 02:17:51.92 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:17:51.97 | Mary Griffin | Sure. |
| 02:17:56.17 | Michael Rex | Exactly what we request is that you continue the hearing to engage with the design professionals to produce a modified plan that responds to concerns raised. |
| 02:18:07.09 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:18:07.12 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you very much. |
| 02:18:07.51 | Vice Mayor | I'm a- |
| 02:18:07.55 | Mayor Blachstein | Right. |
| 02:18:07.82 | Vice Mayor | Can I just clarify that, Mr. Rex? Vice Mayor... |
| 02:18:10.19 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 02:18:10.23 | Vice Mayor | Yes. |
| 02:18:10.40 | Michael Rex | Thank you. |
| 02:18:10.52 | Vice Mayor | Mr. Rex? I just want you to fully enunciate what I believe the answer to the council member Hoffman is. You had four points. Pardon me? You had, I'm sorry. I would like you, I just want to make sure you're asking, what you're actually asking for, if I wrote it down here, was return the design to the local professional group with. Have. SWA, I can't read my own writing. Do some work on the design for $10,000, is that what I heard? |
| 02:18:38.95 | Michael Rex | We want SWA to do the graphics for the modified plan so a plan could be brought to you that's prepared by designers, not engineers. And then return to the city council on a date certain, December 19th. On a date certain, and I'm suggesting December 19th, your regular hearing. Thank you. Before Christmas. Thank you. |
| 02:19:01.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:19:02.66 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, any further questions for DPW or for the appellants at this time? Okay, seeing none, I will now offer the five minutes back first to the appellant to respond to anything heard in public comment, and then we will hear from the applicant. Is that the right order, city attorney? |
| 02:19:19.52 | Sergio Rudin | Um, I will say that the order doesn't matter as long as both get an opportunity to speak. |
| 02:19:24.36 | Mayor Blachstein | Appellants first then. |
| 02:19:26.67 | Sandra Bushmaker | minutes. |
| 02:19:27.50 | Mayor Blachstein | Five minutes. seconds remaining five minutes and 30 seconds. |
| 02:19:34.87 | Jock Ullman | I just want to clarify that the limits under 1128 define the border of Gabrielson Park. |
| 02:19:42.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Park. I'm trying to do the 530 thing. 530. Second, third. |
| 02:19:49.45 | Mayor Blachstein | I'm running the meeting, so we'll get to it. I can see it. It's all going to be fine. |
| 02:19:49.56 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm not sure. Thank you. |
| 02:19:53.39 | Jock Ullman | Okay. |
| 02:19:53.98 | Mayor Blachstein | Go ahead, five minutes and 30 seconds. |
| 02:19:54.68 | Jock Ullman | Yeah. Okay, the limits of Gabrielson Park need to be defined and then Any plan that is presented, all the plans should be based on the same information. And that perpendicular parking that was shown in the plan that Mr. McGowan showed may or may not work within because we were never able quite to make it work. So maybe it can, but we need to know exactly what the boundaries are and have it be same for everybody. And that has not been the case. |
| 02:20:36.55 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. Anyone, anything further from the appellants? You have almost another five minutes. Michael Rex? |
| 02:20:48.30 | Michael Rex | I want you to know in the last week I personally measured the whole Eastside a lot one in Gabrielson Park where they joined. And I'm absolutely confident we can bring before you not only a beautiful plan for the plaza, a beautiful plan for Gabrielson Park. We can show you how the bikes can park along Spinnaker Way, which is much wider than it needs to be. With a much more beautiful sidewalk along Spinnacle Way to access that beautiful restaurant. We can show a new stage and how the. The bile swale, which will be full of plants, can wrap around it so it's nestled into a beautiful landscape zone. We can show how that whole side of the lot can handle bikes and people in a safer manner and not lose a single parking space. I'm certain of this. We need the opportunity to show you. |
| 02:21:39.60 | Patty Bott | my job. |
| 02:21:46.21 | Mayor Blachstein | Mr. Hines, did you have anything you wanted to add? |
| 02:21:48.31 | Bill Hines | No, not really. |
| 02:21:49.62 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay. Council member Cox had a follow-up question to a couple of questions. Okay. I just... Peter's going to talk about it. Peter? |
| 02:22:04.71 | Peter Van Meter | Since we do have some time, I just want to kind of reiterate what I started the presentation with. This is basically kind of a once in a generation opportunity for Sausalito to use federal funds to accomplish a goal that will beautify and enhance our town. At the same time, solving a problem that the bridge district has in terms of processing passengers on the ferry. So it says, Free. Twofer. What can be better? And so you have to have vision. The Dixon report, as many people have pointed out, gives you opportunities to recover the revenue that you're concerned about losing from parking. that is gonna be a non-issue. It's already been mentioned that If somebody comes into the parking lot, to do some business in Sausalito, And it's on a peak day, peak weekend, peak hour. and they can't find a parking place, they will go to another lot and find a place to park. How many are actually going to leave town after coming here for a purpose to buy, shop, you know, just enjoy the view, whatever. it's going to be de minimis in my opinion. So the impact on merchants is going to be. Miner. in the long run. because they're still going to come and they're going to do what they want to do. So. You know, don't get bogged down in these little details. You know, they sound massive, Massive problems. but they're really nothing compared to the long-term benefit of having it improved. Central downtown in Sausalito. Thank you. |
| 02:23:35.73 | Unknown | THANK YOU. |
| 02:23:36.03 | Mayor Blachstein | I'm sorry. |
| 02:23:36.24 | Unknown | All right. |
| 02:23:36.32 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. Peter, could you stay up there? Council Member Cox had a question for you, Mr. Van Meter, if you could stay at the stand. |
| 02:23:47.65 | Mayor Blachstein | Has the appellant completed their feedback and comments? You have an additional two minutes and 30 seconds. |
| 02:23:55.90 | Peter Van Meter | You had a question you said? |
| 02:23:57.87 | Mayor Blachstein | you |
| 02:23:57.92 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I wanted to ask it after the after your formal presentation was done. We can't tell when you're done. to the next one. |
| 02:24:05.57 | Michael Rex | I want to address the Yacht Club. The Yacht Club is a very important institution in this town. It's not just for private members. They open their doors regularly to this community. It's important that whatever we do downtown respects their needs. And I think there has not been enough time to explain how David Parisi's solution to allow bikes to queue along there will be effective. And I think a continuance will give us an opportunity to provide greater detail on that. He's one of the most respected traffic engineers in Marin County. And I think he'll stand behind that plan like he did tonight. But I think it's important that that solution is better explained so people can really understand it. I was out there this weekend, and I can show you pictures of that little narrow sidewalk at their driveway being completely cluttered with people where people are stepping off into that major traffic lane. We need to widen it. And when it's no longer a curb cut, when it no longer looks like a driveway and it looks like a street, it'll be a whole different ballgame. And you have the traffic counts. They're relatively minor, okay? And that minor inconvenience shouldn't make the entire, the rest of the town inconvenient with jumbled circulation everywhere else. So, but I would just want you to know, we're going to come back with more information on that. We're not asking for either or. We think that has to be part of the solution and we can do that. Thank you. |
| 02:25:40.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:25:40.10 | Mayor Blachstein | very much. Have the appellants completed their response so that we may bring back for the questions of the diocese? Okay. All right. Council Member Cox and then Vice Mayor had a question as well. |
| 02:25:51.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:25:51.62 | Mayor Blachstein | Um, |
| 02:25:51.96 | Jill Hoffman | So everything that you say sounds amazing, but amazing costs money. And right now the initial plan is $500,000 over the budget that we have. So how will we raise how the city is, is recovering from a structural deficit. So how will this vision be funded if the city council would like to move in that direction? |
| 02:26:23.55 | Jill Hoffman | That's my question for the appellant. |
| 02:26:25.21 | Bill Hines | Can I address this? So the council granted SWA $25,000 to study the downtown plan. As a part of that, realizing that there were many goals in alignment with those things stipulated would require bringing on some subconsultants. So there were several subconsult consultants that the council approved. I believe the amount of fees was in the range of $188,000. One of those consultants was a cost consultant. And it was my advice to the city that we have the cost consultant cost out the current design and then any future plans so that we can make educated and informed decisions about the future of our communities. Now, I would also add that the particular estimator that I've recommended has been proven very accurate across a wide range of projects. And leaving it to put it out to bid to see what happens is just not a responsible maneuver given the current construction economy. I was reading another story about another project, a spillway for Anderson Dam. That project has doubled. It is now a $2.3 billion project. So let's do it right and make an informed decision. And as a part of the work, potentially for the future, I've scoped to look at these both side by can even provide, you know, these cost estimators routinely provide estimates with escalation for phases of projects, and can certainly look at different alternatives, which is all being left to the bid plans, and frankly, it's really rolling the dice. |
| 02:28:20.51 | Jill Hoffman | So, so you, but you didn't answer how will the city pay if the ultimate price is great. Let me just, if the ultimate price is greater than the money we're getting from the grant funding, are you suggesting that the project be phased so that we can, that it could be phased so that we can. do a portion of it with the grant funding and then do more. as additional funding is identified, because that's what we had discussed in 2020. |
| 02:28:49.74 | Bill Hines | I mean, how much does the project cost? Does anybody know? |
| 02:28:52.25 | Jill Hoffman | Well, just to repave and restripe is $1.8 million. |
| 02:28:56.42 | Bill Hines | The advice that I gave in 2018 was to not do that and spend all the money on everything but the parking surface itself. Because once you do the parking surface, you have to replace all the landscaping and all the trees. You can't just grind the pavement around the trees and expect them to stand up again. That's not how trees work. |
| 02:28:58.25 | Jill Hoffman | I THINK IT'S GOING TO BE |
| 02:29:16.66 | Dan Johnson | Can I respond to that? |
| 02:29:18.09 | Michael Rex | Yeah, please. I agree wholeheartedly that we need a master plan. Okay? We shouldn't piecemeal. That's why it looks like it does down there. And if we can't afford the whole master plan, then we phase it. As architects, we do this all the time. You put something out, you find out what it costs. Actually, we find out what it costs as we design it. So we're not done with 90% plans. Okay? But yeah, we should get some cost input sooner. I agree with Bill. We shouldn't wait for bids. But I'm telling you, it's going to come over budget. |
| 02:29:18.44 | Dan Johnson | Thank you. |
| 02:29:18.55 | Bill Hines | Okay. |
| 02:29:18.56 | Dan Johnson | I don't know. |
| 02:29:18.73 | Bill Hines | Thank you. |
| 02:29:18.77 | Dan Johnson | Thank you. |
| 02:29:50.80 | Michael Rex | Okay, we don't have to wonder about that. It will. It's going to have to be phased. But you don't phase your vision and your plan. You phase your construction. Okay. You phase your construction documents. You only prepare construction documents for what you can afford for phase one. That's how it's done. |
| 02:30:08.06 | Bill Hines | And Joan, just to add one more point along that, you know, Carolyn and Sharna both spoke to the environment. I believe Kieran did too. You know, we have aspects of this project that can be cooked into the design as pollinator habitats. The pollinator habitat is eligible for federal funding that's going to be coming out. So, you know, we know the funds that are available now, we don't know necessarily what funds are in the future. You know, and what I do, we're constantly talking with consultants and economists that are trying to, you know, forecast how this funding is gonna come down And, you know, frankly, a good designer will design the project to the funding that's available. And, you know, we've scoped to explore those sources of funding. I've even made a presentation with Chris and Kevin to California Consulting, our grant writer. And, you know, I believe that this project in all its phases and future phases should be considered with potential funding sources. Again, anything less of that would be foolish. |
| 02:31:06.80 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. It's just really important because what's in our capital plan does not have an additional $500,000 line item for us to spend on this project. So we as a council have to be fiscally responsible in what we approve. |
| 02:31:20.72 | Bill Hines | Yeah. And after five more years of cost escalation, you know, we really don't have the money. |
| 02:31:20.94 | Jill Hoffman | So- |
| 02:31:25.50 | Jill Hoffman | So cost estimating and master planning, I think are important considerations. Thank you. |
| 02:31:31.83 | Bill Hines | You're welcome. |
| 02:31:32.11 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay. |
| 02:31:32.97 | Mayor Blachstein | Vice Mayor, did you have a question? |
| 02:31:35.91 | Vice Mayor | I actually had a question for Commodore Todd Wheeler. I think he's still in the back, right? |
| 02:31:40.13 | Unknown | I don't think... |
| 02:31:40.62 | Vice Mayor | Yes, sir. I just wanted to know, hearing what you've heard, whether you'd be willing to work with, if we go in this direction, with the local professional group to find a solution that's satisfactory to the concerns of the yacht club. |
| 02:31:53.73 | Todd Wheeler | I think we have helped in mind. that I'll |
| 02:31:59.35 | Vice Mayor | Repeat that for the tape. I think Commodore Wheeler's coming up to say, speak his piece. |
| 02:32:06.96 | Todd Wheeler | Yeah, Council Member, I think we have an open mind about it. We have concerns, obviously, that we've stated tonight around, you know, mostly around our parking lot and other things. Safety is a concern. Skip speaks who spoke earlier. He had trouble getting out of our parking lot yesterday. He, I mean, he literally had to wait for Lots of people, I think Michael Ruck said something similar. about seeing lots of people going across parking lot. So that's our big concern is access. We're a tenant of the city. We rent that building from the city. Anything that impacts our revenue impacts the city's revenue. We pay based on our revenue. So anything that causes trouble for the Yacht Club, in our opinion, causes trouble for the city. But that said, I think we have an open mind. I don't think we're, none of us, I think, although we have a certain position, I don't think we're hard and fast about something where I think we have an open mind, but we'd love to work with it and figure it out. Thank you very much. |
| 02:33:04.20 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 02:33:04.98 | Mayor Blachstein | Thanks. |
| 02:33:08.79 | Mayor Blachstein | Okay, so now we will hear from the Department of Public Works and Community Development. If you have anything you'd like to add in response to the epilence discussions or the public comment that you heard this evening. |
| 02:33:23.93 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. I just want to acknowledge everybody in the room. It's very nice to see everybody here have lots of comments. We've been working on this for many, many years, and I respect all of those, including the appellant, including those who have spoken so far. I give them a lot of kudos for. putting this thing together and giving their ideas on this so many thanks. I also want to thank David Parisi for being here this evening, our consultant from BKF couldn't make it for the design, but thank you, David, for being here. And again, thanks to council for, Moving this along. That's all I have to say for this evening. Thank you very much. |
| 02:34:01.03 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you very much. |
| 02:34:01.37 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. We have a follow-up. |
| 02:34:02.82 | Kevin McGowan | Okay. |
| 02:34:03.46 | Mayor Blachstein | I do have a question. |
| 02:34:03.94 | Councilmember Kelman | One second, Kevin. I do have a question for you. So on your 1128 analysis, you let us know that it was an aggregate, but then I believe you also said that the statement was not as to spaces, it was to total area. Do you have a square footage number for us that you are working off of? |
| 02:34:22.82 | Kevin McGowan | For which portion? |
| 02:34:24.78 | Councilmember Kelman | for how this doesn't violate 1128. |
| 02:34:27.56 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, I think we've got to go to that document and let's see if I can find it quickly. |
| 02:34:32.03 | Councilmember Kelman | And I'll just put a plug in. I know there was some requests for delineation of Vigna, which I think arguably is where the shrubs are today, but I'm interested in your square footage numbers for 1128. |
| 02:34:45.31 | Kevin McGowan | So go to attachment number 14 for those who might be following. And if we go back towards page one, two, three, four, five. Go back to page seven, we should have some square footages there and areas, not only for the parking lots, but for the adjacent streets. So for the parking lots, I have an existing area for parking lots one through four as 169,850 square feet. |
| 02:35:17.02 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:35:17.65 | Kevin McGowan | All right. And then for the street areas, and that's based off of the general plan, which you have a diagram there in your attachment, I have 23,660 square feet. Okay. So using those numbers together, we come down to looking at the percentages themselves. |
| 02:35:37.73 | Unknown | Right. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay. |
| 02:35:43.36 | Mayor Blachstein | The public hearing is now complete and testimony is closed. So we are going to bring it back up here for deliberation. I really want to, again, thank everyone who took the time to be here this evening and thank staff and the appellants for the many hours that you spent working on this project and the professional working group for all of the time that you gave. free of charge to our community to vision for a beautiful future for our downtown. So thank you very much. And then I would just like to get started by saying I'm going to go ahead and move to continue per the recommendations seen here. And I will allow everyone to comment away. And I will also comment. But in the interest of time and in what we've heard this evening, I'm just going to put that motion out there. I will second that motion. |
| 02:36:24.34 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Could I amend that motion to actually align with what the appellants asked for? |
| 02:36:29.50 | Mayor Blachstein | Yes, and I think we'll have discussion about what that looks like. |
| 02:36:33.01 | Vice Mayor | uh, |
| 02:36:33.70 | Mayor Blachstein | Yes, the four things that Michael Rex outlined in the appellate. |
| 02:36:36.60 | Vice Mayor | So is that the motion or is that? Thank you. |
| 02:36:39.29 | Mayor Blachstein | But I think someone should enunciate. |
| 02:36:40.98 | Jill Hoffman | See you. |
| 02:36:41.03 | Mayor Blachstein | So yeah, enunciate it. |
| 02:36:42.88 | Vice Mayor | The list I had was return this matter to the local professional group for continued design work and taking advantage of the Commodores. Offer willingness to engage with the Sausalito Yacht Club for a solution that satisfies them. Authorize $10,000 to SWA to be part of that design process. Direct staff to use, I'm sorry, bring it back on a date certain to the city council on December 19th. And then I had three just from additional ones. So I'll offer that. That's the list from... the applicant, direct the staff to use the already authorized cost estimator so that we have a cost estimate based on a professional analysis. And, uh, And, uh, enable this possibly to be done in phases so that it matches the budget availability. and use our already. hired, grant writer, to use this as a basis for applying for additional grants. for that area. |
| 02:37:49.27 | Jill Hoffman | I also heard get the city attorney opinion on the final plan. |
| 02:37:54.53 | Vice Mayor | and get the city attorney opinion. that this will comply with 1128. That would be the most. |
| 02:38:03.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:38:06.41 | Councilmember Hoffman | just one more opinion or one more thing. |
| 02:38:07.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:38:09.70 | Vice Mayor | One more thing on the motion. |
| 02:38:10.83 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yes, please. Yeah, sorry. Another minute. And Golden Gate Bridge District. Oh, great. Absolutely. Okay, great. |
| 02:38:14.16 | Mayor Blachstein | Oh, right. Absolutely. Thank you. |
| 02:38:16.98 | Jill Hoffman | I second that amended motion. |
| 02:38:19.31 | Mayor Blachstein | Does anyone have further amendments or need? I'm just really impressed by how much compromise has come forth from from both the commenters and the council this evening. So if we want to weigh in, I just want to be mindful of that. We were planning to finish at a specific time. We're a little bit past that time. So if you want to make comments, perhaps be brief. But if we can vote and all agree, then I would be thrilled to do that and move forward. |
| 02:38:38.73 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you, Mayor. I'm in favor of a continuance, and I do want to thank everybody again, and I do think this is an exciting opportunity to think about what we want Saucedo to stand for. And Michael, thank you for your flexibility in walking in with the intention of collaborating. That really, really helps. I just want to make clear, because we were concerned up here, that we as a council haven't really gotten to opine on this, and we have some differing opinions around that, but I feel that way still. And so I just want to make sure we're aligned around priorities. And I will say just for the record, my priorities are around circulation and public safety and environmental issues. And so whatever comes back to us, I hope we'll prioritize those. And that's where I think Capital Improvement dollars go to in this, in this town. Beautification is a wonderful, I think, byproduct of really good urban design and planning. But I am really focused on environmental issues, circulation and public safety. You know, I won't, I. |
| 02:38:39.18 | Mayor Blachstein | Go ahead. |
| 02:38:40.21 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 02:38:40.23 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 02:39:37.72 | Councilmember Kelman | I happen to be an expert in sea level rise. And I will tell you, the FEMA maps are not the same as the sea level rise projections. And someone here in the audience did a very good sea level rise map. Thank you, Kes. And I pulled it up, and that area is going to flood under all of the projections. And so we have to approach this. But here's the benefit. There's money for that, particularly because there's a state mandate, SB 272. As of 2024, communities must plan for sea level rise. So there is money to do this. Let's take advantage of that. But this has to be a coastal adaptation project. We have a consultant coming in to help us do vulnerability assessment planning that we got a million dollars from the state to do. So that has to be a part of this. I also, Michael, you mentioned doing some planning on VINIA. Please don't. Let's keep the project where the project is. I don't want anybody to say that then the council approved changes the Vena when we didn't because they were somehow included on a schematic. Let's just keep it clean. Let's stay focused on where we are today. Definitely work with a yacht club on the driveway issues. There's no reason to create for solving for public safety. Let's not create more hazards. I don't want to see an urban heat sink. That's what we're seeing right now on both of these plans. I wanna see a lot of trees, I wanna see a lot of foliage, and I don't wanna see a nod to a bioretention pond as a solution. it is not the right solution for that area down there. There's a lot of other things that need to happen. There's a significant amount of impermeable surface area being suggested to go there. That's just We're going to be in a real problem area. That's a historic pond, actually, historic retention pond. You're going to start to see it flood more and more. And then you may want to add an urban planner to your project group. We have wonderful architects. We have designers. We have landscape architects. But we need an urban planner also coming to the table to talk about the relationship to the general plan, the relationship to our long-term planning. If this moves in a direction of some type of master planning effort, we need the voice of an urban planner on that. I support the idea of phasing it. I think some of the 1128 issues are probably gonna come up as we see some additional features here, but I definitely also wanna see our staff, and I'm looking at Director McGowan, come back with some city budget and this idea of $550,000 or more needs to get weighed against other things on the capital improvement program. So thank you for your opportunity. Okay. |
| 02:41:56.44 | Jill Hoffman | I have nothing more to add to the motion, but I did have a couple of comments that I wanted to address, but I'm, unless anybody has anything to add to the motion I think we have eight items on the motion that I and I'm seconding. |
| 02:42:08.98 | Councilmember Hoffman | Sorry. I do have a clarification to the motion. And that is a request that when we say staff, that that also includes the public safety and police department, and not just a statement from them that they'll make whatever plan comes up work, but a national assessment based on their 10 years worth of successful now management of the bike and congestion pedestrian traffic down there. So whatever, whatever plan is being proposed, I would like to have their input on what they think is the best plan for safety and congestive management based on their experience in the past, like I said, 10 years. |
| 02:42:44.56 | Unknown | I guess vice mayor. |
| 02:42:46.17 | Vice Mayor | I have a comment, but Are we about to move to a vote? Thank you. |
| 02:42:49.59 | Jill Hoffman | No, we have a motion in a second, then we give comment, then we take the vote. |
| 02:42:53.80 | Vice Mayor | My comment would just be, I want to commend the Commodore Wheeler for being open-minded, willing to work with this and to find a solution that is satisfactory. I know that the Yacht Club, they pay the city more than $100,000 a year in rent. I would put that in the context in above tides is also a huge taxpayer to the city, the very same video that Vice Commodore skip sent of his concerns about getting out of the parking lot. Cass Green could have sent with issues in front of her building, we all are affected by things and what I want to commend the Commodore for is being willing to. to be open-minded to consider the bigger picture also always taking care of home base, but also all the other issues. And on that point, I would just say, I am overwhelmed by all the positive support. I know this has been going a long, a lot longer than I've ever been in Sausalito, but I'm really overwhelmed by everyone who's here today. I'm also cognizant of people that feel this is the wrong direction. And I would just encourage people, everyone to talk, seek out people that were opposed tonight and ask them really what, what the heart of their opposition is and see if there's any common ground and, and vice versa. Several people here spoke in opposition, uh, tonight to these plans. Would you consider doing what the Commodore did and reach out to someone who's in favor and try to better understand where they're coming from? At the end of the day, this is our home. And I think there's a real win-win here for everybody. We're all trying to make it a beautiful and better place for everybody. Thank you. |
| 02:44:32.51 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 02:44:32.53 | Councilmember Hoffman | Councilmember Hoffman, no comments? Nothing further to add. Great discussion and conversation tonight. So thanks to everybody. Councilmember Cox. |
| 02:44:39.50 | Mayor Blachstein | Thank you. |
| 02:44:39.75 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I agree. A great discussion. I learned a lot, even though I'm... looked at a lot and thought about a lot before I came in here. I want you to know that we are planning to address the procedural concerns that were raised by Stephen Woodside and others in terms of how the Planning Commission and the city interact on a city project. And I apologize to the 42 of you who had to actually file an appeal to get this back in front of us to get our opinion on our project. And so I want you to know that's not gonna happen again. |
| 02:45:23.85 | Jill Hoffman | I also apologize that our very industrious working group of architects and designers were not allowed, according to Jock Ullman, to... provide their feedback to the planning commission. I don't fully understand why that happened. I saw some of the interactions and I was embarrassed. And so, you know, this community is one that welcomes feedback from everybody, regardless of the opinion. The more people disagree with your initial opinion, the more you learn and the better outcome you ultimately have. And so I want you to know that we embrace process and we embrace hearing from every single person. And tonight is indicative of what happens when we actually listen to every single person. Thank you. Subscribe. |
| 02:46:17.73 | Mayor Blachstein | I really echo the comments of other members of the council this evening in stating that I am overwhelmed by the feedback that we received from our community on this issue. And one of the things that I was most impressed by is how many members of the public said things in their comments this evening or in written comments saying, I felt one way about this, but then I reflected and revisited all of the materials and my opinion has changed. And I think that that is the best form of public engagement in democracy. We should never come to these discussions with our mind made up. We should have an open mind. and be willing to talk about and hear from each other and work together. And I feel that this evening, the way the appellant presented the conversation by saying, let's move this together. I'm not going to shove this down your throat with what we want, but rather, this is a collaboration about the future of the vision of our downtown. And we really need to work together to listen to as many voices as we can to create the best possible vision. And I think how many of you are sitting in the room here tonight is a great testament to that. So thank you so much to our community members. I just want to give everyone a big round of applause for all of their engagement this evening, everyone who showed up. Enthusiastically, 100 plus letters of public comment, which is so critical. So thank you so much. And with that, we will go ahead and take a vote on the motion on the table. City Clerk, would you please call the roll? I guess we can also just say I, but this feels kind of like we should, let's |
| 02:47:34.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:34.71 | Walfred Solorzano | Bye. |
| 02:47:34.83 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:47:37.73 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. Council member Cox. Yes. Council member Hoffman. Yes. Council member Cohen. |
| 02:47:41.34 | Mayor Blachstein | Yes. Yes. |
| 02:47:42.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Sobieski? Yes. Mayor Blastham. |
| 02:47:45.11 | Mayor Blachstein | Yes. Okay. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. The jury is adjourned. The hearing is adjourned. Thank you. |
| 02:47:56.26 | Shelby Van Meter | Recording stopped. |
Adrian Brinton — In Favor: Supports appeal, noting parking utilization is low and revenue loss minimal; prioritizes beautification. ▶ 📄
Dan Johnson — Against: Opposes both plans, argues they violate Ordinance 1128 by using parkland for non-park purposes and exceeding parking loss limits. ▶ 📄
Sunil Raj — In Favor: Supports appeal, believes original plan is safer and more enjoyable, promoting economic activities like farmers markets. ▶ 📄
Rachel Hunter — In Favor: Supports appeal for safety, environmental benefits (trees), and beautification to attract community activities. ▶ 📄
Ken Fong — In Favor: Supports appeal, citing superior safety, environmental, and aesthetic aspects of original plan; references parking study for revenue solutions. ▶ 📄
Martha Loftus — In Favor: Supports appeal due to congestion and safety hazards; prefers modifications to original plan. ▶ 📄
Joel Carr — In Favor: Urges accepting appeal without continuance, trusting professional designers over engineers/planning commission. ▶ 📄
Scott Thornburg — In Favor: Supports appeal; offers EDAC help to develop business plan for offsetting costs/losses through events like farmers markets. ▶ 📄
Patty Bott — Against: Opposes plans blocking Yacht Club entrance; emphasizes safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and delivery trucks. ▶ 📄
Skip Speaks — Against: Opposes plans routing pedestrians/bikes in front of Yacht Club driveway, citing safety hazards from conflicts. ▶ 📄
Todd Wheeler — Against: Supports Planning Commission plan; opposes queuing in front of Yacht Club or on Spinnaker; open to compromise. ▶ 📄
Charles Melton — In Favor: Supports appeal; prioritizes public space over private parking, favors modifications for economic development. ▶ 📄
Mary Griffin — In Favor: Supports appeal; urges visionary approach and appreciation for professional volunteer designers. ▶ 📄
Tad Thompson — In Favor: Supports separated queuing as ferry driver; believes compromise needed but current plan problematic. ▶ 📄
Susan Rogier — In Favor: Supports appeal, references Jock Ullman's past work (Dunphy Park) as example of quality design. ▶ 📄
Cass Green — In Favor: Supports appeal; worries Planning Commission plan causes chaos on El Portal, notes business traffic concerns. ▶ 📄
Muriel Allman — In Favor: Supports appeal; recommends allowing design professionals to modify original plan addressing issues. ▶ 📄
Teresa Ancona — Against: Supports plan with least parking loss; emphasizes parking's importance for businesses and safety concerns. ▶ 📄
Kay Mitzel — Against: Supports Planning Commission plan; concerned about Yacht Club access and budget; criticizes meeting notification. ▶ 📄
Alice Merrill — Against: Supports Planning Commission plan; doubts plaza usage, worries about bicycle conflicts with events like farmers markets. ▶ 📄
Stephen Woodside — In Favor: Supports appeal on procedural grounds; believes council, not Planning Commission, should redesign projects. ▶ 📄
Shelby Van Meter — In Favor: Supports appeal; urges focus on long-term future, not small issues; confident in revenue recovery from parking study. ▶ 📄
Kieran Culligan — In Favor: Supports appeal; emphasizes climate action, prioritizing people/transit over cars for Sausalito's future. ▶ 📄
Carolyn Revell — In Favor: Supports appeal on behalf of Sausalito Beautiful; highlights benefits like larger plaza, safety, sustainability. ▶ 📄
Russ Proci — Against: Supports Planning Commission plan; believes it complies with ordinances and addresses Yacht Club queuing concerns. ▶ 📄
Jeff Shirash — Neutral: Suggests re-evaluating both plans to find a nexus; emphasizes parking importance for merchants, open to modifications. ▶ 📄
Babette McDougall — Against: Warns about MTC designating Sausalito as transit nexus, potentially leading to high-density housing mandates. ▶ 📄
Matthew Nathans — In Favor: Supports original plan as once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; believes Yacht Club access issues are solvable. ▶ 📄
Pat Zook — Against: Opposes bioretention facility in Gabrielson Park, argues it violates park use and disrupts existing screening. ▶ 📄
Carolyn Gallagher — Against: Criticizes process and notification; believes project violates Ordinance 1128 and must address sea level rise (SB 272). ▶ 📄
Sharna Brockett — In Favor: Supports appeal for once-in-a-lifetime funding opportunity; prioritizes people over parking, notes climate change concerns. ▶ 📄