| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:54.62 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm. This is the City of Sausalito City Council meeting. This meeting is being broadcast live on cable TV channel 27. It's also live on the city's website and also on Zoom. |
| 00:01:09.93 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Sidi. Thank you city clerk will begin this meeting on special meeting on January the 22nd by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. |
| 00:01:21.15 | Stuart Rabinowich | Thank you. |
| 00:01:21.18 | Unknown | to the black All right. Thank you. |
| 00:01:23.19 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:01:23.60 | Stuart Rabinowich | Thank you. |
| 00:01:25.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:26.58 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:01:27.61 | Unknown | one. Thank you. |
| 00:01:29.03 | Joan Cox | you Indivisible with liberty and justice. |
| 00:01:31.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:33.20 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. City Clerk, would you kindly call the roll? |
| 00:01:44.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:01:46.82 | Joan Cox | here. |
| 00:01:48.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, sorry. Sorry, I went back to 2024. 2023. I got demoted. So sorry. Councilmember Blaustein. |
| 00:01:52.66 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:01:52.81 | Melissa Blaustein | You're not promoting it. |
| 00:01:53.58 | Joan Cox | It's not. |
| 00:01:57.21 | Melissa Blaustein | here. |
| 00:01:59.24 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman? you |
| 00:02:02.02 | Melissa Blaustein | Here. |
| 00:02:02.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Kelman, Vice Mayor Cox. |
| 00:02:06.59 | Vicki Nichols | you |
| 00:02:06.63 | Walfred Solorzano | Here. And Mary Sobieski. Here. |
| 00:02:07.88 | Steven Woodside | here. Thank you very much. And we now move on to approve the agenda. Can I have a motion to group the agenda? |
| 00:02:12.67 | Walfred Solorzano | So moved. |
| 00:02:15.50 | Steven Woodside | I think we need to do a roll call vote since Council Member Blasin is calling in remote. |
| 00:02:23.40 | Melissa Blaustein | City clerk? |
| 00:02:24.90 | Walfred Solorzano | down somewhere we're lost in |
| 00:02:26.54 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:02:27.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoppen. |
| 00:02:30.19 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes. |
| 00:02:30.83 | Walfred Solorzano | That's when we're coming. |
| 00:02:32.04 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:02:32.06 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. you |
| 00:02:32.68 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mary Cox. |
| 00:02:33.61 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 00:02:34.52 | Walfred Solorzano | Inmersal USB. |
| 00:02:35.30 | Steven Woodside | Yes, moving on to our first business item receive and file the paramedic insurance presentation and provide direction to city staff regarding city interest we turn this item over to city managers of product. |
| 00:02:46.16 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, members of the public, and our team. First, let me say thank you for having this special meeting and allowing us to bring forward some items that are pretty important to the organization and certainly to the community. Insurance being one of them. Getting insurance, keeping insurance, fundamental to a city. Absolutely looking at ways to close insurance gaps, looking at innovative approaches to insurance as a model, using data to drive some approaches for insurance. And so, yes, insurance is important. And why is it important to Sausalito? It's very important to Sausalito for a number of reasons. One, you know, topography. Two, you know, risk of extreme rainfall, climate change. And there have been some landslides in Sausalito. So these things have all created an interest on our end that was driven by Councilmember Kellman. I wanna thank her for bringing this to staff's attention, for talking to us about how this could benefit our community, potentially our organization. and bringing Guy Carpenter to are world. So the things that they're going to talk about tonight and the team from Guy Carbometer is on the phone and they are led by Bridget who will introduce her team. They're calling in from New York City so there's a little bit of time difference so we thank you for considering their schedules as well. They're going to talk about community-based catastrophic insurance, parametrics insurance, some of the things they believe are applicable to Sausalito and so I would like to at this time turn it over to Bridget where she can introduce her team and provide a presentation for the council and the community and then questions and answer and direction. Thank you. |
| 00:04:34.22 | Bridget Carl | Thank you, Councilman Varzapatas. And good evening, Mayor Sobievsky and council members. Pleasure to be joining you here today. Um, can make sure everybody can hear me okay. And I want to make sure I have the, if you have the presentation materials in the room or if I should be sharing virtually, via Zoom. |
| 00:04:55.68 | Walfred Solorzano | You can share your screen via Zoom. |
| 00:04:57.72 | Bridget Carl | Okay. Excellent. Well, nice to be with you this evening. Again, thank you for inviting me to join this special city council meeting. My name is Bridget Carl. I'm a senior vice president on Guy Carpenters. public sector team based in New York. Guy Carpenter is one of the world's largest reinsurance brokerage firms. We are part of the parent company of Marsh McLennan which, is a larger professional services firm. And we work closely with our sister companies, namely Marsh, the world's largest insurance brokerage firm. Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm as well as Mercer, more of an HR consulting firm. And I'm joined here this evening by phone by my colleague, Joseph Becker, if and I'll let Joe introduce himself as well. I know he's been traveling on the phone, so I wanna make sure Joe's audio works as well, I see. |
| 00:06:04.67 | Bridget Carl | Maybe not. He is a joke. |
| 00:06:07.57 | Joseph Becker | Yes, hello, and sorry. Thank you, council members. My name is Joseph Becker. I'm a senior vice president in our public sector, Guy Carpenter's public sector division. I am a hydrologist by trade and have worked extensively in the areas of flood risk management, as well as catastrophe management more broadly in terms of helping communities understand, quantify and ultimately transfer their risks, not only for the homes within the individual communities, but also for the people that live within those communities. Thank you, Bridget. |
| 00:06:45.93 | Bridget Carl | So. I know Joe's expertise in hydrology and the concerns that South Paleto has been having recently with flooding. I certainly wanted to have him on the line as well for any questions that come up. And I might be of interest to know, our team works with government at the sovereign state and municipal level. around the world, we're also open work closely with FEMA and we place the reinsurance for the National Flood Insurance Program in the U.S. as well as their brothers. Sovereign and state and local flood and catastrophic risk programs around the world. I will pull up my screen now. and |
| 00:07:41.14 | Bridget Carl | Can you see this? |
| 00:07:49.38 | Bridget Carl | Is this coming through okay? |
| 00:07:57.69 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. |
| 00:07:57.71 | Walfred Solorzano | can hear. Yeah, we can see it. |
| 00:08:01.80 | Bridget Carl | Okay, thank you for confirming. The volume went quite low there. So yes, as Mr. Zapata outlined, we've been working in conversations, exploring innovative solutions with Councilmember Kellman, and the broader team here for a number of months. learning more about the concerns that the city of Sausalito has related to community flood resilience. especially following some recent major flooding events and exploring innovative solutions that might be available to support the city to not only for their own financial Um, flexibility and resilience post major extreme weather events, but also for the broader community at large. So, I'll be talking a little bit tonight about, firstly, the broader landscape that we're seeing in it. some of these quotations and statistics you can see on this slide will be a surprise to anyone here in the room but I think it's important to outline that, you know, the picture that we're seeing from, and, and that we're having conversations with cities and states all around the United States are grappling with these issues that You see here, you know, millions of homes are underinsured against natural disasters. there's a large insurance protection gap that is uh, making it increasingly difficult for communities to recover quickly after disasters. without, continued reliance on private insurance and FEMA disaster recovery efforts. So. Despite the research showing that insurance is a vital support of adequate and available funds after recovery, there is an increasingly, there is a large and growing protection gap. which we call the difference between the amount of Um, economic impact a major disaster can have on a community and the amount that they are able to recover from insurance, that that gap between those two figures is growing over time. And that is, been the case for local governments as well as individuals you see here calling out that only about 4% of households in the United States have have flood insurance coverage. And so, as a result of these of factors. Communities are not receiving disaster coverage as quickly and not able to recover as, as, as quickly as they could have if they did. have greater insurance coverage rate. And on this next slide, you know, kind of outlines, well, why is that part of the problem? why our insurance rates sometimes going down. You know, you see across the state of California, some insurance companies pulling out of the state, there might be a There might be insurance coverage available, but it's not affordable for individuals. There are also poor understanding of risk exposure, very few people and communities might think the exposure Um, they don't realize the exposure is as large as it is. and certain biases in decision making. yet. Yet the research is really demonstrating that when the lack of insurance coverage is harming the whole society from you know, individual businesses particularly small businesses really struggle with the recovery, which |
| 00:11:41.44 | Joseph Becker | early |
| 00:11:45.27 | Bridget Carl | which can harm the broader community and the ability for economic viability of the community. This is. you know, impacting government and, and, you know, and more broadly economies, driving up short-term expenses, at the same time that you might see a reduction in revenue. communities and governments are being squeezed kind of at both ends of the spectrum when they see an increase in cost, they may also be seeing a reduction in tax revenue coming into a community following an extreme weather event or natural disaster. So, so one of the, that's, you know, kind of outlines a little bit of the, the landscape and the, the issues and concerns that, um, Sausalito might be seeing on a regular basis, certainly across California, other communities and across the United States. So it's It is, It is not to single out any one community, but what we've been, as we talk with communities, |
| 00:12:46.33 | Joseph Becker | But... |
| 00:12:49.78 | Bridget Carl | solutions that public sector entities, public entities are getting a lot of benefits from is parametric insurance. And this is different than your standard indemnity type of insurance because So, rather than requiring a lengthy claims assessment process after you have an event and you might call up your insurance company and there needs to be a lengthy claims assessment process to determine the loss and what that payout should be. Parametric programs remove all of that because they Um, you agree upon the payout trigger upfront. and the payout is made based on the parameters of the event itself. So that could be wind speed, that could be, using the Richter scale, if you're, it's an earthquake parametric coverage, or it could be rainfall gauges on the ground or using satellite data to determine, okay, these are the types parameters of the event we want to see a payout for. And. because of the nature of parametric that enables to the policy holders. to receive a payout. incredibly quickly. It can be made in a matter of days. because again, you're removing that loss adjustment process. on. They're also designed to really maximize transparency. All of the payout mechanisms are Um, predetermined up front before the coverage is in place, and then they're often using third-party data that is publicly available, like from NOAA, NASA, or USGS. And lastly, the other major benefit of parametric inference programs to call out here is that they're designed for maximum flexibility. So. policyholders can receive that, that, that funding really quickly and then use it for whatever they deem necessary. That could be emergency response. if you know, I've heard a lot of cities be concerned about, okay, we need to really increased staffing and pay overtime that we weren't anticipating for, we weren't budgeting for. could be used to fill budgetary gaps. and or help the community more broadly. Thank you. Joe and I work with the city of New York to design a parametric insurance coverage that is specifically aimed to Um, payout quickly to support low income and vulnerable community members. So they really are um, that flexible and there's not really a single use case. These types of solutions are being used and for many different purposes. private sector entities, governments, community organizations are using them for what they They deem necessary. Um, This is this outlines in this quite a detailed slide, but just to give you an idea of what more make it more concrete. |
| 00:16:00.88 | Joseph Becker | make it |
| 00:16:02.56 | Bridget Carl | We have been working jointly with the city of Sausalito as well as The reinsurance firm Swiss3, one of the world's largest reinsurance firms Um, on looking into what could a excessive precipitation or excessive rainfall, parametric insurance coverage. coverage look like for the city of Sausalito. I think it's important to note that this is certainly illustrative, And this is really meant for more conversation purposes so folks can have a better understanding of what it could look like. But what we've proposed here and are outlined here is using CHIRPS data, which is a hybrid satellite and station data that's been around since the 80s. to measure and monitor the rainfall events, major rainfall events that happen in Sausalito. And so um, you could design a parametric cover that looks at that, those precipitation figures, and takes a two-day rolling thumb and figures out, okay, what is the maximum over those two days for any major rain events. And you set the level of millimeter, the amount of rainfall as the trigger point. So you can see here in the, in the chart in the middle of the slide that you know, this is one option again, for, hypothetical sake, let's say the city of Sausalito wanted to have a $10 million of parametric Uh, excess rainfall insurance policy, and they might want to set that two-day precipitation trigger at 115 millimeters moderate excess of rainfall events. And you see here, we've outlined two potential payout options, option one and option two. Option one. Um, would start paying at 115 millimeters of rainfall. again here for conversation purposes, that would, that would begin the trigger. And then as the amount of rainfall increases from 115 millimeters up towards 185 millimeters, the amount of money the city or policyholder would receive would increase along that index. And so, These types of programs are fully customizable and we, Joe and I work with clients. across the country who are looking at these types of solutions and each one is is really customized for their fit. So again, this is, you know, looking at some of the historic events that have really negatively impacted Sausalito, this was a starting point to showcase what it could look like. So on the, this next slide here, and say, okay, we looked back and we said, well, what would have triggered, let's say this policy had been in place since the CHIRPS data has been available, in the early 80s, And we looked and we said, okay, well, when would Sausalito have received a payout using this data? And you can see here these top five events, 1982, Um, Much more recent event, December 2000, 22. that would have triggered a $5 million payout if you had gone with option A, $4.5 million. done with option B. this 1995 event. 2008 and 2002. And you see here on this graph on the bottom that this is kind of the monitoring of the rainfall values that chirps shows and then once it hits what we call the attachment point, that would begin to trigger a payout to the city and kind of as the severity of the event increases the amount of the payout would increase as well. So. I might, Pause here, I know Council Member Zapata, you said you know, likely be a portion of the today's discussion for questions and comments as well. to, you know, go into too much detail here without pausing and seeing if if folks have any immediate questions or perhaps council member Kelman from all our conversations you may have some thoughts to add as I know you've been a real champion of these types of innovative solutions as well. |
| 00:20:41.36 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much for the thorough presentation. I see Vice Mayor Cox is raising her hand to ask some questions. |
| 00:20:48.09 | Joan Cox | Thank you for your thorough presentation. I noted that you identified some cost savings that could be achieved through the existence of this insurance, saving us administrative overhead as part of your presentation, I wonder if you're aware that we plan to hire a full time risk manager and so given that we already intend to hire a full-time risk manager, Um, a position we don't currently enjoy. I, wanted to be sure you were aware of that because I believe that reduces the of the the need to rely on parametric insurance for some of those administrative functions since we'll have someone on staff full time to do such things as administer grant funding, you know, address immediate needs. I still see the value added for parametric, but I'm not sure there's the cost savings that you mentioned because we already have made a commitment, I think, at least philosophically, to hire a risk manager. So I wanted to be sure you were aware of that in your analysis of our needs and what it would cost us. |
| 00:22:03.77 | Bridget Carl | Yeah. No, no, I thank you for the update. I wasn't aware of that, but I would say that cities and County states that do have risk managers, we would often work closely with that type of person, a person in that position to design a coverage that would be put in place. and parametric insurance coverages are complimentary to a city's traditional indemnity program not a replacement for And so, Overall, you could look at the, you know, and we help advise, clients who want to make sure that their overall costs stay within a certain range. Um, And so you could alter the scales. And so you're spending perhaps less on the indemnity more to allow for the additional flexibility and benefits that come with a parametric policy. But no, I would not say that it's overall, it's a cost savings, it's an additional product or tool that governments are using to give them greater financial flexibility in the immediate aftermath of a disaster or an extreme weather event. but it's not meant to, um, It's the type of that a risk manager has. might decide to put in place, but it |
| 00:23:28.03 | Joan Cox | in. |
| 00:23:29.52 | Bridget Carl | it wouldn't replace them. |
| 00:23:29.73 | Joan Cox | It wouldn't. Understood, and thank you for that. And then I don't know if you're aware, but the city is undertaking, in view of its loss history ratio, the city is already undertaking various steps to reduce its risk. when facing various challenges, including environmental challenges, floods, et cetera. And so I wondered if your program has flexibility to adjust the metric by which you weigh our risk. So to the extent that we are reducing risk, could we seek reduced risk? you know, premium and could a favorable loss history ratio over time also enable us to reduce our premium for your program. |
| 00:24:27.30 | Bridget Carl | Yeah. And thank you, Vice Mayor. I'm really glad you brought that up because I kind of paused the presentation at the for describing what parametric insurance is But one of the use cases of parametric insurance policies are innovative programs known as community-based catastrophe insurance programs. kind of what we're working with the city of New York on has been implemented last year. and, The benefit of doing that would enable you to Take- be taking more of a holistic approach to risk and resilience and saying, We want to link risk mitigation and risk reduction with the risk transfer with the parametric insurance policy. The community-based cat insurance programs aims to do exactly what you just outlined which is incentivizing communities to reduce their risk and then therefore, getting a price benefit for that. The, um, the parametric insurance or insurance in general gives you a lot of transparency. It puts a price tag on the wrist. And so because of that, that insurance places on risk you can link the two and make sure you can design these programs in a way that ensures you get some sort of, benefit down the road as the risk goes down as well. Thank you. Does that answer your question? Yes. |
| 00:25:59.16 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you, and thank you, Mayor. |
| 00:26:00.24 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Blaustein. |
| 00:26:03.04 | Melissa Blaustein | Hi, Bridget. Nice to see you. Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate your thorough presentation. And I think that you rightfully identified here that our biggest risk or what we've seen to be most susceptible to from a climate standpoint immediately is the changing nature of storms. But if you look back, so I appreciate it, I'm familiar with CHIRP's data for assessments of what our vulnerabilities are, And I'm trying to think about our critical infrastructure and the foresight for what might happen there in the event of a storm. And if you look at slide, I think seven or eight, and you look back at what would have targeted option A and option B, it looks like we had five potential storm events in the last 40 years, but the incidences of payouts vary from 1.5 million to 10 million. I just I'm kind of looking for What is the probability of occurrence of the events of this magnitude? Like, can we use chirp data? to determine going forward, the probability over the next hundred years of the increase in these events, because of, And a look at it right now implies that it's not much changed. Although we would need to prepare, as you noted in your presentation, and thank you for assessing and reviewing Sausalito's history so well. The landslide event, which was our most catastrophic from a budget standpoint in the last few decades would not have targeted this parametric type of insurance. So what kind of steps are you taking to assess the future probability when you're coming up with these sorts of options for us? |
| 00:27:31.96 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. |
| 00:27:31.99 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:27:32.03 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. That's an excellent question. Yeah, on this slide, we did highlight this here, the largest event, a winter storm in 1982. as well as the oh no sorry that one that one sorry would have paid out this 2019 event that you referenced in proceeding the motivating landslides would not have triggered. That's exactly right. And again, in this illustrative proposal here, Um, The designing and structuring and implementation of a parametric policy is often a fairly lengthy back and forth with clients. um, We need, you need to make sure you get it right for the specific needs of the client and the specific geography and types of events that you're looking to cover. though. Well, this We've outlined here the TIRP data for you for discussion purposes so people can have an understanding this would not be the the, you know, if you guys wanted to go ahead tomorrow and say, we want this in place, we would take a step back and say, we wanna make sure we're designing something using the right data source to make sure we have a policy that triggers when Sausalito needs it, looking backwards at those historical events and seeing how best we can capture the 2019 event. Um, Jo may want to jump in and say more about the nature of the CHIRPS data and why it didn't best capture that 2019 event. It actually, we did look back and it doesn't show it as a large rainfall event and there, you know, I think there were other reasons why those landslides occurred. Um, |
| 00:29:12.68 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:29:13.49 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. |
| 00:29:13.51 | Melissa Blaustein | Sorry. |
| 00:29:13.80 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:29:14.31 | Melissa Blaustein | I was just going to say, I mean, I think the clear reason, right, is CHIRPS data is based on inches of rainfall. And although there was a lot of rain, it wasn't necessarily the amount of rainfall that triggered the landslide, but rather the lack of reinforcements of the landslides over time. I mean, there's a number of reasons we can go into, but I'm concerned because that's a huge issue that we face in a number of different vulnerability areas. |
| 00:29:27.89 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:29:27.97 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. |
| 00:29:34.27 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm really thrilled that it's an iterative process, so I imagine And I think you're answering the question yourself, Bridget, but if we wanted to go forward and we direct the city manager to consider or understand better parametrics, we could say, especially, for instance, we had a landslide task force that put together a group of recommendations. Would you be able to take those into consideration in iterating whatever our parametric insurance policy looked like? |
| 00:29:58.11 | Bridget Carl | Yes, exactly. And we would work, you know, Guy Carpenter is the broker and advisor to clients. We would work closely with partners like Swiss3 and others to make sure that we're designing a coverage that makes the most sense. And so very well, it might be a case where we say, you know what, Chirps is not the best fit for this type of coverage. And we would look at satellite and radar providers of flood imagery that, you know, there's a company, the flood parametric policy I referenced in New York City |
| 00:30:23.09 | Brandon Phipps | there's a much. |
| 00:30:28.23 | Bridget Carl | ISAI, which is a satellite and radar data company that takes high-resolution images and sees if there's flooding on the ground or not. There's also river gauges, rain gauges. There's lots of options when it comes to flood parametrics. I think flooding is one of the more difficult perils compared to designing a hurricane or earthquake parametric. And so Yes, there would be an iterative process to make sure that you get it right to not only consider Those major historical events are accounted for, but the concerns going forward as well. |
| 00:31:01.68 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, because I know, for example, like Miami was looking at their potential rainfall as a result or onset of climate change, and they did something like within two hours, it was this much rainfall, and that might be more. of an example for as opposed to over two days. So, but that's great that I just wanted to, check on that and make sure. And then I would love to, |
| 00:31:17.90 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:31:19.57 | Melissa Blaustein | figure out how going forward. we could have a 20, 30, 40, 100 year projection using the CHIRPS data so that we can make those decisions and have an exceedance probability when we're deciding the cost for the insurance. But thank you so much. Nice to see you, Bridget. I'm glad this is on our agenda. Finally, thanks, Councilmember Kelman, for. bringing it forward. |
| 00:31:38.03 | Bridget Carl | Yeah. |
| 00:31:38.05 | Melissa Blaustein | I have no other. |
| 00:31:38.50 | Bridget Carl | to you as well. And so, Joe, you look like you came off mute. Did you want to add anything on the data sources? |
| 00:31:45.72 | Joseph Becker | The only thing I would like to add is that as we go through that iterative process, Part of that process is to understand the historical frequencies of storms that have happened. and understand how they may change in the future, both through trend analysis, but also through climate simulation models. So as we might see a particular exceedance probability for an amount of rainfall given the 40 years or so of history from the CHIRPS data. we might project that forward based on what's happened in those 40 years and say, what might a five year, 10 year, 30 year projection look like. I think it's also important to remember that as we discuss insurance, we're generally talking about much shorter terms for a contract. So generally, parametric insurance contracts run between one year and five years at the max. So to understand the impact of climate change, you really have to condense it to just what's going to happen in those next five years when we're thinking about what the overall cost should be. It's a recognition that there will be some impact based on the climate change that we've observed so far and what's predicted in the future. But ultimately, it's not that. Uh, a 2100 scenario that we might often reference for planning scenarios, long-term planning scenarios. I just want to draw that distinction and highlight that part of that iterative process is to go through that thorough analysis of the impact of climate change. |
| 00:33:27.09 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Councilmember Kalman has some questions. |
| 00:33:28.98 | Jill Hoffman | Right. Hey, Bridget, nice to see you. Hi, Joe. Good to hear your voice. Okay, great, really great questions from my colleagues. I'll try not to duplicate, but let's talk a little bit more maybe from Joe about sources of data. So the County of Marin maintains the onerain.com website, that's the rainfall data. Our Director of Public Works is in the room. My understanding is that South Florida doesn't actually have a rainfall sensor, or if we had one used to be here at the library and it's gone. Would it make sense to identify types of data collection within the city to be more specific? And I'm talking everything from sensors that could be installed and storm drains to rainfall data and sensors throughout town so that we're not relying on chirps and have something that is more specific and also maybe lends itself to you know the difference between a soil saturation event versus a drain overflow is that a possibility. |
| 00:34:35.27 | Joseph Becker | Thank you, Councillor Kelley. I think that's a fantastic item to highlight. Ultimately, in the presentation, we presented a scenario where we used precipitation as as an example of how we might structure a parametric policy, Ultimately, it comes down to the data on the field and really in the individual community is how we would prefer to ultimately structure a policy. The more information, the more granular that information, and the more relevant to the to the peril that is causing, that we most want to address. is how we would ultimately prefer to structure it. So whether that be a Uh, a sensor in particular drains throughout the community. that would provide the ability to determine Uh, whether particular locations were impacted. An important item to highlight is for us, and for the reinsurance community more broadly, to understand the frequency that particular events may occur. there needs to be some history associated with those individual sensors. So, We can go out and we can put sensors in specific storm drains throughout the community of Sausalito but ultimately without understanding what has happened in the past. ultimately projecting what will happen in the future. understanding the likelihood that specific events would happen and therefore the cost of risk transfer would be quite difficult. We would still need to tie it to a known data source that has a relatively um, known history as well to be able to determine that frequency. Having said that, the more granular and the more specific information that can be fed into this process. And again, this is an iterative process. the closer the, uh, policy can be to the specific need. of the community. |
| 00:36:45.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:36:45.37 | Jill Hoffman | So- |
| 00:36:45.37 | Joseph Becker | So just thank you. |
| 00:36:49.95 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, thanks, Joe. So I'm glad Council Member Blasin asked about the 2019 land side. That's what started this conversation for us. And then we had those storms back in March where because of the lack of flood insurance for most people, unless you specifically have it in the state of California, folks who had water intrusion or some type of flood or water damage weren't covered, right? And so I guess talk a little bit about... when we looked at this, that 2019 event was not covered. So instead we talked about sort of compounding factors, right? Like soil type grade, I think Vice Mayor mentioned that we have an landslide task force, so we have an engineering study that's forthcoming. Could data like that be utilized to more specifically address some of the risk so that we might say on an average gradient over 20% with this type of soil, if it experiences rainfall over two days that exceeds X, then the payout happens. Can we be that specific? |
| 00:37:51.96 | Joseph Becker | to the extent that we can, I'm not sure. understand a specific locality and measure, Um, the particular data that we're interested in, in those specific localities, We can be that specific. The limitation that we occasionally run into is we may have a good understanding of the soil matrix and the soil mechanics at a particular location but the precipitation. Um, is at a coarser resolution. so the CHIRPS precipitation may be a coarser resolution than what we might want to work with. We may want to work with a specific a rain gauge that could be nearby the city of Sausalito. That is part of the process of understanding what is the best way to reflect the policy or what is the best way to reflect the actual risk within the community, in the policy language that we're trying to work with. So it can be as specific as we make it, as long as we have some data to support those specifics. |
| 00:39:01.07 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, and so then the data, we were talking about landslides right now, but it could be as to flooding as well, right? And so we would want to choose what hazard we were going to cover under the policy, right? As opposed to doing some of the compounded policies. |
| 00:39:17.38 | Joseph Becker | That would make the most sense. Correct. |
| 00:39:20.86 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. And so I don't know. I have two more questions and we can wait because you have more in your presentation. But I think you're going to want to talk about the administration, right? Having something that helps our citizens and allocates resources to individual residents versus something that is designed to protect city infrastructure would be my first question. And then my second question would be around pricing and any opportunities you may see on the horizon for a pilot with the Department of Insurance to get them to pay for it. Mm-hmm. the softball. |
| 00:39:53.56 | Bridget Carl | He's softball. I'm not. not sure what to take first. Maybe, maybe I'll start with that. It's, uh, I didn't go into the level of detail a positive thing. what parametric insurance is and how it could look for the city of South Pluto, but, but yes, the, One of the applications or use cases of Parametric is the community-based cat insurance program. uh, which I started to highlight and, You know, I think what you're getting at council member Kelman is, I know how could they use it? And so, What this is, is it's really a framework. It's not an off the shelf product. It's a framework to help, um, communities design innovative mechanisms to increase insurance coverage. And so you can see here on the right, it says it could be arranged by Local government, like the city of South Lido, could be quasi-governmental, it could be a non-profit organization. The policyholder in New York is actually a non-profit called the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, It could be a I'm not sure. a coalition of, you know, |
| 00:41:03.34 | Unknown | you |
| 00:41:03.76 | Bridget Carl | public-private partnership between several types of entities that come together and wanna have this policy. Thank you. It really has a framework to be designed to fit the specific needs of a community. Um, And to your point, you know, The payout could be used to directly support individuals, several cities and counties that we're talking to are interested, they know they have these more vulnerable populations and may want to design mechanisms that ensure. those individuals and households have access really to funding really quickly after a disaster, especially because of the Thank you. really lengthy process that is FEMA's IA program. That's often what people and that can take a lot of time and we have to do putting people through a really cumbersome process to get access to. Um, And so this aims to simplify that and get people, you know, access, to funding really quickly after disaster to get back on their feet. Again, it's not a replacement for their homeowner's insurance policy, but it's a compliment or a supplement in the absence of those types of. Um, coverages. And then, And then CBCI also could be used more at the community level. And so rather than, you know, if it, if soft Lido or our clients want to use them more for contingent disaster liabilities, the budgetary gaps, those types of things, that they can be using them for that as well. you know, I've wanted to highlight these kind of broad buckets of benefits that we see here. It's the overall community resilience. How can we get small businesses, local government and individuals back on their feet and running much faster, reduce negative harm to GDP. That's number one. Number two could be to provide accessible and affordable coverage in the absence of it so we know Um, Not very many people have blood insurance to begin with. Some people might want it, but not be able to afford it. And so this aims to get at that issue. Enabling risk reduction is the third bucket of benefits. you know, we talked about this a little, earlier, you can, by linking the risk mitigation efforts with the risk transfer, you're kind of, designing something that enables a premium discount to capture for those those mitigation efforts. and supports, you know, has a robust you know, just analytics process to it. So, so folks are, you know, risk education and more people are aware of their risk and therefore motivated to reduce it and the community kind of can come together around a single peril. Um, And lastly, here is bolstering bond ratings. So we've had conversations with Um, S&P, for example, on how would they consider these types of programs? You know, we've talked with cities, on the East Coast who have been told, okay, you have a AAA rating bond rating right now, but with climate change, you're going to become increasingly exposed to flooding and the impacts of storm surge and Um, your bond rating could be at risk for these types of things. And so these CBCI is one type solution that these rating agencies, again, it's not a specific line item in their rating, but It's something they look favorably on and we, are aiming to work with clients to help either improve their bond rating or retain what they already have as the impacts of climate change So, worsen the impacts that are being felt. |
| 00:45:03.49 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 00:45:03.69 | Bridget Carl | And. Oh. |
| 00:45:06.49 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:45:06.59 | Bridget Carl | I was just going to answer the second question on pricing. Um, pyrometric policies are And again, because of that maximum amount of flexibility, it really depends on the trigger points. how frequent of a payout you're anticipated to get. So there are quite flexible. I've seen them anywhere for know, half a percent of the total limit to upwards to closer to 15, 16% of the total limit. So there really is a very wide range depending on the needs. Um, And yes, the funding for these types of programs |
| 00:45:43.28 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:45:43.89 | Bridget Carl | We're in conversations with private philanthropies as well as So, federal and state governments who may see an interest and benefit in providing some premium funding for these innovative coverages to become piloted because they are new and there's not lots of examples. That being said that, you know, You guys probably know better than I do that there's often comes with a lengthy grant application process and that can be there's challenges associated with that process as well. |
| 00:46:15.78 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Did you have any other questions? Council member Hoffman, any questions? I have just one question for you. In your experience in other municipalities, when there are payout events, when there are, events that do not cause damage, that trigger a payout. What do the municipalities do with the money? Do they put it into a self-insurance pool? Do they spend it on a new pool? What do they do with it? |
| 00:46:38.68 | Bridget Carl | So I have never seen that happen. because they are often used for more catastrophic type events. So that what you're referring to is basis risk where you can have a damaging event that the payout is not triggered, We don't want to see those happen. On the flip side, what you outlined, you know, you have a triggering event, but there is no on the ground damage. We don't wanna see that happen either. And so that iterative process that we talked about aims to reduce that basis risk as much as possible And also it's important to note that chiropractic insurance in order for it to be accounted for as insurance. it often has a statement where you need to demonstrate a proof of law. |
| 00:47:26.91 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so it is, even though it's parametric, it's still tied to a damaged event. You can't get a payout. |
| 00:47:27.22 | Bridget Carl | So it is. |
| 00:47:32.61 | Steven Woodside | and not have damage even in the event of a parametric triggering |
| 00:47:36.36 | Bridget Carl | But damage could be financial impact, we have a budgetary gap. flexible definition. but there are there often is in the contract, there's a statement that says the city or client must demonstrate a proof of loss and it can be, simply an affidavit that signs that says, yes, we sustained economic damages in excess of the payout that we received. |
| 00:48:03.41 | Steven Woodside | Good in those. |
| 00:48:03.85 | Bridget Carl | So that's what makes it legally insurance. |
| 00:48:06.65 | Steven Woodside | Got it. But in those events, do the insurance companies that have, of course, at that moment, an interest in not paying, would they challenge a self-certification of, say, for example, financial loss from decreased tourism that is amorphous and potentially... hard to pinpoint with the insurance companies being incentivized to disallow a claim of financial loss for loss of business, let's say, which I saw as one of the criteria. |
| 00:48:33.28 | Bridget Carl | Yeah. I think that that's a fair concern and something you know, good. good point to raise. Um, I have not seen that been been the case, um, you know, these products are fairly new, but any insurance company would, I think, know, There. they're motivated as well to, they don't want the negative perception and risk associated with trying to challenge something like that. So I haven't seen, that happened in the, or heard of that happening in the decade or so that I've been working on parametrics. policies. Um, you know, there are, barriers in place to protect against that kind of situation happening. in the contract process where you align on those things ahead of time. AND I THINK THAT'S A LOT OF Again, they're really parametric policies are really not used for minor events. They're more used for extreme or catastrophic type events with increased severity. So I think it's very unlikely that you would have it trigger, but no economic damage associated with it. |
| 00:49:47.85 | Steven Woodside | All right. Thank you very much. Seeing no other questions from the dais, we will now open it up to public comment. City Clerk, could you please give guidance on how to make public comment? |
| 00:49:58.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Members of the public that want to comment, you can fill out a speaker slip over by the table. If you're on Zoom, you can use the raise hand function and you and we will we'll a screen will pop up. It'll say to unmute yourself and then you can speak. So do we have any speakers in house? Seeing none, we have Vicki Nichols. |
| 00:50:22.55 | Vicki Nichols | Hi there. Thank you, Mayor Sobieski. And thank you, Bridget. That last slide answered some of my Questions that were whirling around before you got to that. I'm still a little confused. The mayor's last question, if the. The event triggers the payout. uh, would then the is this a policy that augments what the city may be liable for in terms of city residents claims against the city. or Is it just something that we might want to offer them as a complimentary thing in one of your slides, like a pool or something. And you don't need to answer because clearly there's a lot of decisions to be made it sounds like, to really customize this. And lastly, yesterday, I believe I read about FEMA, who there's still several council members on the dais that still have heartburn from our last FEMA claims on that landslide. But there is a process underway to speed up and consolidate the applications to allow more money for those that have delinquent policies et cetera, et cetera. So it seems that that may be part of this analysis when we get farther down the road. But it sounded interesting, but it's not in place and who knows how long it'll take. So anyway, thank you very much. It's really interesting. |
| 00:51:50.11 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:51:51.82 | Steven Woodside | No further. Public comment is closed. So discussion from the dais, please. |
| 00:51:57.59 | Jill Hoffman | Mary, I'd love to lead up. Yeah, so actually just respond to Vicki's question in a way. So one of the reasons that I started looking into this was because of the lack of insurance, as I mentioned earlier, for certain events. And the implementation administration is one of those pieces that Bridget and her colleagues are still trying to figure out, meaning Is it a pool that is maintained on some type of district level, kind of by neighborhood? Is it a pool that the city maintains on behalf of its residents? Is it a pool the city maintains on behalf of itself? And so those are all administrative questions that, because this is a new product, haven't been hammered out. But the important and the attractive thing about this is that there's no claims adjustment associated with it. You hit the trigger, there's a payout. Now, getting that trigger right and getting the payout amount right and making sure it balances with the overall cost of the program is, that was in the details, but that's kind of, I think, the next stage of it. But I just want to kind of give that context to be able to provide members in the community who may be on fixed incomes or otherwise with some type of opportunity, seven hundred bucks, ten thousand, fifteen K, to be able to respond to some type of hazard event. So that's why the CBCI, the catastrophic based community insurance is interesting, but also something for the city based on what we've experienced in our own insurance pool and knowing how climate risks are increasing. So that was the context, and I appreciate you guys all considering it as an option as we just review where we are with insurance and how we create more resilience for ourselves from a risk perspective. |
| 00:53:29.00 | Steven Woodside | Ice Mary Cox. |
| 00:53:31.18 | Joan Cox | Yeah, I'll just piggyback on the back of that and say, I definitely think this is an important arrow to have in our quiver as we consider the various insurance tools that the city can undertake to mitigate loss and risk. But I do think it needs to be part of a holistic conversation as we consider the other insurance uh, vehicles available to us. And so once we become aware of what other vehicles are aware to us, I think we have to make the overall decision um, by thinking of everything holistically as a sum of the whole. And so, But I'm very grateful for this presentation. I'm very... intrigued and interested in further exploring this project. And I thank Councilmember Kelman for making us aware of it. I do a lot of risk assessment for a lot of clients and I'm not aware of this, so I'm grateful. |
| 00:54:37.68 | Steven Woodside | on some member of Bluffstein. |
| 00:54:39.38 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:54:39.42 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you, Mayor Sobieski. I just, again, I think we're so lucky to have Bridget here because they're designing this sort of program right now for the city of New York and we're the city of Sausalito, which is another example of us taking steps to be a smart climate leader. And I think this is definitely a part of our overarching insurance plan as Councilmember Vice Mayor Cox pointed out, this is one arrow in our quiver and we should absolutely pursue all of the tools available to us because business as usual, will not work for mitigating climate change, especially from a, the standpoint of costs incurred to our community. So, I think this is a very simple direction, which is just to allow the city manager to continue the conversations. And let's see if we can find the correct formula for the parametric insurance to work for us and be cost effective. |
| 00:55:29.18 | Steven Woodside | Yes, Council Member Hall. |
| 00:55:30.31 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think this is interesting, too. It's the first time we've approached this. And I think it's interesting for the city as well as residents who may want to participate in some kind of program The only caution I would say is I don't know if we need to put a cap on how much staff time to devote to this. I think we have a landslide task force report and a lot of geologic studies from the 2019 landslide task force report that I headed that we finished back in 2019. So there are, you know, there are, I think 12 or 13 Recommendations in that report that were accepted by the city council at direction to the staff to carry out I don't know an assessment from the staff of where we are on that would be interesting. But there's a lot of information in there, including the LIDAR studies and things like that. I'm cognizant, though, of just a general direction from the council to staff to sort of look into something or review something. without knowing the context of the devotion of the staff to that project. against all of the other projects that the staff are working on. So one of the things that I would ask, we're going to have a, a retreat or whatever it is we're calling it, a priority setting conference. So I think it'd be interesting for this staff, frankly, for the city manager to provide the council a running total of how much staff time do we have? and none of our staff time is unaccounted for. So we set priorities as a council and with our priority projects list, and that pretty much takes up staff time. So every time we ask our direct staff to do something, that either takes away from those projects or somehow we magically create more time for the staff to work on additional projects. at the direction of city staff. I'm hesitant to just give a sort of general direction without some sort of parameters and guidelines to the city manager. I think it'd be very interesting for this company to look at our look at our landslide task force and look at our Other reports that we've done on sea level rise, of which there are many, and we're working on another one. Right now, we just had a So I think those two things with review of this company with a response back of this is what these are the options for you. These are the products that you might avail yourself of. This is how much they'll cost and the opportunity for people in the community who want to you know do a in some sort of community-based where they buy into the different offerings would be most interesting instead of us kind of flailing around and trying to figure it out. I think that would be the direction to staff, to provide the reports to these people. I agree. I think this is an interesting thing that it's worth looking at. I think that would be the most efficient path forward with a report back from the company. So thank you. |
| 00:58:42.40 | Steven Woodside | Well, in the interest of giving some clear and crisp direction to staff, do we have some guidance on our colleagues concern about an open ended direction. How should we allot the priority of this and what kind of guidance should we provide staff for investigating this issue. |
| 00:58:58.62 | Jill Hoffman | Mayor, I want to pick up on the vice mayor's point about we are in a really hard race right now to identify our insurance coverage. And I think that we have to look at all the options on the table as we evaluate that and what's cost efficient and effective for the community. And if the city manager thinks that this is one of those tools, I would say that this is probably our top priority is to make sure we have the right insurance coverage for the city. So it may be the direction would be distinctive if it was coverage for the city versus a product coverage for residents, which would have two different sort of levels of importance. And so to the extent is a product that would cover the city, I say, whatever our city attorney is doing now on insurance, please consider this. And if it's something that would be ongoing to benefit residents on a smaller scale and neighborhood level, then that might be something we want to get more feedback on from the community and see if it's worth pursuing and giving resources for us. |
| 01:00:00.60 | Steven Woodside | I see a nod from Vice Mayor Cox. Is that something you feel comfortable with, Council Member Hoffman, in terms of narrow direction, which is the city looking at this as a... potential answer to its insurance question. And it's looking at all the options for the insurance question. Is that the direction that we should be giving or do you want to? |
| 01:00:21.19 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:00:21.20 | Joan Cox | I thought the vice mayor was going to weigh in on something. I evidently weighed in by nodding my head. That's counts. |
| 01:00:28.97 | Ian Sobieski | the member was speaking. Yeah, I think that's probably the narrowness of it, you know, not to exceed whatever, you know, not to exceed a certain number of hours, right? I mean, I hate to be that specific, but I also don't want him to spend a lot of time on something that's not going to pan out that takes his time away from something else. Some higher priority is what I meant to say. So, yeah, I mean, I think if this is something that looks like it's viable after, I would have them review those reports first, this company, sorry, the company review all the reports first if they haven't reviewed them all. And then, yeah, give us a cost breakdown, right? I mean, if it's so expensive that it's, you know, it doesn't particularly pencil out in this instance, I think our general liability is, is, is probably our top priority on insurance coverage. |
| 01:01:19.34 | Steven Woodside | Would it be fair then to say that as part of his professional investigation into insurance alternatives, we would direct the city manager to include an investigation of this parametric option as one of those? If that's the consensus and I see nods, then that's the direction to staff. Thank you very much, city manager. We will close this item and move on. Just as a word of administrative note, the item 1B we will hear after the public hearing item scheduled to begin at 7 PM, which is now in the interests of not having another interruption will take a two minute recess for, for whatever we need to recess for, and we'll be back in two minutes. Thank you. |
| 01:02:09.36 | Walfred Solorzano | So that's why I'm not thinking for it. And then you kind of... here's a problem. |
| 01:02:15.62 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you. |
| 01:02:21.64 | Walfred Solorzano | That's how you write the key words with the cast head right there, but that's what we think. |
| 01:02:24.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:02:27.04 | Walfred Solorzano | And then we hear it out, we can hear it out together afterwards if you want. But yeah, the main thing is that's what blocks the new trade. |
| 01:02:34.84 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:02:36.78 | Unknown | . |
| 01:02:37.06 | Jake Beyer | Thank you. |
| 01:02:37.10 | Ian Sobieski | some of them. I didn't know you said I bought that. Never, but I'm not going to have this. Thank you. |
| 01:02:46.46 | Unknown | not. |
| 01:02:46.95 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, yeah. You take a... This should be pretty easy. Well, this... Yeah, like, one thing that you'll do is you need to probably email somebody and get the other guys' name. Joseph, I use a guy carpenter, you know. You'll need to... |
| 01:03:03.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:04.20 | Walfred Solorzano | pretty easy |
| 01:03:06.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:06.76 | Walfred Solorzano | And this will be pretty, pretty paddling. This direction's the heart of the heart. |
| 01:03:07.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:11.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:03:12.23 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:03:12.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:12.30 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:03:12.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:12.35 | Walfred Solorzano | No. Blah, blah. Thank you. |
| 01:03:16.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:16.86 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. |
| 01:03:17.02 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. So we don't think that's being done. |
| 01:03:25.63 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. |
| 01:03:25.66 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:03:27.55 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:03:35.77 | Ray Swanson | Thank you. |
| 01:03:39.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, we have it up here. |
| 01:03:43.50 | Walfred Solorzano | I mean, we don't really need it. |
| 01:03:46.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:51.65 | Steven Woodside | In special public hearing item the appeal of planning Commission decision approving design review with heightened design review and encouragement permit to zero to three dash zero zero zero one three for four to six pine street APN 065 dash 054 dash 11. I invite any Council members to state any ex parte communications they had with the applicant or appellants. Thank you very much, Vice Mayor. Just as a housekeeping note, on the advice of city staff, we're actually going to continue Item 1B, the adoption of a resolution authorizing staff to issue a request for proposals for the 2024 Building Facility Assessment Study to a future city council meeting. We are obliged to take public comment on that matter. So if you want to make public comment on that matter, even though it's being continued, you can stick around and we will hear public comment after the public hearing on that issue. Back to the public hearing matter of the appeal. Are there any ex parte communications that any of my colleagues wish to announce? Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:04:55.49 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, I met with and toured this afternoon, 19 Bonita and |
| 01:05:09.06 | Ian Sobieski | the other two. |
| 01:05:10.00 | Brandon Phipps | 104 Benita and 428 Pines. |
| 01:05:12.85 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Yes, yes, those two. Thank you so much. Those are the two. Other than that, I don't believe I've had any other ex-party communications with either the applicants or the appellants, and we did not discuss any substantive issues with regard to this appeal. I merely viewed and listened to the two appellants. So thank you. |
| 01:05:38.98 | Steven Woodside | Any other ex parte communications? |
| 01:05:41.30 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, Mayor. I did visit all of the locations. I exchanged email with Sam Chase. And other than that, did not communicate with the appellant or any of the other folks |
| 01:05:53.62 | Steven Woodside | voice man. |
| 01:05:54.10 | Joan Cox | Yes, I did visit the site. All of the sites that were the subject of correspondence walked the entire block to understand the character of the block. Watched both of the prior planning commission meetings. I did. before I received correspondence on this, reach out to Michael Rex, who is representing now, I understand, one of the neighbors, to ask him not a question about this specific project, but about the manner in which we have interpreted some of the design review standards in the past, because I've worked with him on prior projects. So I did not ask him specifics about this project I did take a call from him this morning asking me to come visit with one of the property owners, but I was working all day, wasn't able to actually go visit with the property owner. And I did greet the applicant and one of the neighbors this evening in the lobby. |
| 01:06:57.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vice Mayor, Councilmember Blomstein. |
| 01:06:59.62 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:06:59.64 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you, Mayor Sobieski. I have received email from Sam Chase and from the Gagan Appeal Appellants, and I was not able to schedule a time to walk the property with them, but I have walked the block to familiarize myself with the property and I have in passing converse with Jake Beyer about the property, but not about the specifics of this project beyond the scope of what we've received or indeed in any detail. |
| 01:07:27.48 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Council Member Glaustein. For my own part, I met with both Mr. Sam Chase at his property and in his house, looking out the window in question, as well as Mr. Conrad Glenn at his property and toward both his houses to assess the impacts of the proposed development. That's it. In terms of ex parte announcements, I turn it now over to staff to give us a summary. Thank you. Welcome. |
| 01:07:54.18 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you. Good evening, everybody. So the subject site is located on the lower block of Pine Street between Caledonia and Benita in the R3 multifamily zoning district. This residential the residential lots in this black block are generally all a bit smaller, ranging from 3000 to 4800 square feet. Plots are also rectangular in shape and configured in a side-by-side arrangement. with homes facing toward the street. The neighborhood's rather densely developed, and some residents are nonconforming due to their age and do not meet standard side and rear setbacks. The site in question is 3,600 square feet. The existing improvements include a single-family, single-story home of 1,319 square feet. The applicant filed permits for design review with heightened design review to extensively demolish, remodel, and expand the existing single-story, single-family residence. This would include a proposed ADU on the ground story that is not included in the floor area. proposed design and finishes present a contemporary three-story home as presented on the project plans that were provided to the Council. Generally, the proposed project is found to be in compliance with all of the zoning regulations applicable to single-family homes in the R3 multifamily zoning district. The project summary table and references to all the code sections that either increased or decreased setbacks were also provided for you in that summary. as it as references. The project was first heard by the Planning Commission October 25th. generally the staff report to the commission was supportive of the design and found the placement and scale in keeping with other buildings in the neighborhood And the design introduced a distinctive and creative solution to take advantage of the site limitations. The staff report also included letters submitted by surrounding property owners, including 104-428, 104 Bonita, 428 Pine, 425 Turney, as well as a letter attached later from 19 Bonita that I received after the staff report was complete and being published. During site visits, staff identified potential impacts at 104 Bonita, 428 Pine, when viewing the story polls. We also walked into the site and looked out the windows of 104 Bonita. Based on that impression, staff then suggested in the staff report to the commission that they might want to consider modifications in the design to reduce potential impacts. And that included removing the proposed roof line over the exterior decks, particularly that in the rear. reducing the size of the rear deck to remove the extension that went on beyond the back of the building. Modification of the second floor family room windows to reduce potential impacts if they can view into the windows of 104 Benita, if it's unclear if they could from the story polls. and staggering portions of the South elevation and or stepping in the upper floor. at the side to break up that unreliefly story element on the South side. In response to the staff report, the applicant provided a second shadow study that he presented to the planning commission during the hearing, and they went through that pretty extensively. In their deliberations, the commission acknowledged the subject lot, as well as others in the neighborhood, were standard and substandard in size and width, and that the neighborhood was fairly densely developed. and several of the surrounding residences maintain non-conforming setbacks. These conditions made it difficult to achieve the applicant's design goals, even in full compliance with zoning. without raising some design concerns from the neighbors. At the conclusion of their discussion, the commission determined that the project could be approved as proposed and directed staff to prepare the findings for design review and, and, uh, um, the extended design review all 20 findings and return to the commission on november 15th During the November 15th hearing, staff did provide them with a short report and as well as letters, additional letters from the same property owners who attended the first meeting. Um, Lastly, staff received four additional letters after the report was done, and they were filed by late mail. A letter from Jake Bayer, an email from Sam Chase of 19 Bonita, an email from Conrad Gann of 428 Pine and 104 Bonita. In a letter from the Breckes Law Firm, on behalf of Conrad Ginn, which provided a different interpretation of the setback requirements required under SMC section 1040 070 D1. And this section requires an increase in side yard setback when the building length exceeds 40 feet. Staff notes the code interpretation by the Burkitts law firm was not consistent with the CDC department. or interpretation. Thank you. And under our interpretation, the setback was met. After considering all the information provided yet again to them on November 15th, the Commission moved to approve the draft resolution of approval. The appointments are now challenging or appealing. The Planning Commission's decision based on several issues raised in their letter. One was that the project does not meet section 1040.070. D1 in the section. The second was that the findings have been improperly addressed. And then they raised several points in the letter asking the council to address each of these points that would require additional studies on view, privacy, the setback requirements. And there was one more, which I'm sure I'll cover here. In interpreting section 1040-070-D1, staff, based on some of the language in this code section, noted that there were multiple references to building wall, length of building wall, including in the intent section as well as in the wording of this particular provision. So we interpreted that the Building wall length was really the primary key here in measuring length of the building. And we did not include an open unenclosed deck projection. If you include the unenclosed deck projection, the length of the building wall, including the deck, would be approximately 47 feet and would require a modest increase in the setback. The appellants maintain that the setback increases two feet as the requirement is based on a one per five foot ratio, one foot for every five feet. And because it exceeds five feet, It goes to seven. they think it requires then two fees. staff's interpretation is a bit different. We, we look at it as a one per five ratio, meaning it's 2.5 inches per one foot, one foot total per five feet. It's incremental. And based on that, these 40 foot wall length and the three and a half inches over still meets the setbacks that they provided. With regard to view impacts, the Sausalito Municipal Code doesn't actually have a chapter that addresses views with regard to new development or additions from single-family homes. The view issues are raised under the applicability requirements in the design review chapter, which triggers design review if there is potential for a view impairment. from additions or new buildings, both commercial and residential. |
| 01:15:18.99 | Brandon Phipps | The planning commission heard and took into consideration the viewing impacts claimed by this various property owners that came to both of the October and November 15 meetings. This included 19 Bonita as depicted in the pictures in 425 tourney street, which in the original hearing for October did not include a picture. But in the November 15th hearing, we did receive a picture that we had included. With regard to 19 Bonita, taking into consideration the larger view shed afforded this residence, the commission did not find that the identified view impairment over 424 pine and through the trees toward the Schumacher Marina. a significant loss of a primary view. for 425 Turney Street regarding his distant views of the surrounding hilltops over the roof of 426 Pine Street now. And there was no question that the applicant would see an increased height at the rear of this building because the proposal is now three stories tall. But again, the commission could not find the concerns raised by Mr. Raven, a wish. created a significant impact on a primary view. That would justify denial or modification of the design program. In addressing the sun and shade study, the commission did review both the sun shade study of the project plans, as well as the late male sun shade study that updated the project planned sun shade study based on concerns expressed by the neighbors. this particular study was done on a program designed specifically for this type of work. It was not a program designed by the applicant. They input the information and the coordinates and it produces the sunshade study. With that explanation and based on the presentation that they received from the applicant going through that, they were confident that the Thank you. neighbor would not significantly lose light. Um, With regard to privacy impacts, the Commission also considered that for 104 Punita at 428 Pines. It is noted that the wording of design review finding nine requires the commission to determine the project provides a reasonable level of privacy to the site and adjacent properties. taking into consideration the density of the neighborhood window deck and patio configurations. And I want to say I paraphrased that. I picked out the pertinent things for this particular project. There were other references in there. Inquiries by the Planning Commission with the applicant regarding the privacy impacts due to the window placement led to a detailed review of the window placement from the interior of the building utilizing a modeling program. I'm not sure if the applicant has that prepared for you tonight, but it was quite... helpful to the commission and feeling comfortable that the window placements were not staring directly into one of Fort Benita. Um, In considering the rear decks, it was noted that the applicant had included privacy screens along the south side of the front and rear rooftop decks. However, the deck extension at the very back, the two decks were not walled in. One of the reasons they didn't have privacy screens on the extending deck projections is because then that would increase the length of the building wall measurement based on how we applied it. So ultimately, the Commission determined that stepping in the rear deck by 18 inches would reduce the possible privacy intrusions and allow for a reasonable level of privacy to 104 Benita Street. If the Council finds that additional modifications are warranted to further reduce possible light and privacy, the Council may wish to consider the modifications originally proposed in the October 25th staff report. including Removal of the proposed roof line over the exterior decks, particularly at the rear. to reduce massing and potential loss of light, reducing and removing the rear deck, which extends beyond the rear of the building. building. Modifications of the second floor family room windows to ensure they're not looking directly into 104 Bonita. Um, Removing the rear decks would also remove this whole discussion regarding the length of the building wall and whether or not it meets the setback, which is an added bonus to that. possibility. So at this point, staff recommends the council deny the appeal and support the planning commission decision. And I can expect that you have many questions for me. |
| 01:19:56.12 | Steven Woodside | Bye. You do, thank you. But before we get to that, would you like to give an overview of the format of the today's planning hearing? I expect you to start with that, or would you like me to do that? |
| 01:20:02.93 | Brandon Phipps | I'm sorry, would I what? |
| 01:20:03.74 | Steven Woodside | Would you like to give an overview of the format of today's hearing for the benefit of everyone or would you like me to go over the high points? |
| 01:20:09.46 | Brandon Phipps | Why don't you do that for us? |
| 01:20:10.70 | Steven Woodside | All right, well, so we were gonna hear your presentation Then we're going to hear questions from council members. Then we're going to hear from the applicant presentation, who may reserve time for a rebuttal. We're then going to hear from the appellant. And then we will ask, in each of those, we will get questions from council members. We will then ask for public comment. After public comment, the applicant will be entitled to a rebuttal period for any period of time that he or she is reserved. If he didn't have any, then he still gets one minute. We will then close the public hearing and the council will begin to have its discussion. If any of us introduce any material new questions, then there will be another opportunity for the applicant to respond. After that, we'll go to a motion and conclusion of the public hearing. But for now, let's go to any questions, please, for staff. Vice Mayor Cox. |
| 01:21:03.74 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you for your hard work on this over many months. I, you know, one of the most controversial issues I think that we've received a lot of correspondence on is the manner in which the length of the building is measured. So I wanted to just test you a little bit on this section 10.40.070D1. |
| 01:21:19.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:21:19.79 | Alice Merrill | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:21:27.20 | Joan Cox | And you mentioned that you measured the structure. You considered the fact that The building wall, there was not a single building wall that extended beyond 40 feet. |
| 01:21:37.71 | Brandon Phipps | 43 and a half inches. |
| 01:21:39.37 | Joan Cox | Right. But the statute actually, the ordinance actually says where the length of a structure, comma, building wall, comma, or series of attached building walls exceeds 40 feet. Now the definition of a structure includes a deck, does it not? |
| 01:21:57.34 | Brandon Phipps | I suppose it could. I don't have a definition of a structure in front of me. |
| 01:22:01.00 | Joan Cox | Well, I did ask you about this earlier today on the phone, so I would expect maybe the Community Development Director can help us with this, but... as pointed out in the correspondence from Elizabeth Brekus, The definition of a structure includes a deck Because a deck requires a building permit. So would you agree that a deck requires a building permit? Absolutely. Okay. |
| 01:22:24.19 | Brandon Phipps | Absolutely. |
| 01:22:25.84 | Joan Cox | And so If you simply measure the length of the structure, including all aspects that include a building that require a building permit, that would exceed that 40 feet 3 inches. |
| 01:22:37.72 | Brandon Phipps | would be about 47 inches, 47 feet, four inches. |
| 01:22:42.83 | Joan Cox | Okay. I just wanted to make clear where the challenge. comes in evaluating the statute, the ordinance. And I will say as a planning commissioner, |
| 01:22:51.14 | Joseph Becker | Mm-hmm. Subordinate. |
| 01:22:57.99 | Joan Cox | for eight years before I became a city council member, We did. include the deck in measuring the length of a building for purposes of evaluating side setbacks. All right, that being said, in your staff report for October 25 you concluded that the proposed design does not meet finding seven and nine of the design review findings or finding two of the heightened design review findings right. |
| 01:23:28.65 | Brandon Phipps | I based that conclusion on the viewing of the story polls and indicated to the commission, it appeared that they could not be met because... |
| 01:23:37.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:23:37.12 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 01:23:37.36 | Brandon Phipps | It appears that there are impacts that may be significant. |
| 01:23:41.05 | Joan Cox | Well, I'm reading from the staff report. It says, due to the observations discussed above, staff has concluded that the proposed design does not meet findings seven and nine of design review findings or finding two of the heightened design review |
| 01:23:53.17 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:23:53.61 | Joan Cox | Thank you. You also recommended to the Planning Commission, the very same three things you recommended to us tonight, which is removal of the proposed roofline over the exterior decks to reduce the loss of light, reducing the size of the rear deck, which extends beyond the rear of the building, and modification of the second-floor family room window to minimize impacts on privacy. |
| 01:24:16.93 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:24:17.38 | Joan Cox | staggering portions of the south elevation and or stepping in the upper floors at the side to break up the unrelieved three-story wall plane and permit greater retention of light and air. Did the applicant undertake any of those three recommendations that you made? |
| 01:24:32.91 | Brandon Phipps | Did they know because we were going to public hearing? They didn't have time to really do more than address them verbally. |
| 01:24:38.93 | Joan Cox | Yes, and yes, I know. And I think that was unfortunate. The applicant did not know. I listened to the hearing, and I realized that the applicant on October 25 did not know what your position on these findings would be until the staff report was published. Is that right? Yes. |
| 01:24:56.10 | Brandon Phipps | It's not necessarily uncommon because we are sort of on a deadline gun all the time in this business. So I visited and saw the story polls when the public notice went out, and that's when I started identifying concerns. And I didn't get into the House until a few days before the staff report was published. |
| 01:25:13.90 | Joan Cox | And in fairness, you actually inherited this from a different planner. |
| 01:25:16.84 | Brandon Phipps | Yes, I did. |
| 01:25:17.04 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Yes, so no criticism. intended, but I think this does make this project more challenging. in that the applicant didn't have an opportunity to really consider and address the concerns that you raised in advance of the Planning Commission hearing on October 25. |
| 01:25:39.38 | Brandon Phipps | I don't believe he did. There may have been some concerns raised during review of the project regarding in massing, but I can't say for sure since I didn't do the initial reviews. |
| 01:25:50.40 | Joan Cox | Okay. |
| 01:25:53.77 | Joan Cox | I think that's it for now. Oh, one more clarification. You made reference to this project as an addition. In fact, this is actually a demolition and a rebuild, right? |
| 01:26:05.13 | Brandon Phipps | Substantial demolition and rebuild because they have claimed in their documentation all their written and building record here. that they will demo the roof and exterior materials and a portion of the back and lift it. So they're keeping the body of the home. in making it part of the middle floor. so It's not complete demolition. It makes it difficult to describe it. |
| 01:26:30.48 | Joan Cox | And then I also noticed that the ADU on the first floor has a ceiling height that is a good bit taller than the ceiling height of the first floor of the neighbor's house. Do you know why? |
| 01:26:41.89 | Alice Merrill | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:26:43.61 | Joan Cox | Because obviously one of the issues raised is the overall height and massing of the building. So do you know why it was important to the applicant that the height of the first floor ADU be so tall? |
| 01:26:47.86 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 01:26:57.70 | Brandon Phipps | I can't speak for the applicant's intention. Okay, I can ask you. |
| 01:27:01.17 | Joan Cox | Mm. |
| 01:27:01.21 | Brandon Phipps | Mmm. |
| 01:27:01.66 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:27:01.68 | Joan Cox | All right. |
| 01:27:01.97 | Jill Hoffman | Those were my initial questions. |
| 01:27:02.89 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:27:02.91 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vice Mayor, Councilmember Coleman. |
| 01:27:04.99 | Jill Hoffman | Great, thank you. Those are excellent questions, Vice Mayor. I'll try to not repeat them. Thank you. I know you inherited this, which we just established, and so some of this may be just a, you don't know, but let me try to ask it. So oftentimes in between seeing something at planning commission, I was also a planning commissioner for 10 years, we'll have some type of, you know, the planner will intercede and say, what about a tradeoff here? What about this? What about that? Was there any conversation to your knowledge of suggesting that the height of the building be reduced, maybe in exchange for keeping the decks and the length and dealing with the setback in that way? Was there any... Between staff and the applicant? Yeah. I'm not aware of any. Okay. And I think the report you gave for us tonight said this was a substandard lot size, right? Is that $3,000 plus? Right. What are the, just remind me, I know I read it, what are the adjacent lot sizes or what's the average lot size in that area? |
| 01:28:01.99 | Brandon Phipps | Um, the average, the lots ranged from 3000 to 4800 square feet. Um, |
| 01:28:07.17 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 01:28:07.36 | Joseph Becker | Thank you. |
| 01:28:09.58 | Brandon Phipps | I would assume that the neighbor to the left and right are both in the 4,000 square foot range. |
| 01:28:14.92 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. And then- In their size. Okay. Great. Thanks. And then back to the demolition question. So this is three stories. They're keeping the middle, but my recollection of definition of a demolition is anything over 50%. |
| 01:28:16.54 | Brandon Phipps | So, yeah. |
| 01:28:28.89 | Jill Hoffman | So it's a pretty substantial |
| 01:28:30.97 | Brandon Phipps | Okay. I'm not saying this is not a new house. It is. Okay. |
| 01:28:35.86 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:28:35.89 | Brandon Phipps | . |
| 01:28:35.98 | Jill Hoffman | All right, thank you. That was it. |
| 01:28:39.50 | Steven Woodside | Other questions? Councilmember Blaustein. |
| 01:28:43.20 | Melissa Blaustein | Thanks. Sorry. I know I'm hard to see on Zoom over here. Yeah, I just wanted to get a little bit more clarification on a couple of the points that Councilmember Cox brought up, because I think it's really important to understand. In the staff report and in the meeting as well, if you go back and watch the Planning Commission meeting, There's discussion of some of the comments that Chair Luxembourg made specifically around The side yard setback requirements in light of section 10.40070, which is what Councilmember Cox had asked about. And I just wanted to get a little bit more clarity around what we might do in order to be fully compliant, or if it's your belief because of what you were saying about the, sorry, that you see it as a one to five ratio and two and a half inches per one feet for total five feet are the with the decks if we if we, for example, decided to say we approve this project, but we that the decks need to be removed, then would that eliminate that issue with the setbacks? Or do you feel, is it your opinion that there is no issue? given that you don't consider the DEXA part of that measurement. |
| 01:29:43.70 | Brandon Phipps | Well, actually both. We did not measure the deck, so we didn't believe that the project was not in conformance with setback, but If you eliminate the deck, it certainly meets the letter of the intention as raised by Ms. Cox. Council member Cox. So it would be 40 feet, three and a half inches. And it provides a five foot three inch setback to that side. And that is over, actually, the minimum setback required based on our ratio. application of two and a half inches per foot. |
| 01:30:20.01 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thanks. That's the only thing I really wanted clarity on. |
| 01:30:24.33 | Steven Woodside | By Samir Cox. |
| 01:30:26.05 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:30:26.07 | Joan Cox | Yeah, one more question. In comparing the neighboring houses, I believe the neighboring houses are also on substandard lots and may also have nonconforming setbacks. |
| 01:30:38.89 | Brandon Phipps | That's correct. |
| 01:30:39.96 | Joan Cox | And so the overall impact visually and logistically is that both properties side by side have less than required setbacks. |
| 01:30:50.99 | Brandon Phipps | Well, the proposed applicant is trying to provide required setbacks. |
| 01:30:54.89 | Joan Cox | Absolutely, but still less properties on the |
| 01:30:56.48 | Brandon Phipps | Properties on both sides of him have less than required sub-ex. |
| 01:31:00.01 | Joan Cox | And so it makes the cumulative impact more startling when you walk between the two buildings there's really very little room to walk between the two buildings. Again, not through fault of the applicant necessarily, but because of the non-conforming nature, the existing non-conforming nature, of the surrounding buildings. |
| 01:31:24.39 | Brandon Phipps | Okay, that appears to be your observation. |
| 01:31:25.32 | Joan Cox | I do agree. Well, I'm asking if you would agree because you visited the site. |
| 01:31:30.48 | Brandon Phipps | I did visit the site. |
| 01:31:32.22 | Joan Cox | I had a concern, what if there's a fire? How do you put a ladder, a three-story ladder up the side of that building? |
| 01:31:39.02 | Brandon Phipps | Well, the fire department does review all the plans and provides us comments, and they were not concerned about. about emergency services for the property based on its design. So that was answered that way. That's how we do look into that in advance. With regard to setbacks, it hasn't been staff's practice to try and punish an applicant for the nonconformities of the neighbor. did not approach it with the notion that, oh my goodness, the others are nonconforming. They need to squeeze in and make up for this. |
| 01:32:15.60 | Joan Cox | True, but when a project goes to the very outside of all of the development standards, such as FAR, impervious surface, setbacks, height, it's subject to heightened review. Yes, it is. Which then puts a more focused lens on the massing and the |
| 01:32:29.36 | Brandon Phipps | Yes, it is. |
| 01:32:36.92 | Joan Cox | overall holistic impact of the project. |
| 01:32:41.46 | Brandon Phipps | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:32:42.54 | Joan Cox | you would agree |
| 01:32:44.24 | Brandon Phipps | Well, that's what the findings are attempting to do, yes. |
| 01:32:46.30 | Joan Cox | Yes. Exactly. And indeed, The planning commission has the ability to increase setbacks if it deems it necessary beyond what's required in the code in order to avoid some of those challenges. |
| 01:33:00.14 | Brandon Phipps | I believe they do. |
| 01:33:01.69 | Joan Cox | All right. Thank you. |
| 01:33:03.70 | Steven Woodside | So my question is, I guess, picking up on that one, why didn't the Planning Commission increase the setbacks then? |
| 01:33:10.18 | Brandon Phipps | It's appeared to be their findings based on their lengthy discussion about the multiple nonconformities around and the density of the neighborhoods. that it wasn't really necessary. And I think the The sunshade study also really added to that decision making process. |
| 01:33:29.84 | Steven Woodside | And was the vote of the planning, what was the vote of the Planning Commission? |
| 01:33:32.86 | Brandon Phipps | 5-0. |
| 01:33:35.02 | Steven Woodside | Uh, Can you elaborate a little bit on this sunshade? issue for those of us who are not ever planning commissioners. What is the obligation of the process for determining the impact of shading from new construction upon the neighboring properties. |
| 01:33:53.43 | Brandon Phipps | The applicant attempts to demonstrate how the sun angle works at various times of the year. Morning light, evening light, afternoon light. So they'll identify it at certain times of the day. I have not personally prepared a sun study, so I am not an expert in doing this, but you have to just sort of read through it very carefully and try to ascertain if they have adequately given you enough information. breadth of times and year when the sun angle changes to determine if there's really a significant impact or not. |
| 01:34:29.88 | Steven Woodside | Well, that's the question. To quote what I think you said was, it does not significantly lose light. But what does that mean? What is significant? |
| 01:34:39.43 | Brandon Phipps | It's discretionary that just like most of the wording of your findings in design review, they're discretionary and based on your interpretation, looking at the design. |
| 01:34:48.69 | Steven Woodside | in terms of just. |
| 01:34:48.95 | Brandon Phipps | In the various studies. |
| 01:34:50.89 | Steven Woodside | So in terms of fairness, I'm looking for some guidance from the experience of the department. if they're in general, when there's new construction or renovations, uh, across town over the years that where there's been some impact to the neighbors. So I get it. If there's zero impact, that's the easy case. And if there's a hundred percent impact, I guess that's an easy case too. But what has been the past practice for the range of shading, so how many hours a day, let's say, or how many minutes a day? I can't answer that. |
| 01:35:23.71 | Brandon Phipps | I can't answer that. I don't really have enough sun study expertise under my belt. They're not commonly required in the other cities I worked for. Here I think it's more of an issue because you do have a lot You have a little bit higher height limits and generous zoning. So. |
| 01:35:45.23 | Steven Woodside | Well, when the Planning Commission investigated this, if you recall in the line of inquiry, the sunshade study provided by the applicant did it, what was the conclusion in terms of the amount of shade thrown on the neighboring property on Bonita Street, I guess? |
| 01:36:03.30 | Brandon Phipps | It was... limited to in like an hour, I believe. It's hard to remember because that happened in October. And I'm sure the applicant has his son's studies that he can present to you and show you what the commission saw. |
| 01:36:15.89 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:36:16.21 | Brandon Phipps | Which I think would be the better |
| 01:36:16.23 | Unknown | I think. |
| 01:36:16.41 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:36:18.47 | Brandon Phipps | way of looking at it than me trying to remember. |
| 01:36:21.64 | Steven Woodside | Fair enough. But it, but, uh, Still, if I might challenge your memory just for a moment, if it was about an hour, what you're asserting from your recollection is that the, |
| 01:36:30.69 | Brandon Phipps | It seemed limited in the way they presented it, enough that it was... |
| 01:36:32.00 | Steven Woodside | like. |
| 01:36:35.19 | Brandon Phipps | a comfort zone for the commission. They didn't find it to be a significant impact. |
| 01:36:38.99 | Steven Woodside | that an hour of impact was not significant in their qualitative assessment. you |
| 01:36:43.44 | Brandon Phipps | Yeah. |
| 01:36:43.73 | Steven Woodside | of what they define as significant impact. Then on that same question of you, Again, for folks that aren't playing commissioners, can you help us understand this distinction? The Sausalito Code, you say, doesn't have any view protection. And yet, I know that views are protected, right? And so can you help us understand how are, how's everyone's views? How are everyone's views in town protected? |
| 01:37:06.40 | Brandon Phipps | Through the design review process. |
| 01:37:08.76 | Steven Woodside | And then what's the crux of that again? Is it completely subjective to ascertain whether there's a significant loss of primary view, or is that in some way objectively defined? |
| 01:37:21.41 | Brandon Phipps | It is. not objectively defined. It is again a very Subjective. determination based on the findings that you're provided for design review. And you also do have definitions of view that try to establish what it is you're trying to protect. that I provided for you in the staff report. |
| 01:37:43.82 | Steven Woodside | Right. And the photographs from across the catty corner, across the street, were those provided to the planning commission to assess? |
| 01:37:54.30 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:37:55.91 | Steven Woodside | knowledge that any of the planning commissioners visit and actually see the view themselves |
| 01:38:00.11 | Brandon Phipps | I can't recall if they all stated they were there, but... Pretty much all of them indicated they had come to the neighborhood and walked around. |
| 01:38:10.40 | Steven Woodside | I think those are all my questions now. Thank you very much. Are there any other questions from council members? All right, thank you very much. I think we'll turn the podium over to the applicant now with the applicant kindly approach. |
| 01:38:29.50 | Steven Woodside | Welcome. |
| 01:38:31.66 | David Grabham | Hi, sorry. The PowerPoint presentation kept crushing their computers, so I'm supposed to have my BIM specialist on Zoom. |
| 01:38:41.44 | Steven Woodside | Do you, okay, let's get you set up. |
| 01:38:43.10 | David Grabham | up. |
| 01:38:45.50 | Steven Woodside | Lamb, L-A-M-B. |
| 01:38:45.94 | David Grabham | I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My name is David Grabham. I'm the owner of G Design, the applicant representative for Jake in Georgia, and design the plans at 426 Pine Street and model. |
| 01:39:03.35 | Steven Woodside | All right, and this is your presentation here. |
| 01:39:03.61 | David Grabham | And this is your presentation here. |
| 01:39:06.48 | Steven Woodside | Yes, you have 15 minutes and please go right ahead. |
| 01:39:11.10 | David Grabham | Thank you so much for hearing us today and for my third presentation of this project for the town council. Really appreciate your time and thought going into this project. I created a fly around model. We basically modeled both the neighbors' houses on either side so that we could see viewpoints on either side. Lamb, can you go ahead and press play on the slide? The main thing that we are concerned with was actually 424 Pine Street. They have a zero side yard setback, which was actually missed in the report from Kristen and the whole reason where we started with them in the third story trying to provide space between the two houses. So with the existing setback at 428 Pine and Bonita, it seemed like trying to create as much space as possible between 424 Pine and our project was the direction we wanted to head from the beginning. You can see on 424 Pine Street, they have the third floor deck and we were trying to gain more yard in the small backyard by adding in the deck. You can uh 19 bonita or i'm sorry 104 bonita and 426 pine um both in one lot overbuilt for the neighborhood um and basically we tried to create privacy toward 104 bonita and 428 pine through placing the bedrooms for the back in the main livable space on the lower floor where we would miss we would change the viewpoints between where the houses align at 428 Pine Street and 426. So, Lamb, can you go to the next slide, please? This is a study we did for the neighborhood just as we were doing our preliminary study. We were looking at all the legal nonconforming, which is shown in purple in the neighborhood, which is basically almost every single house in the neighborhood. The worst ones happen to be 19 Bonita, which is way beyond lot size FAR, lot coverage, and setbacks same with 428 pine and 19 bonita or i'm sorry for 28 pine and 104 bonita which is the house on the right go ahead next slide lamb |
| 01:41:46.15 | David Grabham | This is just a sample of showing the modifications in the process we went through with the model. Once we met, this is iteration one when we met with Conrad Gann and Sam and actually made adjustments month after month. We put up temporary story poles. Jake and I were out there in the wintertime putting up temporary story poles to make these roof line adjustments so that – Sam could have a better view of the bay, went up into his house and actually looked at this. Also, Conrad brought up privacy issues. We showed him the misalignment of the windows, but also adjusted the roof line on the top to do a trellis and then added in the big privacy windows to allow more ambient light. when we did our son's study, which he requested from us in the beginning, which we weren't required by. store, uh, big, uh, privacy windows to allow more ambient light. When we did our son study, which he requested from us in the beginning, which we weren't required by the city to do, but did on our own, uh, cognizance was showing that the sun comes from the front of the house around to the side. So, um, but we realized that ambient light was his next concern. So we added in the privacy glass windows. Um, and made huge adjustments. So the house is actually 30 feet tall for only eight feet. So the ridge line, the way that we set everything up, is right in the middle between the two properties because when we had met with the neighbors behind him they had a view this way they had a view this way so we lined everything up with the house right beside it and the actual top story is 25 feet or so wide which means there's very little of a roof height even hitting the 30 foot height limit everything is in height limit we're trying to get solar panels that's the direction of the sun you can see all the solar panels we're running out of roof big time which is why we added in the roofs over the decks is to try to offset our solar array um Go ahead and go to the next slide, Lam. This shows the work we actually did on the story poles in reducing the roof line. This is out of Connor or Sam's house. But actually that red line shows the story poles right there and the house behind it, which is about as good as we could get considering there are supposedly views from the back and the side and from every side. So this was kind of like stuck between a rock and a hard place where the only part that actually goes up three floors is right in the middle of the house. Go ahead, Lamb. This is showing that when we did the design, we actually dropped the house down two feet in order to reduce the building wall on 104 Benita side and that we dropped it down two feet. And then we actually, the third floor master bedroom, in order to let more light and air through, we have seven feet starting at the roof, which vaults up to create the master bedroom. On the bottom part is the first floor window. You can see we dropped the floor, which is below actually the fence. So the whole livable space is below the fence so that the windows used to align perfectly between the houses. And now we're below and above 428 Pine Street's windows, which 104 Bonita is in between those. But when we designed the house, we aligned the back of our house with the back of 428 Pine and 104 Bonitas beyond that. So we literally are squished in this little tiny box and trying to create a livable house for his family. Go ahead, next slide, Sam, Lam. This shows the different windows and how we looked at the model. We actually have his model. You can see the front roof line in the corner. So the whole third story is over. We designed the bedrooms to look out to the front. The other bedroom is looking into the giant tree, but the windows are actually above his window so they don't align. And then same with the living room we put in the privacy glass. That's the only side he gets a little bit of sun from like 12 o'clock to two o'clock is over Conrad's house. The lower level windows are blocked by the privacy screen. And then we have the second and third floor deck. Go ahead, Lam. These are just a close-up of the windows. Go ahead, Lam. This is the actual view right now. He's out of the bedroom right into his kitchen window. The new bedroom will be lower or above, so no cross views. How's the line? Go ahead, Lam. is showing another picture of looking right into one of Bonita. Go ahead. This is the view from the second floor. You can see that the windows are above this, sitting on the roof, taking a picture across where the window would supposedly be. Go ahead, Lam. This is showing the privacy in the back. The whole reason we had that back deck back there is right now Jake's house is legal nonconforming also has that addition right there that goes back into the property line. It blocks the view of 104 Bonita view down into his yard and we put these decks here with the privacy screens because if we don't have that, then you can look right out the window of 104 Bonita right down into Jake's yard and it kind of kills the the privacy for both of them so we were a little surprised that they actually wanted to remove these decks but that's why we designed it that way in the first place. Go ahead, Lamb. This is the sun study that we put together that shows at 10 o'clock we actually went out and took a picture at 10 o'clock we took a picture of our sun study this was This was voluntary, all of this. And then we did a more extensive version of the sun study. But if you can see the line on the lower level where the sun comes up, there's a little bit of blockage A couple months out of the year for an hour to an hour and a half, very early in the morning. The sun, as you guys, as everyone who lives in Sausalito know, which I live in Sausalito, comes from over in Oakland, goes up. The sun study we produce actually doesn't take into account the hill that I live on. And so as it's coming up, it's actually blocked by the hill. It doesn't show that, but then as it gets higher, You can see we're straight on at nine o'clock into 428 pines. Go ahead, Lamb. This is the next solstice. Go ahead. |
| 01:48:24.85 | David Grabham | I am. Next one, all voluntary. This is the compliance in the backyard. You can see in the pink where the old house actually used to be, which was much more than 50 feet. I was 52 feet or something like that. Right now we're down to 40 feet. So we had to remove the legal nonconforming addition. That's where the deck is. Go ahead. This is where in the code it says ratio, which is determined by a ratio. So every, like Kristen said, every foot is two and a half inches. Four feet is two and a half times four. Five feet is one foot. So this is how we read the code when we designed the plan. Go ahead. Uh, and I'll go to the last slide. So we made a lot of adjustments in this project. We met with four different planners. We had a planner for six months. We had another planner for six months. The one thing that we didn't talk to Kristen about when she did her findings is how we were trying to make accommodations for 424 Pine and reduce the privacy impact on 428 Pines. We have talked with the planning department about this even more. And they said, look, you should remove the deck in the back. I talked with my client, Jake. He said he would be willing to take the extra whatever it was, five foot, seven foot, five foot, seven inch deck off the back in order, if that's what the planning commission, or I'm sorry, the town council says needs to happen to further make further concessions to the neighbors to be neighborly. And we felt like this was another step. We already made the 18 inches that the planning commission recommended to us. We said, fine, that's what it takes. Let's get it done. So the whole time we've been making adjustments with them and Justin Fields, Adjusting the plan adjusting the plan, we would like this to be our final adjustment if you guys think it's necessary in order to remove the reading of the code of the way that it looks to this person or that person let's just clear it up and then we can move on, hopefully, with our project. and I like to save the rest of my time. |
| 01:50:59.73 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. So three minutes and 12 seconds is reserved for a rebuttal. Are there questions from the council? Vice Mayor Cox. |
| 01:51:08.66 | Joan Cox | Thank you and thank you for your presentation. very familiar from the prior hearings. Thank you for the virtual Drawings, it's nice to spin them and see the perspective animation. |
| 01:51:20.51 | Bridget Carl | Thank you. |
| 01:51:20.54 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:51:21.77 | Joan Cox | And I appreciate the challenges of the change in planning personnel that you went through as you were planning. the project. And I appreciate your approach to dealing with the setback of the one neighboring building that has a zero setback. Were your story polls ever certified in their final form? |
| 01:51:40.10 | David Grabham | Yes. Always. That's the condition. |
| 01:51:40.86 | Joan Cox | Okay. I know, it's just not part of the record, so I just wanted to confirm that. During the – October 25 hearing, Commissioner Feller mentioned concern about light from the glass staircase. |
| 01:52:01.11 | David Grabham | here. |
| 01:52:01.63 | Joan Cox | Did you guys consider that or address that? |
| 01:52:04.70 | David Grabham | Absolutely. We put the staircase, which is basically where people are just walking up and down the stairs. There's no sunlight coming from the other side to light the house. We put that setback back and we're trying to get as much light into the middle of the house as possible through the staircase, which feeds all three levels in the halls so that instead of it feeling like a really dark hallway that you're walking down, you actually have a nice, you have the ambient light coming in from those windows. In order to respect the privacy from 428 Pine Street, we put that whole set on that side because there's not very many windows from 424 on that side in that area. So, and the ones that are, have a little bit of glass, like satin glass and stuff like that. So. |
| 01:52:50.70 | Joan Cox | And what about in the evening to avoid light pollution from illuminating the stairs? |
| 01:52:56.83 | David Grabham | I don't know about you, but I live on Edwards. It's a little darker over there, and you can't see a star most of the night. So, you know, the light pollution definitely is something that we thought about when we met with the planning commission. They asked us to put in low lights for the decks. We did that as part of our conditions of approval. So, yes, that was brought up to us. I don't know what kind of light they're planning on using. We started on our lighting plan. And one of the ideas was to put some low step lights in the walls that would help light that path, but not be an, you know, the last thing they want is a big glowing, uh, light well, that's going to reduce the privacy from the people walking up and down the street and views into their house. So I think that, um. Although it's been thought of, we haven't designed the lighting plan, but that's been in our conversation is lower lights, wall lights, things like that. |
| 01:53:54.41 | Joan Cox | At the November 15 hearing, Mr. Gann testified that he had requested CAD drawings, but that you all had declined to provide those to him. So he felt less able to actually evaluate the level of the windows. facing his property. were you ever able to provide CAD drawings to him or is there a reason? Because one of the heightened review standards is obviously this interaction with your neighbors. |
| 01:54:21.56 | David Grabham | We met with Conrad twice and Jake met with him a few times after that. His first issue was that we were going to have privacy issues between the property We actually have the 3D model with this model. We cut a section looking right out the windows and showed them, look, here's where the fence is. This is where we're looking. We thought of this when we designed the house in the first place, which is why we dropped it down two and a half feet, was the staggerous windows with the adjacent buildings. So, yeah, he knew that. I also provided a printed set of plans to Michael Rex, his representative, at no cost. The next day he said, can you bring over a set of plans? Sure. Here you go. We have a QR code on the plans that he could have accessed any CAD files. Every single one of our plans has a QR code. They can look at the BIMx. They can do a scan. So I was never requested from anybody to give any CAD files to anybody. So Conrad never said that. Michael Rex never said that to me. So I don't know what to say. All we did was be super accommodating and try to sit down with them. Michael Rex, I tried to sit down with him and he literally canceled my meeting 20 minutes before the meeting. So. |
| 01:55:34.66 | Joan Cox | Okay, so, but you were at the hearing on November 15 or no? the hearing where the Planning Commission adopted its resolution. |
| 01:55:43.81 | David Grabham | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:55:44.43 | Joan Cox | And you heard him complain that he had asked for CAD drawings and they weren't provided? |
| 01:55:44.50 | David Grabham | Of course. |
| 01:55:51.01 | David Grabham | I don't. I couldn't tell you five things Conrad said in that meeting because I was focused on what I had to say and what I was going to say to the council. So I didn't go back and watch the meeting. I know my plan. I know what I did to get this far and all the work that I put in and all the hundreds of hours I did in adjustments and model adjustments and meeting with the neighbors and the hundreds of neighbors and everything else that this project has gone through to be here today. And the five, you know, approvals of the planning commission twice I had to present to them. So Uh, I feel like I did everything I could for Conrad and Michael Rex and gave them everything and set up a meeting in which I have a very busy schedule and he canceled at the last minute. |
| 01:56:41.82 | Joan Cox | You mentioned the master bedroom height. But in looking at your it looks like the height to top of roof is 10 foot 5 inches. |
| 01:56:54.48 | David Grabham | So the walls start at seven feet. So it's a pitched roof. |
| 01:56:59.95 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:57:00.27 | David Grabham | So because the walls start at seven feet, the idea was to keep the exterior walls as low as possible. So then they pitch up to a peak, yes, but our ridge is only eight feet long at 30 feet. |
| 01:57:09.50 | Joan Cox | are really. |
| 01:57:14.69 | Joan Cox | Okay. And you may have heard me ask the planner about the height of the ADU. it. |
| 01:57:25.02 | David Grabham | Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to answer that for you. So if you look at the stairs, how the stairs are, it's the exact same height as the next floor up. So it's not the 80U, it's the lower level. That's their main living level. And it's not nine feet, it's like an eight foot. uh lamb do you can you pull cut a section for that do you want to see a section |
| 01:57:46.00 | Joan Cox | I'd like to just understand, I do know that it is taller. than for example, the first floor of your neighboring building, maybe that was because you wanted to offset Thank you. |
| 01:57:57.54 | David Grabham | I don't know what neighboring building means. |
| 01:57:57.56 | Joan Cox | I DON'T KNOW. I forget. |
| 01:58:00.61 | David Grabham | The neighbor. |
| 01:58:01.66 | Joan Cox | The neighbor, yeah. |
| 01:58:02.50 | David Grabham | Oh, I have no idea what their roof height is. But typically when you do a project like this, you do nine foot, nine foot six high ceiling, something like this. This is, I think, eight foot six, sorry, which is very modest, I would say, for a new building. And the only reason that it's eight foot six is because the existing house that we're lifting is eight foot six. And what that does is allow the stairs to stack and go up evenly both ways. So when you look at the stairs from the outside, if the ceiling height is lower than the stairs are gonna be like that. And so we started out with eight foot six, which I think it's super modest for a main livable space connected to the lower level and then eight foot six going up. And then, as I said, we started with seven feet on the top level to bring that down. That was another adjustment that we made for the neighbors to allow more light and less wallplanes. |
| 01:58:54.43 | Joan Cox | Right, but the roof still goes up another three and a half feet above that at its apex. |
| 01:59:00.03 | David Grabham | Yeah, so that you actually have a decent master bedroom. So that's the one place is in the master bedroom where the roof is taller. And we actually adjusted it. So you can see in that model right there where you see it pitches up because now the hip comes in to the bedroom. So we adjusted the hip roof so far forward to accommodate for Sam that. |
| 01:59:15.79 | Joseph Becker | MAKING THEM. |
| 01:59:21.16 | David Grabham | that you can see the triangle coming into the bedroom from the master bedroom. So that's that picture right there. |
| 01:59:28.58 | Joan Cox | Okay, and then thank you for your willingness to remove the rear deck, if that was something we thought was necessary. the Initial staff report made two other recommendations and I just wanted to find out whether after having seen that and whether you and your client had discussed willingness to Remove the proposed roof line over the exterior decks to reduce the loss of light. and or staggering the portions of the south elevation or stepping in the upper floors at the side, to break up the unrelieved three-story wall plain and permit greater retention of light and air. |
| 02:00:07.24 | David Grabham | No, absolutely. As you can see, there's almost no room for the solar up there. And those decks were initially put on to provide privacy for the client, but also to provide an array for solar. So we're caught between, reducing the ridge line so that somebody has their view and the sun study, which has no effect on his property at all and ambient light and air for the, for the back deck. So we did modify those. As you can see in our drawings, we had a straight pitch deck, like this in our first drawing, we reduced it to a gable end in the very back. And then finally we put in the big window and put in beams instead to hold that side of the roof so that any air or light, it broke that up and we literally have, I think, 12 or 14 square feet of wall in the back that goes above the third floor, which is a living space. So we did step it in. We stepped it in, stepped it in, stepped it in. But if you look at the bedroom size on the top, the bedroom is not very big, width or length. It's a small bedroom, 14 by 15 or something like that. The bathroom is lineal and long, which has the privacy windows, which allowed us to have privacy on the side and the closet is in the back. So if you could tell me how to step that in and still get that, all it's going to do is expand the length of the section in the middle anyway. So our focus was stepping back from the street, stepping the levels back as we went to reduce the mass and height of the stories. You see three story buildings in Sausalito, right? With a zero front yard setback. There's one right up the street. So we felt like we did a good job at that. |
| 02:01:45.39 | Joan Cox | But the second story is actually wider than the bottom story. So. |
| 02:01:52.07 | David Grabham | That's because the car, you mean in the front? |
| 02:01:54.25 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 02:01:54.85 | David Grabham | That's because you need 20 feet for a car to park under it. And that's the existing structure. Right. So basically that's the existing house. We lifted it up. We had to move in the bottom wall to get our 20 foot to make this project conform with the parking requirements. So that's why I stepped in like that. |
| 02:02:11.48 | Joan Cox | Okay, those were my initial questions. Thank you. |
| 02:02:14.75 | Steven Woodside | Other questions, please. |
| 02:02:18.80 | Steven Woodside | Johnson, remember Hoffman? Councilmember Blasthain. Let me see if I had. Again, can you just go over the Sun Study How much additional shadow do you throw onto the neighboring property? |
| 02:02:37.92 | David Grabham | I think when we did the sun study in the summer, By the way, that's a master bedroom in the back at 104 Benita. That's not there. So when you look at the... I'm sorry, I'll stay focused on your question. It's an hour to an hour and a half in the early morning, 6.30 to 7.30 or eight o'clock in our sun study. So. in the back bedroom, almost no effect at all or no effect on Pine Street at all. |
| 02:03:09.83 | Steven Woodside | And then in the record, you originally had a garage, I believe that ran out. We did have a garage. |
| 02:03:13.64 | David Grabham | We did have a garage that was the 40 foot setback line that we removed. |
| 02:03:20.12 | Steven Woodside | Was that in consultation with staff during the planning phase or was it with the neighbors during some iteration around? |
| 02:03:27.02 | David Grabham | That was staff brought that to our attention and said, you know, we have the 40 feet. We could have put an ADU there and tried to, fight with the staff on that. And we said, we'll let it go and remove it from the project to move forward. |
| 02:03:42.52 | Steven Woodside | And then in terms of impacts to the view from the Caddy Corner house owned by Mr. Sam Chase, did you execute any changes to the roof line or building impacting that view? |
| 02:03:56.96 | David Grabham | You're talking about 19 Bonita. |
| 02:03:59.75 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 02:04:00.25 | David Grabham | The three store four story house that's wall to wall in the lot. Yes. That's where we went and made all those roofline adjustments was in his upper office, sitting down in the corner looking out the window. |
| 02:04:12.62 | Steven Woodside | you just summarize those for me, please, what you did? |
| 02:04:14.88 | David Grabham | Yeah, can you go back to the adjustments, Liam? So you can see the first, it says model one iteration for Zoom meeting, you can see our solar array and our roof. Basically, what we did was, oh, there's a printer. Look at that. |
| 02:04:25.36 | Joseph Becker | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:04:31.59 | David Grabham | Look at that. Yes. the roof gable back. After we went up and met with them, we were like, oh man, me and Jake went out, we made story polls, we're standing out there. Jake was standing out there, I was up in his house. We reduced this part of the roof, we kicked it out here. He could still see right here, it was still blocking his view on this gable end. We went back, redid the story polls again. We brought this hip in. We literally superimposed the photo onto our modeling program, and we pulled this hip in. And I was like, we can't pull it in more than this. This part's already floating. You're going to need steel to be able to even go this far. And then this was the adjustment we made for Conrad, which was full roof, ambient light, window, trellis, trellis, big window, big window, and then we hipped everything back. And this barely works with the head height right here in the stairs. So that was the other thing. When this hip comes down, it has to hit this other hip right here to allow for us head height where we lowered actually the stair side also is low, seven feet or maybe a little bit more than that where you're walking up the stairs and then you turn in and as the roof comes up, you're turning in stepping into the full height hallway. Everywhere we could shave inches, we did. We have the model, so although it's a lot of work to change all this in the model, Um, You know, this was our first attempt at really working with the neighbors and trying to get support for this project. We thought we actually had support for this project if the condition was that we got the other neighbor to cut their tree. more. And so we approached the other neighbor to cut the tree also. And that fell through at the end. But this is our line right here. Right. And you can see it's literally this is the knob open the window. Yes. Right here. So when you walk into the room, this is what you see. |
| 02:06:24.48 | Steven Woodside | All right. |
| 02:06:30.15 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 02:06:34.88 | Steven Woodside | And you don't happen to have this perspective with a red line for some of the earlier iterations of the roof line, do you? |
| 02:06:42.61 | David Grabham | I have pictures of Jake standing out there with the story poles, but... |
| 02:06:46.57 | Steven Woodside | But not. |
| 02:06:46.84 | David Grabham | I don't have them. They're in my phone. I could dig them up. But yeah, he's literally standing on the roof holding up the backside of this story poll and it's You know, we did a lot of work to try to do. |
| 02:06:58.76 | Steven Woodside | But your assertion is that this red line was higher and blocking more view than we see in this picture in your original view and you modified the roof line. |
| 02:07:08.04 | David Grabham | Yeah, I mean, this went back here. You can see where it goes. It went like this. This went straight back and then down right here. That's exactly the roof line right there. Straight back and down. I see. Bugging this whole entire area. |
| 02:07:19.72 | Steven Woodside | I see. So you're saying the crest of the building receded along that line, and then you cut over to the bottom left corner. |
| 02:07:28.14 | David Grabham | Yeah, the ridge came all the way back and then started going down to here. This point stay this is at the back of the building right here. |
| 02:07:37.08 | Steven Woodside | Understood. I can see that. Thank you very much. I have no other questions. Any other questions from the council members? Oh, I see Council Member Blasthine. Sorry, I didn't see you there. |
| 02:07:43.41 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. |
| 02:07:43.58 | Joseph Becker | Thank you. |
| 02:07:45.85 | Melissa Blaustein | No problem. That's okay. It's hard when it's on Zoom. Thank you very much for this presentation. I had a couple of just clarifying questions. When did you first submit your plans or request for a permit to the Community Development Department? I mean, a long time ago, |
| 02:08:03.86 | David Grabham | Thank you. |
| 02:08:04.97 | Melissa Blaustein | So, A couple of years ago. |
| 02:08:06.97 | David Grabham | Yes. I mean, we, Jake worked on this project for a year before me and I'm almost, I'm coming up on two years. So. |
| 02:08:14.24 | Melissa Blaustein | So it's been about three years of working on the plans. |
| 02:08:17.90 | David Grabham | For Jake, yes, around three years trying to get this thing through, yes. |
| 02:08:22.07 | Melissa Blaustein | And how many iterations did you work through on the property? |
| 02:08:27.42 | David Grabham | Well, I showed you six. Thank you. |
| 02:08:28.99 | Melissa Blaustein | Right. Okay. And at every phase, |
| 02:08:29.27 | David Grabham | OK, and at every phase. Probably 15 more. |
| 02:08:33.07 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. And at each phase you worked with the neighbors and the community development department to get feedback. |
| 02:08:39.10 | David Grabham | Those six that I just showed you were all done through the neighbors in the Community Development Department, yes. |
| 02:08:45.88 | Melissa Blaustein | And even after those six that you've completed, Your client is willing to make the necessary change to the deck for us to approve the... plan this evening. |
| 02:08:56.80 | David Grabham | Well, I mean, we've been, you know, there's been talk of lawsuit and all these things, and it's very hard to, you know, work this because the code is very ambiguous and it's always like that. So, you know, Jake can push this forward and be in court for another year. He wants to build his home. He's been, this is his third year. His kids are grown up. I think he's, I think he's in before when we met with him, this was not an option. So, you know, through this process, he's compromised and compromised and compromised. And he's like, look, this is the last thing, but let's... You know, let's do one more and get this thing wrapped up is his hope. |
| 02:09:37.52 | Melissa Blaustein | So what you're saying is you're willing to make that concession. I just wanted to confirm. |
| 02:09:41.70 | David Grabham | Yeah, to remove the back deck that's over the 40 feet, 3 inches, if that makes Conrad happy, then they can move forward and we'll submit our application without the back deck. |
| 02:09:55.25 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, thank you very much. |
| 02:09:57.16 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 02:09:59.40 | Ian Sobieski | Hi. Did you happen to confer with Conrad before tonight that you were willing to remove that back deck? |
| 02:10:06.91 | David Grabham | No. |
| 02:10:07.47 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. And could you go back to the picture with the red line? I'm looking over here, but you guys aren't driving. Sorry. that we just looked at. So you just showed us a picture with the red line of the roof line. So... Yeah, thank you. This is it. There was, today when I was at 19 Bonita, there was a green line that still existed that didn't have tapers on it. And so is that green line that didn't have the tapers on it? Is that the red line right now? |
| 02:10:44.90 | David Grabham | potentially if that's the last line up there, they didn't put it up for no reason. So that's probably it. I would imagine. |
| 02:10:52.15 | Ian Sobieski | So that would be my question is if, um, if this is a representation of that green line. So anyway, that's a question I have. |
| 02:11:06.77 | Steven Woodside | Council Member Hoppen, I was there as well. I believe that that, if you could put that drawing back up. Lisa? |
| 02:11:12.22 | David Grabham | LAMB. |
| 02:11:14.66 | Steven Woodside | I think what Councilmember Hoffman's referring to is the top right diagonal line from the roof crest. That first section has green telltales on it. And so she's looking for confirmation. |
| 02:11:19.76 | David Grabham | Yeah. Okay. I think we made an adjustment and adjusted the story polls. So maybe I, you know, I mean, those have been up there for five months. |
| 02:11:34.81 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah. |
| 02:11:35.19 | David Grabham | So, you know. |
| 02:11:36.15 | Ian Sobieski | Like if there's a... |
| 02:11:37.75 | David Grabham | four months maybe. |
| 02:11:39.51 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. |
| 02:11:40.06 | David Grabham | but I would imagine that yes, if there's a line there, That is the line. You know, this view goes just like they said in the staff report, which is very interesting because we would have never made these adjustments. But for the fact that we were trying to get the support, but reading the code and the view impacts of the code, this view goes all the way over here. You know, he's got the whole entire bay up there. So to us, this little teeny part was us saying, hey, we really would like you to support our project. We're really working hard to try to work with you on this. And we did. And we have an eight-foot ridgeline now on a hip roof. And the whole design is the front A-frame. That's the whole design we went in with the beginning, which is just down the street. It's a very historic homage to a modern home from back in the day. We tried to pull elements of those things and put them into this house and make it a really special house. But this is all we could do to lose this. We got eight feet. Thank you. |
| 02:12:49.42 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Oh, Council Member Kelman. |
| 02:12:51.71 | Jill Hoffman | Just one quick clarification in the staff report for tonight. It says the proposal is building height of 32 feet. And you've said a handful of times that it's only at 30. |
| 02:13:02.16 | David Grabham | I'm sorry, I meant 32 feet. Okay. It's that eight feet, yes. |
| 02:13:08.47 | Jill Hoffman | And just wondering, why did you guys lift the bottom floor instead of doing a full demo? |
| 02:13:14.27 | David Grabham | just less waste and materials. It's already there. It's all great wood. There's no reason to tear it out. And it worked within our setbacks and our building line and just want, you know, save a little money, save a little time. So we lift houses all the time. |
| 02:13:31.30 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:13:31.51 | David Grabham | It's not a hard thing to do. |
| 02:13:31.72 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE And also, this is about 2,200 square foot. What's the size of the solar installation you're trying to do on that rooftop? |
| 02:13:41.21 | David Grabham | I think we did a preliminary and we're not even, I mean, or several panels short still. But the goal was to get to net zero. That's not going to happen because of the roof reductions. But we're close. I think we're four panels off or something like that. |
| 02:13:59.11 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:14:00.60 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, and thank you, sir. I will now turn to the applicant, to the appellant, who is presenting on behalf of the appellant. |
| 02:14:02.56 | David Grabham | Yeah. three times. |
| 02:14:10.08 | Steven Woodside | please approach the podium. |
| 02:14:17.24 | Steven Woodside | welcome. You'll have 15 minutes for the appellate. |
| 02:14:20.17 | Conrad Gann | Thank you. My name is Conrad Gann. I have owned these two beautiful houses, 428 Pine and 104 Bonita for nearly 20 years. I raised my kids on pine street and they're now in their early twenties. And then I'm hoping that they'll raise their kids, these properties as well. My family also has four generations in Sausalito. I love this town. I, um, um, We're going to basically, the rest of this presentation, we have Michael Rex and Elizabeth and Sam Chase present. This house is too big for the lot. If you look at the volume, what they did is they shrunk the footprint so they could go up. And the overall mass is 240% of the existing cottage. Um, The idea that two windows have to be perfectly aligned to be a problem. Well, when they're 10 feet apart, it's a problem if they're not one is still above the other. Um, I, did get like tours of the 3D very early on, but they were asking for 62 feet with a garage at that time. When the story polls went up and I objected, I was completely cut off. From then, I have not received any new CAD models. I requested picture to picture comparison so I could see each view to each view. In the absence of a model, I was denied that as well. And finally, I did a sun study. on the angle of the sun rising, the property line is around 124 degrees when the sun rises to The left of that angle, this building will block it. And David said we would have like two hours of block sunlight. Well, using data from NOAA in early July, the sun rises at around 545 a.m. and it would take 350 minutes before it passes the angle of 124 degrees. So I don't really want to rely on their sun study. Michael is going to point out other problems with it. I requested them to provide an independent third party sun study from the very beginning. I think you all received emails back in July on this. And, um, They don't want to do it. I'm going to turn it over to Michael Rex. |
| 02:16:34.83 | Michael Rex | Thank you. I'm Michael Racks, local architect. I've been doing business in town for 40 years, and I'm here representing Conrad Gann. Can we get my slides up there? Thank you. |
| 02:16:59.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Did you send us your slides, Mr. X? |
| 02:17:02.22 | Michael Rex | Yes. Yeah. Kristen forwarded them to you before the hearing. |
| 02:17:21.76 | Steven Woodside | Since we need to find that, we're going to take a three minute recess to accommodate the council. So let's find those slides and we'll be back in three minutes. |
| 02:17:26.86 | Joseph Becker | Thank you. |
| 02:17:26.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:26.89 | Joseph Becker | Thank you. |
| 02:17:26.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:26.98 | Joseph Becker | So, |
| 02:20:50.59 | Steven Woodside | It appears that we have your slides. Is that right? Are we ready to resume? Okay. Hang on. Let's make sure our colleague is here. She is here. So please start the clock and proceed. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:21:06.44 | Michael Rex | This slide just shows that where Conrad Gans, the property, is next to the subject property. on the west side. And I want to advance the slide. I guess next slide, please. This is a copy of the applicant's drawings. And by his own dimensions, he shows the length of the building with the decks of 48 feet, 8 inch, 47 feet, 8 inches, more than 40 feet by eight feet, by seven feet, eight inches. And there's no ambiguity in the code. If you go to the next slide. Um, a build the length of a building, uh, is defined as the structure. Uh, so structure and building are one in the same. And when a building is longer than 40 feet, it has to be set back and it's important to note, um, that this word rate, For the last 20 years or more, the planning department has determined that rate means ratio. So for every inch... it exceeds 40 feet at one to five ratio. And that's how you increase setback. So it's always been applied. Next slide, please. In your staff report, staff calls this an accessory, the DEX accessory structure. It's not accessory. It's part of the building. So that's an error. And they advise the Planning Commission incorrectly. And there's no ambiguity about this whatsoever. There's no opportunity for interpretation. and they advise the Planning Commission incorrectly. And there's no ambiguity about this whatsoever. There's no opportunity for interpretation. Yet if you go to the next slide, In your staff reports, the staff says, well, we reinterpreted the code because on small lots we thought it would be punitive. We don't have separate standards for different lot sizes. The zoning code and development standards are applied equally throughout the town. So that's another error. If they were to apply the code accurately, they'd have to increase the setback from five foot three to six feet or another nine inches for the entire length of the building. So they have to go back and redesign it. If they take the decks off, they don't. Next slide, please. But that's not the only problem. The problem, in fact, even larger problem, is the sheer mass. On the left is what Gam looks out at now out of his bedroom window and from his central courtyard, which is his only outdoor living space. And he'll be completely closed in by a massive building, three stories straight up, no articulation horizontally with walls moving in and out, no articulation going up or setbacks as it gets taller. With a fairly high plate, like seven and a half feet at the top, it doesn't have to be that tall and it doesn't have to be a straight wall all the way back. So the mass is a very serious problem, even if the setback was increased. Um, And if they don't, if they take the decks off and the setback stays where it is, this is what you're going to get. And on a little lot, my goodness, on a little lot, that's why we have heightened review. that you, the planning, this is built to the max, total maxed on floor, total maxed on building height. And when buildings build to the maximum allowed, they're subject to height and review. And the whole reason the Sauceto adopted height and review was recognizing that on substandard lots, which this is, instead of 5,000 square feet, it's 3,600 square feet, that if you build to the max on a substandard lot, you might crowd your neighbors. And it takes extra scrutiny to avoid that, which might mean not building to the max, making it smaller and setting it back greater. This has not happened. In fact, the height in review on this application has been completely ignored for reasons I can't understand. Next slide, please. When it comes to the SUN study, it makes absolutely no sense to me, and you don't have to be a scientist or dig very deep. This shows that all you need to know on the left, Uh-huh. This is existing in the morning. at 9 o'clock with the existing one-story house next door. This is what the applicant showed the planning commission that at the same time, in the morning. With a three-story house, there's no change in the shadows. No change. They're identical. Nobody, nobody from the simplest point of view could imagine that you can build a three story house in place of a one story house and not shadow, increase greater shadows. So as far as I'm concerned, The sun studies bogus. Okay. Please, we know comments down in the audience. We know a three-story building is going to shadow the neighbor's house. In fact, next slide, please. This is angle of azimuth of morning sun coming up. And it basically shows, Comrade put this together, as he explained, based on NOAA data, scientific data. And if this house gets approved as proposed, it will, he'll lose all morning sunrise throughout the whole year. Okay. I don't consider that minor and I don't think you would. But it's not just sun, it's this incredible sense of closure and mass so close to you. Next slide. and Conrad isn't the only one objecting. In fact, this shows no from the people he spoke to There's 10 just in the immediate neighborhood. And in fact, there's more that object. have objected to this application, but they've been so intimidated by the applicant that they refuse to step forward. So in that sense, the neighborhood outreach, in spite of what the applicant has told you, is a failure. And he says, I canceled the meeting right before it was scheduled. You know why I canceled it? It was for an earlier application that, was so out of compliance with the code When it was pointed out to them, when we realized it, the planning department pulled the application. So it was a courtesy to the applicant that we canceled the meeting because there was nothing to talk about. They had to redesign the building. And in fact, they need to redesign this building because this was represented as a remodel. It's not a remodel. Substantial demolition by our own code is defined as if you remove 51% of the roof or 51% of linear walls, it's substantial demolition, which means it's demolition. Okay. There's nothing in between. Okay. So this is a brand new house because they're removing the entire roof and most of the original walls. And when you build a brand new house, you have lots of options. The neighbors have no options. So when you look at the findings, Kristen pointed out that three of the findings can't be made. But in fact, many more can be made. In fact, it's not just the findings. If you take design review, before you get to the 13 findings, there's the purpose defined for design review. And of those purposes, I put it in my letter on, dated January 18. And I won't go into it all. But the whole purpose of the design review is to promote Saucido's unique visual character. This is out of character. to preserve land values. This is going to seriously reduce the land value of the neighbors to have a massive building so close to them. to lose their sunlight and have have their only outdoor living space closed in by a three story wall. Another purpose is to prevent the erection of unsightly and obnoxious structures. on. Take Conrad Gannon, this is exactly that. and to incorporate site considerations, including adjacent uses. He may have made lots of changes, but from our point of view, they were token and they don't address the concern. In fact, it's so obvious with the roofs. Half the roofs on top don't cover the floor area. They cover decks completely unnecessary. In fact, it's a rear roof over the rear deck that's blocking Sam Chase's view, kitty corner. So what it really is, is it's not only overly massive, it's excessive, okay? And, Those are just the purposes when you get into the findings, even more so. So I ask that two things, that you ask the applicant to go back to the drawing board and reduce the mass. He could do a two-story house, or if he wants the master on top, it could be in an attic with dormers. I ask that you request that he, He accepts a continuance, so he can reduce mass and bulk And so the findings could be made properly. Thank you. or if you want to do that, I ask that you deny the application. I'm going to turn it over to Elizabeth. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, Sam. |
| 02:30:31.95 | Sam Chase | Good evening, council members. Thank you for being here tonight. I'm speaking for both my wife. I'm Sam Chase, 19 Benita. I'm speaking for both my wife, Ingrid, and I. Preserving our nearside Bay views are very important to us, particularly at locations at our home where we often are seated performing daily activities. followed by periodic breaks for Bayview enjoyment. I've tried to accurately display views in the photos. Those of you who were able to visit the property experienced views firsthand. The photos in the site visits hopefully give you an idea of how fragile Bayviews can be in low-lying terrain of Newtown. |
| 02:31:17.16 | Unknown | Definitely. |
| 02:31:23.37 | Sam Chase | To give credit where credit is due, the owner and the applicant have made a concerted outreach effort, including site visits, erecting temporary story poll, and orange rope to indicate where the hip roof line would be. Unfortunately, when the story polls, the official story polls, I should say, went up, it became clear that neither the hip roof nor the upper ridge height were consistent with outreach discussions. Another suggestion was readily dismissed because of ceiling height issues, which were not explained or justified. Our suggestions We're meant to keep the project moving forward by not impacting our views and to gain our support. The owner applicant are quick to credit themselves with hours spent and effort made during outreach, yet they dismiss the fact that current plans don't match those discussions. Finally, the owner applicant have options to reduce the view impacts, but have chosen not to do so. On the other hand, we have no options. to protect our views if the project moves forward as proposed. If our daily enjoyment views are obliterated, they're lost forever. So we request that you uphold our appeal and stop the project from moving forward as proposed. Many thanks. Okay, I'm not sure that now's the time to talk about rebuttals or save that for later. Well, I can, yeah, you go ahead. |
| 02:33:03.54 | Unknown | Regarding the agreement to remove the deck, I'd like to point out that there's a concern that you know, in two years from now, they walk in, request a building permit and try and build a low deck. So if they're going to make the decision to withdraw the deck, then they need to understand it's a long term decision and we'd ask for a condition of approval. that there never be allowed to be a deck. As you know, that requirement for adding the structure includes not just decks, but also includes you know, concrete. walkways. I mean, it's a very extensive definition. And I also just want to say thank you so much for the institutional memory on that provision and how it's interpreted. Thank you. |
| 02:33:47.36 | Steven Woodside | All right, we now have questions from the council who would like to start. |
| 02:33:57.14 | Steven Woodside | Does anyone on the dais have a question for the appellant? Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 02:34:04.59 | Ian Sobieski | I guess I'll ask this. I asked this of the applicants as well. And that was with regard to the red line drawing that we saw. When I was at the property today, it appeared to me that THE GROUND. the line that was the green line did obstruct some of the view. And so that was why I was asking a question about whether or not the red line follow the green, the green line that's currently up. So I don't know if you have any Comment on that or? Not on that, but. |
| 02:34:37.70 | Michael Rex | I'm going to let. It has to do with where they take the picture if they hold the camera away. |
| 02:34:43.68 | Conrad Gann | Thank you. |
| 02:34:43.81 | Michael Rex | Amen. |
| 02:34:43.96 | Conrad Gann | Thank you. It has to do where the picture is taken. I think Jake is taking the picture way high up. OK. You know, it's different. |
| 02:34:48.35 | Ian Sobieski | picture. Thank you. Okay, well, I'll like to- |
| 02:34:52.27 | Steven Woodside | You'll have an opportunity, sir, to respond during a rebuttal. Let's let the people who have the podium have the full attention of everyone. |
| 02:34:59.78 | Ian Sobieski | To me, that's a material issue. Anybody who cares to shed light on that is fine, but |
| 02:35:09.53 | Michael Rex | We typically take pictures out of windows sitting and standing so it's clear which is which. Thank you. |
| 02:35:18.98 | Ian Sobieski | I think it might be helpful if we, for me, because I think that that is a significant, I think I'm leaning toward a finding that that's my position is that might be a significant view. And I think it would be helpful if we had a consensus on. |
| 02:35:26.89 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 02:35:37.04 | Ian Sobieski | you know, what the view is out of that window. And that would be an agreement on a depiction of what the new roof line is going to look like from those views at 19 Bonita. |
| 02:35:47.51 | Michael Rex | One thing you should keep in mind is that the height of the ceiling in the master bedroom at the ridge is 13 feet high. So just lowering that a little bit with a little shallower pitch, you remove a fair amount of that view blockage. And if you remove the roof off the rear deck, the one that would still remain, You also preserve the view to the north of the Fort 24. and Yeah. |
| 02:36:18.72 | Michael Rex | Any other questions? |
| 02:36:20.24 | Steven Woodside | Well, I guess I'll ask, just following up on that view question, that view is taken from what room in Mr. Chase's house? And he's here. He can probably answer the question, but if you want to answer it, it'd be fine. |
| 02:36:30.80 | Joseph Becker | Thank you. |
| 02:36:30.83 | Ray Swanson | Yeah. |
| 02:36:36.11 | Sam Chase | I'm glad you asked that question. The view from the library was taken you |
| 02:36:42.51 | Unknown | Ugh. |
| 02:36:42.95 | Sam Chase | at the lower two panes from a sitting position. And then the view in the master bedroom was taken. Well, I guess it would be sitting in that chair, looking straight on. Now, the drawing that Mr. Grubham had up earlier about the view with the red lines, that is not consistent with what you saw today if you visited the property. And it's not consistent with the photos. So one of two things, one of possibly three things, You know, the story polls were inaccurate. The picture was taken somebody holding their hand up from the highest pain that I'd have to get on a ladder to look out of that pain. Or, well, those are basically the two options. |
| 02:37:42.43 | Steven Woodside | Let me ask you. |
| 02:37:42.69 | Sam Chase | There's a very big difference between what I've submitted to you and what's showing up on that slide. |
| 02:37:52.49 | Steven Woodside | Right. Thank you. Just a question about access to the drawings. The architect for the applicant said that there was a QR code on the drawings. I guess this question for Mr. Rex. Were those did that QR code give you access to the drawings? Thank you. |
| 02:38:14.61 | Michael Rex | Can you ask your question again, please? |
| 02:38:16.45 | Steven Woodside | The architect for the applicant asserted that there was a QR code on the drawings that would give you access to the BIF file, the BICS file, I guess it's called, the BIM file. |
| 02:38:27.02 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 02:38:27.47 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:38:28.13 | Michael Rex | Well, first of all, the applicant's not an architect, just for the record. Okay. He's been characterized and called an architect all throughout this process, and he's never corrected anybody. But as far as access to drawings, I could download them off the city's website. I asked for a copy of the drawings originally because it's easier to scale, but I could print them to scale. So I didn't have a hard time reading the drawings. And he's absolutely right that when many months ago, when we asked for the drawings, he provided us with a set. That hasn't been a problem. The problem is when we I complained about the mass and nothing really changed. and the impacts on sunlight. Our dialogue was not productive. Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:39:20.44 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 02:39:20.78 | Michael Rex | Councilmember Calvin. |
| 02:39:21.54 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:39:22.03 | Jill Hoffman | Michael, could someone on your team put up the slide that showed the view from Conrad's property with the tree? We see that again. |
| 02:39:31.45 | Michael Rex | Yeah, that's not on my slides. That's on Conrad. or in the staff report, right? |
| 02:39:39.17 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:39:41.03 | Michael Rex | It did? Let me go to it then. Sorry. Can you put it? |
| 02:39:44.05 | Jill Hoffman | Somebody on your side had it. I just want to bring that back. |
| 02:39:46.21 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 02:39:46.48 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:39:47.90 | Michael Rex | OK, oh, you're talking about the view from his Conrad's bedroom. |
| 02:39:51.48 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:39:51.82 | Michael Rex | Oh yeah, I have that. |
| 02:39:52.74 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:39:52.78 | Michael Rex | Yeah. If you can pull that up again, thanks. It's like the second or third slide. |
| 02:40:03.58 | Michael Rex | Down one. |
| 02:40:04.71 | Jill Hoffman | I think. |
| 02:40:06.33 | Michael Rex | Well, I guess one more. There it is. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. |
| 02:40:10.07 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Thank you. So you made the statement that you showed us this and then you made the statement that you replace a two story with a three story you're going to have impacts right. And I think you're making the assertion that despite the other changes you never saw changes in the mass were there ever any changes to this side of the building. |
| 02:40:14.19 | Michael Rex | here. |
| 02:40:21.72 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:40:33.82 | Jill Hoffman | That you discussed specifically by way of feedback. |
| 02:40:35.03 | Michael Rex | you know. |
| 02:40:39.15 | Michael Rex | You can see this was what was originally, or not originally proposed, but this went to the Planning Commission, right? Let me rephrase my question. I'll let Conrad answer this. |
| 02:40:45.59 | Jill Hoffman | Let me rephrase my question. I'd like Conrad to answer this. Let me rephrase the question. So this seems to be your major allegation or assertion why the building mass is too much. What did you convey to the applicant as to which changes would satisfy you? Or was your position that now it's three stories, it's never going to be good? |
| 02:41:06.01 | Michael Rex | We think that a building straight up with no vertical articulation or offset, building straight back so close to the property line on the substandard lot with no articulation horizontally in the walls creates an excessive mass. And we think covering the front and rear decks with roofs on this side that directly block view and create more mass when it's really completely unnecessary is all excessive and should not be approved. |
| 02:41:36.35 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:41:36.51 | Michael Rex | Did I answer your question? |
| 02:41:37.86 | Jill Hoffman | I was just wondering about the dialogue and what specific, you know, to say, you know, Hey, it's two stories and now it's three and that's it means that the applicant is never going to be able to. you know satisfy a neighbor if i was wondering if you had made or delivered any concrete specific requests regarding this facade. |
| 02:41:55.25 | Michael Rex | Recently, since Planning Commission approved the project. |
| 02:41:59.81 | Jill Hoffman | The course of the of the application. |
| 02:42:02.43 | Michael Rex | I was involved in the beginning with an earlier design. And even then, we explained that it's too massive. It doesn't honor setbacks and too bulky. And then I was not involved in the process going through the planning commission. Conrad handled that on his own. And so I haven't had an opportunity personally to speak to the client about what changes could be made. Thank you. handled that on his own. And so I haven't had an opportunity personally to speak to the client about what changes could be made. And I'm certainly willing to if there's the opportunity. |
| 02:42:32.65 | Jill Hoffman | That's what it is. of the opportunities. Can I fill in the middle part? Sure, please. |
| 02:42:39.67 | Conrad Gann | In the planning commission documentation, I propose they have 1,319 square feet in the current cottage. And I propose that they simply go up from there to add space for their kids and master bedroom with, kind of tastefully maintaining the style of the neighborhood and dormers and so forth. So that's in my THEIR OWNERS. That was the ask at the time. |
| 02:43:03.80 | Steven Woodside | Could I ask a question then on this picture and it dovetails with Councilmember Kelman's question. The right label here is posed older version and it says applicant refused to share updated views, but this is not a perspective from the courtyard of the planning Commission approved. |
| 02:43:23.55 | Conrad Gann | That's entirely correct. |
| 02:43:23.80 | Steven Woodside | Right. |
| 02:43:26.03 | Conrad Gann | I got that from our first call where they were sharing data and David navigated around in his 3D software to my master bedroom. and I took this screenshot of this picture. I asked to have this updated and they refused to provide the information for me to provide to you an update of this picture. If they were to provide the DIMMACS software, we can find someone to help us navigate around and provide all of the pictures from any window to any window. give you a very precise view. of the privacy and view impacts of this, but I was denied the opportunity to update this. |
| 02:44:03.29 | Michael Rex | And I'd like to add, when Conrad showed this to me, I observed the note as well. And I said, well, are we looking at a project that's changed? Because that would be meaningless because of the note. It begs that question. And the answer I was told was, even though we don't have access to the current model, because it wasn't provided to us, So we could compare the two. I understand that this design hasn't changed in terms of height or mass or bulk or shape. from what you see here. The only thing is we don't have a model to compare the two, but if we did, we'd see no reason why it'd look any different because my understanding is there hasn't been any |
| 02:44:49.67 | Steven Woodside | change. So another question for you, sir, is to the east of the property toward Caledonia on Pine Street, immediately next door is a three-story building. It's got a garage level a living area, and then a substantial peaky roof. It's quite high, and it seems like the roof level from peak to ground of that building is similar to the one that's proposed by the applicants. |
| 02:45:14.77 | Michael Rex | Actually, the hill's dropping, and their ground floor, you're talking about at 424, directly to the east. Directly downhill. Right, directly to the east. If you look carefully, their ground floor is dug in on the west side, okay, and the hill's dropping. So it doesn't appear as massive. But you're right. It's two-story, and it has a peak roof, OK? Well, it's great. I mean, I'm sorry. And if this. |
| 02:45:26.72 | Joseph Becker | directly. |
| 02:45:51.25 | Michael Rex | was two-story with a peak roof, where the plate dropped down to the second story, And he had dormers in there for the bedroom. And it didn't have these big roofs. going out over the decks at the front and back, and he didn't have a ridge height of 13 feet in his bedroom. this would not be as massive. Or if he would step the second floor back a little bit and lower the plate a little bit from seven and a half feet. It wouldn't look as massive. These are options he can do because none of that exists right now. And it would go a long ways to the findings being met for heights and review. And it would bring in more light and not have it close in this. only outdoor space, the center courtyard that Mr. Gannon and his tenants enjoy. |
| 02:46:38.82 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:46:38.84 | Michael Rex | Thank you. |
| 02:46:39.31 | Steven Woodside | questions, please? |
| 02:46:40.97 | Joan Cox | Thank you. You mentioned that the 424 was sunken in. There's no garage in front of this, so this building could be sunk. |
| 02:46:51.09 | Michael Rex | Um, Yeah, it could be. There's lots of options. Actually, I think there's enough room in this square footage because it's built to the max that they could put the master on the front, on the second floor, put the kids in the back and not have a third floor at all. He has extra building coverage remaining, particularly when he removes the extensions of the decks in the back. He has existing remaining impervious surface if he didn't pave the whole backyard. So he has options that he refuses to consider. Okay. |
| 02:47:29.57 | Joan Cox | Referring to this drawing, I see the, you know, something else that really enhances the massing, I have to say, is the landscape screening. um, It looks to there's like what 26 30 foot trees in between the two buildings. Is that your understanding? |
| 02:47:48.01 | Michael Rex | There's trees out in the front and you can see it in the existing photo on the left that's on Conrad's property. although they're deciduous. So the sun comes through there, morning sun comes through there in the winter. If you look at the proposed or approved landscape plan, it shows an entire dense hedge squeezed in along the side yard of podocarpus. Well, if you have a wall of podocarpus that's used to screen the mass of the house. Now you're even more closed in and you're losing even more light. That's a band-aid solution to solve a problem that shouldn't even exist. If you have to have a 30 foot tall portocarpus and they can get that tall, they grow very fast. Then there's something wrong with them. designed to begin with. if you need that kind of solution. |
| 02:48:37.57 | Joan Cox | if you want to. And how big is the canopy on that? Because there's only a five-yard setback. Yeah, on the podocarpus. |
| 02:48:45.32 | Michael Rex | Oh, a podocarpus girl is very tall and narrow. If you're trying to create a hedge in a narrow space, that's a good solution. But it grows very fast and it can grow very, very tall. And. We're not seeing that. but it's approved. Okay. |
| 02:49:03.34 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:49:05.30 | Steven Woodside | Other questions please from the council. |
| 02:49:08.99 | Michael Rex | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:49:10.26 | Steven Woodside | Seeing no other questions, then we will move back to the appellant who has three minutes and some odd seconds, which will be confirmed by the city clerk. I'm sorry, the applicant. My apologies, the applicant. I think it was- Public comment. And 15 seconds if I made my notes correctly. 12 seconds, all right. Thank you, city clerk, for any points of rebuttal. So please. |
| 02:49:25.87 | Sergio Rudin | Public comment? |
| 02:49:30.36 | Sergio Rudin | maybe. |
| 02:49:41.21 | Steven Woodside | Sergio, would you like to make any comment? The voice of the mayor pointed out that you popped up on the screen. |
| 02:49:48.95 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I think we should take public comment before we do rebuttal. |
| 02:49:53.39 | Steven Woodside | I see. Okay. then, uh, Yeah, thank you very much. My apologies to the applicant. So city clerk, would you please? |
| 02:50:06.71 | Walfred Solorzano | you We have Stuart, sorry, Revin Woltish. Sorry if I could pronounce that. |
| 02:50:07.42 | Stuart Rabinowich | Bye. |
| 02:50:13.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 02:50:13.76 | Stuart Rabinowich | Thank you. |
| 02:50:13.78 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:50:17.61 | Stuart Rabinowich | It's Rabinowich, but that's fine. I am Stuart Rabinowich. I have owned the building at 425 Turney Street since 1980. It is a Victorian, it's right next to that ADU that was just plunked down right next to it, which was a bummer. Right after that, I saw the story post and actually, can you hold, I did send an email that has a photograph from my kitchen and my kitchen on tourney street actually so if you can stop my time for a second so you is that possible |
| 02:50:51.17 | Steven Woodside | We can pause. If just pause the clock, are you able to pull that picture up easily? Please don't make any more comments, though, so we don't suck away from your time. |
| 02:50:58.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Is this something that we usually do for public comment or just let them comment? City attorney? |
| 02:51:04.89 | Steven Woodside | We're just asking if it's easily to access. It's not an obligation. |
| 02:51:06.63 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm just asking if it's |
| 02:51:10.88 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I mean, this is at the discretion of the mayor here. So this is something that we can pause just for the purpose of showing up. |
| 02:51:15.27 | Steven Woodside | We can pause just for the purpose of showing up. I understand that you're not being submitted in public record. We're making an accommodation. If it's easily accessible, if not, we'll move on. City Clerk? |
| 02:51:26.12 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:51:31.84 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 02:51:35.52 | Steven Woodside | All right. Well, I'm sorry, sir. We have a record of it, but incorporating into the, is not going to be a standard we're going to be able to meet. So if you'd kindly proceed to comment. |
| 02:51:48.78 | Stuart Rabinowich | Well, again, and I sent it to all of you, so you do have it. And nobody has visited my property, neither from the Planning Commission or from the City Council. And it's unfortunate because my property, it is not adjacent, but there is empty space between my kitchen and there. And the third story of this building completely will block the sunlight that comes over the hill in the morning. right now in the wintertime it will be gone and all and and it will make a major impact on oh and my view of the i can see up to the star of the sea church i'm a member of the sausalito historical society for years my whole concept of this city city from a historical point of view will be really impacted profoundly by this third story that they're doing. And I'm more than happy if they find a way to reduce the height and that glass third story. But the third story is massive and will completely obliterate my entire view of the hillside. And also sunlight right now during the winter time will no longer be coming in through my kitchen window. And so it will make a major impact. And I would invite any of you, and I wish that the planning commission, I got there a little late. Hopefully this isn't too late. You're welcome to come and see the view from my backyard. And you can see it in that photograph. So that's really all I can say right now. But you're all any of you are invited over to. Could you reiterate your address? |
| 02:52:03.38 | Joseph Becker | there. |
| 02:53:23.32 | Stuart Rabinowich | 425 Churney Street. |
| 02:53:25.80 | Jill Hoffman | Sir, do you happen to know what you Name the file up here, sir. But you might have, do you know which file that is as an attachment? |
| 02:53:32.63 | Stuart Rabinowich | It was an email that I basically sent to all of you. Yes. And I think the only person that got back to me, in fact, was you. I think you got back to me. Yeah. And said, thank you. And actually, Kristen, I had sent it to her right after the planning commission meeting that, but unfortunately, it was too late. |
| 02:53:37.27 | Jill Hoffman | I think the only thing |
| 02:53:51.46 | Steven Woodside | Vice attachment 15. The vice mayor had a question for you, sir. Yes. |
| 02:53:57.15 | Joan Cox | Mr. Rabinowich, thank you for your correspondence. Your correspondence also states that Quote, the plans also have a floor plan on the upper floor where people will be able to look down from above on my property, eliminating the privacy of our backyard. |
| 02:54:12.25 | Stuart Rabinowich | Yeah. |
| 02:54:12.73 | Joan Cox | Can you further explain that? |
| 02:54:15.56 | Stuart Rabinowich | Well, it appears that there's glass on the third floor. And they can, I have a beautiful backyard and my neighbors are welcome to come and hang out there when they want, you know, but, but to just be able to look down, it will be, it'll, it'll be a direct view into my, into the backyard there. And it will in fact be, I would say that the impact on my property is in many ways, you know, as big as it is on the adjacent properties. It's just that I wasn't contacted because I'm not adjacent. I'm not adjacent. |
| 02:54:47.52 | Joan Cox | And because it's up above, ground level screening would not protect your own. |
| 02:54:54.90 | Stuart Rabinowich | No, it looms, it will loom above. Yeah, absolutely. |
| 02:54:59.72 | Joan Cox | All right. Thank you. |
| 02:55:02.15 | Stuart Rabinowich | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:55:02.96 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker, Alice Merrill. |
| 02:55:05.70 | Stuart Rabinowich | Thank you. |
| 02:55:11.65 | Alice Merrill | Good evening. I would just like to say that change is change. Change happens. Change is hard to take sometimes. And in Sausalito, it is one of those things that... We have establishment. homes and people come and want to remodel or redo or even tear down in my particular instance. Um, and it. We have to open our hearts to new friends and neighbors. These people are really good people and I think that they've been through a lot and, um, I think they've tried really hard and I think that the people who are against it have been against it from the minute it started because they didn't want change. And, um, And I'm sorry about that, but I just think that... We need to open our hearts. It's a funny little town. We need to accept people. Thank you. |
| 02:56:23.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Lorraine Klein. |
| 02:56:31.93 | Lorraine Klein | Good evening. I'm Lorraine Klein. I live in below in the lower unit at 425 Turney Street, right behind. saw the story polls go up. I looked up when the planning department meeting was, and I came here. I think it was the second one. And I heard the, you know, I sat through it and I heard the Mr. Byer. going on and on and talking to the audience about Sausalito needs more children. And so then I looked online and saw a professional video he had made. And my comment was on next door. And my comment was. Tosileta has plenty of children. We're 7,000 people here. And I said, maybe you'd be happier in Tiburon or Mill Valley where there's a lot more people. So now... I have read these terrible things He's got a blog and a I don't know what, but I've seen links to these. comments being made about me that I regularly flip off his wife in public in front of his children. Wouldn't know her if I saw her. I have a restraining order that's going to be put against me. I am not trying to hang out with these people or stalking them. And I I just feel there's a huge intimidation campaign going on with anyone who disagrees with this. The house is too big. That's all I'm going to say. Take it down a story. It's too big. I came here on my own. I've been I've heard that I've been recruited by Conrad. No, I came here on my own. That's where I met him. You know, I think for myself. And I'm feeling really uncomfortable and really intimidated by these people. Thank you. |
| 02:58:35.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Ray Swanson. |
| 02:58:45.85 | Ray Swanson | Hello, I'm the owner of 422 Pine Street and was here on the October 25th meeting as were a whole parade of neighbors. who at that time each express the really heartfelt thought that the design of this building was not in keeping with the neighborhood design. It sounds like you've all been down this neighborhood, and the Planning Commission went down there. I thought people really spoke from their heart. I thought that Points were made very well But we were told at the end of that meeting that it was off the record because the plans had been changed, which I think means the garage was brought back. And that was the end of it. So I just have a sense that the neighborhood wasn't really heard on this point. Um, And my last point is I would second the, it's probably off point, but this issue of an intimidation campaign is, it's not factitious. It's, there's something there. |
| 02:59:51.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker, Jeffrey Conan. |
| 02:59:57.80 | Jeffrey Conan | Thank you all for your time, your dedication to Sausalito. My name is Jeffrey Conan. I currently live at 325 Pine Street, one block down, and was a former tenant of 414 Pine Street with my partner. One thing that I haven't heard much of, and you might have received Kate Green's presentation deck by email describing the visual character, the visual things that we're trying to allude to in our opposition or our attempt to try and get the applicant to really understand the objective historical architectural heritage that not only define Sausalito for Sausalitans, but for the rest of the world, right, that we receive and that we all come to love and cherish. And so I think it's a little bit difficult for all of us to really understand. what a prevailing design district means on a street versus a distinct and unique design. that deals with the site. And I don't feel like, that those were created without intention. It was really about being neighborly, being observant around. And I think that I would ask the applicant to kind of look at the neighbors, reflect some of the historical design that we have, even if the 102-year-old cottage that they currently live in and probably love to death needs to be reflective in their new build. It was never publicized as a new build. On the yellow cards that all the neighbors got, it was a remodel and expansion from the start. And I think that this sort of sloppiness has created this acrimonious nature within I will mention, though, that we are being attacked on this website. |
| 03:02:05.38 | Steven Woodside | You're out. |
| 03:02:06.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:02:06.14 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:02:06.24 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 03:02:06.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:02:06.37 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:02:06.41 | Jeffrey Conan | Thank you. |
| 03:02:06.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 03:02:06.49 | Jeffrey Conan | Yeah. |
| 03:02:06.81 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:02:06.83 | Jeffrey Conan | you |
| 03:02:07.12 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:02:07.13 | Jeffrey Conan | Thank you. |
| 03:02:07.22 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:02:07.27 | Jeffrey Conan | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:02:09.04 | Walfred Solorzano | All right, we do have somebody on Zoom. Laurie? |
| 03:02:14.12 | Laurie | Hi. Sorry, I'm... I'm actually out of town today. I live in Sausalito. I've lived in Sausalito for over 22 years. I have empathized with the applicant in the sense of I know how difficult it is to do a renovation. We renovated the Thomas Frost House on Sausalito Boulevard And what I'm really concerned about here is one thing which is that the planning commission has decided that rear decks are not tied to setback Well, they were when I was doing my plans, And I don't think that we should just have a new planning commission that decides that they're going to change the way we've done business. So we either all are tied to the regulations that everybody had to do before. Because what happens next time when a new planning commission comes in? Is it gonna change again? So as much as I do empathize with the applicant, I do think You have to, what Michael Rex said was relevant and important And I hope that you consider those things as well. |
| 03:03:24.27 | Laurie | Thank you. |
| 03:03:24.67 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:03:24.79 | Steven Woodside | The vice mayor asks for your address, ma'am. |
| 03:03:27.29 | Joan Cox | I remember your project on Sausalito Boulevard, but I don't remember the address, but that's one of the projects I had in mind. |
| 03:03:33.91 | Laurie | It was 640 Sausalito Boulevard. Uh, now it's, uh, Sunshine Avenue, we changed the address. Took us four years and we had all kinds of neighbor issues too. And I feel- |
| 03:03:45.57 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. We just needed the address. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. |
| 03:03:48.47 | Laurie | Thank you. |
| 03:03:53.89 | Steven Woodside | Is there additional public comments, city clerk? |
| 03:03:55.99 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment. |
| 03:03:58.36 | Steven Woodside | Seeing no additional public comment, then now we do return to the applicant who is invited to make any rebuttal. anything. fish. |
| 03:04:10.93 | Jake Beyer | Sure, you do. We could. |
| 03:04:13.26 | David Grabham | Thank you. you |
| 03:04:13.44 | Jake Beyer | Is it 315? between. |
| 03:04:15.96 | David Grabham | Thank you. |
| 03:04:15.99 | Steven Woodside | 3.12, I was incorrect. 3.12 is the correct time. |
| 03:04:19.52 | David Grabham | Go ahead, Jake. |
| 03:04:26.91 | Jake Beyer | I'm Jake Beyer. I'm the applicant, along with my wife, Georgia Glassie. And I just want to point out something here. We've been working on this for three years. We spent over a hundred hours working with the people up here who sat here and opposed this project. We are writing the playbook. of families who decide whether they stay in Sausalito or whether they leave. If you open up your phone right now and you look how many four bedrooms homes are available, there's two. One's a $3.85 million lot where the house hasn't been built and one's an alleged four bedroom houseboat. There isn't a housing stock available for families with three kids, five occupants, in a 2,200-square-foot house with three 10-by-12 bedrooms. for us to live. So the decision we make tonight is going to reverberate for a very long period of time for a town that has a struggling school system that needs kids, that needs families. We are not a cookie-cutter place where my house has to look like your house and all these houses over here. This isn't Nantucket. Think about all the musicians that came here and made music and the mobsters. It's funky because we have an eclectic group of people. Let's embrace that together. |
| 03:05:46.09 | David Grabham | Thanks, Jake. I just wanted to reflect on some of the points Michael Rex made. The Sun study where he said it was obvious that a three-story house, there would be no impact. That was taken at 9 o'clock because there was no impact at 124 degrees, he says. Of course, his Sun study was from Google Maps, so it's probably a little less than 124, but that was one of the things I wanted to say. It's impossible to design a house with no impact. and what we tried to do was take everyone into consideration, try to make as many adjustments as we possibly could and still keep the house. So when you look at the second story floor plan, you can see three very small bedrooms, two very small bathrooms that are about as small as they can be. That's what caused the width of the house um because jake has three kids and his wife um the the photo taken from sam's was standing there just like this right out the window you can see the the latch in the photo which if you went to his house you would know that the latch was basically around this high so you can see the the latch in the photo. We didn't go like this. Sam was there when we took the photos. It wasn't like this big thing, but we weren't trying to be dishonest with the photos. It was literally walking into his office, taking the photo so that we could see what was going on. um michael rex brought up a really good point about the sun study the sun is very low in the winter time there's literally no effect on on bonita in the winter time when the tree has no leaves um when the tree is full you can't see that hill and it blocks the sun from the back bedroom anyways because the sun's low which is in the summertime so the shade study we produced doesn't show that unfortunately but that is the case when the tree is dead the sun is low in the winter time and vice versa thank you for your time |
| 03:07:44.19 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. So that closes our public hearing. We're now going to bring this up before the hearing is closed. I'm sorry. Thank you. |
| 03:07:52.16 | Jake Beyer | No. |
| 03:07:52.34 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. No, sir, I don't. There's no need for any comment from anyone except. I believe unless this city attorney, my understanding is that there is no additional time. Can you please comment on the form of the appeal? |
| 03:08:06.82 | Sergio Rudin | No, there is no requirement for the appellants to be provided additional time. |
| 03:08:10.25 | Steven Woodside | Sorry, that's the end of the public hearing. Thank you very much. We now are going to bring it back up to the council for discussion. While we're doing that, city clerk, if you'd kindly bring up the recommended motion from staff, just as a starting point, and stick it on the screen so everyone can see. My colleagues, please proceed. |
| 03:08:25.84 | Jill Hoffman | Can I ask a question of staff? Christian, would you mind coming back up? you |
| 03:08:31.50 | Steven Woodside | Of course. |
| 03:08:34.23 | Jill Hoffman | So I think I got this right, I took notes. I think you said in response to the vice mayor that one of your staff reports found and suggested to the planning commission that heightened review findings seven and nine could not be made. but yet the Planning Commission made those findings. Can you share with us why you recommended they could not be made? |
| 03:08:56.57 | Brandon Phipps | I don't have them in front of me. Unfortunately, with this digital world, I have no paper. But I'm going to take a stab at this. I would assume it's because. I saw the story polls and thought that there might be more than just a moderate impact on light and privacy. which I think are findings that are part of that whole set. And so I had recommended if the commission felt the same way, that these are the modifications that I thought might help relieve that without completely redesigning the building. |
| 03:09:26.34 | Jill Hoffman | Was the privacy concern because of the close proximity or because of the facade as designed |
| 03:09:32.48 | Brandon Phipps | I think the facade and the height |
| 03:09:34.44 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, and I think I had one more. You wanna go? Seven is light and air. Right, okay. |
| 03:09:40.23 | Joan Cox | So you addressed privacy. Did you want to address light and air? |
| 03:09:44.28 | Brandon Phipps | Well, it was hard for me to make a determination on light because I didn't think they had much of a view or a lot of like coming in in the direction of the new house. It didn't appear to be, but you know. you do the best you can trying to take into consideration the design which isn't built yet. |
| 03:10:04.70 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. Sure. |
| 03:10:05.86 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 03:10:06.72 | Jill Hoffman | Two other questions for you. Do you have a follow-up on that? |
| 03:10:08.71 | Joan Cox | Karen Hollweg, yeah I was just going to follow up because the third finding you said could not be made was heightened review finding. |
| 03:10:08.92 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:10:14.92 | Joan Cox | B, which is the site is configured with adequate width and depth to provide yard spaces and setback proportional to the size of the structure. |
| 03:10:25.28 | Brandon Phipps | Right. And that would have to do with the height, I'm sure, because it's maximized to the minimum setback required. And then you have three stories. I think my biggest concern just thinking this through is that the So they call it South Side in the plans. I know that Michael referred to it as West. That it's fairly linear and really not very broken up. And that I think in my staff report, I had mentioned it multiple times. |
| 03:10:54.75 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:10:54.88 | Brandon Phipps | Thank you. |
| 03:10:54.90 | Jill Hoffman | That makes sense. All right, two other. It seemed like there may be some factual questions, one around the story polls and the green line versus the red line. Is that right? |
| 03:11:04.05 | Brandon Phipps | You know, I'm not there every day watching their story poll, so if there were changes, I have not been party to this. I'm not aware they've changed them since they put them up for the October meeting because they... The appeal was filed in time, and so those presumably are the same polls and lines that were seen by the commission. |
| 03:11:21.04 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I have one more question, but I'm going to make a note for the city attorney that one would think that there should be some recertification prior to appeal of the story polls. And I don't know if there's anything in the code that provides for that, but that seemed like a prudent measure. So no, no question. Just a statement. And then there was another comment from the property owner on Turney Street. And I'm just wondering if you had any engagement with that property owner. |
| 03:11:43.21 | Brandon Phipps | Mm-hmm. Well, we talked by email on several occasions, and I went and visited the site and actually sort of trespassed through some of the apartment buildings on Bonita and tried to really get a good idea how that impact might be seen to him. |
| 03:12:02.16 | Jill Hoffman | and I trespass on city business. Thank you very much. |
| 03:12:05.67 | Brandon Phipps | Just an offering of a tidbit, the application was filed with us in like February of 2023. I just don't want you to think it was in process with the city for three years. Okay. |
| 03:12:17.27 | Steven Woodside | So in, So the city attorney has advised me that there is an element of new factual information presented by your question that would afford the applicant an opportunity to respond. Sergio, our city attorney, could you please just clarify the scope of the allowable subject matter for the applicant to respond? |
| 03:12:37.85 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I would I would suggest that we allow the applicant to respond just to these staff comments that have been made following the close of the public hearing. So. It will be limited just to the comments made by staff now. |
| 03:12:49.24 | Steven Woodside | So you, the applicant has an opportunity, if you so wish, you're not required to, to respond to what the staff member said regarding the questions presented by the council. |
| 03:13:09.04 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:13:09.07 | David Grabham | Right. |
| 03:13:09.29 | Steven Woodside | It wasn't, I mean, the, well, the, |
| 03:13:09.31 | David Grabham | It was. |
| 03:13:13.27 | David Grabham | I did want to say something about the planning |
| 03:13:16.04 | Steven Woodside | You can't speak about anything. Well, what's that? |
| 03:13:17.51 | David Grabham | Well, what's that question that Kristen just answered? Is that what he was talking about? Yeah. |
| 03:13:19.13 | Steven Woodside | You have an opportunity to do that. You have an opportunity to respond to the question of the two findings that the staff member said that she could, was going to recommend that the Planning Commission not make, which the Planning Commission then ended up making, but her statement in the staff report was that there were three findings that she couldn't make, and the question was about two of them, light and air and privacy. We asked about all three. Okay, all three of them. What's the third one? |
| 03:13:40.51 | Joan Cox | We asked about all that. Okay, all three of them. |
| 03:13:43.13 | David Grabham | Thank you. |
| 03:13:44.71 | Joan Cox | about the |
| 03:13:48.10 | David Grabham | Can I just take them one at a time anyways? |
| 03:13:49.56 | Joan Cox | The adequate width and depth to provide yard spaces and setback proportional to the size of the structure. |
| 03:13:56.09 | Steven Woodside | Yes, you do. |
| 03:13:56.52 | David Grabham | If you want to give me the first one, I'll give you the answer, and we can do the other two. |
| 03:13:56.81 | Joan Cox | THE END OF Yeah. Sure. The first one is design review seven. Design and location of buildings provide adequate light and air for project site, adjacent properties, and general public. |
| 03:14:11.16 | David Grabham | I think one of the things that, uh, |
| 03:14:13.25 | Steven Woodside | Could you be sure to speak into the microphone, Sophia? |
| 03:14:15.09 | David Grabham | Thank you. I think one of the things the planning department said, |
| 03:14:17.92 | Steven Woodside | for one moment. Is the microphone on city clerk? |
| 03:14:21.28 | David Grabham | Sorry, yeah. |
| 03:14:22.17 | Steven Woodside | Here's a topic to see if it is. Okay. Thank you very much. |
| 03:14:26.27 | David Grabham | I think one of the things the planning department overlooked because the neighbor at 424 Pine Street had felt like we had communicated with him and had shown him what we had done and didn't raise a big fuss, whereas 428 did. when his house is on the setback, we were trying to create light and air for the whole entire building. And so if we push toward him to create more on the other side, which, by the way, were more than the setback on that side, except for the ADU, then the 424 Pine Street would be would have even less light and air. And so we basically positioned the house as much as possible to provide an attempt at a 10 foot setback for most of the structure. If you look at most of the structure, it's 10 feet away from him and over 10 feet on the other side. So we were trying to go in the middle between the two, which provided light and air, which I think, and I can't speak for the planning department, but I think that that was how the planning commission was able to make that finding. |
| 03:15:31.34 | Joan Cox | Okay, number nine is project provides a reasonable level of privacy to the site and adjacent properties, taking into consideration the density of the neighborhood by appropriate landscaping, fencing, and window, deck, and patio configurations. |
| 03:15:46.26 | David Grabham | I think the project we designed, because it's conforming to all the codes, is the third smallest house in the neighborhood. So the density of the house, the way that we stepped it back to provide the light and air, especially to the third floor back in the sunlight to the neighbor at 424 Pine, was something we did strategically in the beginning of the project. So could you, I'm sorry, I lost the end of that. |
| 03:16:16.72 | Joan Cox | you it's um Project provides a reasonable level of privacy to the site and adjacent property. |
| 03:16:24.53 | David Grabham | Oh. And I went through my section cut where we dropped the house down, staggered the windows. You know, we didn't get to review our project in this depth with planning or see what their comments were. So we didn't know exactly how we were going to have to explain how we did these things. We did it just because that's how we designed the project. But and then we did, of course, the screening in the back, the backyard decks, the portacarpus was actually not our idea. That was somebody wanted that one of the neighbors so that it would block instead of them looking at the wall. |
| 03:16:25.45 | Joan Cox | is, you know, the |
| 03:17:00.58 | David Grabham | We don't really want to put the port-a-carpus there. There's bamboo there now. I think that there could be some kind of screen. It doesn't really matter what it is. It's to create privacy. Jake wants privacy as much as Conrad does for his house. |
| 03:17:14.59 | Joan Cox | And then heightened review standard B, site is configured with adequate width and depth to provide yard spaces and setback proportional to the size of the structure. |
| 03:17:25.56 | David Grabham | So if you look at the existing home and you look at the yard in the existing home, this is another thing that we showed in the meeting. We basically pulled a huge section of the house back that goes into the backyard to actually give them a backyard so that it's all within the setback. And if you looked at my slide where it shows the whole pink structure, they actually have quite a bit more yard than they had before. Plus, we did the decks, and especially the front deck gives them some sunlight in the daytime, whereas Conrad's houses block most of the afternoon sun in their yard, you can see from the shade study. So more light in there. And I think that's why the Planning Commission approved our project is just some of those points. |
| 03:18:08.70 | Steven Woodside | And the council member Kullman reminds me that there's story poll question. And just so you know, your applicant raised his hand that he wants to add something. |
| 03:18:16.23 | David Grabham | Okay. So the story poll question with the green, what was the question? I'm sorry. that you present that story. |
| 03:18:25.01 | Joan Cox | Karen Hollweg, Were the story polls altered since the October 25 planning Commission hearing. |
| 03:18:32.92 | David Grabham | No, I don't think so. They've been that ridgeline has been the same in all of our drawings. So we did know we altered it before the commission hearing. And that's why it was green as it was all pink and we ran out of tape and it was green by the time we had the commission meeting. That's right. But we did make an adjustment with the 40 feet. We put the lower level and remove the fireplace chimney. And that's where that kind of modification came in. And that's why it's green there. But it hasn't been touched since then. No. |
| 03:19:06.84 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:19:06.97 | Jake Beyer | Thank you. |
| 03:19:07.11 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:19:07.21 | Jake Beyer | Thank you. |
| 03:19:07.24 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:19:08.78 | Jake Beyer | I just want to quickly add on the privacy note in the current state, in our third bedroom, you can look out the window. and watch someone doing their dishes in Conrad Gann's 428 property. In our master bedroom, you can open the window and look directly into Conrad's master bedroom in the current state. And then 424, we do our dishes and we look directly across into their master bedroom. And that's why Andrew Junia said in the Planning Commission hearing that they approved this project on November 15. There is no privacy issues whatsoever because we're actually increasing the amount of privacy that we have. and both of Conrad Gann's properties that sit on the exact same size lot is our lot. |
| 03:19:57.30 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. So back to thank you. I believe that's the full opportunity to respond to new factual information. The conversation is now back up to the city council. |
| 03:20:10.61 | Steven Woodside | Council Member Kellman asked the question, but now the opportunities for anyone to comment on, Or... make motions toward this action. Just for everyone's reference, the staff recommended motion is on the screen for everyone to see. the staff recommend the city council didn't, the appeal upholding the Planning Commission's decisions and approve the project subject to Planning Commission imposed modifications and conditions. That's the staff recommendation. |
| 03:20:40.99 | Joan Cox | So can I ask a clarifying question of staff? So in order to approve this project, we have to be able to make all 20 of the design review and heightened design review findings. Is that, would that be an accurate statement? |
| 03:20:56.04 | Steven Woodside | Brandon, could you? |
| 03:20:56.46 | Joan Cox | I'm seeing Brandon. |
| 03:20:57.07 | Sergio Rudin | brand. |
| 03:20:57.37 | Steven Woodside | I can answer that. Yes. Yes. |
| 03:21:00.54 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 03:21:01.35 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:21:03.29 | Steven Woodside | So for organizing that. |
| 03:21:05.54 | Joan Cox | So for me personally, I would not be able to make all 20 findings. The project is currently configured. So I would not be able to support the staff recommendation at this time when the project is currently configured. And I have a lot more to say about that and to explain why, but I would be interested in hearing where other council members stand so that we can organize how we're going to comment on it. |
| 03:21:35.20 | Jill Hoffman | I'd be interested to hear which ones you think at the outset you can't make. |
| 03:21:39.44 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:21:41.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:21:41.04 | Joan Cox | I actually agree with staff about 7, 9, and B, but there are, for example, 12, design review 12 says that you have to be able to make all of the heightened review findings. And so if I can't make, Heightened review B, that means I also can't make design review 12. So for me, it's absolutely 7, 9, 12, and B. But there are others that I am challenged with as well, as I'm happy to explain. |
| 03:22:18.10 | Steven Woodside | So I guess I come at it a little differently. Uh, my view, we don't have a planning commission that votes unanimously very often. Uh, and here was a case, uh, where there's a lot about this. I don't lie. I don't like the anger around the, the whole situation. I don't like, uh, you know, elements of the design, but at the end of the day, that's not what I, as I approach it, I take seriously everybody's property rights. You know, I visited both neighbors at their invitation because I took seriously their concerns, and I think they both are impacted by the project, Mr. Chase's view. Uh... Just for my, for Council Member Hoffman, in my perspective, for Mr. Chase's house is that that photograph we're talking about was from a favorable window in Mr. Chase's study. If you sit at his desk, the slight, the angles are a little different and part of the boats are obscured. That's a loss. Those boats are there. And Mr. Glenn's property does have an at least an hour uh more shade every day so they're real impacts uh but what i was looking for in this investigation was is there something so over the top as to overrule the planning commission that voted unanimously on all these things and i couldn't find it even though i kept looking for it um this issue of the deck arguably because it has to do with a vague section of the code is the place i would center in on uh but as a person trying to be practical about moving the from my point of view trying to get this effort to culminate in a house that a family can live in and giving clear direction to bring the whole issue to resolution, I would love to encourage a path here from the dais to actually do that. And so you two former planning commission members have a lot more tools in your toolbox to figure that out, but my own direction or disposition is to. I think it's a very make an approval that would allow this construction to proceed |
| 03:24:32.41 | Joan Cox | I mean, I will say, eight years on the planning commission dais, I rarely voted against a project. I frequently voted to continue a project to allow changes to be made to make it approvable. I have visited literally hundreds of properties in Sausalito because I always insisted on visiting every site that I was going to ask to be voted on. I cannot remember experiencing on a site visit what I experienced yesterday in terms of the crowding. of the site. And it's not entirely the applicant's fault. These are substandard lots with non-conforming setbacks on either side. So their designer was challenged to design something that is visually that does not have this really crowding visual impact. you know, we went back and forth on an appeal on a project on the Hill. that started out being straight up. And we ultimately, the project was stepped back in order to avoid that really, that feeling of mass. I... would worry I mean, literally walking down between the story poles and the neighbor's yard. I would worry if there was a fire. And I understand that FIRE signed off on this, but for me, if I'm trying to... rescue people or put out a fire or erect ladders, there's not much room at all. And that's what happens when you reduce the required setbacks. So that's, I don't see a way. I also am a firm believer of not designing from the dais. So lopping off the back deck, that's an absolute must if they want to preserve their current setbacks, in my opinion. The articulation that I think would be helpful in addressing a lot of these concerns, I can't do that from the diet. |
| 03:26:55.34 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Boston. |
| 03:26:56.99 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, thank you very much. And I appreciate it. how much information was presented and how much time all of the neighbors as well as the applicant put into I was just explaining this situation and trying to build a home. agree with the mayor that it is quite rare that we have a 5-0 vote from our planning commission. And I also was looking for What might be the reason that we would deny or accept the appeal, given that our planning commission had Vigorous, we reviewed this a number of times and had responded to changes. The one thing that stood out for me consistently, both from public comment that we heard as well as just an ongoing concern, is the issue of the setbacks. The fact that section 10.4070 makes clear the length of the wall and the increase in the length of the wall for the lot. So I was pleased to see that Mr. Beyer was willing to remove thedecks. I would hope that we could get to a consensus where we might approve the project with that change in mind because based on my conversations with the city attorney, That was probably the most problematic or ambiguous with regards to our code. When I look at projects like this, I'm always looking at, you know, can we maintain our character, of course, but the most important thing is, is this a legal project that conforms with our code and follows the rules that we put forth? And the concern that I did have with regards to the setbacks seems to be willing to be amended. So while I agree that there are a lot of... concerns from the neighbors and a lot of conversation around this issue I believe that we're in a situation where we are, working towards trying to be able to say yes to projects that to support our residents and so I would be willing to approve the project if we could include that exemption on the DEX and an agreement that we would continue that exemption as requested by the residents because that's something that they brought up and would like to be respectful of that and appreciate that both sides are making concessions here this evening. But again, I look forward to hearing from our other council members, I appreciate very much Councilmember Cox's perspective and Vice Mayor Cox's perspective and Councilmember Kelman. since they have both served on the Planning Commission and bring a unique piece of expertise. So I would love to hear from Council Member Kelman, for example, And hopefully we can get to some consensus about what we do here since. huge amount of staff time as well has been put into this project. And I really want to thank Kristen because this project and this, was she is the second planner on this iteration. So I think she did an excellent job of answering our questions considering that fact. |
| 03:29:38.35 | Steven Woodside | Are there other comments? |
| 03:29:40.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yeah, thank you, my colleagues, excellent comments. And thank you to everybody for showing up and sharing your thoughts. This is obviously a very special area, a very special part of town. And it's also obviously a substandard lot. Whoever were to buy that lot and there's lots in that vicinity understand the constraints that they are working with, regardless of their overall goals and projected outcomes. That's a pretty tough lot to put a lot of density into. I think the deck question is a no-brainer. That certainly is something that sounds like the applicant is willing to eliminate. It sounds like it's something that was an issue for the neighbors, and that's a great move in the right direction. I may be more on the side of a continuance with the following direction. I think when you have a substandard lot, Like that. you have a choice and a trade-off of height versus articulation on solid wall structures that have those substandard setbacks. And it doesn't appear to me that that choice was made here. It appears that both were executed. And I mean that within the context of the actual planning process. So I have a great appreciation for the number of iterations that your designers have put together. And there's probably many more than what we saw. Um, but I am really focusing my comments on what was presented within the city process as of February 2023, which was less than a year ago. So that's kind of where I'm having a little bit of a sticking point and why I asked the folks on appeal to show us what that sidewall looked like because having spent 10 years also on the Planning Commission, I know what these things look like when they get built, and I know what the community looks like when these things get built and this is not a comment on the designs it's a very pretty design um it's about uh the design on a substandard lot and so that's what i'm trying to anticipate and trying to understand the trade-offs that were made between the height obviously taller than other buildings in close proximity and then of course that solid wall right there which is a tough tough thing to wake up to and i appreciate the comments regarding window height and changing window height. I think that's a thoughtful introduction of a concept to modify, but I'm just sharing with my colleagues that's kind of where I'm struggling on is trying to understand the trade-offs that were made with full acknowledgement of the limitations of the lot. |
| 03:32:30.22 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 03:32:32.08 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. I'm not going to repeat what other people have said, but I will say generally, that. I You know, my sympathy is to with everybody in the room and everybody that's watched this and everybody that showed up to any of the planning commission meetings. with both the applicants and the people that are concerned about this property. And anytime you're dealing with people's homes, no matter what it is, it's very disturbing to everybody involved. And so, I'm sorry for that, and it seems like this is ramped up into something, unfortunately, that has a lot of bad feelings surrounding it. And so one of the things in Sausalito is that you buy into Sausalito and you buy into a community because all of our homes, almost all of our homes, are within a few feet of the others. And so impacts, even small changes, are significant. And so I, too, am... I think I too am leaning toward a continuance with consider these things. And I wouldn't suspect that we need to have too much more staff time with this. I would suspect that we've been through the planning, two planning commission meetings. We know what the planning commission is probably going to say. We know, you know, based on today's hearing, and very thorough by all of the parties involved. So thank you so much for all of your hard work in getting us information. But I think, you know, I don't like it when people show up at these hearings and they're revealing something new. a significant thing that's a reveal at a hearing, because people on both sides need to consider that reveal, whatever that is. And it may be. they need to prepare their own comments and prepare themselves when they come and make public comments here about how they feel or consider the removal of the decks, right? That's something new that no one... on the other side, I believe, was aware of before tonight. So... I think just a basic... consideration for the people who are involved in this, they should have been told before tonight. And they should have had the, the opportunity to respond to that in a thoughtful and concerned way and to be able to talk to all the applicants in a reasonable and calm fashion. From my perspective, too, I mean, I'm not saying I'm not commenting one way or the other on the depiction of the view from, you know, through the trees from 19 Bonita. I'm just saying it was different from what I saw like when I was looking through it, it looked to me like the green line went straight across and all you were going to see. And I'm happy to look at something that everybody has a consensus on that everybody agrees on. I mean, I can only rely on what I saw and- you know. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be happy if everybody could decide and have all the parties could agree that this is the view. That's fine. That's just my point of view. I would struggle too with some of the 7-9-B, and I would also add in C because that's the view corridor. I'm not sure. I would encourage, I would say, yeah, a continuance, if everybody agrees, and to work in good faith with the applicants with, and hopefully no more postings, right, no more public postings. Let's just have a calm and quiet and respectful exchange of ideas and how we can help a family Believe me. I mean, you know, family needs more space. I know that 100%. And so how we can achieve this, but also within the other concerns of the people that have come here. And that's where I'm falling out for that. |
| 03:36:32.30 | Steven Woodside | Please go ahead, Councilmember Kelman. I would like to make a comment after you. |
| 03:36:36.48 | Jill Hoffman | I also just want to thank you for that, Councilman Hoffman, and deliver a comment from the other direction as well, which is I think there's some consensus here around removal of the decks. It sounds like the applicants are also willing to do that. I'm going to ask the neighbors to take that seriously and to look at that. That was a comment that was made by the neighbors that it was something that they wanted to have removed. They didn't like the deck covering. They didn't like the extension. So I think this goes both ways, and I just want to make sure just for the record that we get to say that as well, that I hope that there is some collegiality on both sides to be able to recognize that concession as well. |
| 03:37:20.46 | Steven Woodside | So my comment is, I don't like the angry somewhat postings, but at the same time, I understand some of where the frustration and the anger comes from. It's a kind of maddening process. not to have. the ability to have some guidance on what's... an approved design or approvable design, uh, where, you know, I'm still, if I were the applicant, I'd be a little confused as to what the process is. Uh, I'd be very confused and frustrated. So I'll absolutely go to you next. I, for instance, to my friend, Vice Mayor Cox, if we can't rely on the fire department to tell us that the side yards adequate fire safety, then why do we have the fire review in the first place? And why put everyone through that hassle of dealing with the fire department if we're going to overrule the fire department and say even though the fire department says it's safe, that I would be uncomfortable if there was a fire. I'm not going to be fighting any fires unless it's in my own house. But if, but I, and so I, I just feel like that, that guidance is frustrating and it, it leads to a kind of corrosion where there's a sort of controversy veto that if, if I can gum up the works because of the, so, you know, we have such a full agenda at city council continuing this matter means it comes back to us as the designing body uh and it like grinds on perfection instead of compromise which ultimately means right what's the definition of compromise that my colleague calman always reminds me that i think i said which is that everyone's a little bit unhappy. I think the applicant would be very unhappy losing their decks. And I absolutely recognize that Mr. Chase with the current roof line is going to lose the view, a very nice little portion of his view that's real. That's not nothing. And for more than two hours a day in the summer mr gann is going to lose some sunlight in the courtyard um So the thought is to try to bring this to resolution. So I just put it put it to you. I thought Councilmember Blaustein's proposal was a good one to talk about the decks. If that's not adequate for my colleagues to get an additional vote or two or three to do it. I guess my only question before we continue it is, is there something we can do here tonight to bring resolution to this so that we can move on to other city matters? We can allow this family to move forward and we can accept a compromise that makes everybody unhappy. |
| 03:40:01.92 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, I'm very sorry, Councilmember. |
| 03:40:04.38 | Steven Woodside | Very sorry, Councilor Weber Hoffman, please. |
| 03:40:06.00 | Ian Sobieski | I think what we're trying to do is, my perspective, is not to vote to deny, right? I mean, if we can't make the findings, then you deny. And I don't want to do that because I think we might have a path forward, and I don't want these guys to start all over again if we can have a path forward. And so that's sort of my perspective. You know, I'm always looking at what time we're spending at city council. I mean, but I think I would rather, you know, the parties work it out if we can. It may be that they can't, and we have to make a tough decision. Our review and my responsibility as a city council member is, of course, planning commission are our experts on applying the facts to the law moving forward. But our review is de novo. So I have to go with what I think is appropriate under all the facts and circumstances and the facts and laws as I see them. |
| 03:41:08.35 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:41:09.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:41:10.57 | Joan Cox | And I would endorse that. And I really do appreciate the comments of my fellow council members. When we buy property in Sausalito, we buy property understanding its physical constraints. Because. it's charming and we are nestled into a hillside. And it's one of our jobs as council members to preserve the charm and character of our neighborhoods for all residents. At the same time, While. weighing the necessity of making those changes necessary to accommodate our families. And I think that's something that's very important. to all of us. And I too would prefer not to deny this project. I would prefer the best of all possible worlds would be for us to continue this and for the applicant and the appellant to jointly report to us that they've worked out their differences and here's the design for our approval. So that would be the best of all possible worlds. I did want to address the mayor's comment about how does an applicant know what to do. How do they know what's going to pass or not pass? And that is one of the reasons we are working feverishly on our objective design standards, so that it will be much more clear to all of our applicants, what does it mean? How much of a view corridor must you preserve? Is it 40%? Is it 50%? We already make it clear you're not entitled to an unobstructed view. And so. In 2018, Melissa Blaustein served on my blue-ribbon committee in which we started this process with Michael Rex to attempt to turn our standards, make our standards more objective and less subjective so that applicants are not in the dark about what will likely be approved or not. They can have a whole lot more certainty. And we're finally... in the final stages, five years later, of being provided with some objective design review standards to review. And so I regret that this applicant was not availed of those updated standards to provide more certainty about what would be acceptable or not. I was relieved to hear that the application was submitted less than one year ago. That's actually not bad in terms in our history, unfortunately, in terms of Um, going through the planning commission and especially coming to an appeal so i'm relieved that this application is not yet a year old and hopefully we can wrap this up in not much longer than a year Um, And then... You know, I do hate hearing about the controversy. I hate seeing... The Venom on Nextdoor. Um, and I don't I don't think our decision tonight should be a reflection that we don't care about families in Sausalito. I think that's really. and unfair characterization. Um, I think a lot of what we did with our general plan was expand The potential housing stock. to include room for families. I think that's something that's important to all of us. have for a long time provided lots of encouragement And economies of scale and efficiencies to our school system. We are very invested in the future of our city in terms of families and kids who have the opportunity to grow up here. So. At the same time, we have to be respectful of the character of our existing neighborhoods and not, you know, and not Um, Thank you. inappropriately disadvantage property values of neighbors who also bought into the same neighborhood. |
| 03:45:29.73 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Boston, I see you have your hand raised. |
| 03:45:32.18 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in again. I appreciate the expertise of those who served on the Planning Commission for a decade and for eight years. And I appreciate as well the perspective brought up by Councilmember Hoffman about our community and where our lots are and what you're buying into when you buy into Sausalito. And while I am you know. was hopeful that we would have some resolve here. I am based on the comments of my colleagues understanding of the continuance, but I would like to have the continuance have very clear direction so that this might be move forward as soon as possible. And I just want to say again, I really appreciate the concerns of the neighbors and of the applicant. and appreciate the effort and time that's been put into this. And I also put a lot of time into the odds in 2018. Thank you, Vice Mayor Cox, for allowing me to serve on your mayoral blue ribbon committee. I would hope that we're revisiting some of those recommendations that Michael Rex also spent quite a bit of time on. that would streamline this process going forward. So hopefully we don't end up in this situation again, but I, very amenable to the comments of our colleagues. And I think we can find a nice path forward to reach consensus. |
| 03:46:44.30 | Steven Woodside | So I was gonna riff off that, maybe you can address this both because I'm riffing off of what she just shared. |
| 03:46:49.67 | Joan Cox | Right. So to give clear direction to the applicant and the appellant in terms of what I think we as a council are focusing on. Thank you. They are the design review standards seven and nine. having to do with privacy and air and light, and then the heightened review standards B and C having to do with scale and character complementing the surrounding neighborhood as well as view corridors. |
| 03:47:26.25 | Steven Woodside | Can I ask you a question, my colleague? So Andrew Junius said that there are no privacy issues whatsoever. |
| 03:47:27.79 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 03:47:33.48 | Steven Woodside | if I could just take a couple of these one at a time, that the current configuration is such that there is more, there's less privacy than under the new structures. So my So just love to, they have a little diet. |
| 03:47:42.98 | Joan Cox | Yeah. Because this is a demolition. This applicant can put their windows anywhere they like. So they have the opportunity to avoid all privacy impacts based on their design. They are not constrained. to a renovation. they have the ability to wholesale start over. Now, I do totally respect their desire to save money by raising the first floor up a story, so I'm totally mindful of that. But to the extent that windows look into windows, they have the ability to mitigate that through design, which existing property owners do not. |
| 03:48:19.65 | Steven Woodside | So, you could indulge me the the staggering of the windows seems to be an attempt to mitigate How can it be more mitigated than that? And still have windows at all? |
| 03:48:31.15 | Joan Cox | Well, they're concerned with light. They can... which they have done, they can frost some windows, right? when you look out so that you get the light, but you don't get the vision. of your make the windows opaque so that people can't look in or look out. |
| 03:48:49.68 | Steven Woodside | Okay, and then on air light, which is sort of the shadow question, it was the same line of questioning I was asking is whether our code or the interpretation of that is that there can be no impingement. And if the answer is that's not what it says, then how much is enough? Because currently it's an hour or two. We could get the exact number, but is an hour or two okay? Or is the direction from us that it should be less than an hour? |
| 03:49:12.21 | Joan Cox | So the finding seven is design and location of buildings provide adequate light and air for project site adjacent properties and general public and unfortunately that adequate is not quantified. |
| 03:49:26.33 | Steven Woodside | So I was just saying, since we're moving towards odds, this is a great opportunity to be practical and help a family. Could we experiment with odds here by actually being objective and specific on how much light is enough? Is it 45 minutes? |
| 03:49:28.93 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:49:38.38 | Joan Cox | In the past, we've seen studies where the loss of light resulted in algae growth on decks and things of that nature, right? So that's been, Something that in the past the Planning Commission has opined was an unacceptable loss of light. Um, it you know. But I can't. To me, I would need to hear from the neighbors what they consider to be not too much of a loss of light. You know, six hours is different from one to two hours. So there's a factual discrepancy between what we heard today. We heard it one time of year, it's six hours, and another time of year, it's one to two hours. |
| 03:50:28.11 | Steven Woodside | Right, so I was just in terms of just guy, guy. So is that a question for staff to clarify with |
| 03:50:33.02 | Joan Cox | We could certainly get staff feedback on that. |
| 03:50:35.14 | Steven Woodside | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:50:35.56 | Joan Cox | I think that. |
| 03:50:35.69 | Steven Woodside | Right. |
| 03:50:36.43 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:50:36.45 | Steven Woodside | Yes, Councillor Hoffman, please. |
| 03:50:36.77 | Ian Sobieski | Offcoming. That's a bad habit not raising my hand. |
| 03:50:39.76 | Steven Woodside | It's all right. |
| 03:50:40.18 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. I think the point that we're trying to make is we can't make some – some of us have different findings that we can't make, right? Therefore, the option today is deny or to allow them to work it out. If they work it out and come back to us with a consistent plan, then we don't have to go through the whole process, which... has happened in the past. which is we feel, or I feel, I'm sorry, I feel is the best solution. Thank you. And I understand you're struggling, you know, what you're trying to do, and I respect that, too. But I'm trying to give them the latitude to come up with a plan that they can all agree with. |
| 03:51:19.89 | Steven Woodside | I think that's where the majority is. I might have to dissent from that because it feels like what that's actually saying is we're handing a veto. The consensus plan is one where the neighbors, by not agreeing, have a veto. And of course, if I were either of the neighbors, I would prefer that nothing happened and that little craftsmen stay exactly as it is. That would be my preference. And so if I lived there, I would say I'm not going to agree to anything. |
| 03:51:44.95 | Joan Cox | I mean, I would say if the applicant addresses the issues that we've raised and the neighbors continue to disagree, that would become less of an issue for me. if I feel as though the applicant has addressed the remaining issues, which were identified on October 25, then I would be less persuaded by the neighbor's concerns, depending on the level of effort to address the concerns we've enunciated, and that staff has enunciated since October 25. |
| 03:52:16.42 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:52:19.88 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Kelman. |
| 03:52:20.72 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Mayor. It's always been a challenge of the Thank you. design process in building process really in the city of Sausalito because it is both um, building approval and design review. And one is, as we talked about earlier today, objective and one is subjective. And so I just want to offer perspective on what we're discussing and with great appreciation to your efforts to achieve a design compromise. I think what the majority here is offering is a procedural compromise, which I think is actually more advantageous than us trying to, from here, move a window, move a wall. And so if I were to give a clear direction, I would say there's agreement amongst five of us that the decks will be removed, I think, that I've heard. And then the suggestion is to the talented designers and applicant to work with the people in their community to bring us something that they feel they have buy-in. Now look, That's the role of the dice. They might not be able to achieve that with their neighbors. And we know that, they know that, the neighbors know that. And I think what we're saying, and I'm just calling Council Member Hoffman's earlier point of some new information was presented the community didn't get a chance to weigh in on the new information in tandem. I'm talking about the deck agreement. I think that's worthy of having that conversation. And that may be all that we see next time around. But if they also come back to us and there's a collaborative, documented process and we feel a sense of everything was done, then I think that that is as much direction as I am willing to get. But I think this is a procedural compromise, which I think is actually better than us trying to design from up here. |
| 03:54:05.82 | Joan Cox | And Mayor, I did hear the applicant call out that they've already spent over 100 hours on this. And so an option that we always offer is we can continue this to a date uncertain so that you have an opportunity to address our comments, or we can deny it and you can take it to the next level. So I would offer that option to the applicant if they prefer that we deny it. I would prefer not to deny it. I would prefer to continue it in hopes of finding resolution. Okay. |
| 03:54:41.42 | Jill Hoffman | I actually don't wish to deny it. Yeah, I mean, they could ask us for that, but I just don't think that is the right answer for them either. And I think it's the right answer for the community. And I think it loses the compromise component that I think we're trying to achieve. But I appreciate that. And we can have offered that as an option, |
| 03:54:56.66 | Joan Cox | Okay, but I appreciate that. And we have that out there as an option because I'm hearing |
| 03:55:00.31 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 03:55:01.78 | Joan Cox | Okay, I prefer not to deny it as well. |
| 03:55:08.04 | Joan Cox | then I will move that we continue this project to a date uncertain to give the applicant |
| 03:55:14.72 | Steven Woodside | I don't know if, did you actually have a question for the opportunity? |
| 03:55:16.98 | Joan Cox | No, I don't. |
| 03:55:18.16 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Sorry, sir. |
| 03:55:23.21 | Joan Cox | We understand. We're not going to deny it. |
| 03:55:27.22 | David Grabham | There's still a point talking to the neighbor. |
| 03:55:28.98 | Joan Cox | We're not gonna debate. The public hearing is closed. |
| 03:55:30.92 | Steven Woodside | Can we have an order in the chamber, please? There is a motion being made, if you'd like to continue the motion. |
| 03:55:39.85 | Joan Cox | So I move that we continue this item to a date uncertain to allow the applicant an opportunity to address the design review and heightened design review findings that we as a body have indicated were not able to make this evening and to revise the designs to remove the re the decks as discussed with the proviso that that is a permanent removal and and that they will not return at some point in the future to seek approval of adding a deck. |
| 03:56:17.06 | Steven Woodside | Okay, just a point of order. That was a long motion. I would like just as a standard practice for our body going forward to be able to write the motions down and actually ask the city clerk to put them on the screen. Sorry. We'll try to, well, then we will have to be, then we'll ask you to repeat the motion if you wouldn't mind. |
| 03:56:19.30 | Joan Cox | Yep. |
| 03:56:35.74 | Joan Cox | Okay, and I will happily write motions down in the future, but my motion tonight is to, I move, that we continue this hearing to a date uncertain to allow the applicant an opportunity to address those design review and heightened design review findings that we have indicated as a body that we are unable to make this evening. based on the project as designed. And that part of the changes we are seeking is the removal of the decks with a proviso that the removal of the deck is a permanent removal and the applicant will not return at some date in the future seeking to add back the deck. |
| 03:57:22.08 | Steven Woodside | There's a motion, is there a second? So I feel obliged to make an alternate motion, which is that we deny the project. |
| 03:57:37.42 | Steven Woodside | if there is a second. I do not see a second for that motion, so that motion will die. And then we will move to the first motion. If there is any discussion, we have a wide-ranging discussion, any additional discussion. I have one comment, but I want to let others make comment first. |
| 03:57:59.30 | Steven Woodside | Okay, well, my only comment is I just feel this is wrong. I have to elaborate on it more because I'm not a planning commissioner and I don't quite understand it all, but it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like a compromise. It feels like a death without ownership because it's really putting our applicant in a tough position. I feel like we could try to provide more guidance than we are. But that is obviously a minority opinion, and I fully respect my colleagues and the good faith that they bring to this engagement. Are there any other discussions about this topic? anyone? Okay, so on the motion to, articulated by Vice Mayor Cox, can we please have a roll call vote because, |
| 03:58:48.44 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. Council Member Blaustein Yes. Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 03:58:55.70 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:58:55.72 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:58:55.73 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 03:58:55.97 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:58:56.00 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:58:56.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. I found someone we're coming. |
| 03:58:57.67 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:58:57.71 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. Vice Mayor Cox? Yes. |
| 03:59:01.72 | Steven Woodside | I'll abstain, thank you. All right, so we have a continuance of this matter of four in favor, one abstention. And now this special hearing is hereby closed and we move on with the rest of our agenda. Item 1B, which was moved off and continued to a date uncertain, nevertheless, we are obliged to take public comment on it. So if anyone has public comment about adopting a resolution authorizing staff to issue a request for proposals for the 2024 building facility assessment study, there is an opportunity to make public comment. City Clerk, is there any public comment? |
| 03:59:32.94 | Walfred Solorzano | We have somebody. It's for that specific item, not for something else. |
| 03:59:35.83 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 03:59:36.25 | Walfred Solorzano | specific. |
| 03:59:36.60 | Steven Woodside | BLOCK. |
| 03:59:36.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:59:36.97 | Steven Woodside | ONLY. |
| 03:59:40.23 | Chris Zapata | this |
| 03:59:41.85 | Steven Woodside | No, no, it's for the... It is for the topic, item 1B on the agenda, adopt a resolution authorizing staff to issue a request for proposals for the 2024 building facility assessment study. Is there any public comment? |
| 03:59:57.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Sure. |
| 04:00:02.17 | Joseph Becker | I will talk to them. |
| 04:00:05.19 | Steven Woodside | Okay, then we will close public comment and that I'm sorry? |
| 04:00:12.34 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, Senator Bushmaker just popped up. |
| 04:00:17.96 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening. I'm really glad to see this RFP get moved forward because it is incredibly important that we know the amount of our deferred maintenance on our city-owned properties, and it's really critical that we get that underway. So I'm highly supportive of that. project, even though we're continuing it. Thanks. |
| 04:00:38.06 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay, that brings us to the end of our evening. It's just past 10 o'clock. The meeting is hereby adjourned, and we will see you at the next regularly scheduled meeting in the first Tuesday of February. Good night. Thank you. Okay, good job. |