| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.03 | Steven Woodside | Let's see, I got a message. |
| 00:00:01.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Good evening, Mayor Sobieski and Councilmembers. |
| 00:00:04.35 | Steven Woodside | So, |
| 00:00:04.40 | Sybil Boutillier | I'm not. |
| 00:00:04.59 | Steven Woodside | AND I THINK THAT'S A |
| 00:00:04.66 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:00:05.35 | Walfred Solorzano | This special meeting of October 29, 2024 is being held in Council Chambers located at 420 Little Street. staff and members of the public are also participating through Zoom. Meeting is broadcast live on the city's website at Cable TV Channel 27. And we are also on location at the Fairfield Inn Suites at San Bernardino on 1041 East Harriman Place, San Bernardino, California, 92408. |
| 00:00:32.70 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Mr. City Clerk. Would you kindly call the roll? |
| 00:00:36.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Blosty. |
| 00:00:37.43 | Steven Woodside | See you. |
| 00:00:38.54 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Hoffman. Here. Council member Kalman. Here. Vice Mayor Cox. |
| 00:00:41.81 | Unknown | Here. Thank you. |
| 00:00:43.59 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:00:43.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:47.63 | Walfred Solorzano | Sorry, we couldn't hear that. |
| 00:00:49.46 | Unknown | here. |
| 00:00:50.83 | Steven Woodside | And Mayor Sobieski. I'm here. Thank you very much, Mr. City Clerk. Thank you. I'll now announce the items that we're conducting in closed session. Government code section 54956.9. legal conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. I am to his conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation initiation of litigation pursuant to five four nine five six point nine. one case and then the third item is conference with real property negotiator property 558 bridgeway uh, Yes, 558 Bridgeway. That's it. Is there any public comment on any of these items? |
| 00:01:30.95 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:01:30.97 | Sandra Bushmaker | you know, |
| 00:01:31.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, we have Stephen Woodside. |
| 00:01:32.72 | Sandra Bushmaker | I very briefly, I know you need to get into closed session and that's, uh, I'm, I'm hopeful that as you. deal with the delicate trying to keep the balance between keeping your housing element alive and doing the environmental work. That you Again, I would ask you to make sure that the next round of environmental review can is broad enough to include potential sites. Because I think as you're well aware, the existing modifications that are suggested call for some changes in existing sites, and there may be more. And just want to make sure your environmental review is covered in such a way that going forward in the next few years, we can actually build some affordable housing. Thank you. |
| 00:02:23.50 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment. |
| 00:02:24.85 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll close public comment and join the closed session and return at 7 p.m. Thank you very much. |
| 00:02:31.70 | Steven Woodside | Hi, everybody. We return from closed session. Thank you for your patience. There are no announcements from closed session. We're going to resume our meeting and begin with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. |
| 00:02:45.47 | Steven Woodside | Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. Uh... ahead of any city manager. Do you have any comment? |
| 00:03:03.06 | Chris Zapata | I do, Mayor and Council members of the public and staff. I'd like to request that business item 5A be pulled from this agenda and moved to a future date. That item needs some more work on it. This will allow staff to respond to some questions we received and to do some more work and bring it back. But we're requesting it to be removed from the agenda tonight. |
| 00:03:23.24 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so item 5A, we'll still take public comment on it, but it is the resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with Kimber. Companies for property management services in an amount not to exceed $102,000 will be pulled off the agenda and put to a future agenda. We'll still take public comment on that. One personal note, just for public information, I received a campaign contribution from Kimber, management LLC and from Mrs. Kimberly Huff. I've returned those two contributions. And so, That's just public information to comply with the Levine Act. So I'll be able to hear this item if and when it comes back before the council. Is there any other comment, Mr. City Manager? No, sir. Okay, then we begin with our two special presentations, one from our school district and one from climate resolve so the first one is. Mrs. Larisha Huffman, where you're here, the superintendent of Sausalito Marin City School District. It's an honor to have you here. and look forward to hearing your presentation. Thank you. |
| 00:04:46.18 | Larisha Huffman | It is on. All right. One good evening board, community. Parents, city officials, anybody in the room or on Zoom, thank you for having me. I am Larisha Huffman, superintendent of Sausalito Marin City School District. And I was asked to come before city council today to actually do a presentation on just kind of some updates on the school district. So I'm super excited to be here and to have this partnership with our city. So these are some of our logos in our school. Do I click myself? Okay. All right. Thank you. All right, so my next slide is just really talking about SMCSD educates about 270 students as one campus, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Sausalito. The mission of Sausalito-Marin City School District is to support and teach every student to achieve at high levels academically and reach high potential. Our vision is to instill a love of learning in our children and support them to be curious and flexible thinkers, confident in their individuality, their community, and their ability to create a safer and more just world. Students, we have three core values in South City Marin City School District. They are students first, belonging, and accountability. I wanna just kind of, next slide please, talk about or give a little overview of, I think there's one slide before. |
| 00:06:20.17 | Larisha Huffman | you Maybe they're out of order. Okay, so we have our next slide. We have our school board. So we have Bonnie Huff, Lisa Bennett as our board president. We have Alina Monder, Lauren Walters, who is our board clerk, Caroline Tiziani, who is our board vice president, and then myself, the superintendent. Next slide, please. |
| 00:06:47.85 | Larisha Huffman | I wanted to give a little bit of demographics about our school. We are 31% African-American. 29% white and 19% Latino Latinx. 105 of our students are multilingual. We do have 69 students who are in special education in SMCSD. We have 43 who are attending Dr. MOK Academy, 13 at our MCOE program, and 13 at a non-public school and or our preschool. We offer core classes for our students, as well as art, music, gardening, and extracurricular activities. Next slide, please. This is a picture of the construction. So for those who are in Sausalito and pass by on Nevada, you'll see construction happening. These are just some images of our new school. Next slide, please. Thanks to, I can't see that. Thanks to Measure P, $41,600,000 bond, our school is being rebuilt. The new campus will feature a STEM arts courtyard flexible learning environment, a new sports field, and a community learning hub. Next slide. There's a little video here that I wanted to present to a city council. |
| 00:08:52.18 | Larisha Huffman | Right. So this is our new campus. No sound, but you get to see it. |
| 00:10:20.73 | Larisha Huffman | All right. So that is our construction. And as I said, if you've passed by there, you'll see the construction happening. We should be ready in fall of 2025. |
| 00:10:36.61 | Larisha Huffman | Workforce housing, I know this is has been a conversation and a topic I was asked to address, so I just want to have a little. paragraph here, so while we recognize the potential need for workforce housing to support our staff and community, the district is currently unable to provide specific details on this topic. At this time, we are facing several limitations, including restricted financial resources, resources, a shortage of dedicated personnel, and other pressing priorities that require our media attention. We understand that affordable housing is a concern that impacts our workforce and community well-being. and we remain open to exploring potential solutions in the future. However, as we manage our current commitments and resources, we are unable to actively pursue workforce housing initiatives. As circumstances evolve and resources allow, we will revisit this topic and assess viable options in collaboration with all stakeholders. Next slide, please. There's also a request to get information on Willow Creek. So we are We have the Creek Project. The district secured a $3 million grant. with Friends of Willow Creek. for Environmental Protection Agency, which is EPA. to support the Creek Daylighting Project. However, additional funding will be necessary to fully realize the project as currently envisioned. At the upcoming Board of Trustees meeting in November or December, SMCSD board will consider a contract with a design and engineering firm to initiate design work on the creek. The district will collaborate with the Friends of Willow Creek and other partner agencies to pursue additional funding sources to bring this project to fruition. And this is being done in partnership with our current construction of our MOC campus. So it's a great opportunity because we're already doing the construction. And so this is an amazing opportunity to daylight the creek in conjunction with the construction. overall test scores. I'm also wanted to provide some information around our test scores. I am going to speak specifically to three two assessments that are on here, which is our ESGI, which is basically educational software for guiding instruction. It really supports kinder readiness and basic developmental skills. We give this to all of our younger grade students, our TKK students. Our students also take a map reading fluency assessment three times a year. They also take map, reading, and math in K through eight. And that's how we progress, monitor student growth throughout the year. We also give our students an English proficiency exam, which is our ELPAC. And then we also give CAS, which all school districts do, which is done once a year. and Next slide. So this is just some data on our current TK students. And as you'll see, we progress monitor this data. So you'll be able to see like the number of students who have uppercase letter recognition, lowercase letter recognition. uppercase sounds, shapes, colors. Obviously our students are doing well in that area. shapes, patterning, and number recognition. Next slide, please. in our kinder. You'll see, remembering this assessment was given as soon as students walk in the door at the beginning of the school year. So by the end of the school year, even last year, most of our students were at 90% proficient. So we have uppercase letters again, lowercase letters, uppercase sounds, number recognition, patterning, shapes and colors as well. Next slide. And these are our kinders and how they're faring. And so also again, number recognition, patterning, et cetera. And so the council is able to see how our TK and our K students are doing at the beginning of the year. This is what teachers progress monitor. to identify what they need to reteach and what they need to focus in on to ensure our students are at grade level by the end of the school year. Next slide. This is our smarter balance assessment, which all students have to take in the district. Not all students, third through eighth grade students. And so for our ELA, we have 42% of our students who are meeting or exceeding standard. If you see the orange or the yellow color line, that's basically students who standards are not being met or nearly met. For mathematics, it's 40.11% meeting or exceeding standard. This assessment was just given in May. Next slide, please. This is how our students science assessment, which is given also once a year. This is how our students are faring in fifth through eighth grade, fifth and eighth grade. It's only given to fifth graders and eighth graders. We're at 37.5% meeting or exceeding standards. And my last slide is what is Measure G? And I'm not going to, you know, speak to voting, but just we with the school district does have a parcel tax on the ballot, which is Measure G. And Measure G is really going to support our students with the additional arts and music and programming that we know we need and also helping the district support salary increases for our teachers and staff. And we have a QR code here. If you want to get more information on Measure G, You can scan the QR code and get more information. And then my last slide. is our newsletter. So we do put out a community newsletter twice a month. I would encourage anyone, our city council, to scan the QR code. You can get my messages. and find out about things that are happening throughout the district. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. |
| 00:16:47.00 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much, Superintendent. It's wonderful to get the update. Are there any questions for my colleagues? Council Member Comey. |
| 00:16:58.84 | Councilmember Kelman | Welcome and welcome to council chambers and welcome to the community. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation of a handful questions. Just sort of broadly speaking, how's the budget looking for this year and what are your sort of three to five year projections and what are your hopes around the current budget. |
| 00:16:59.89 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:17:00.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:17:16.38 | Larisha Huffman | Mm hmm. Currently, our budget, we're solvent. So we don't have a financial deficit. I think the biggest concern in terms of our budget is that the board signed a resolution to build the reserve to 17%. And we are currently not there and we're getting closer, but we are not at the 17% reserve that the board created a resolution on. And I think we could get there. Um, with some additional things that we need to do as a board and as a school district. But yes, we're working towards the reserve, but currently we are solvent. |
| 00:17:51.39 | Councilmember Kelman | And are you fully hired? Are there vacant positions? Did you have to let people go? |
| 00:17:56.23 | Larisha Huffman | No, we do not have any vacancies. We do have vacancies, but we have no teaching vacancies. So we have no teaching vacancies. All of our. teachers are in the classroom serving students. We do have one what is it's called a student success coach. So we have one student success coach opening, which is essentially like a teacher's assistant. And then we have one custodian that's vacant. So those are our only vacancies. So we've done a really good job last year, HR principal staff, really trying to get fully staffed and make sure we start the school year strong. |
| 00:18:31.81 | Councilmember Kelman | Great. Well, congrats on that. And so while we have you and you're new, I want to, in the interest of collaboration, see if there's a pathway to partnership on some of the things that I know the district is interested in doing but hasn't been able to either have resources to pursue. The two that I'm thinking of, and you mentioned them both, are daylighting Willow Creek and building housing. So on daylighting Willow Creek, I'm sure you've met the friends of Willow Creek. I know you have the EPA grant. I think Army Corps is probably interested in helping if they haven't already. I know at least the mayor and I, and I think other council members support this, would like to partner with you all to be a part of that, to make sure that you do get the funding, if there's more funding needs to get applied for, that the creek is routed in the most environmentally beneficial manner. How can we play a role in this and support your efforts while making sure that this watershed restoration proceeds, like I said, in the most environmentally beneficial way? |
| 00:18:56.65 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:19:05.99 | Sybil Boutillier | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:19:08.93 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:19:28.07 | Larisha Huffman | Well, I have had the pleasure of meeting with your general manager, city manager, Chris Zapata, a few times already. And he did bring this up as well. And so I would say attending possibly facilities meetings where Friends of Willow Creek is in attendance to also hear from them. We can also schedule meetings together to actually think about fundraising or partnership or grant writing to ensure that we daylight the creek. So there's a couple of opportunities. We do have a facilities meeting every single week. We don't always have Friends of Willow Creek there because we haven't actually started yet, but they will become a part of the conversation. And so it would be a great opportunity if Citi also wants to join in some of those meetings, especially as we're problem solving of the financing part of it. |
| 00:20:05.24 | Sybil Boutillier | you know, |
| 00:20:16.80 | Councilmember Kelman | Maybe there's some opportunity for a subgroup, a working group with somebody, one of your representatives and someone from here, and we could work that forward in a, |
| 00:20:25.29 | Larisha Huffman | That's possible as well too. It would most likely be me. |
| 00:20:28.43 | Councilmember Kelman | I was hoping you'd say that. But that's like, so I don't want to overextend you, but I do want to tell you, I did review in light of you coming in, the facilities master plan for November, 2020 in the language around housing. We'd like to partner, well, I know I would like to, I would like to explore ways that the city may be interested in helping you put housing there. And I heard from you tonight that |
| 00:20:37.63 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:20:37.69 | Larisha Huffman | Thank you. |
| 00:20:37.81 | Sybil Boutillier | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:20:47.08 | Unknown | AND, AND, |
| 00:20:49.17 | Councilmember Kelman | you know the resources and I know that the facilities master plan said that this is you know only if the district and a developer are able to reach an agreement. I want to make that same a potential offer if the Council of course agrees I can't oblige us to participate with you on this, you may not be able to go it alone, we have a strong interest in that, we're looking at our Reno numbers right now, how can we facilitate that communication in a more |
| 00:21:05.12 | Sybil Boutillier | may not. |
| 00:21:12.89 | Councilmember Kelman | sort of efficient manner and more advantageous manner. So we make sure that our teachers get this this type of housing. |
| 00:21:18.79 | Larisha Huffman | Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I would say again, it's probably meeting with me. It would be most likely me. That's okay. It would be meeting with me. We're, you know, we're small staff. And so a lot of these decisions around like workforce housing or daylighting the creek really require me to kind of be the lead in a lot of these conversations. So I don't necessarily have anybody to like punt it, punt this to, but I can definitely engage in those conversations. As I said before, the workforce housing and the friends of Willow Creek is always an agenda item on our facilities meeting. It's just because Willow Creek daylighting hasn't started. And because we, do not have the funding and resources, etc. for workforce housing, they remain agenda items, but not necessarily anything that we're talking about. So we can also resurface those and have you our representatives come to that meeting. We're open to that. I have let Jason know who is our project manager for the building of MLK. that we might start having guests. And so that's something that we're open to as well. But I'm also willing to have separate meetings to figure out how to make this work. |
| 00:22:25.39 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. Thank you for that. Other thoughts? |
| 00:22:28.78 | Larisha Huffman | Thank you. |
| 00:22:28.97 | Steven Woodside | I'll echo both those. care a lot about the Atlantic Blue Creek and was part of the bond measure. So we'd like to try to help make that happen. |
| 00:22:36.75 | Councilmember Kelman | Yeah. |
| 00:22:36.97 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:22:39.63 | Steven Woodside | but also it really would be a win-win-win to get teacher housing, workforce housing on the school property. |
| 00:22:47.23 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:22:47.26 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. And we're stronger together. So I personally would welcome coming over and hearing your ideas on that and contributing my own. And I appreciate the invitation and the willingness to do that. I know you're busy. I hate to add another item to your... |
| 00:22:57.10 | Unknown | All right. |
| 00:23:00.85 | Steven Woodside | to your list, but I'd welcome that. Vice Mayor Cox. |
| 00:23:07.98 | Unknown | Thank you and good evening and thank you so much for coming to chat with us. We so greatly appreciate it. Appreciate it. I think made a decision months ago that we wanted to invite you. So I'm so glad we were able to make tonight work. I wanted to follow up on some of the statistics that you've provided, You know, one of the things any prospective resident in Sausalito or Marin City considers when they're deciding whether to move here if they have school-aged children, is the quality of our schools. And so I was wondering if you had any plans in mind |
| 00:23:40.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:23:43.42 | Unknown | to, um, raise the 37%, 41%, 42% scores that you're seeing this year? |
| 00:23:52.75 | Larisha Huffman | Thank you. Well, absolutely. So, you know, we're doing several things. We have a new three year LCAP, which is our local control accountability plan. We are fully staffed this year, which we were not fully staffed last year. We did have a shortage of middle school teachers, so I think that impacted some of the data, although it's pretty similar to what it was last year as well, too. I would also say that, you know, we are providing more professional development this year focused on reading. focused on implicit bias, focused on inclusion, because we do have some high special education numbers. So really thinking about inclusion. I know teachers have also asked for training to really support our English language learners as well, too. So we have quite a few things underway in terms of coaching intervention. We have more. coaches and tutors being supported by our students. I mean, supporting our students. We partner with Bridge the Gap, who also provides a lot of after school tutoring and enrichment. And I think it's really just really getting focused on doing learning walks in the classroom. supporting our teachers, giving them feedback so they can improve their practices. And also, obviously, a lot more engagement with parents, too, because at the end of the day, students go home. And so what does that look like at home? Are you doing your homework? Are you reading? Are you doing the things that need to sort of also help you when you come back to school every day? We also, this summer, really intensified our intervention for summer school. So normally we have summer school where it's taught by college students or, you know, after school staff. This year, this summer, we hired our teachers to come back and do intervention for our students. So we focus on math and reading. And that was one of the ways that we tried to make sure that there was no backslide in terms of student. It's hard to make a lot of growth in five weeks. but at least it gives students the opportunity to maintain of their level during the summer and it's no better teacher than their actual classroom teacher. So we do have several things underway to try and increase test scores. My goal is to get us above this for sure within the next couple years. |
| 00:26:12.36 | Unknown | Thank you. And just as a brief follow on, I know that in the past, you know, we used to talk about it takes a village because there was an attendance challenge. And I'm wondering, I didn't see any, statistics this evening about Attendance. But I wonder if that remains a challenge or if you have been successful in addressing that. |
| 00:26:36.42 | Larisha Huffman | Um, attendance remains a challenge. Um, It's better. I don't know the actual percentage. We actually had a slide on here about attendance and we decided to take it off. So unfortunately, I'm over here looking at Nixon. Can you pull up the attendance data for me? So I can tell you what our current attendance is, but we do have students who are chronically absent. We do have a full service community school manager who calls families, meets with families, you know, sort of puts parents on a contract and figures out the needs of why a student is not coming to school, why they're coming to school late. This is a grant that the district received. It's called a full service community school grant that came from the state. So we are in our third year of that grant, which actually funds director Phil Logan. And that is his main focus is increasing student attendance every day. So that is his work. I don't know what our current, I think we're pretty high. I think we have like 94% attendance. But I believe obviously, you know, we still have students who are chronically absent. Well, kudos to you. |
| 00:27:43.50 | Unknown | you for that improved. you |
| 00:27:45.02 | Larisha Huffman | you |
| 00:27:45.04 | Unknown | statistic because it, if they certainly aren't learning to the same extent if they're not present. |
| 00:27:52.61 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:27:52.98 | Unknown | Great news. And again, thank you so much. for um, taking the time to put together a really great presentation and to come chat with us tonight, although we don't have any jurisdiction over you. You're one of our most important partners, so very much appreciate you being here. |
| 00:28:10.91 | Larisha Huffman | You're welcome. |
| 00:28:11.65 | Steven Woodside | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:28:11.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:28:11.95 | Steven Woodside | Vice Mayor, Council Member Busting. |
| 00:28:12.04 | Larisha Huffman | Thank you. |
| 00:28:12.07 | Larisha Huffman | Yeah. |
| 00:28:12.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:28:13.94 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Hi, Superintendent Huffman. Thank you so much for joining us. Good to see you. Nice to see you again, too. |
| 00:28:16.42 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 00:28:16.46 | Larisha Huffman | Good to see you. |
| 00:28:16.86 | Larisha Huffman | you know, |
| 00:28:18.80 | Councilmember (not in known list) | I'm not sure. And I appreciate the feedback and an understanding of what's going on at the district. I know that recently the school board made a very difficult decision to close the Marin City campus going forward. I'm wondering two things about that decision. Is the plan going forward to move those students, all of the students, given that to the new campus, and do we anticipate that there'll be enough space? And then my other question is, what is the plan for that building and will it potentially be a revenue source going forward for the district? I know I've spoken to some nonprofits who have interest in using the space as well, so we'd just like to get an idea of what the future is there going forward. And again, I know that it's been a difficult decision for you, that there was a lot of discussion about it, but members of the community have asked about that, so we'd love to know. |
| 00:29:04.84 | Larisha Huffman | Mm-hmm. Currently, yes, it definitely was a difficult decision. You know, I think there were financial concerns, concerns around, you know, sort of the middle school families leaving the district. So, you know, part of the move was to mitigate some of those factors. We did move all of our middle school students. So they're currently all at the MLK campus. The plan is for them to stay there. And so there is a plan for middle school to have kind of their own section of the school once the new campus is built. And so the plan is for them to stay. There is no current plan. or discussion about them, the middle school moving back to, um, the Phillips campus in Marin City. Doesn't mean it can't happen. That's just not on the table currently. Um, I would say in terms of the next part of your question was related to the use of the Phillips campus. So I have had partners, um, Marin City, our library being one of them who wants to use space for STEM lab that they currently are running out of the church. Um, And so we've had those conversations. I don't believe the board yet is ready to make a decision around space. I think there's They want to see what happens with the new building and making sure that all students have space that there's enough space for all staff before they make any long term lease agreements with any partner. So I would say it's in the future. And it's definitely something we started talking about, but I don't think the board at this time is ready to make decisions. We do have Facilitron. So people are still able to access Philips because we use Facilitron. So you're able to access it for short-term usage, but we don't have anything yet around long-term leasing. |
| 00:30:57.29 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. I appreciate that update. And again, thanks for being with us and putting together the presentation. I know that you're hard at work to increase the test scores and improve the environment and hard, very challenging job that you walked into. So I appreciate hearing from you and I hope we continue the conversation. |
| 00:31:13.43 | Larisha Huffman | you |
| 00:31:13.44 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 00:31:13.49 | Larisha Huffman | Me too. Thank you. |
| 00:31:15.32 | Steven Woodside | And no other questions, then thank you very much, Superintendent. Right, thank you so much. We'll now take public comment on the presentation. public comment on the presentation we just heard from the superintendent please turn if you remember the public in the audience please turn in a slip to our city clerk Sunshine I see you have your hand raised and if you're the only one we can recognize you directly Is there anyone else mr. City clerk? |
| 00:31:40.39 | Walfred Solorzano | On Zoom, we do have Kieran Culligan. Okay, let's go with you, Ms. Sunshine. |
| 00:31:45.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:31:51.97 | Sunshine | Hello everyone, my name is Sunshine and I can't tell you how grateful I am to have seen your presentation because I've been asked to move. I'm in low-income housing across the way, and I had 12 years of plant growth there that I needed to move in three days. And being 84, it's very hard to do that in three days. But the garden teacher from your school came with a big van and took all of the plants so that they didn't have to go to the dump. And so I had not seen any of the pictures of your new campus to be, but I am going to go and visit my plants at some point. So she was wonderful, and thank you so much for helping me out. That's it. |
| 00:32:39.89 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much. I'm Zoom, Mr. City Clerk. |
| 00:32:44.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Gary Culligan. |
| 00:32:48.72 | Kieran Culligan | Hi there. Good evening. Yeah, I'm Kieran Culligan. I have two young children in the school district. I'm also the board president of Rise Up 94965 Foundation, which is a all volunteer nonprofit that supports the school 100%. And I just want to thank Superintendent Huffman for doing this presentation tonight, for City Council for allowing time for it. Superintendent Huffman in her capacity, like can't lobby you officially to talk about Measure G, but I as a just member of the public can. Vice Mayor Cox talked about it takes a village, right? There's things that the district can do to raise those test scores and create an even better educational experience for kids. There's things that parents can do, and there's things that the community can do. And one of the things that the community could do would be to support Measure G. It is not easy to be a small school district. It is not easy to be a small school district in one of the highest cost of living places in California, if not the planet. And especially in the light of some really severe acute educational needs of kids who are coming out of war-torn countries. They're coming out of difficult family situations, and we really want to help them. We want to make it a great place. This school is amazing. Every time I'm on campus, it's just, it reminds me of how special it is, and I want it to create an even better outcomes for these kids. So please support, consider supporting Measure G, and tons of great questions tonight. Thank you all. |
| 00:34:14.66 | Steven Woodside | No further public comment. Okay. Thank you. We'll close public comment then. I will move on to our next special presentation. This is Mr. Jonathan Carpenter-Ray from... Climate Resolve is the lead presenter with a presentation on how to keep, how California communities can keep their cool is the title. but it's responsive to a request for some discussion about pavement technology and how in our paving, uh, repavement or infrastructure investment, we can be mindful of sustainability issues and, uh, and other environmental issues. So Mr. Parfait, the floor is yours. |
| 00:34:51.55 | Jonathan Parfait | Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of Sausalito City Council. Our organization at Climate Resolve, I'm calling you from Los Angeles, we're very active in trying to help Californians keep cool during extreme high temperatures, extreme weather events. And I have to say, as someone who has visited Sausalito numerous times, I can tell you, your city is already a pretty cool place in every sense of the word. So congratulations to the great leadership in your town. And as I bring up some of these strategies, some of them may apply to your city, but some may apply to some neighboring cities within your region. Next slide, please. I just wanted to bring to your attention that Extreme heat, believe it or not, is the number one cause behind mortality and morbidity from any other weather event in the United States and by a wide margin. More people are killed and injured by extreme heat temperatures than from hurricanes, from tornadoes, from seismic events, from floods. And we've seen a lot of hurricanes and floods in the southeastern part of the United States. And extreme heat is even a more deadly climatic event than those. And just to give you a little bit of awareness in California, we're looking at some 3,900 deaths that have been identified by the Los Angeles Times, and that's six times higher than previous estimates. Thankfully, the state of California is standing up a new program out of the California Department of Public Health on syndromic surveillance, where they would gather information from various emergency rooms and trauma centers across the state and use that information to provide contemporaneous information on that during heat waves of how many people actually do need care. And, I just wanted to say that of all the places in the state that may stay cool most of the time, Sausalito is among them, but it's just a sign of your progressive city council that you wanna learn more about this and I applaud it. Next slide, please. Our organization is responsible for the building code upgrades in both the city of Los Angeles and the county of Los Angeles. And so through this new building code upgrade, there are now over 80,000 new cool roofs over the last 10 years. And that's a rather conservative estimate. We're pleased to say that this has been one of these low-cost interventions that during an extremely warm day can reduce electric use for refrigeration and also for air conditioning in our region. Next slide, please. And so what I lay out on these bullet points is some of the sort of specific building code targets, and then what some of those new targets might be. SR stands for solar reflectance, and that is something that is measurable. Next slide, please. |
| 00:38:44.92 | Sandra Bushmaker | and, |
| 00:38:49.54 | Jonathan Parfait | But our natural world also has its own form of solar reflectance. And so you can see that freshly laid asphalt has very little solar reflectance. In fact, it's less than 10% of the sunlight that strikes newly laid asphalt is actually reflected back into space. It is actually then converted from shortwave solar radiation into longwave heat, infrared radiation. And that poses a problem in the creation of both the urban heat island effect, but it also sends heat up into the atmosphere where it interacts with greenhouse gases and then is rebounded back to Earth. And so the very way that we have built our cities, I'm afraid, has been a very negative form of geoengineering over the last 150, 200 years. And there is a better way to be in greater harmony with the natural world, and it is to return to a kind of natural reflectivity, a natural albedo that is possible. I listed the Cool Roof Rating Council's website. It's the easiest to remember, coolroofs.org. This organization, located in Portland, Oregon, has conducted studies on virtually every kind of roofing material that is out there and has given them a solar reflective value, assigned that after three years of exposure, and then has also examined the thermal emittance of those same materials, both for the roofs as well as for various wall sidings and paints as well that people would have at their homes. Next slide, please. I wanted to tell you about a cool pavement project that we were involved in in Pacoima. Next slide. And Pacoima, if you look at the map on the left, is a very small neighborhood within the city of L.A. It's part of L.A. in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. And we worked with a company, GAF, which is the nation's largest roofing manufacturer, with their materials applied to 10 square blocks. And this included a LA Unified School District school, the Broadus Elementary School, and it also included a park called the Hubert H. Humphrey Memorial Park. Did you ever think I would be talking about Hubert H. Humphrey on this night of all nights? Well, there you go. Next slide, please. And I just wanted to share this image that the traditional asphalt that was on the ground on the left, that surface temperature is considerably warmer than the newly laid coating from the GAF company on the right. The thing that's amazing is that that coding on the right is actually pretty a pretty dark tint to it. It's not this bright, glary material. Most of the solar radiation that strikes the Earth comes, it's not visible to the naked eye. It comes in the near-infrared band. And the product that GAF makes reflects not so much in the visible light spectrum, but its coatings have materials that reflect in the near infrared band of the electromagnetic spectrum. So it's actually kind of dark. Next slide. And here again is another image. There are currently studies on the pavement maintenance of these coatings that the company is asserting, and it's not my assertion, but it can prolong the life of the road for an additional eight years of use. And so there are cost savings from applying this coating as well. Next slide, please. we decided, let's find out if this stuff really works. And so we got funding to conduct a study, which was led by Dr. Haider Taha, who lives in Martinez, California, by the way, who used to be at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. And he is the author of Cal EPA's Urban Heat Island Index. He's a very fine scholar, and he helped design this project where we did a survey of the neighborhood through weather stations. There's an image on your left, and on the right is through an electric golf cart, which was outfitted with various instruments It's measuring temperature, air temperature, surface temperature, and reflectivity. And the next slide, please. The results of this study by Dr. Taha has been published in a peer review journal. And this is what it says. It says that the coated area over the control area has reduced the temperature during heat waves by three and a half degrees Fahrenheit. And that was air surface temperature, not air temperature, not surface temperature. And it also had no negative impacts on pedestrians. There's been some concerns that reflective pavements can bounce up solar radiation. It could attach itself to clothing and to skin and make people feel hotter. He found no such correlation with the product from GAF. Next slide, please. And so I wanted to, bring to your attention that there are different kinds of new developments when it comes to pavement coatings. I was talking about the GAF street bond material that's available. It comes in a variety of different colors. So at the Hubert H. Humphrey Park, we did a basketball court in some really great colors. We had advice from our local rec and parks department in Los Angeles to stay away from certain gang colors. So we were very attentive to that. But the testimonials from that local park are exceptional. The young people playing on the court said that it used to burn through, the old asphalt would burn through their tennis shoes and would actually deteriorate their basketballs. And they're telling us that the cool material both is giving their shoes a longer life as well as the basketballs, right? I never would have believed that as one of the findings, but that's what we found. There are a lot of food vendors in Pacoima, and they prefer to be on the streets where there is this cool material because they can stay open later, make a little bit more money, as these are frequently first-generation families in that community. The guard top material, by contrast, does reflect largely in the visible light spectrum. It is the product that has been embraced by the city of Phoenix because they want to move a lot of that solar radiation out of their cities. And the last product is Pavement Technology Inc., which is absolutely fascinating. They have materials that can photocatalytically interact with the surrounding air, eliminating CO2, yes, the basic ingredient of climate change, and it can eliminate NOx, nitrogen oxides, which when exposed to UV light converts into ozone, and it gets rid of volatile organic compounds, VOCs. It's kind of amazing product, and it has some reflectivity, but not as much as those two other products that I've mentioned. And there are very well new pavement technologies emerging, as well as cool roof technology emerging at all the time. Next slide. So the reason why my climate action organization is involved in this, it is to help communities. I think environmentalists are frequently seen as loving the natural world more than the two-legged critters. We want to help people. And so we felt it was really important to champion different interventions related to extreme heat temperatures that can help people. That's number one. Number two is that... We wanted to see if there was a way to improve the Earth's energy budget. Overall. affecting basically the mechanisms undergirding what they call solar forcing or climate change. Next slide. And so here's an image. This is not Sausalito, folks. This is Las Vegas. So you can see the reflectivity of the desert surrounding Las Vegas compared with the sprawl of these new suburbs that are being built in Las Vegas. So you can see the dark asphalt and the dark roofs of that area. And so, as I mentioned earlier, we've kind of been involved in a... a geoengineering experiment in the wrong direction of converting sunlight into heat. Next slide. And so this is a NASA slide that basically describes the Earth's energy budget. We have sunlight coming in and it gets reflected by clouds. It gets some reflection from the surface of the Earth. And it's our goal that if we can keep the solar radiation in the short wave end of the electromagnetic spectrum, it then gets rebounded out into space, does not interact with the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and escapes into space. It's a way of improving the Earth's energy imbalance that we have wrought with the presence of fossil fuels burnt and creating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Next slide, please. And so what if we, this is the wild question, and there's a researcher whose name is Ruhl Hammerschlag out of Olympia, Washington, and he performed a study, again, published in a peer reviewed paper that said, what if we took all of America's roads and all of America's roofs and we made them all 20% more reflective? not a crazy amount, we're not putting mirrors anywhere, but just 20% more reflective What difference would that make in GHG terms, greenhouse gas terms? And here's what he found. He found that if we did that 20% more reflective on America's roof and roads, it would be the equivalent of 10 to 12 years of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. uh, And when you do this at scale, it can have a significant benefit in the fight against climate change. Next slide, please. And so our organization, that's a QR code, If you really want to nerd out and you want to read our white paper on the benefits of reflective materials in the climate fight, please scan that QR code and it'll take you to the white paper and you can print it up. And if you need to find a way to sleep at night, this will definitely help you. The thing I wanted to point out is that there, however, is no agency that is the proper home for governing albedo reflectivity. It doesn't exist. The California Air Resources Board that you would think would be the most likely home to issue regulations associated with this, They're a chemistry agency. They were founded to deal with air contaminants. we're not talking about air contaminants, we're talking about physics and solar radiation. So it's presenting something of a quandary and how we can actually implement some of these strategies beyond voluntary action. Next slide, please. I don't want to, because I'm excited about the solar reflectivity, there in no way do I want to diminish the excellent other forms of dealing with extreme heat. tree shade. is amazing and it is something that is always our first choice as an organization. If we can get trees planted in the right place to be a benefit to our communities, we're going to do that. That's really exciting. In other parts of the globe, they have green roofs, not cool roofs, but green roofs where they have vegetation on top of roofs. I've visited Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They have an amazing green roof program there. The problem, in California is that we have these damn earthquakes. And so imagine putting thousands of pounds of soil and adding even more weight in the form of water and vegetation on top of a roof. Every home would need to have just a massive amount of rebar in order to do that. And so our seismic conditions here kind of point in the direction of cool roofs over green roofs. So buildings and building shade, awnings, other forms of mechanical shading are just something we need to explore much more seriously. I happen to sit on the LA28 Sustainability Committee looking ahead to the Olympics. And so one of the things that we're really looking at is mechanical shading in certain parts of the city. And some of that shading might just be temporary. It's just ready to go up. You use it for a few weeks and then you take it away. Could be interesting. Water, as you well know, is the way a human body cools down from being overheated. And so the presence of drinking fountains, or as they're more recently called hydration stations, is actually an excellent amendment that a local government can do to help people stay cool. And last but not least, the urban heat island is made worse by the act of combustion. And some of you, I assume, have been in Los Angeles. You know that we have these great big freeways down here. We have literally millions of cars having little tiny explosions, internal combustion engines going all the time. And if you know the second law of thermodynamics, that energy doesn't just magically go away. It contributes to some degree. It's thought to contribute about a half a degree Fahrenheit to the air temperature in our region. Next slide, please. Okay, here I get controversial and forgive me for this, but what doesn't work, next slide, are cooling centers. Everyone loves the idea of a cooling center. |
| 00:55:26.04 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:55:29.59 | Jonathan Parfait | But nobody goes to cooling centers. This is in Los Angeles. It's a big rec center with a bunch of folding metal folding chairs in the middle of it. Does this look appetizing? Does this look like something you would like, oh gosh, I can't wait to go to a cooling center. And you're alone in that big room with those big metal chairs. It's not a lot of fun. And there are much better strategies. Next slide, please. And this is one I took just two weeks ago when we had our last heat wave in Los Angeles and I opened up the center. It's Jim Gillian Park off of La Brea near the Baldwin Hills, if you happen to know the area. Just empty. Lovely people, though. I mean, the park staff are great. And you walk outside and there's a bunch of people sitting underneath the trees. That's where people want to be. They want social connection. They want to be in the presence of nature, This stuff isn't working. Anyway, next slide. And so I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit about extreme heat. For Sausalito, I was at a meeting with AARP today, having a meeting on extreme heat. And I mentioned that I was going to be talking with you good people tonight. They said, oh, my God, we love Sausalito. They're one of our cities that we love working with and improving the quality of life for California. And so I want to thank you for your good work. And if you ever need to reach out and talk about cooling strategies, Climate Resolve is here. We're around. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:57:04.46 | Steven Woodside | Bill Hines has been working with Jonathan the past week to bring these concepts to any future paving issues here in Saucon. So, Mr. Hines. |
| 00:57:16.24 | Bill Hines | Thank you very much. Walford, could we bring up those slides? |
| 00:57:23.38 | Bill Hines | So I'm Bill Hines from SWA, principal and landscape architect. We're an employee-owned international design firm with eight offices headquartered right here in Sausalito. If you could go full screen on that one, Control-L, and next slide. So tonight I was asked to add to Jonathan's presentation in terms of applicability to Sausalito. |
| 00:57:43.68 | Sybil Boutillier | to the |
| 00:57:43.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:57:43.78 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:57:49.70 | Bill Hines | Why does it matter? The city maintains 26 miles of road over 3.3 million square feet of pavement, which is over 75 acres. And in 2023, the city did a study that valued our roads at one hundred and six million dollars. They recommended spending $1.8 million a year to maintain the mostly fair pavement and to keep that from deteriorating. So this is a critical piece of infrastructure that's going to require investment. Next slide. We can skip this one. So today I'm going to talk about some basic strategies for pavement design. The first one is right sizing pavement. The second one is that materials matter. And the third is that you should design with landscape and living infrastructure. Next slide. Right sizing pavement, we know that wider streets increase vehicle speeds and decrease pedestrian safety. It's a proven fact. Narrow roads reduce crossing distance. Most people don't know that pavement area also drives stormwater treatment requirements. More pavement creates more stormwater runoff that requires, that collects more pollutants, and those are discharged into the bay or our aging sewer system. It also costs more to maintain over the course of its life cycle. And it puts your city in the realm of cars instead of sidewalks and landscape. Next slide. The key takeaway here is that right sizing pavement reduces maintenance cost in perpetuity while providing more space for trees, sidewalks, and other green features. The photo there is Pine Street. And what you're looking at is a center section that's paved in concrete with two outboard sections that look like they're paved in asphalt. When I look at that section, it looks like you could probably drive three lanes of traffic in between the parked cars in the middle of the street. Point is that there's a lot of extra space in the paving section. Next slide. San Francisco has a program to construct sidewalk gardens and increase pervious area. Alameda is a community that is currently working on a park project. And the name of that park project is called DePave Park. |
| 01:00:10.64 | Sybil Boutillier | Yeah. |
| 01:00:23.90 | Bill Hines | And that's how seriously they're taking their sustainability ethos. This is a typical street in Sausalito in our downtown. Could be pine, could be locust. Let's just say it's locust for the purpose of discussion today, because that's one of the next streets that's going to be repaved from end to end. The existing street section consists of a 60 foot right away with 40 feet of street in the middle. go to the next slide, you'll see what the minimum effective dose of street in order to fulfill the mission of conveying cars and parking cars. The work that's currently done in 40 feet of street could be done in 32 feet. That leaves eight feet leftover. That's 20% of the street area that's not necessary. You could decide to do several things with that. This particular sketch just shows adding new pervious areas adjacent to sidewalks, which could be the idea of a parkway strip, which brings landscape to the streets and reduces the amount of paving that needs to be repaved. Next slide. |
| 01:01:41.98 | Bill Hines | So as I mentioned, Locust is the next street to be repaved in Sausalito. It could be done with 32 feet of pavement. That allows 20 feet for emergency vehicle circulation. And it still allows room for parking. So that's a 20% reduction by virtue of a road diet. Next slide, please. So the second topic is that materials matter. Pavement's a key contributor to heat island effect. 91% of our downtown is paved, mostly in asphalt. Asphalt is the worst for heat absorption, but can be coated to mitigate it. Porosity is another consideration. Pervious paving will typically need to be sub-drained in Sausalito in the Bay Area. And pervious paving can be used in tandem with planting and sidewalks and parking to increase porosity for healthier trees. Next slide. That's a picture of downtown and the red areas are currently paved and the green areas are landscape areas. Next slide. |
| 01:03:01.36 | Bill Hines | So there are a number of strategies that can be used over asphalt areas. Jonathan described several of these surface coating options, which can also be used to treat pollutants. As he mentioned, some of the newer coatings are actually able to break down carbon dioxide. in addition to other harmful things. But there's an opportunity for placemaking and making something colorful and vibrant and actually treating the paving surface as a piece of art. Next slide. There's also the possibility, if you want to dig a little deeper, thinking about how you can integrate landscape and pervious paving into these components. So these are six different examples of different parking surfaces that have integrated tree planting that feature pervious pavements. And this allows you to fulfill the mission of parking cars, shading pavement, and creating a healthy environment for the trees to live in. Next slide. This is a parking lot that I've worked on in my career. And I think the point with this slide and the next slide is that these parking lots can be Quite beautiful, in fact. They don't have to look like a normal parking lot. They can feature these highly reflective materials and have integrated planting, bioretention and stormwater treatment. So. Key takeaways here. Thank you. Thank you. are that roads will typically need to be asphalt or concrete for durability. The negative aspects of asphalt can be mitigated. Low carbon concrete mixes can significantly reduce embodied carbon without reducing performance of pavements, Pervious paving, may not be suitable for certain applications such as heavy vehicle traffic, and are more costly than typical road surfaces. But some of these premium pavement choices can be reserved for pedestrian areas and multi-use spaces where they can be coordinated with landscape, which leads me to the last topic and next slide. Designing with landscape and living infrastructure. |
| 01:05:28.53 | Bill Hines | So. We actually have the ability to design streetscapes with integrated landscape and proper tree wells. Part of this involves selecting the right tree and maintaining trees and landscaping. and using landscape solutions for stormwater treatment. If you recall, our new bioretention basin that's being installed in parking lot one is doing just that. So this is a strategy that achieves less pavement, more shade, less pollution, and a more healthy community. Next slide. |
| 01:06:09.91 | Bill Hines | Here are a couple examples looking along Bonita Street. And what you're seeing is a sidewalk with a very narrow planting strip. And in this case, it looks like we have a few volunteer oak trees. |
| 01:06:10.03 | Sybil Boutillier | Yeah. |
| 01:06:22.67 | Bill Hines | there's really not adequate space for those trees within the streetscape. If we looked at reducing the amount of pavement in the streetscape, we could give that space back to the trees. Next slide. |
| 01:06:36.86 | Bill Hines | If we look at Bridgeway, it's a very similar sort of configuration where these trees have very little space for their roots to fan out. And the result is that the trees will lift curbs and pavement. Next slide. This is a tree well that has already been mitigated. You can see fresh concrete poured around the base of that tree. The pavement was lifted at one point, but the decision was made to put back exactly the footprint of the opening that was there previously, which effectively chokes the tree with enough time. Next slide. So this is an idea about how we can take an existing street like Locust, next, Think about how we could add more pervious area street section. Think about how we might add trees to that section. Thank you. next. Think about how we can add bioretention and stormwater treatment to these areas if we want or need to. Next. which can also happen with trees as a part of a complete streetscape. Next slide. |
| 01:07:56.71 | Bill Hines | This is kind of an overview of stormwater treatment, looking at quantity control and quality control. a couple studies that have been pulled from New Haven, Connecticut, which has made a pretty significant program to incorporate bioretention. Paris, France, where the mayor Anne Hidalgo was given a ULI visionary leadership board for her work in eradicating extraneous pavement. And, you know, some of the work that's being done in Indianapolis, Indiana, where they're leading the charge and incorporating over eight acres of planted ecosystem into their urban framework. Next slide. So the key takeaways here, if we're designing with landscape and living infrastructure, |
| 01:08:49.73 | Bill Hines | Excuse me. Sausalito has acknowledged the benefits of complete streets. You guys have actually adopted this idea about sustainability as a policy and building these functional streetscapes. So... The message is that Sausalito can be a leader. We can rethink our streets and remix what we already have by looking at what the right size of street widths are. by employing different materials and coatings in order to work with what we have and build new infrastructure that's more suitable to urban conditions. And we can use that to design complete streets that integrate landscape, trees, and stormwater management into one comprehensive section. Next. So with that, I'll take your questions. |
| 01:09:57.22 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Are there questions for Mr. Parfait or Hines on any of this? |
| 01:10:02.80 | Councilmember Kelman | I'll go to thanks. Thank you, Bill, and thank you, Jonathan. And thank you to the mayor and the vice mayor, the agenda setting committee, for picking up my excitement around this and extending it to include Bill as well. I think this was really informative. And if done correctly, it's not only good for our city's climate goals and leadership and the community, but also for our bank account, because ultimately it's meant to preserve infrastructure. I was reminded of a friend who is the head of sustainability up in Vancouver, and they had an atmospheric river two weeks ago, and she shared a bunch of photos of how they had created this whole rainwater management system in the middle of the street. My only question for you that's fantastic. Jonathan, thank you. I get to see this again. Really appreciate the art of what is possible. And Bill, thank you for taking specifics and showing us how it fits the Sassilo. Can we just get a copy of your presentation? I want to make sure that the city manager and members of staff have that. And maybe it's an opportunity to start incorporating that into our capital improvement program. Thank you. |
| 01:11:07.87 | Steven Woodside | Any other questions? Okay, please. Talk to my boss. |
| 01:11:13.76 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. I really appreciate anyone that can nerd out about climate and pavement, like my colleague, Councilmember Kelman. So I really enjoyed hearing from both of you, and I appreciate that we got to. To get this perspective, I'm wondering what are next steps from you, for example, Bill, in helping us to incorporate some of these ideas into our capital improvements plan if we wanted to do that, for example? And is this a project that maybe Sausalito Beautiful could help us with, or what would you suggest we want to start taking action on some of these ideas? |
| 01:11:39.70 | Sybil Boutillier | and, you know, |
| 01:11:39.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:11:39.86 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 01:11:49.10 | Bill Hines | Yes. So this presentation is meant to be kind of a conversation starter and it's not meant to solve all your problems. I think in terms of next steps, it would make sense to look at the list of the next slew of roads to be repaved. As I mentioned, locust is one of them and do an analysis to see what we really have to gain by paving the complete section of the road. Because if we can reduce 20% of the road with, obviously, that would require some redesign and rethinking. Something has to go in that space. But you're saving 20% for repaving over the cost of the road in perpetuity. So from that standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. And, you know, we're currently in a mode of examining sustainability and adaptations with the sea level rise master plan for Sausalito. And I think what the design team on that project would tell you is that anything that you can address in terms of stormwater as a smaller solution, a low impact solution, something that's upstream from everything collecting at the bottom of the watershed, you're just going to be better off in situations of extreme weather. You know, when the atmospheric river comes to town, it's going to make the community more resilient. So I would really target looking at the street widths of the next roads to be repaved. And you'll learn something from those that can be applied to future projects in terms of developing that right section. |
| 01:13:28.25 | Councilmember (not in known list) | And have you worked with, and then I promise this is my last question, sorry. Have you worked with other municipalities who have been able to, and maybe this is a Jonathan question, get grant funding for these feasibility, like these assessments to start planning? |
| 01:13:41.28 | Bill Hines | I'm sure grant funding is available to do these assessments. |
| 01:13:44.30 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Okay. Great. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you again. Thank you. |
| 01:13:47.98 | Steven Woodside | Any other questions? All right, we'll take public comment. |
| 01:13:50.97 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm not. |
| 01:13:51.03 | Steven Woodside | this. |
| 01:13:51.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. We do have somebody on Zoom, Jory Tim. |
| 01:14:01.53 | Jody Timms | Jody Timms Good evening, Mayor and Council Members of Sausalito. I'm Jody Timms. I'm actually the chair of the Fairfax Climate Action Committee. And I just really want to thank you for this presentation and to thank Council Member Kelman for mentioning that Jonathan would be here and have this presentation at the recent Resilient Neighborhoods Party. But as part of the, you know, all of our municipal caps, our climate action plans, talk about low albedo products and low carbon concrete. And I've been waiting a long time to see what are some of these products, who's using them, what's happening. And so I'm just delighted to have watched what you had to say, Jonathan, and also Bill, just these incredibly creative ideas and leading edge, but not so complicated and so reasonable. solutions and products that are out there for us. especially given the bad news we often hear around what's happening around climate. It's just super inspiring to hear this. And I want to congratulate you, Sausalito. You have inspired me. And I'll be passing on some of the information, well, much of this information to the other cities. Five of the cities in the county of Marin have advisory committees, like your sustainability committee, like our Fairfax Climate Action Committee. We meet monthly and we talk about ideas we're learning about, what each city is doing, how we can cross-pollinate and inspire each other and move all of this action along to address climate change. So I'll be sharing a lot of these ideas there. And I just really want to thank you again for your presentation and for hearing about it and then being able to watch it. So right on. Good work. Thank you so much. |
| 01:15:51.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Any other public comment, Mr. Dukes? Yes, we have Babette McDougal. |
| 01:15:58.90 | Babette McDougall | Good evening, can you hear me all right? |
| 01:16:00.92 | Steven Woodside | Yes, we can go ahead. |
| 01:16:02.42 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. So I too would like to say thanks for these really interesting presentations. Now, here in the city of Sausalito, as everyone knows, we have quite a. a web of streets that are narrow and wide and all of them need attention. Our primary concern is always the ability for first responders to get through when they need to get through. This has always been an impediment It continues to be an impediment. and especially along Bridgeway, which is our It should be our showcase corridor. It's the one road. that connects the town north to south. in every possible way. And yet we still fight over, are we going to keep this median or get rid of it? what happens to emergency response or not. And yet all the while, when you think about, except for our beautiful, stunning natural views, We're really not doing a heck of a lot or as much as we could do. the good work of Bridgeway Beautiful notwithstanding or Sausalito Beautiful notwithstanding. But there's still a great deal more that we can do to improve our green spaces So I'm really glad that we have SWA in our town because they have proven to be such a valuable asset. Tonight's presentation, I think, is a good example of that. Thank you so much. |
| 01:17:18.28 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:17:19.52 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:17:19.54 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:17:19.59 | Steven Woodside | And, well, |
| 01:17:19.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. No further public comment. |
| 01:17:21.35 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you very much. We will now move on to our consent calendar agenda. These are items considered generally non-controversial and can be passed with one vote, but any city council member can request that they be removed. from the consent calendar and heard as a item later in the day the items are 3a adopt a resolution acknowledging the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in older adult communities and committing to continued support for programs and services that promote the social determinants of health and enhance the well-being of older residents 3b receive and file Sausalito Police Department's third quarter year date report 2024 3c receive and file the shoreline adaptation plan update 3d adopt a resolution of the city council of sausalito accepting the north street steps repair project at a total cost of 573 000 from reserve funds stair fund capital fund measure all fund and direct the city engineer to file a notice of completion Thank you. |
| 01:18:16.83 | Chad Hess | REGARDING. |
| 01:18:17.15 | Steven Woodside | E adopt a resolution of the city council and the city of Sausalito, accepting the Woodward avenue sewer main replacement project with a total cost of three hundred six thousand dollars from the sewer fund and direct the city engineer to file a notice of completion 3f adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the transportation authority of uran county a fiscal year 2427 accepting measure b funding from the coloma street safe routes to school program in an amount of $102,752. 3G, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a maintenance and operations agreement with the city of Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District to support the cost of one full-time equivalent per physician in an amount estimated to be $268,000 from sewer enterprise. 3h resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a contract as approved by the city attorney with recata for an amount not to exceed 76 857 dollars for the sausalito police department funded by the cops state police grant as a budget expenditure for 24 25 and 3j adopt and receive and file the september 2023 cars report I'll come back to the minutes since it appears I've missed those, but let's just do the consent calendar first. And is there anyone who answers to remove one of the consent calendar items? Thank you. If you do. |
| 01:19:47.76 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I'd like to remove item 3D, which is the North Street stairs completion. |
| 01:19:53.49 | Steven Woodside | 3D will become the last business item of the night. Anyone else? Okay, let's take public comment, please, on 3A through 3I, except for 3D. That public comment on that item will be later in the... |
| 01:20:09.35 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Sybil Boutillier. |
| 01:20:17.45 | Sybil Boutillier | Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members. I just want to make a real quick couple of comments about 3A, the resolution on isolation. I thought you might be interested in a few data points that are countywide. The Commission on Aging just finished a needs survey of older adults. And since 2019, older adults are expressing elevated levels of concern in all areas. about one-third, these are just a few top-line points, one-third of all the adults. older adults are expressing elevated levels of concern in all areas. About one third, these are just a few top line points. One third of older adults feel isolated or lonely. And, um, There are so many concerns that have risen in people's minds, the cost of living. 47% of those surveyed said it's difficult to live on their total household income. More than 30% say that they eat alone most of the time. And this causes isolation and is a big cause of isolation and depression and bad health outcomes. In Sausalito, we have some fantastic programs. Sausalito Village, the Edgewater Seniors, which the city has supported for some 50, 60 years, has fabulous socialization programs. And these are the kind of programs that are being called out in terms of thanking the city for supporting them and asking them to continue. And it's not necessarily financial support. Most of these have very little, if any, city financial support. But there's a spirit of support for seeing that everybody feels included. Everybody has the best quality of life here in South Salido. I think we can be proud of that. But we still need to be aware that there is an epidemic of social isolation. We can't get to everybody yet and help them be part of the community, which is our goal. Thank you. |
| 01:22:22.48 | Walfred Solorzano | Sunshine. |
| 01:22:32.91 | Sunshine | Good evening again. I was not anticipating being up here speaking tonight. I was, but here I am. Um, I've been evicted from my place. I'm in senior housing. And I've lived there 12 years. There have been eight different managers in the 12 years, and we never know what to expect is coming our way. And I did not expect this. I'm the one that helps everybody because I'm still mobile and I still drive. Today, we had a washer and dryer installed. The dryer is put in backwards with the door opening towards the entrance, and the washer has water accumulating in it. We don't know quite why yet. The place is so neglected And one manager has gotten to be worse than the next. And, um, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I had letters of recommendation, you know, make letters stay. We want her. She helps us. And I wasn't allowed to present any of that. because it was just a matter of settle with the owners. And so I'm right now not knowing quite what I will be doing, where I will be going. I'm 84. I'm working on a heart condition. And I just need some support and figure out what is the city doing to make sure that these senior residences that were not being harassed. I went to see about senior abuse, told crime had to be committed before you could report senior abuse. So I got, I got parking permits. I've helped everybody out for 12 years. and I cannot figure out why I was targeted. But I was. And so I just need any help that any of you can think of. Thank you very much. |
| 01:24:32.12 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:24:32.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:24:32.17 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:24:32.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:24:32.25 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any other public comment, Mr. |
| 01:24:35.49 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Lorna Neulitt. |
| 01:24:35.54 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:24:47.98 | Lorna Neulitt | Hello, I'm Lorna Newland. I'm a Saucedo resident for 30 years. I live in Whiskey Springs. I cross every day to the MLK site to my studio and I walk down the Tamales Pass and cross Coloma. And I'm here to speak on 3F. I was here in 2020 when this came up with, I believe it was the Pedestrian and Bike Coalition. We're still needing a crosswalk there. It's pretty dangerous crossing the street. I look both ways and then both ways again. Unfortunately, people do speed on Coloma and they also speed right through the parking lot. And I've gone blue in the face, sending letters to city council, probably way before your time. I've been a tenant there for 19 years, but I've kind of given up on certain things. However, the main issue that I noticed when reading the consent calendar was it talked about a flashing beacon. And I spoke against that in 2020, that those lights that flash there, there are homes that look out there. My studio windows look right at Coloma Street. And that would, I don't think the flashing beacons are necessary and I would strongly oppose that. Also, I read that they're gonna put a sidewalk along the fence, which the fence should be replaced because it's pretty rusty. But on the other hand, there is that lovely walkway on the inside of the park. So why do we need a sidewalk if the children are mostly, if it's school kids, they're walking around the field and then going that way? So that is just a comment, especially after Mr. Hines was talking about concrete and all that. Do we really need a sidewalk when there is a walkway just on the other side of the fence? But mostly it's about the lights. Thank you. |
| 01:26:33.23 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Anyone else, Mr. City Clerk? Oh, sorry, I didn't see you by spare Cox. You have your hand raised. You need to unmute yourself. |
| 01:26:42.71 | Unknown | Yes, thank you. I wanted to propose. I don't want to pull these items, but I wanted to propose two changes to two of the resolutions were being asked to approve this evening. |
| 01:26:55.10 | Unknown | If I might. |
| 01:26:55.39 | Unknown | Yeah. All right, so for the Um, Operations and Maintenance Agreement, Karen Hollweg, The the staff report says that we're proving an amount not to exceed 268,000 but the resolution says, both in the title and in the final. Now, therefore, that the amount is estimated to be in excess of 268,000. And so I think the resolution needs to be revised. to comport with the staff report so that the amount we're paying for the full-time equivalent position for Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District does not exceed 268,000 rather than we are approving an amount in excess of 268,000. The other change that I'm recommending is to the resolution for The item. three H. The title of the resolution says not to exceed 76,857 and the quote is for 76,857, but nowhere in the resolution does it say that it will not exceed 76,857 nor Does the end user agreement with FERCADA say that it will not exceed 76,857? And I don't believe a quote. without any enforcement language is enough to protect the city. So I would like to recommend adding a provision to the resolution that says that the amount to be paid to Verkata is not to exceed 76,857. |
| 01:28:41.19 | Steven Woodside | And those are my two. Adopting those two changes. OK. consider them adopted as part of the motion to approve the consent counter. Is there any other public comment, Mr. There's none. So I make that motion with those changes. |
| 01:28:54.29 | Councilmember Kelman | I would like to just note Sunshine's comments and I'm not sure city manager if it's you who might give a call over to EAH who proudly displays B Street housing on its website as being a all encompassing senior care but maybe Sybil you can give us some guidance and work with the city manager to see how we might be most helpful in this matter we'd appreciate it. |
| 01:28:54.61 | Steven Woodside | Second. |
| 01:29:20.81 | Steven Woodside | Is there a second to the motion? I second it. Okay, motion made seconded, all in favor say aye. Oh, I guess we do roll call, sorry, because of our vice mayor being remote. So roll call the vote. |
| 01:29:26.06 | Sybil Boutillier | Okay. |
| 01:29:31.77 | Walfred Solorzano | . Thank you. |
| 01:29:32.29 | Steven Woodside | Blasting. |
| 01:29:33.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:29:33.11 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 01:29:33.13 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:29:33.17 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Yes. |
| 01:29:33.96 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. Councilmember Kelman? Yes. Vice Mayor Cox. Yes. |
| 01:29:41.65 | Steven Woodside | Yes, well now go back to item two, which is adoption of the action minutes from September 17 and October 15. Is there a motion to approve these? I'm sorry. We'll take public comment, please, first on the minutes. Any public comments? |
| 01:29:54.41 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 01:29:55.24 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay, we'll close public comment. Is there a motion? move to approve the action minutes of september 17th and october 15th 2024 is there a second |
| 01:30:05.60 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 01:30:05.62 | Steven Woodside | IN THE CITY. |
| 01:30:05.89 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 01:30:05.90 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. OK? Call the roll, please, Mr. City Clerk. |
| 01:30:08.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member blasting. |
| 01:30:10.09 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 01:30:10.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. Yes. |
| 01:30:12.53 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 01:30:12.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Kelman? Yes. Vice Mayor Cox? |
| 01:30:14.38 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:30:14.39 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Yes. |
| 01:30:17.02 | Walfred Solorzano | you I'm Marisol Bieski. |
| 01:30:18.44 | Steven Woodside | Yes. I will now move on to the business items. The first item, 5A, has been pulled by city staff and will perhaps appear at a future agenda. However, we will take public comment on 5A. Is there any public comment? Seeing none. |
| 01:30:31.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Oh, sorry. |
| 01:30:34.03 | Steven Woodside | We do have one person. 5A? This is, okay. It has been pulled from the agenda, FYI. Okay. Go right ahead. Go right ahead. Hello, Lauren. |
| 01:30:45.26 | Lorna Neulitt | Hello, Lorna Newlin again. I was watching at home. I saw it was pulled. I decided to come to speak about the crosswalk and I'm happy to do public comment. I did email city manager and, um, council, uh, again, resident for 30 years in Whiskey Springs. I've been a tenant at MLK for 19 years. I've been in business for 22 years. My first, uh, location was on Bridgeway. I moved there and in the 19 years, I have probably had 12 different property managers. Most of them have been either city staff. We've had somebody from HR, park and rec. We've had realtors. We haven't really had somebody who really did proper property management. Public works. I've, I like the public works guys, but they took two weeks to sheetrock two rooms for me to move in when I was approved by city council for my lease. Uh, The public works says it's a industrial building. So I guess cleanly, I don't know what that means, but the bathrooms aren't clean. I would invite anybody to come and look what the inside of that building looks like. I'm in the bus barn. I think where the schools are on the other side on ebb tide are probably better maintained. The bus barn has not been. Um, I, Fully recommend Kimber Management becoming the property manager. I think that what they're quoting is certainly less than what we were paying our last one, Mike Wagner, who, I'm sure he did things at other properties. I read about that, but not at MLK. I learned about this on Currents, and nobody from city staff or anybody reached out to any tenant at MLK that this was being considered. So I do strongly recommend them. Thank you. |
| 01:32:49.30 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Is there any other public comment? Babette McDougall. Oh, put our back up. Yes or no? Yeah. |
| 01:32:59.02 | Unknown | and then the TVC is really really good. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? |
| 01:33:16.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, she's got to have one device on. |
| 01:33:19.93 | Steven Woodside | Mr. McGugle, it appears you have two devices, which is creating a feedback loop. Can you hang up on one of them and use the other for public comment? |
| 01:33:27.05 | Babette McDougall | Can you hear me now? |
| 01:33:27.17 | Unknown | Can you hear me now? |
| 01:33:32.27 | Steven Woodside | it. Yeah. |
| 01:33:33.75 | Babette McDougall | I don't think I have two missions open. |
| 01:33:35.91 | Steven Woodside | Okay, now it's working, so please go ahead. |
| 01:33:36.06 | Babette McDougall | it. Can you hear me still? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. So actually, I just want to say about this whole issue about... |
| 01:33:38.66 | Steven Woodside | Go ahead. Okay. |
| 01:33:45.02 | Babette McDougall | what 5A represents. You know, first of all, this is a very, important project for the city of Sausalito, at least from the point of view of the resident citizens. So to continue to be very cavalier and the way you are treating it is frankly unacceptable. So this policy that we spoke about over a year ago now that has yet to materialize, is something that I think we're all waiting for. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop. So if we don't have a roadmap from the city and the people saying, this is how we want to go forward. as we manage our portfolio. then how in the world do we know what to do next? And, I think Bruce Hough is a fantastic candidate for this job. So I'm not trying to say that there's anything wrong with the choice. But I'm very embarrassed by the way the city has put this whole plan together. It's very slapdash. And it does not reflect well on us as a community. So I'm glad you've taken it off. But I would like to see when it comes back that it is given the respect that it is accorded and must be due. You have to take this seriously. You look like rank amateurs otherwise, and I don't think of you. as rank amateurs, each in your own. I think of you as someone that you still needs to show that you are capable of standing as leaders of this community, and I have yet to see that in certain of you. So I'd like to see this project of all projects look like a shining star. And I'd love for you to think of it as a shining star, because it really will help us move forward into a very, positive future if we do it correctly. Thank you. |
| 01:35:35.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing no further public comment. |
| 01:35:37.45 | Steven Woodside | Mr. City Clerk, I got a text from a resident who says that the closed captioning, which is a nice feature, thank you, but it is blocking, he thinks, your ability to see his hand raised. Just move your window back. |
| 01:35:47.69 | Walfred Solorzano | just No, I can see if somebody's hand is raised. Okay. So who's the speaker that wants to be? Peter Van Meter. |
| 01:35:52.41 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:35:56.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Yeah, he just doesn't have his hand raised. And actually, I don't see him in the meeting. |
| 01:36:08.12 | Steven Woodside | All right. |
| 01:36:10.05 | Walfred Solorzano | So, yeah, I cannot call on him. |
| 01:36:12.21 | Steven Woodside | Okay, well, then we will unless you well you if you don't see it, then it's something we can do about it. So we will close public comment on item five a and we'll go on to which is presentation and discussion of the fiscal 2324 audit. Mr. City Manager. |
| 01:36:35.23 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor. That's going to be handled by our Finance Director, Chad Hess. |
| 01:36:40.17 | Chad Hess | Good evening, Mayor Council. Are you guys able to hear me? |
| 01:36:44.41 | Steven Woodside | Yes, we are. Go right ahead. |
| 01:36:45.89 | Chad Hess | right things are frozen on my end, so I will continue on. If things freeze, please let me know. |
| 01:36:59.73 | Chad Hess | Now I can't move anything. |
| 01:37:07.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:37:11.20 | Chad Hess | I have no computer access. |
| 01:37:17.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Chad, you're freezing out. |
| 01:37:19.69 | Chad Hess | Yeah, I'm Thank you. Can't move my computer mouse at this point. Not sure what's going on. |
| 01:37:42.76 | Steven Woodside | Is there a computer problem on your end or is it an issue with Zoom, Mr. Hess? |
| 01:37:46.64 | Chad Hess | I think it's on my end. |
| 01:37:51.27 | Steven Woodside | Do you think it'll be a few minute, 50 second remedy or? We could move on. Okay, so it just unlocked itself. |
| 01:37:56.01 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:37:56.04 | Chad Hess | Okay, so it just unlocked. Hang on, let me try again. |
| 01:37:59.21 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 01:38:02.08 | Chad Hess | All right. So I think we're back up and running. Sorry about that, folks. Let me share my screen and we will start our discussion on results of fiscal year 23-24. |
| 01:38:22.82 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:38:22.84 | Chad Hess | you guys able to see the presentation? |
| 01:38:24.63 | Steven Woodside | Yes, we are. |
| 01:38:26.30 | Chad Hess | Thank you. All right. So we are going to start off with just kind of an overview of What is an audit? Why do we have an audit? And kind of set the stage for us to discuss more specifics. So the city of Sausalito is required by the state of California to undergo an annual audit of its financial records. and to issue the financial statements within six months of the close of the fiscal year. And our fiscal year ends June 30th of each year. Our current auditors is Badawi & Associates, and they are an external certified public accounting firm who specializes in audits of local governments, and is registered with the state of California and the AICPA. Our previous auditor was Mays and Associates. They served as an auditor for seven years. And Badawi & Associates is currently undergoing their second year as our external independent auditor. But now we and associates will conduct their audit in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States, also known as GASP. And the standards applicable to financial audits contained in the government auditing standards issued by the Comptroller General of the United States. So those are the two frameworks that they conduct their audit on. And these are both recognized nationally as the standards for which audits should be conducted. So what is an audit? An audit is an examination of records by an external independent reviewer to ensure that the records comply with generally accepted accounting principles known as GAT. The audits, are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. When we look at the audit, it's important to understand the timing of the audit and how we want to communicate information to counsel in our community. If you look at the screen here, you can see that the yellow bar represents the fiscal year under audit. which started July 1st of 2023. and wrapped up or concluded June 30th of 2024. During that fiscal year, we report Treasurer's reports quarterly, and that is unaudited information that we present to Council in the community to give an indication of our cash position at those given intervals. When we look at the fiscal year end, it takes about six months for the city to close its books and undergo the audit and the report issue date. Last year, we issued our audit report December 28th of 2023. And this year we are targeting a report issuance date middle of December. So it is important to understand that the audits take time to complete and releasing this interim information is our way to give council in the community more timely information. rather than waiting for six months after the close of the fiscal year. or 18 months after the start of the fiscal year, if we look at 7-1-23 through December 31st of 24th. Now, I wanna get into the results of this year's fiscal year And we're going to start with the general fund. We're going to cover three funds in today's presentation. All of the information in the funds is available in the attachment to the staff report. I've given summary information for all of the city's funds across the enterprise. Now, looking at the general fund, you can see here that we are projected to end the year with a surplus of $2.6 million. This does exceed our original expected budget, which projected a surplus of $583,000. This variance is attributable to two different things. Really, the revenues came in over budget. primarily on the property tax line item. That is attributable to the excess ERAF that we received from the county. That was just shy of 600,000. digging back in, I don't believe this was properly budgeted in fiscal year 24. And looking back, fiscal year 23, we also had a very noticeable variance in our property tax line item. So I believe that that has been under budgeted in previous fiscal years as well. Looking at our planning revenues, planning revenues was another contributor to our surplus. Planning revenues came in about 130,000 over expectation. Recreational revenues as well, about $140,000 over expectation. based on better participation within our events. On the intergovernmental line item, we had several grants the city received. In there, we had a FEMA grant that was from 2009 that the city had to really fight to earn those dollars. We went through several appeals with Cal OES and FEMA and really had to work hard to get those dollars back into the city's coffers under a reimbursement. There were also state dollars that came for reimbursement for some of our housing element planning. These dollars are, were unbudgeted and they are considered one-time revenues. Those dollars came into the city. We don't expect to receive FEMA grants every year. We don't expect to receive reimbursement from the state for those housing element costs. Those were truly one time dollars that flowed into the city. The other thing that I want to pull out is the fines line item was over budget by 172,000. The primary driver of that is our parking tickets. With that department being fully staffed, we did see an increase in parking citations. Looking at the expense side of the house, Expenses were under budget by just over a million dollars. mainly attributable to our salaries and benefits, which came in under budget at $414,000. |
| 01:44:30.27 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 01:44:31.37 | Chad Hess | And the primary driver of this is the way that we've budgeted in the past. We have always budgeted. We had full employment. We're at top step, which overstates potential wages. And we are seeing that here in this variance column, we've over budgeted by 414,000. Professional services, another area that the city's departments have saved on. relying less on external consultants and staffing our city functions with staff that will show up under our salaries and benefits. So that is a positive variance to the city. The primary savings was in the building department and community development. where they had less of a reliance on forward Supplies and materials are also under budget by about $161,000. And again, that is just the departments being aware of their expenses and trying to control those costs the best that they can. Overall, we do have that positive increase in fund balance of 2.6 million. which again will add to the available resources of the general fund as we move forward. None of this is changing the fiscal year 25 budget. This is simply a recap of where we have been. On this slide here, I just want to kind of show a comparison, if you will. of the last couple of fiscal years compared to the budget. So the general fund wages are represented as the green line and they're trending below budget as expressed as a linear red line item on the graph below. Wages are in line with prior fiscal years. And I do want to note that some of the months, if we look at the top graph where we have those spikes in Um, are represented by the three pay periods that we have in several, two of the months of the fiscal year. So if we look at the 23, 24, those three payroll months were November and May. in fiscal year 2022-23, those months were August. in June. Overall wages for the fiscal year 24 were under Fiscal year 23 in the general fund and the driver of that is really because where we've coded our parking enforcement officers. In the past, those were always recorded in the general fund. But in fiscal year 24, those wages have been recorded within the parking fund to give a better representation of the economic value of that parking fund. When we look at total general fund expenses, again, we're using the green line to represent the activity, the red line represents the fiscal year budget. And again, you can see here that We represent the budget as a linear line item, but that is not how these expenses typically flow. When we think about our pension UL payment and our insurance payments or premiums that we have paid, Those are two significantly large payments that are expensed in July of every fiscal year. So you can see that there is an inflection point right around January where the budgets go under or the actual expenses. fall below the budget. at that inflection point, and then they continue forward The city did a great job of really controlling those costs this year, and that is helping drive this surplus that we've received. I just want to give a quick update on our Section 115 trust. I'm not sure. We can see on the top graph, that's our OPEB trust cash balance. When we look at the end of the fiscal year, June, we had about 1.95 million. And a little bit of information that I've left on the screen here, the 2025 balance as of September was just over 2 million due to capital appreciation. The pension trust cash balance at the end of fiscal year 24 was 3.8 million. |
| 01:48:11.73 | Chad Hess | in. |
| 01:48:12.72 | Chad Hess | And at the end of September of 2025, it was just over $4 million. And again, that is attributable to capital appreciation within that Section 115 trust. I do want to point out, you can see the significant increase here on the yellow dots. |
| 01:48:23.08 | Sybil Boutillier | Yeah. Bye. |
| 01:48:23.15 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:48:27.89 | Chad Hess | That is the million dollar contribution that we made into the Section 115 Trust in June of 2023. On this slide here, we can see MLK revenues, and the MLK revenues offers a stable stream of tenant rental income. that you can see on the top chart. MLK ended the fiscal year with revenues exceeding expenses by $95,000. And you can see the spike in June. Over here, this is and recognition of a new GASB standard, GASB 87, and how we record the recognition of leases. But overall, you can see that this does offer a very stable source of revenue for the city. Here we can see the unaudited numbers. Overall, we have a positive change in net position on a full accrual basis. You can see revenues exceeded our budget by just under 80,000. and that our expenses were under budget by about $95,000. The city did pay down $90,000 of principal on our COP debts. And then we also transferred 700,000 to the general fund as we have done in previous years. We've always made that general fund transfer. The amounts have varied over the years, but we have made a transfer from the MLK to the general fund. And again, this MLK is a profit-seeking endeavor. The city made the investment years ago to purchase that property. And this goal or the goal of the city is to earn dollars to supplement our general fund and really help keep those tax dollars, the dollars that need to be collected from taxes to help reduce those by having this profit seeking endeavor. Parking revenues had a phenomenal year. Parking fund ended with revenues exceeding expenses by 762,000. and it exceeded our budget by 392,000. And this is after the $1.5 million transfer to the general You can see here that the fiscal year 24 revenues have exceeded the prior years month over month with the exception of September. And then we had one month in April. But this gives you a little bit of context on how those parking revenues are recorded or receded throughout the year. And you can see some of those peaks and valleys due to seasonality of parking. Here you can see in numbers, the actual results. We had $3.2 million in parking revenues for fiscal year 24, which was a positive variance to our budget by 382,000. When we look at the expenditure side, we had budgeted expenditures of 2.4 And we met that with a positive variance of under $10,000. So we did a pretty decent job of budgeting expenses or controlling those in the parking fund. |
| 01:51:29.10 | Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. |
| 01:51:38.88 | Chad Hess | The parking fund ended the year with $2 million in cash, which is a $760,000 increase over the year. And again, we did transfer 1.5 million to the general fund. That number was reduced in fiscal year 23. That was a $2 million transfer to the general fund. But that was reduced in 24 due to the recording of salaries and expenses or salaries and benefits in the parking fund this year. In the past, I look back the last 10 years, we have made transfers from the parking fund to the general fund in all of those years. And again, the parking fund is a profit seeking endeavor. The goal here is to earn dollars to contribute to the city's operational fund, the general fund, in order to keep our reliance on taxes as low as we can. So with that, I'm gonna open it up for questions and Public comments. |
| 01:52:34.77 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you, Director Hess. Any questions for Director Hess? |
| 01:52:38.96 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you, Director Hess. I really appreciate that. I also know the vice mayor has her hand up. A quick question for you, a slide nine, MLK revenues. This is more of a budget than an audit question, but I am interested. Where do we track MLK expenses? |
| 01:52:55.18 | Chad Hess | The MLK expenses in the MLK fund. So you can see on the next slide, slide 10, is where you will see the expenses for MLK. |
| 01:53:05.94 | Councilmember Kelman | I guess what I'm calling out is, Is it fair to look at create just a revenue slide. I mean, you don't have just an expenses slide. And so I'm curious about your methodology. |
| 01:53:16.79 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so I really wanted to promote or display the revenue because that's really the primary driver of that fund is the revenues. I certainly can provide an expense slide if that is the request of counsel. But primarily I wanted to focus on revenues just to show the stability of those revenue sources. |
| 01:53:35.17 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay, that makes sense, and I appreciate that. The other reason I ask is because this is one of a handful of properties where we have a debt burden obligation, and the way that those COPs are structured are into tranches. The second tranche is not favorable to us in terms of the interest rates, and so there's potential increased costs for us down the line. You're looking at me quizzically, so maybe I need to follow you offline. But my understanding is that's the way we structure the COPs. Maybe I'm confusing that with the general obligation bonds. |
| 01:54:07.16 | Chad Hess | Yes. Yeah. So the the MLK has a very stable cash flow. It's about six hundred twenty thousand per year. The principal increases as the interest reduce deuses over the life of those bonds that mature in 2040, I believe. |
| 01:54:07.92 | Councilmember Kelman | Yeah. |
| 01:54:23.45 | Chad Hess | But it's roughly $620,000 of debt service per year. The 2006 A and B bonds are what you're referencing that have that increasing payment schedule. and have a substantially higher interest cost. |
| 01:54:42.55 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay. And then the last thing I'll note is, um, I've got to believe the city attorney services is incorrect on that slide 10. for MLK. |
| 01:54:51.95 | Chad Hess | Let me go back. Take a quick look. |
| 01:54:52.81 | Councilmember Kelman | I'll take a question. |
| 01:54:55.88 | Chad Hess | Yeah. So that's really just how things are coded. I think more attention should be had at coding those attorney fees to the benefiting fund. That is something that I want to continue to refine and work on because that would provide additional relief to the general fund. by using dollars in other funds outside of the general fund. |
| 01:55:15.62 | Councilmember Kelman | So yes, I see something like Cushman and Wakefield that helped us with Elise. A. Would I see that under. |
| 01:55:15.81 | Chad Hess | But yes, she was correct. |
| 01:55:22.58 | Chad Hess | that would roll up under professional services. |
| 01:55:24.76 | Councilmember Kelman | services. Yeah, I think overall my concern, particularly around this fund and these properties, is that we're not – Thank you. We're getting partial snapshots at a time, and I think we need to develop a more holistic approach from a financial perspective for both fiscal and maintenance security for this property. And it feels tenuous based on this. And so some of this is reporting in the way we report, which we can brainstorm offline. But those are things that stood out. So thank you for allowing me to give you that context. |
| 01:55:56.43 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:56:00.14 | Unknown | Thank you. um, |
| 01:56:05.61 | Unknown | Chad, I noticed there were a lot of variances in a lot of categories. between what we budgeted and how it actually turned out. And I know in our current budget, we've addressed some of those, But I'm wondering if as we put together our next budget next year in May and June, if you can include in the budgeting process this spreadsheet of variances so that we can do a better job of predicting, you know, the county contributions and other sources that are consistently different from how we've budgeted. I know that grants are a one-time thing that will not repeat, but You know, while I'm happy to have a surplus and the problem of figuring out what to do with it. I... Um, It's concerning to me that our budgeting process is that inaccurate and I would like to Um, it. undertake a process to ensure that our budgeting process is a more accurate prediction of our finances so that the change changes are not so volatile. Is that possible? |
| 01:57:14.85 | Chad Hess | Thank you. Yes, I agree. A lot of work can be done to improve our overall budgeting process. Looking back at the last fiscal year, Um, You know, when we started to develop this budget, I was brought on in April and we had to get this thing out the door by the end of June. So this was my first budget when I was the interim director. So that's one of our challenges. You know, the institutional knowledge of our revenues and expenses takes time to build. So I certainly want to improve our budgeting process, bring in our variances to a more reasonable number. And I certainly look forward to making this a more collaborative process as we approach our preparation for the fiscal year 26 budget. So yes, certainly noted. And I certainly want to improve on our budgeting process to help you make you and the rest of council make better decisions. Um, |
| 01:58:07.89 | Unknown | And this was not intended as a criticism of you, Chad, but more a process improvement of the budgeting process overall. |
| 01:58:07.90 | Chad Hess | And this was- |
| 01:58:14.74 | Unknown | Yes. Thank you. Um, In the past, in 2018, we passed a resolution saying that moving forward between now and 2025 or 2026, we would invest any surplus each year into our Pension 115 trust in order to reduce the risk of not being able to of not having enough money in our general fund to make our annual payments. Um, in you may recall during our budgeting process this year in June, And even prior to that, when we heard from our 115 trust consultant regarding the performance of that trust, we asked you to explore... different mechanisms for investing those monies to achieve a higher rate of return. We were disappointed in the rate of return We are currently reaping. So that's been about at least six months ago. And I'm wondering if you can, can you tell us your progress on that? |
| 01:59:14.66 | Chad Hess | Yes. So I have been meeting with the CalPERS team. CalPERS runs Section 115 Trust. I'm actually in San Diego today at the CalPERS Educational Forum. I met with the the team that manages those two trust accounts for CalPERS. We had a one-on-one consultation, and we are scheduling a call for next week to bring more information forward. Looking at the costs, there is a substantial cost savings on the management fees, looking at PARS versus CalPERS, and then also looking at their investment tiers. The last 10 years shows a more favorable results than what we are receiving from PARS. So that is a recommendation I'd like to bring forward. I plan on making that discussion part of our next finance committee meeting. to introduce the topic there and then bring it forward to the full council. after that. |
| 02:00:08.15 | Unknown | Okay. Okay, those were my primary questions. Thank you so much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. |
| 02:00:13.16 | Steven Woodside | Anyone else? Council Member Hoffman? |
| 02:00:17.16 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Chad. I appreciate the work that you've done on this. But just to be clear, I think the mayor introduced us as... A presentation of the audit. To be clear, the audit's not completed yet, correct? |
| 02:00:30.31 | Chad Hess | have not issued. We have gone through our preliminary audit back in May, which looks at the risk assessment of our internal controls. And our audit, the fieldwork audit, tests of balances took place So, for. Three weeks ago, early October, the auditors were performing their tests of balances, looking at confirmations, recalculating things, asking lots of questions and asking for supporting documents. |
| 02:00:48.62 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 02:00:57.51 | Chad Hess | We've gone through that process. They have not proposed any journal entries at this point. And then we are hoping to issue the report by middle of December. So the audit is not complete. We haven't issued. But the test of balances has been conducted. They have a few little tie or cleanup items to address, but at this point, there have been no changes or proposed journal entries. |
| 02:01:20.51 | Jill Hoffman | But the description of the numbers as they |
| 02:01:21.14 | Chad Hess | the- |
| 02:01:24.92 | Jill Hoffman | The information as it exists right now is that it's unaudited numbers, correct? That's correct. |
| 02:01:28.92 | Chad Hess | That's correct. Yeah, I can't say that they're audited until the auditors have blessed it and issued their report. |
| 02:01:35.47 | Jill Hoffman | And that will be sometime in December. |
| 02:01:37.52 | Chad Hess | Yes, we're shooting for the middle of December. |
| 02:01:40.17 | Jill Hoffman | So I looked at some of the... times in the past when we looked at unaudited numbers, uh, prior to the issuance of the, of the full audit. And there were some pretty, um, pretty strenuous disclaimers with regard to those reports and how they were presented, but I didn't see that in this report. Is there some reason why you didn't include Um, the disclaimers. |
| 02:02:04.56 | Chad Hess | Thank you. No, I will include those on, on future on audited numbers. Uh, I know back in. fiscal year 21. We did a finance committee. where we published a quarterly report using auto-audit numbers and that disclaimer wasn't present there. I am familiar with the disclaimer to referencing city managers. Apapa has sent that to me. It was after we were ready to publish these agenda items, but I will make sure that that disclaimer is in there going forward for you. |
| 02:02:35.81 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks very much. Let me just read it real quick. Yeah. Um, Thank you. Unaudited numbers. This was the disclaimer that we're referencing that's not included anywhere in this report. It's. as follows. The following exhibits are unaudited and are provided for general information purposes only. The statements have not yet been reviewed or audited by the City of Sausalito auditors and do not conform with generally accepted accounting principles. and as high-level summaries without supporting statements or notes are inherently incomplete. The City of Sausalito publishes certain financial information that management believes to be accurate and correct, as of the date or dates contained therein, However, The financial affairs of the city change regularly, and such changes may be material. Users are advised that while the city makes reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of information, information may change from time to time without notice and so that disclaimer will be included in all future? |
| 02:03:32.26 | Chad Hess | Yes, I'll include that going forward. You know, the records that I provided The accounting complies with GAAP, but GAAP requires note disclosures. Note disclosures are not present in this presentation. Uh, And they are if part of the |
| 02:03:47.61 | Jill Hoffman | And they are part of the |
| 02:03:50.78 | Chad Hess | Say that again. |
| 02:03:50.80 | Jill Hoffman | Say that again. That's an accurate disclosure. Yeah. |
| 02:03:53.16 | Chad Hess | Yeah, I agree. I think it should be there. I don't see anything wrong with it. Numbers can change. They are unaudited. They are truthful and accurate to the best of my knowledge. Um, So yeah, I'm comfortable putting that disclaimer there in future unaudited releases. |
| 02:04:09.58 | Jill Hoffman | And the only report attached to this agenda item from our auditors is |
| 02:04:09.75 | Chad Hess | I'll see you next time. |
| 02:04:16.28 | Jill Hoffman | is attachment to. Thank you. |
| 02:04:22.71 | Chad Hess | So that was their exit memo from our interim audit. |
| 02:04:22.76 | Jill Hoffman | So that was... |
| 02:04:26.78 | Jill Hoffman | And that's just a two-page report. It has no numbers or analysis in it. |
| 02:04:31.89 | Chad Hess | That's correct. That was when they come in and assess the risk of our control environment. |
| 02:04:31.98 | Jill Hoffman | Exactly. |
| 02:04:37.93 | Chad Hess | So if we had poorly designed internal controls or we had controls that were designed well but not implemented, they would comment in that exit memo That is really getting at what type of findings could we be looking at. If we weren't reconciling our bank account in a timely manner, or if we had significant challenges closing our books or a particular cycle of accounting. it would be noted there. um, during their audit, if there is increased risks, they do additional tests to gain comfort. in their test of balances. So that is really just an initial assessment of our control environment, more so than the test of balances. |
| 02:05:20.98 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. My next question is, I'm going to shift now over to the actual funds, the transfers out. And so I think there were three funds, there were transfers out in 23, 24 to from the general fund, Parking. I'm sorry, I said that backwards. From the parking fund to the general fund of $1.5 million. |
| 02:05:44.76 | Chad Hess | That's correct. |
| 02:05:44.84 | Jill Hoffman | Sounds great. Thank you. a transfer from MLK to the MLK fund of $700,000 to the general fund. |
| 02:05:53.25 | Chad Hess | That is correct. |
| 02:05:53.97 | Jill Hoffman | and a transfer from the Tidelands Fund to the $200,000 to the general fund. |
| 02:05:59.51 | Chad Hess | That is correct. |
| 02:06:00.49 | Jill Hoffman | And so let me go back up to the parking fund. With regard to the parking fund, and this means that we have revenue that's generated from our parking our parking operations and that's segregated into a fund. And then we transferred 1.5 million out of that fund to the general fund. Correct. |
| 02:06:22.59 | Chad Hess | Yes. So we track those revenues within the fund just to show the performance of the parking fund, the parking. |
| 02:06:28.77 | Jill Hoffman | Well, let me follow up on that, because I think one of the purposes for segregating the funds is also to protect that capital asset, that capital generating asset. And maintenance and other expenses are booked against that fund, correct? Correct. |
| 02:06:43.06 | Chad Hess | That is correct. If we repair the pavement, we would record the expenses there. If we bought new parking systems or parking technology, we would recognize the expense in that fund. That is correct. |
| 02:06:53.88 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And so one of the things that we've asked for Do we have a maintenance? Plan. for our parking, our revenue generating parking lots. Actually, we have one non revenue generating parking lot, but Do we have currently a maintenance plan or a capital improvement budget. for that revenue generating asset that is our parking fund. |
| 02:07:20.59 | Chad Hess | So there are references to that in our CIP plan. I don't know off the top of my head when that is scheduled to take place, but there is parking lot resurfacing in the CIP. Um, And then we are also going through our facilities assessment that will help steer and direct that same question for the MLK fund or the Old City Hall fund as well. |
| 02:07:42.51 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, great. Thanks. I'm getting to there next. Thank you. |
| 02:07:44.69 | Chad Hess | Awesome. |
| 02:07:44.98 | Jill Hoffman | So. So do we have any idea if the capital, the capital costs for maintaining our parking operation exceeds 1.5 million. |
| 02:07:57.11 | Chad Hess | Can you ask that differently or ask that again? |
| 02:07:59.68 | Jill Hoffman | Sure. So we segregate money into that parking fund in order to support the capital improvements to that parking fund so that it keeps generating Money. In other words. Correct. Yes. |
| 02:08:13.23 | Chad Hess | Correct. Yes, we want to invest in it and make sure that it's sustainable. |
| 02:08:17.21 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. So do we have any assessment right now of what the |
| 02:08:17.31 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 02:08:22.12 | Jill Hoffman | what the ongoing maintenance needs are to maintain that the parking lots. It... |
| 02:08:30.00 | Chad Hess | I don't have a number available today. If we were gonna completely resurface or rebuild those parking lots, that would need to take place between public works and the finance department. Currently, that fund has over 2 million of available cash in the fund. That would not be sufficient cash if we were going to repave all of our parking lots today. |
| 02:08:51.36 | Jill Hoffman | And so let's go on then to the MLK. And I know that we've talked about doing a facilities assessment and also an ongoing maintenance program, neither of which we have right now for MLK. Do you have any sense of whether or not the The assess the facilities assessment, in other words, the status of that building and the immediate repairs needed and or the maintenance ongoing would exceed at least for last year, $700,000. |
| 02:09:22.14 | Chad Hess | Thank you. It depends to what extent we want to repair those facilities. I would assume that any significant repairs would exceed 700,000. |
| 02:09:32.49 | Jill Hoffman | And so, and the same thing for the Tidelands funds. Do you have any, I mean, Tidelands funds, |
| 02:09:35.20 | Chad Hess | It was. |
| 02:09:39.49 | Chad Hess | Those are restricted dollars within the tightlands. So the transfer from the general fund or from Tideland's fund to the general fund, from my understanding, is to help with the administration of that rental endeavor. So a lot of our costs right now for property management and the billing come out of the finance department. We invoice every month. We get a lot of phone calls. The collection process, there's the administrative work that takes place there. that's what that transfer represents. The dollars that are still in that fund need to be expended within the Tideland's boundaries. |
| 02:10:15.18 | Jill Hoffman | And we have Tidelands projects, or at least we certainly know that we have Tidelands, needs that exceed $200,000. currently correct? |
| 02:10:25.22 | Chad Hess | Um, I, yeah, I would suppose I know there's, there's opportunities to improve our parks. You know, we're trying to be as intentional as we can with coding expenditures against that fund. any part that's within that zone, we wanna record those expenses in that fund. um, But there is over a million dollars available in that fund, ready to be expended on any type of project council chooses that are a qualifying project within the boundaries. |
| 02:10:53.62 | Jill Hoffman | And so let me move on to how you calculated the employees. And it's the employee expenses. And the employee expenses went down significantly. And that resulted in the surplus for that for that expenditure. over budgeted and so is part of the reason that that happened due to the change, I think you made a reference to it in there. to more clearly explain it, is it the same change that we discussed back on June? June 18th. when we were talking about the change in the methodology and assumptions for employee expenses and that was slide 19 that was set for. |
| 02:11:38.21 | Chad Hess | So, |
| 02:11:41.38 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so if you're looking at fiscal year 23's labor costs compared to fiscal year 23, 24, The primary driver of the reduction in wages there is the recognition of the parking enforcement officers. So if we, let me bring that slide up and I think that might help. One second. |
| 02:12:15.18 | Chad Hess | I think this is what you're referring to here. Councilmember Huffman. where the fiscal year 2015 24s. Jennifer Waddley, Wages one second, so the fiscal year 24 wages is here represented in the green line compared to the 23 wages, they are slightly higher, you know in 24. due to the raises that we, the cost of living adjustments that took place in fiscal year 24, as well as, you know, the step increases that are, are, Members have received. |
| 02:12:51.71 | Jill Hoffman | So I'm actually looking at page four of your staff report. And it talks about the last paragraph there on the expenditure side, a favorable variance of 1 million $40,583 is due to And one bullet there is salary and benefits and lower than expected due to open positions. Thank you. |
| 02:13:13.18 | Chad Hess | Yep. |
| 02:13:13.41 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:13:13.43 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:13:13.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. understandable, and budgetary slack due to the budgetary methodology used in 23-24. And then the next sentence says, the methodology used in fiscal year 2324 you know, goes on to say to use full positions at top. So we talked about that. on June 18th. that was just a big one. |
| 02:13:31.25 | Chad Hess | When we were working on the fiscal year 25 budget, correct? |
| 02:13:34.61 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, and the explanation of that was set forth in slide 19. Do you recall that? |
| 02:13:40.45 | Chad Hess | Those discussions, yeah, we're trying to build a better budget for fiscal year 25. Our methodology of full employment top step is grossly overstating our potential wages. So bringing that back, you know, we're still budgeting for full employment. Our goal is to fill every position authorized on our position control with a qualified individual. Um, But based on experience, we are not paying top step for all of our employees. So the goal of reducing that to a reasonable wage is an effort to help us build a better budget. |
| 02:14:15.31 | Jill Hoffman | And so... We talked about this back on June 18th, but the increase in actual costs. is closer to 1.1 million. That was our conversation. |
| 02:14:25.96 | Chad Hess | The increase in potential cost, yes. If everybody was at the top step, that increase would be much, much closer to over a million dollars. But if we look at actual costs to actual costs, I don't have that on top of my head, but I can certainly let you know in a memorandum or attachment to a future agenda, what the actual costs 23 to 24 were. in the general fund. |
| 02:14:52.62 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, we discussed that. That's fine. I'm happy for you to look at that again. We did you and I discussed that at length, and then we also discussed it at the city council meeting and that's resulted in that sentence. that the increase in actual costs is closer to 1.1 million if you use the same methodology from one year to the next. And I'm just trying to understand you know, the the terminology that you're using and the conclusions. in your staff report. So thank you for that explanation. But you would agree that This, again, these are last year's, this is for last year's budget. |
| 02:15:31.72 | Chad Hess | Fiscal year 23, 24, correct? |
| 02:15:33.16 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, June 30th of 2024. |
| 02:15:35.47 | Chad Hess | Yes. |
| 02:15:35.72 | Jill Hoffman | And you would agree, I mean, I think you said it, but the next year's budget, 24, 25, that's still a deficit budget, correct? |
| 02:15:43.74 | Chad Hess | That is correct. This is not changing anything with the 24, 25 budget. That's correct. |
| 02:15:49.44 | Jill Hoffman | And that budget, the deficit for that budget, this budget year, is approximately a million dollars or just under. |
| 02:15:56.51 | Chad Hess | That is correct. As it stands today, as council has approved back in June, we are Our current budget for the general fund is deficit spend to the tune of roughly a million dollars. That will be evaluated and brought back to council during our mid-year budget review, which is scheduled to take place in January of 2025. |
| 02:16:15.14 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. That's all I have right now. Thank you. |
| 02:16:17.27 | Steven Woodside | So... |
| 02:16:17.50 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:16:17.54 | Steven Woodside | Thank you Council Member. Anyone else have questions? Vice Mayor, you still have your hand raised. |
| 02:16:17.59 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Covran. |
| 02:16:22.18 | Steven Woodside | You're still muted. Yes, I do. |
| 02:16:23.36 | Unknown | Yes, I do. I just had a couple of follow ups. uh, Chad, you know, You were just asked about unaudited versus audited financials. Um, I'm sure I know that you've spoken with former mayor with the regarding the city's practice in the past of publishing preliminary audit results. Um, he wrote a letter to the city council that was shared at our last city council meetings that says, It is routine practice for year-end unaudited results to be published by finance staff in nearly every jurisdiction. Is that your understanding? to |
| 02:17:09.01 | Chad Hess | Yes, yeah, typically that, |
| 02:17:09.11 | Unknown | you |
| 02:17:11.18 | Chad Hess | You know, we want to communicate information more frequently to counsel. I know this last year, it was a little sparse. I was understaffed in my department, we had significant hot button issues that we had to tighten up. So it was a little sparse. My goal for fiscal year 25 is to bring quarterly information to council Um, in an audited fashion again, but to give more frequent communications to community and council members. But yes, most jurisdictions issue unaudited. |
| 02:17:38.17 | Unknown | But yes. So, and in fiscal year 2021, isn't it true that the unaudited end of year report for fiscal year 21 was presented to the city council? on October 26, 2021. |
| 02:17:53.51 | Chad Hess | Yes, that is correct. I was actually there as a consultant to the city. |
| 02:17:58.42 | Unknown | And Councilmember Hoffman was our mayor at that time, yes? that is good. |
| 02:18:01.67 | Chad Hess | and the chair of the finance committee. |
| 02:18:04.07 | Unknown | And that report had previously been discussed at Finance Committee on October 6, 2021, with Mayor Hoffman chairing that meeting. Yes? Yes. And if we go back to 2020, the interim unaudited financial results for fiscal year were presented to the Finance Committee on October 8, 2020. |
| 02:18:25.21 | Chad Hess | Would you agree? I don't... Don't know. It sounds reasonable, but I can't confirm that. Thank you. |
| 02:18:32.49 | Unknown | And well, I have the link here in front of me and then to the city council on October 27 2020. Does that sound right to you as well. |
| 02:18:38.09 | Chad Hess | That's on right. Yeah. |
| 02:18:40.30 | Unknown | Okay, and so, and of course 2020 was an election year just like this year, right? |
| 02:18:45.30 | Chad Hess | That is correct. |
| 02:18:47.81 | Unknown | And then this evening, Councilmember Hoffman was asking you about whether we are treating different cost centers as cost centers with revenues and in that when considering revenues, whether we are also Um, Uh, Right. But, considering the projected expenses within those cost centers, like the Tidelands Fund and the Parking Fund. Is that how we have managed and reported our revenues in the past? |
| 02:19:18.81 | Chad Hess | So when we report Audited statements. It's what has been expended that fiscal year. It's not forward-looking. It's historical information. |
| 02:19:29.10 | Unknown | And so we can certainly change the manner in which we budget and report revenues and expenses, right? Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:19:34.87 | Chad Hess | On a budgetary basis, yes. But from an audit perspective, that has to follow GAAP. |
| 02:19:37.00 | Unknown | Right. Right. Right. And so the questions posed to you about Council Member Hoffman about whether we are deducting from revenues. projected expenses in the long term is not how you report revenues under a gap. Is that right? |
| 02:19:55.73 | Chad Hess | Is that right? No, we have to report actual. We don't forecast anything under GAP. |
| 02:20:01.77 | Unknown | Okay. All right. Thank you so much for those clarifications. |
| 02:20:04.71 | Chad Hess | Welcome Vice Mayor. Thank you for the questions. |
| 02:20:06.62 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:20:06.63 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Council Member Hoffman had a question. Jean, go ahead. I did. |
| 02:20:06.67 | Steven Woodside | Come. |
| 02:20:08.93 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I did, since my name was bandied about by the vice mayor. Yeah, I do have some follow-up questions. And so in that October 21st, that October 21 presentation Um, It's not your recollection that that was a report of unaudited an unaudited audit. Is it? |
| 02:20:29.70 | Chad Hess | Is it? An auditing. Yeah, it was unaudited. So in October 4th of 2021, we brought forward the... |
| 02:20:33.01 | Jill Hoffman | So we're going to... All right. |
| 02:20:37.75 | Chad Hess | fiscal year. |
| 02:20:37.78 | Jill Hoffman | fiscal year. Right. And that's in the context of a quarterly financial report. |
| 02:20:38.95 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:20:42.83 | Chad Hess | It covered the four quarters. It was for the year ended, June 30th, 2021. My understanding, I'm looking at it. |
| 02:20:45.38 | Jill Hoffman | Was it or was it? My understanding, I'm looking at it. It's a quarterly financial. |
| 02:20:49.12 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. answer the question that you're posing? |
| 02:20:52.40 | Jill Hoffman | I'm trying to get him to answer. |
| 02:20:53.65 | Steven Woodside | Well, let him speak, please. Go ahead, Mr. Director. |
| 02:20:57.07 | Chad Hess | Yes. So it is a quarterly report that reported four quarters of data for that fiscal year. |
| 02:21:04.68 | Jill Hoffman | It wasn't a standalone. presentation by you of an audit, which would be odd, |
| 02:21:11.70 | Chad Hess | No, it wasn't a presentation of an audit. It was communication of... budget to actuals for that full fiscal year. |
| 02:21:19.72 | Jill Hoffman | And tonight's presentation is the, |
| 02:21:19.97 | Chad Hess | It's a nice |
| 02:21:23.19 | Jill Hoffman | is a report by you of an audit update. |
| 02:21:28.06 | Chad Hess | Yes, we're trying to communicate with the status of our audit as well as financial information. |
| 02:21:32.93 | Jill Hoffman | Have you seen anything in our past financials |
| 02:21:32.98 | Chad Hess | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:21:36.61 | Jill Hoffman | reporting where we did where our finance department provided an audit update |
| 02:21:44.76 | Chad Hess | We've talked about the audit previously on the status of the audit and where things are going. I recall talking about that last year. |
| 02:21:53.18 | Jill Hoffman | I have not seen anything... in our financial reports where The Sauclidle Finance Department presented an audit update. |
| 02:22:03.76 | Chad Hess | I will look for that. I know that we've discussed it in the past. |
| 02:22:03.93 | Jill Hoffman | I will do. We have discussed unaudited numbers in the context of quarterly financial reports twice. In 2021, I think, and in 2020. 2020, I think. was in the spring, so I don't think it was in October. But 2021 was in the context of a quarterly financial report. So it's odd that our finance department would be presenting anything of an audit because That's not, we're not the auditors. You would agree with that. |
| 02:22:45.07 | Chad Hess | I'm not proclaiming to be an auditor, no. |
| 02:22:48.06 | Jill Hoffman | And the purpose of an audit is so that you have independent third party financial experts who are looking, and they're the ones that present the numbers. and as to that's to maintain the integrity of the audit functions. |
| 02:23:03.48 | Chad Hess | They have no responsibility to report the numbers to you. The management, us own and produce the financial statements. They are the city's documents. The auditor simply express an opinion as to if they can form the gap. It's the city's financial statements. It's not the auditor's financial statements. |
| 02:23:22.28 | Jill Hoffman | Three. of that we agree, but the actual audit and the audit report and the conclusions of the audit |
| 02:23:28.98 | Chad Hess | is theirs. |
| 02:23:33.39 | Jill Hoffman | are the responsibility of the auditors. |
| 02:23:35.29 | Chad Hess | Their responsibility is to express an opinion. |
| 02:23:40.59 | Jill Hoffman | for the |
| 02:23:43.33 | Steven Woodside | Vice Mayor, you still have your hand raised. Do you have something else to add or no? |
| 02:23:47.24 | Unknown | Yes, I was just gonna share my screen and show what we saw. |
| 02:23:53.11 | Unknown | Dude. Mm-hmm. |
| 02:23:54.63 | Unknown | I guess we don't need to beat a dead horse. I think it's clear that the city council has received audit reports on the unaudited financial reports in October in prior years. |
| 02:24:08.40 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:24:09.28 | Unknown | Is there any other questions? |
| 02:24:09.73 | Steven Woodside | And |
| 02:24:09.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:10.97 | Steven Woodside | Do you have a question? No. Any other council member Blaston? |
| 02:24:12.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:12.40 | Councilmember (not in known list) | No. I have a few questions. Okay, so first of all, we talked a little bit about the Tidelands Fund and you, you know, the Tidelands Fund is revenues from city waterfront properties, like the Yacht Club and the Spinnaker. And indeed we did transfer a million and a half from the Tidelands Funds to our general fund. Could you just talk about what that was allocated for? I think you mentioned finance department and other general uses as they relate to costs associated with those properties, correct? |
| 02:24:40.77 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so that transfer is there to help compensate the general fund for the administrative costs, as well as some of the maintenance costs that take place in that. |
| 02:24:48.28 | Councilmember (not in known list) | And I wanted, I know, I know that one of the things that you did when you came on Chad was take a look at all of our existing funds and see where things were allocated and where we weren't using available balances, for example. |
| 02:24:48.33 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:24:58.87 | Councilmember (not in known list) | We have a library fund, correct? |
| 02:25:01.22 | Chad Hess | Yes, we have a library capital improvement fund, which has had a balance for a very long time. And there's been no revenues and no expenses in that fund. Right. |
| 02:25:11.93 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Right, but we had, for example, we had to make improvements to our library roof and we could allocate the funds from the library plan. |
| 02:25:18.75 | Chad Hess | We should have used those dollars instead of general fundraising. |
| 02:25:21.79 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Right. So moving the money from the Thailand's fund to the general fund was an example of allocating available dollars for a use that made sense for the rest of the funding. |
| 02:25:29.77 | Chad Hess | It's allocating those dollars to reimburse for the administrative overhead. It's, it's, yeah, it's not driven by a project. It's, it's, compensating the general fund for the burden. |
| 02:25:40.08 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Compensating for the work that's already done. Yeah. Okay. But that's why the funds were moved. |
| 02:25:43.83 | Chad Hess | Right. |
| 02:25:44.42 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Okay, just in the same- The bulk of those tidings |
| 02:25:45.64 | Unknown | Same. |
| 02:25:45.91 | Chad Hess | Both of those Tidelands dollars are still in the Tidelands Fund ready to be expended for projects within the boundaries. |
| 02:25:52.43 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Right. And the same goes for the movement of the funds from the MLK to the general fund and all of the allocations that were made in the last budgeting period. |
| 02:26:00.28 | Chad Hess | So no, the MLK fund is different. The goal of that fund is profit-seeking and the excess revenues are transferred to subsidize the general fund. |
| 02:26:04.53 | Councilmember (not in known list) | is |
| 02:26:11.18 | Councilmember (not in known list) | OK, and I just wanted to also just circle back to the update on the surplus. So now that it shows that fiscal year 2324 ended in what we had anticipated as a million dollar surplus, which went towards the Section 115 trust, and there is apparently unaudited, we're not yet confirmed, an additional million and a half in surplus available. Is that something that we could allocate to our Section 115 trust? Do we have the availability to do that once it's audited and confirm that there that is available in the fund? |
| 02:26:41.90 | Chad Hess | . Yeah, so we can contribute dollars to the Section 115 at any time. We simply need council's direction. We can't recognize that as a contribution in fiscal year 24. We have passed June 30th. But if council directed staff to make a contribution into that trust, we certainly can. And that can be a discussion that we, you know, agendize for a future meeting, or we put as part of our mid-year budget review. |
| 02:27:09.35 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Okay, but part of the reason that you wanted to share the update in the balance is because it impacts going forward what our budgeting picture looks like and what we have available as we close out. 24, 25 and start thinking about the picture for 26. |
| 02:27:21.75 | Chad Hess | That is correct. |
| 02:27:22.04 | Councilmember (not in known list) | That is correct. So it's a significant change in the balance in terms of how we project going forward and make planning for our fiscal future. |
| 02:27:30.55 | Chad Hess | Yes, that surplus increases our you know, resources in excess of our reserves. It's more available resources to meet the needs of the community. |
| 02:27:38.16 | Councilmember (not in known list) | on board. And similarly, if we had seen something like an additional deficit of a million and a half, you would immediately inform the council as well, given that it would shift our fiscal picture. |
| 02:27:50.34 | Chad Hess | Yes. Yeah. You know, if this was the opposite direction, yeah, I would bring it forward as soon as I had that information. |
| 02:27:50.83 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Yeah. |
| 02:27:57.33 | Chad Hess | You know. |
| 02:27:58.44 | Councilmember (not in known list) | So in your opinion, this was important information that the council needed in order to determine our fiscal future and what we do going forward. Yes, that is correct. |
| 02:28:04.60 | Chad Hess | Yes. |
| 02:28:05.04 | Steven Woodside | That is correct. |
| 02:28:05.71 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Okay, thank you. |
| 02:28:08.23 | Steven Woodside | That's Raymond Kelman. |
| 02:28:09.41 | Councilmember Kelman | Right, I also just wanna make the point, this is an audit, not the budgeting process. So I think, you know, comments like we discussed earlier about the MLK slide not adequately capturing all the legal fees. I'm curious about an improvement plan to make this more exact. Now I understand that you can only collect what data is provided to you, and so I wanna make sure that we're highlighting those things that need to get improved so we have a more accurate picture. And so I had a question about methodology because earlier tonight on the consent calendar, we actually had a report from the police department And that report talked about hiring. And I'm just curious because I just genuinely do not know. It's not a leading question. I'm curious when we have somebody who is completing a training program, Is that captured in our expenses because we've paid for some of their time? And then the other type of hiring individual was someone who had accepted the position and not had not yet started. Most of these are in training. So does the training program folks show up on our? |
| 02:29:25.21 | Chad Hess | Yes. So, so I think you're talking in reference to like a police academy recruit. Um, |
| 02:29:30.83 | Councilmember Kelman | Yes, like Brandon accepts the position of parking enforcement officer and is progressing well in his training program. I think that's, we actually hired Brandon, but I'm just kind of curious, like how do we track that? |
| 02:29:40.18 | Chad Hess | Yeah. Yeah. So when we, when we bring on a new recruit and we send him to the academy, we are paying wages. So we pay wages while he or she is gaining that, that, that education or that, that training through the academy. We also pay for that academy. We pay tuition, if you will, And that would be recognized within the police budget. in the general world. |
| 02:30:03.84 | Councilmember Kelman | Okay, just trying to make sure that I understand how the dots connect, thank you. |
| 02:30:09.12 | Steven Woodside | Any other, go ahead, Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 02:30:12.93 | Jill Hoffman | And just, you know, to look at the increase in revenue that we were talking about was the increase in revenue was $106. Well, it was revenues, but it was interesting what was set out as revenues, right? So in there, you can see that the intergovernmental revenue – Some of that exceeded because I think it was 242 because of FEMA grants, one-time FEMA grants, and should not be considered ongoing revenue. |
| 02:30:50.13 | Chad Hess | Yes. So, you know, those, those grants that we received, the FEMA dollars, the reimbursement from the state, I think it was right around 60,000. Those were not budgeted. So that is causing part of this variance is those dollars that were received after the city had to negotiate and appeal for the FEMA dollars, you know, that took considerable effort on this, on the city's resources and time to, to ask for an appeal on that. It was not budgeted, so therefore it is showing up as a positive variance on the intergovernmental revenue line. |
| 02:31:22.34 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And that was kind of a one-time Thank you. |
| 02:31:25.02 | Chad Hess | Yeah, that's not included in my fiscal year 24, 25 budget. Those were one-time dollars. I am not counting on those. going forward. |
| 02:31:34.51 | Jill Hoffman | So how will... So when we talk about MLK, when we talk about city hall, and maybe, maybe the parking, you know, the parking lots of that's that comes back as a big or any other facilities assessment Um, would agree i think you would agree that before we start our budget process next year we probably need to know what those numbers are going to be wouldn't you i i yes i |
| 02:32:02.81 | Chad Hess | Yes, I hope that that facilities assessment is available before we start that budget process. Yes, I agree. |
| 02:32:08.04 | Jill Hoffman | I agree. you know, if those deferred maintenance issues go well into several million, if not more, that's going to affect obviously, our budget processing for next year. |
| 02:32:24.31 | Unknown | Certainly. |
| 02:32:31.63 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:32:33.55 | Steven Woodside | Are there any other questions? My only question, Chad, so our... In the balance of funds, we have like $5.7 million in something called the Infrastructure Fund. That's a separate fund outside the general fund. Which fund are we talking about? So we have the Capital Improvements Fund. In your balance of funds, you have cash for infrastructure and improvements, 5.389 million dollars. |
| 02:32:58.36 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so those are outside of the general fund. I think you're talking about... One second in the wrong folder here. |
| 02:33:08.91 | Steven Woodside | Are you, |
| 02:33:09.18 | Chad Hess | talking about attachment eight |
| 02:33:09.21 | Steven Woodside | talking about capital eight. We have a capital fund to which we make contributions and it has other sources of revenue that we use for capital projects around town. |
| 02:33:18.69 | Chad Hess | Yes. |
| 02:33:19.20 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Oh, yeah. |
| 02:33:19.99 | Chad Hess | multiple funds that we receive dollars for capital. |
| 02:33:22.63 | Steven Woodside | When we're paving a road like director McGowan has a list of roads that are going to be paved over the next several months by June. That money, is it going to come out of that fund primarily? |
| 02:33:33.07 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so we have a construction traffic road impact fee. So that, you know, those dollars contribute to our road projects. You know, we have a gas tax fund, which goes to contribute to road projects. We have the measure L of sales tax revenue, which is, I reported on that for infrastructure improvements, but that fund has, At the end of June 30th, it had over $3 million in it, ready to be expended on road projects. |
| 02:34:04.80 | Steven Woodside | And so if we wanted to increase the rate at which we're fixing our streets, filling our potholes, we could take some of the $8 million that's sitting it's called unassigned cash. It's not in our savings account. It's, I mean, it's not in our pension reserve. It's not in our, budget stabilization reserve, it's just unassigned cash. We could take that and put it into, say, the capital improvement fund. |
| 02:34:26.50 | Chad Hess | Sure. So you're talking about the resources in excess of our reserves, the unassigned fund balance and the general fund. Yeah. Council could direct the city staff to make a transfer to our capital improvement funds to build roads. We could take those dollars and contribute it to the section 115 or pay down our UAL |
| 02:34:46.87 | Steven Woodside | And I don't know you I'll say I suggested as policy and former mayor Blaustein and hurt in her last year, we could transfer a million 2 million 3 million 4 million 5 million to the 115 trust that would offset our pension obligation. |
| 02:35:03.20 | Chad Hess | Yes. So we could make a contribution to the section 115. I'm also evaluating making a contribution directly to the PRRS and to the, to the CalPERS system. you know, we are paying an effective interest rate of 6.8% on that pension liability. which far exceeds our rate of return within the Section 115 trust. with my discussions with our actuaries, you know, the Section 115 trust is really beneficial when we approach a 90% funding status, Right now, we are about 70%, 75% funded. And you know, we would get more bang for our buck if we just contributed directly to the pension fund. to eliminate that 6.8% interest on that outstanding debt. Right. And it would reduce those future UAL payments, which is really the risk that the general fund bears is those ever increasing UAL payments. This would |
| 02:35:49.90 | Chad Hess | And it would be, |
| 02:35:50.22 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 02:35:59.06 | Chad Hess | help keep those lower by paying off some of that existing pension debt. |
| 02:36:04.32 | Steven Woodside | And so then I just have a macro question a little bit like along the lines of Councilmember Kelman. You know, I'm a finance expert, right? I've been audited for my venture funds for years, but I'm also a pretty simple guy. And I think everyone struggles with the numerous accounts. You know, it's as if most people have a checking account and a savings account. maybe a brokerage account. And that's the way they think of their lives, checking out savings account, brokerage account, maybe they have two checkings account and another account. We similarly have many different accounts, some devoted to certain purposes, others to others, but they're all our money. And in addition to that, we have a bunch of sources of revenue. It's like you get your salary, you get your veterans benefits, you get your annuity from the annuity that you bought, you get your inheritance that's paid from your trust. So you got lots of different sources of revenue. But this nomenclature we have, it's gap, it's accounting, it's done the way every municipality does. But in your experience, is there any possibility of creating something that's more readily comprehensible by the people to let them understand the, you know, the fact that our cash and our savings has doubled over the last 10 years? That, you know, we do have this 30-year pension obligation that's paid out like a mortgage year in, year out, you know, so you don't have to pay it all at once. But it also varies with the stock market. So, you know, some years it's up, some years it's down. It's pretty maddening if you look at any piece of it. And I'm just wondering, you know, it might be putting a lot on you, but do you have any ideas about how to correctly, accurately, truthfully translate the gap numbers that we do according to the way accountants say we need to do them to a format and a framework that would be more readily transparent and understandable by people? |
| 02:36:39.17 | Sybil Boutillier | It's... |
| 02:37:49.18 | Chad Hess | Yeah, it's a very complex topic. Governmental finance is very complex with all of our revenue sources and expenditures and restrictions on our dollars. |
| 02:37:58.74 | Unknown | you |
| 02:37:58.99 | Chad Hess | Um, I think some of the confusion is self-imposed. We have a lot of funds that don't necessarily have to be funds, but we've always done it that way. Some of our special revenue funds like our measure A and the measure double A from the county, those have to be segregated funds based upon their grant agreement. Um, But all of our parking fund doesn't have to be a separate fund. Our MLK or our old city hall does not have to be a separate fund. Those could be consolidated into a single fund called property management, or we could collapse that into the general fund proper. I think that potentially would simplify things by consolidating the number of funds that we have. um, and then also looking for ways to visually represent the activity. So, know, it's going to be a work in progress. It's not going to be something that I can bring forward to next council meeting, but I think continuous improvement is really where I want to really focus my efforts. Thank you very much, Director. |
| 02:39:00.77 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:39:00.83 | Chad Hess | us. |
| 02:39:01.12 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:39:01.16 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:39:01.34 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Let's move on to public comment, please. |
| 02:39:06.77 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Babette McDougall online. |
| 02:39:13.48 | Babette McDougall | Hello there. So first of all, I want to just say right up front, I have great confidence in Chad Hess as our finance director, and I have Every bit of appreciation for the fact that we have so many lawyers on our team this time around, because what a wonderful and invigorating discussion it is to pull apart and tease out the threads. of what can make this whole budgeting process seemed very complicated. I would like to also point out that there's a lot of buzz around town lately. particularly about the MLK site and the money that it generates. And there seems to be a thousand different ways depending on who upon the counsel you're listening to, At any given moment. on how we can apply these MLK funds variously this way. or variously that way. In that regard, I'm glad to hear that we are reminded that there are certain funds that are indeed restricted. Now I work in the nonprofit world and I realized that In the nonprofit world, restricted funds has a very precise meaning. And it's probably not the same as one used in City circumstances that said. I think the MLK charter, the original charter for MLK, it's about time that we pulled that out, dusted it off, and revisited it. Because after all, as I put in my letter, if any of you happen to see it today, We do have pending bulldozers. I mean, everybody seems hellbent. on developing MLK. which would be in gross violation of its original charter, but nonetheless, It seems it's certain among you. feel that that's absolutely the best thing since sliced bread. for Sausalito. So there's not much I can do to push back on that at this point. except to encourage you that part of the discussion And part of the confusion around town has to do specifically with always bandying about one way or the other, how we're going to do this to MLK, that to MLK, use this MLK fund for that or another, and it gets very confusing after a while. So thank you for the... |
| 02:41:16.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:41:16.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:16.93 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Steven Woodside. |
| 02:41:22.57 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi, I just wanted to add a couple hopefully helpful comments. In my experience with counties and cities and special districts, There is always. end of year financials that are reported promptly. And why is that? It's so there are no surprises, uh, Once these final Financials prepared by staff are subject to audit. Then once there is an audit, assuming there's a surplus, that surplus can be appropriated in the then current fiscal year for whatever purpose the council so decides. such as adding to reserves or paying down pension obligations or you know, anything else that is a priority for the council. I'm assuming that's the practice here in this city. And secondly, Ms. McDougall mentioned the nonprofit world and the concept of restricted And I think the big picture for all of this is that some funds that are established in a city are restricted. And, Many are not restricted and they're subject to council appropriation. And I assume that Most of the funds that have been discussed tonight are actually not restricted. They're simply segregated as funds for accounting purposes. So you can determine whether there's a net profit or loss or something. so that you can properly manage that aspect of the enterprise. Anyway, that's how I see it. Certainly, I hope that's the case here. Thank you. |
| 02:42:58.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Kieran Culligan. |
| 02:43:04.53 | Kieran Culligan | Hi there. I just want to say thank you to city staff for their financial management and transparency. I think that's what this looks like. That's what this conversation looks like. And we owe them a huge thanks. even as they've been taking hits in anonymous emails, next door, even city council member newsletters. So huge appreciation for their service to the city. Frankly, I've never seen people so mad about good news. So let's focus on the goodness. I hope we can work towards what's best for Sausalito, not just kind of particular interests of the day. So I look forward to getting the conversation towards the current budget and future budgets, making sure that we're growing the top line and that we have a sustainable financial model for the city. So thanks again, city council and city staff. Thank you. |
| 02:43:50.39 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public speakers. |
| 02:43:52.57 | Steven Woodside | All right, we'll close public comment. Is there any discussion here on the dais? Vice Mayor. |
| 02:43:57.57 | Unknown | Yes, I just wanted to address an inaccuracy made by one of our public commenters, which is that you know, we're willy-nilly's set on developing MLK. Our general plan. and our housing element, and our study session and our housing element committee meetings regarding MLK all make it very clear that the city council will not vote to do anything with the MLK site beyond what the charter allows unless and until a A ballot initiative is approved by a majority of the voters. So I just wanted to make that Hmm. statement on the record. so that there's no misunderstanding about this city council exceeding its authority. |
| 02:44:46.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any other comment? All right, we'll close discussion, move on to the next agenda item, which is 5C, presentation and discussion on the current state of enterprise software and a recommendation. City Manager, who's doing this? |
| 02:44:59.33 | Chris Zapata | It happens to be Mr. Hess's birthday today. Oh, my God. He won't have a birthday on a council meeting again. Happy birthday. |
| 02:45:01.44 | Steven Woodside | Oh my God. Thank you. |
| 02:45:04.81 | Councilmember (not in known list) | At the evening. |
| 02:45:05.28 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Happy birthday. |
| 02:45:06.15 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Happy birthday, Director Hess. Thank you. |
| 02:45:06.95 | Chris Zapata | THE END OF THE END OF THE Happy birthday to you. |
| 02:45:09.05 | Steven Woodside | I'm sorry. you happy birthday to you happy birthday cheer chad |
| 02:45:13.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:45:16.61 | Steven Woodside | Happy birthday to you. Thanks for putting up with us. |
| 02:45:20.07 | Chad Hess | Thank you. That was good. I did leave an Easter egg in my presentation. |
| 02:45:20.12 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. That was good. |
| 02:45:25.60 | Chad Hess | And there'll be another one on this next one too. So I appreciate the recognition. Thank you. |
| 02:45:29.85 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Are we supposed to go back and find it? |
| 02:45:32.22 | Chad Hess | It's pretty easy. It's pretty obvious. But yeah, you can go back and find it if you'd like. |
| 02:45:36.39 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Okay. |
| 02:45:37.33 | Chad Hess | All right, let me share my screen and we will. Little tech difficulties here. Bye. One second. |
| 02:45:47.79 | Steven Woodside | Actually, everyone wants to take a two minute biobank. So we will resume at 953 we're going to hear item 5 What was it that you pulled up in the middle, Joe? It's the consent item 3D, adopt a resolution of the City Council of Sausalito accepting North Street steps repair is complete with a cost of $5373,000. And Council Member Hoffman, you pulled it off because can you explain why you want to pull it off? |
| 02:46:18.84 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you so much. Yeah, I pulled off because we got an email from the homeowner that lives there at the top of North Street stairs, Mr. Lalonde, who showed us some pictures. And I've seen the site as well, and I've locked it, I think, with you or somebody. No, it probably wasn't you, it was one of the other guys. But I mean, I can see where there's water. There's water still coming. We still have to sleeve the storm drain, I think. We still have to make sure that that's a problem and fix. So principally, I just don't, I believe that it's not done. And so I don't think we should, especially because this has been the subject of litigation, and we're subject to a settlement under the litigation. I don't think it's right that we would put it on. And I want to concede that on the, in the, Public Works world, perhaps. that that's the correct thing, but I don't think as a council that's the right thing to do. I think it should be continued until the project is actually done and the streets are, the steps are actually open because they are still closed. And I think there's still some damage to the roadway below from the curbs from the water from that project. So that's the reason I pulled it off. So thank you. |
| 02:47:29.94 | Steven Woodside | thank you councilmember hopman director mcgowan can you comment on this why is it say that it's complete when i can't walk down the stairs |
| 02:47:36.74 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, that's a great question. So what this action is for is to recognize that the contractor we hired in order to perform the slide repair or at least the improvements adjacent to the steps themselves, their work is complete. Now, as we were working on this project, we did discover that the storm drain system that runs from josephine down to bridgeway was leaking water onto the stairs itself so i don't think my opinion is that the that the storm drain work shouldn't um shouldn't be excuse, let me back up, that the work on the wall itself should be released at this point because we're done with that contractor. We have another contractor coming in to do the sleeving work. |
| 02:48:31.78 | Steven Woodside | So this is a technical step to finish the contract for a contractor's work is actually completed. |
| 02:48:39.34 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, their work is completed. There may be some miscommunication or understanding of what it what the title of the project is. And keep in mind that we discovered that the storm drain system was leaking during the work on the wall itself. |
| 02:48:53.27 | Steven Woodside | So there's no implication here that the work at the North Street Steps is finished. That is an ongoing project. Yes, it is. |
| 02:48:59.26 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, it is an ongoing project at this point. |
| 02:49:01.97 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. So is there any other questions for Dr. McGowan? I'm sorry, Vice Mayor, I didn't see you up there. That's okay. |
| 02:49:08.32 | Unknown | That's okay. Director McGowan, if we fail to declare this project complete, and fail to pay the contractor within 60 days of their completion of work on the project, we are subject to prompt payment penalties. Is that right? Yes, as long as it says that in the contract. Well, isn't the Prompt Payment Act a statute that applies to all public works contracts? |
| 02:49:30.98 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, it's a matter of state law that we have to. have to pay the contractor and finish out the contract. And the main purpose of a notice of completion is to protect the city from liens, stop work notices, and claims from material suppliers and subcontractors. |
| 02:49:48.95 | Unknown | And prompt payment penalties are 2% per month on any unpaid balance. Isn't that right? Thank you. Bye. Bless you. I think that's correct. And in addition, the city could be liable for any attorney's fees spent by the contractor attempting to collect any fees unpaid within those 60 days. Isn't that right? |
| 02:50:10.11 | Kevin McGowan | Well, I think you're more versed on this particular part of the law than I am. And so I will go with what you are saying at this point. |
| 02:50:17.54 | Unknown | Well, the bottom line, Director McGowan, is that if we don't declare the project complete, and pay the contractor for the work that it did competently within the scope of its work, that we're exposing the city to potentially significant liability. Would you agree? |
| 02:50:34.42 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, I agree with that. |
| 02:50:35.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:36.47 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. If I can just do it in order. Councilman Kalman and then Councilman. |
| 02:50:41.40 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you for that, Vice Mayor. I just learned something. And so I think it seems like an easy solution, which is this is just misnamed. They probably should just say adopt a resolution accepting a notice of completion as to the work performed by ex-contractor in the amount of, and then the resolution can be modified as such. So I appreciate Council Member Hoffman pulling it off because this project, as we know it, is not complete for a number of reasons. However, for the reasons articulated by the Vice Mayor, we have a statutory duty to pay the contractor. Two very different things. I think maybe one lesson from tonight is that many of our titles need to be revisited more closely to make sure that they track with what's going on in town. And I think this is an easy fix. |
| 02:51:30.20 | Steven Woodside | I agree, but go ahead, Councilman Harper. Then vice mayor. |
| 02:51:31.11 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:51:31.13 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:51:31.25 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:51:32.13 | Councilmember Kelman | Um, |
| 02:51:32.53 | Jill Hoffman | that. Is Miller Pacific going to do the additional work? Anybody know? Can we do a change order with Miller Pacific? That's the contractor that we're talking about. |
| 02:51:40.95 | Kevin McGowan | That's the contract. you I'm sorry I interrupted. Miller Pacific is our geotechnical consultant. The next portion of work will be somebody who can sleeve the actual culvert. And so we need a specialty contractor for that. And they're known as mixes. So we're working forward with mixes to do that work. |
| 02:52:00.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:52:00.44 | Kevin McGowan | Thanks, man. |
| 02:52:00.90 | Unknown | you |
| 02:52:01.66 | Unknown | Thank you. Director McGowan, the notice of completion that was attached to the staff report that you're asking us to approve describes the work as, Installation of soil nails, grading and soil mesh to hold the hillside in place. Is that right? |
| 02:52:16.73 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, that's correct. |
| 02:52:17.45 | Unknown | And that was the scope of the contractor, RWR Construction, Inc., correct? |
| 02:52:22.26 | Kevin McGowan | Yes. |
| 02:52:22.92 | Unknown | And so that's the only a project that we're declaring complete this evening. Is that right? |
| 02:52:28.12 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, that's correct. |
| 02:52:29.35 | Unknown | Okay, so I just think that the resolution needs to be clear. |
| 02:52:29.50 | Kevin McGowan | Okay. |
| 02:52:33.45 | Unknown | The resolution needs to track the notice of completion or else simply refer to the notice of completion. rather than referring to it as North Street. stairs or anything else that's somewhat misleading. So I endorse what Councilmember Kelman said. |
| 02:52:47.86 | Sergio Rudin | David Ensign, And Council, the project, the name of the project is the North street steps slope repair project, that is the project that the city committed to doing as part of its settlement with property owner lawns. |
| 02:52:48.74 | Unknown | the language. |
| 02:53:03.91 | Sergio Rudin | So that is the scope of the work that has been deemed complete, is the work that is required under the settlement agreement. |
| 02:53:10.64 | Councilmember Kelman | But, Sergio, I thought that the notice of completion that is required under statutory law, so it's not incurred at the 2% fee, is in fact the notice of completion of the work of the particular contractor, independently of how we chose to name the project. So I think we should... articulate that is the name of the project because I don't want to say too many things, you know, knowing that this is an open pending contentious issue, but I think we've noticed the completion is to the work done by this particular contractor. |
| 02:53:41.15 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 02:53:41.20 | Jill Hoffman | period. |
| 02:53:41.27 | Councilmember Kelman | THE END OF |
| 02:53:41.56 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 02:53:41.58 | Councilmember Kelman | There's more work to be done in this area. |
| 02:53:45.12 | Jill Hoffman | or should there be more proper title have been repaired to the slope of the hill. It's not the North Street stairs. This is about the hillside. That's it. |
| 02:53:55.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:56.53 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:53:56.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:56.56 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:53:56.58 | Unknown | So the resolution- |
| 02:53:56.59 | Jill Hoffman | So the resolution- Thank you. |
| 02:53:58.89 | Unknown | The resolution does say slope repair project, North Street steps slope repair project. |
| 02:53:58.94 | Jill Hoffman | the rest of the world. |
| 02:54:04.17 | Jill Hoffman | So can we just, okay, fine. If it says slope repair project, I'm wondering if we can amend, nevermind. I was thinking amend the agenda, right? So people don't look at it and say, oh, that's |
| 02:54:17.60 | Unknown | We are on a deadline to accept. So we only have a certain amount of time after work is complete to actually accept the project. |
| 02:54:22.60 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. to actually So stipulate what the definition is here so that we can vote on it. I mean, we've had discussion. It's clear that none of us think the steps are open. |
| 02:54:30.99 | Councilmember Kelman | None of us think Yeah, Mayor, let's just make sure that the resolution is updated accordingly. I think that's where we have the opportunity to make the change, right? |
| 02:54:40.42 | Steven Woodside | you want to make a specific record? I'm happy to just |
| 02:54:42.31 | Councilmember Kelman | I'm not sure. I'm going to go. I'm sorry. |
| 02:54:43.51 | Steven Woodside | Bye. |
| 02:54:43.62 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:54:43.88 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:54:44.27 | Unknown | I'm happy, yeah. I would like to say accepting the slope repair project adjacent to the North Street steps as |
| 02:54:53.02 | Steven Woodside | complete. |
| 02:54:53.83 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:54:53.85 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:54:53.87 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:54:53.93 | Steven Woodside | OKAY. With that change, a bunch of head nods. I'll second that. Second motion. Call the roll. Oh, sorry. City public comment, please. |
| 02:54:56.23 | Chad Hess | I'll second that. Second. |
| 02:55:03.50 | Walfred Solorzano | Linda Pfeiffer. |
| 02:55:15.01 | Walfred Solorzano | we have nobody. Thank you. Okay. |
| 02:55:17.69 | Steven Woodside | We'll close public comment. Call the roll, please, Mr. City Clerk. |
| 02:55:22.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Blosting. |
| 02:55:25.24 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 02:55:25.25 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:55:25.64 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 02:55:26.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 02:55:29.07 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:55:29.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Kelman. |
| 02:55:30.66 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:55:31.53 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Cox. |
| 02:55:32.80 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:55:33.62 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 02:55:33.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:55:33.66 | Steven Woodside | Yes. All right. That passes unanimously. You'll now hear item 5C, presentation and discussion of the current state of enterprise software and recommendation. Director Hess. |
| 02:55:48.46 | Councilmember Kelman | Don't forget it's your birthday, Director Hess. |
| 02:55:51.19 | Steven Woodside | Director Hess. |
| 02:55:54.30 | Walfred Solorzano | City Clerk is, let me see where he's at. |
| 02:56:06.21 | Unknown | He's an attendee, he needs to be promoted to a panelist. |
| 02:56:07.93 | Walfred Solorzano | promoted to a panelist. I'm making him a panelist right now. Sorry. |
| 02:56:32.96 | Chad Hess | All right. My computer's freezing again. |
| 02:56:37.63 | Councilmember Kelman | We see you. |
| 02:56:38.88 | Chad Hess | You can see me. hear you, but my computer, I can't move my mouse. |
| 02:56:44.80 | Unknown | Chad, you might try discontinuing your video because that takes up bandwidth. You can still share your screen without sharing your video, and that will release some of the bandwidth that might be freezing you. |
| 02:57:00.60 | Councilmember Kelman | Not to put too much pressure on you, but we also have the presentations in the agenda, so perhaps you wanna just verbally inform us. |
| 02:57:14.07 | Steven Woodside | Director Hess, can you hear us? He looks frozen. |
| 02:57:19.03 | Councilmember Kelman | He looks like a |
| 02:57:19.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:57:19.40 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:57:19.42 | Unknown | and again, |
| 02:57:19.72 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 02:57:19.74 | Steven Woodside | Bye. and, you know, |
| 02:57:20.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:57:20.48 | Councilmember Kelman | Yeah. Thank you. We do have it. |
| 02:57:26.35 | Unknown | You know, he can join, maybe someone could text him and tell him to join the Zoom call by Phone. And then he can just walk us through the presentation that we have. Or maybe the city clerk can share the presentation. |
| 02:57:40.44 | Councilmember (not in known list) | The presentation is in the agenda. So I have it open. |
| 02:57:44.68 | Unknown | I'm thinking about for those members of the public who |
| 02:57:46.55 | Councilmember (not in known list) | the public. |
| 02:57:48.56 | Unknown | I'm just thinking about members of the public. |
| 02:57:50.35 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Yeah, of course. No, I'm just making the point that if Chad joins by phone, we can easily pull it. |
| 02:57:53.96 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:57:54.25 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:57:54.87 | Chad Hess | Are you guys able to hear me? |
| 02:57:57.20 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:57:57.22 | Chad Hess | Yes. Go ahead. All right, let me share my screen. or if you guys can share the presentation, that'll probably save on bandwidth. |
| 02:58:04.56 | Unknown | Yeah, we're sharing it. We've got it up. |
| 02:58:06.04 | Chad Hess | Thank you. Okay, so tonight I'd like to discuss the current state of enterprise software for the city of Sausalito. |
| 02:58:07.05 | Unknown | Chat. |
| 02:58:14.71 | Chad Hess | Next slide. Currently we operate with three different software solutions that do not talk well to each other. They're not integrated. And this is creating a lot of manual data entry. to record revenue from various systems. This is creating inefficiencies, increasing labor costs, and then there are excessive annual price increases for some of our softwares. Currently, we use Springbrook software for our accounting and payroll. We use Central Square Trackit for our community development and DPW. And we use RecDesk for our Parks and Rec registration. Next slide, please. Tonight, I am just looking for feedback if we should proceed or move forward with looking at a single enterprise-wide software solution. This solution would be fully integrated. and help create efficiencies on our processes that staff can focus on more value-added activities. There is significant cost savings over the current state. We have negotiated price not to exceed clauses for the next eight years within this agreement with Tyler Technologies. And it is a modern cloud-based experience. Next slide, please. A little bit about Tyler Technologies. They currently have 45,000 installations in 1300 or 13,000 locations. Largest client is County of Los Angeles. Smallest population of 57, Loving County, Texas. they are based in the U.S., publicly traded company. Um, And they have 56 offices throughout Thank you. their enterprise. Next slide, please. What we are looking at doing here on this slide, you can see as it stands now, we currently subscribe to Springbrook, Trackit and RecDesk. Our fiscal year 25 costs for those three solutions was $140,000. Springbrook is increasing at 7%. Trackit and RecDesk are escalating at 5%. If we switch to a Tyler solution, this would cover all three softwares and it would bring everything into a single platform. The cost for this software as a service fees is $71,220 for the first three years of this agreement. And then the next two years, years four and five, are not to exceed 4%. And then years six, seven, and eight are not to exceed 5% annual uplift. You can see in the last column that there are annual software savings going to a single unified solution. Over the life of the eight years, that projected savings is eight $824,000. And the cost to implement this over a 18 month to 24 month period is projected to cost 370,000 in professional services fees. When we reduce that upfront cost over the life of the savings, we have a net benefit to the city of $454,000 in dollars today. Next slide, please. The impact on the annual budget. You can see here that we would have a half a year if we started January 1st, 2025. We would have a half a year of Tyler SAS fees in addition to what we currently expended. And then we would incur about $100,000 of professional services fees. So this would increase the the expense in our fiscal year 25 budget by 138. looking at the impact on fiscal year 25 budget, Here we would incur a full year of Tyler software as a service fees, but we would no longer subscribe to Springbrook or RecDesk. in fiscal year 25 as we implement the community development and DPW sections of Thailand. In fiscal year, I'm sorry, that last area should be impact on FY27 budget. It currently says 26, I apologize there. There we would start to incur the total annual savings of $84,000 $445 because we would no longer be subscribing to Springbrook RecDesk or Trackit at that point. So, The primary goal of this is to create efficiencies for our staff. We spend a lot of time doing manual data entry, doing reconciliation between softwares. Using a unified solution would increase the efficiencies of my team and teams throughout the department, but also there would be real dollar benefit to the city by simply reducing our software subscriptions to a unified solution, which would have a payback of about four years. over the life of the project. Next slide. At this point, I'd like to open it up for questions. Thank you. |
| 03:03:12.76 | Steven Woodside | All right, Councilmember Blasting was first. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:03:15.21 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Yeah. Hi, Chad. I appreciate the look at how we can make our IT services more streamlined. I definitely am a, |
| 03:03:15.22 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 03:03:15.41 | Steven Woodside | ANYBODY? |
| 03:03:23.24 | Councilmember (not in known list) | fan of using technology to improve city services. I'm just wondering how we landed on Tyler as a preferred SaaS provider. We had a formal RFP service or if we've actually tested Tyler against other providers and how it will interact. What is the API between Tyler and Granicus? How do we know that Tyler is actually going to be easier and better for us than track it or than rec pay? I just as a, um, having used a lot of these backend, uh, systems, I want to get in a sense of why this is what you chose. |
| 03:03:31.10 | Jody Timms | Yeah. |
| 03:03:48.40 | Sybil Boutillier | I'll see you next time. |
| 03:03:48.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:48.50 | Chad Hess | to be able to get the |
| 03:03:54.59 | Chad Hess | Yeah. So in the past, we have met with a few different providers of software. We've met with OpenGov. We've met with Central Square, which offers a accounting package in conjunction with their community development package. |
| 03:03:54.76 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 03:04:07.91 | Chad Hess | Um, And then we've also had conversations with Tyler. We did not go out for formal RFP. This contract would be let under a group purchasing policy, Sourcewell, out of Minnesota. So we would be getting negotiated contract prices based upon that original vetting through the group purchasing. Tyler is a well-known organization. They are very popular throughout the California market. We've had discussions with other finance directors regarding their experience with Tyler as well. Um, And we've had very positive feedback from that. You know, if council's direction is they'd like us to go for a full RFP, we certainly can do that route. but we would like to take advantage of the expediency offered by the group purchasing policy. |
| 03:04:56.27 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Have you checked with department heads about whether Tyler meets their needs or if they've had a chance to review other types of SaaS software for this? |
| 03:05:00.91 | Chad Hess | Thank you. other types of sex. Yeah. Thank you. So we have met with our department heads. They've gone through demos and had their opportunity to ask questions of Tyler and and see real live demonstrations and offer feedback on |
| 03:05:20.15 | Councilmember (not in known list) | I think we lost you, Director Hess. |
| 03:05:33.50 | Steven Woodside | I mean, someone's got further questions. I'm sorry. |
| 03:05:33.94 | Councilmember (not in known list) | I mean, someone's got further questions. I'm sorry. Okay. Well, the vice mayor, their hand raised, and I was still asking questions, but. |
| 03:05:43.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:05:43.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:05:43.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:05:43.34 | Councilmember Kelman | I have concerns about the... |
| 03:05:45.12 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 03:05:45.17 | Unknown | This is really for the city attorney and not for Um, |
| 03:05:50.03 | Steven Woodside | Well, I think it's a good thing. Let's chat. One of your questions in your questions for city attorney. So you want to ask you a question, Sergio, please. |
| 03:05:56.68 | Councilmember Kelman | Then I want to hear Mayor Bosworth. Yeah. Because my boss is concerned. The agreement. |
| 03:05:59.23 | Unknown | The agreement references the quote, but simply says that we'll pay professional services. Do we have the ability to add a not to exceed amount to the agreement so that we are protected from spending more than we anticipate. |
| 03:06:17.74 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, you can do that. We would probably need to negotiate the specific not to exceed provisions with Tyler. I mean, this is on your agenda tonight for, you know, discussion and recommendation. It is not on the agenda tonight for contract approval. So. |
| 03:06:32.97 | Unknown | The other thing is that there is no ability to terminate unless it's for cause. or lack of appropriations. I'd like to know if we can add a termination for convenience clause so that we can terminate at some point if we're unhappy with the services, but not for cause. |
| 03:06:49.55 | Sergio Rudin | We can approach Tyler to address that. Typically one of the incentives for them, um, is that they do typically request a long-term service contract given the startup costs. Typically the startup costs of any sort of significant ERP is a fair amount of investment by both city staff as well as the vendor. But yeah, we can approach them and discuss a reasonable termination for convenience that would be workable and we can report back to the council. |
| 03:07:21.19 | Unknown | Just because we didn't go out for formal And, you know, we're only supposed to use Sourcewell if the manner in which Sourcewell procured Tyler is similar to the manner in which we would procure professional services. And I don't know if anybody's done that checking to see how SourceWell procured Tyler. But if they didn't use a procurement process, Yeah. qualifications based process similar to our own then we shouldn't be piggybacking on back of them. I just want to be sure that We're protected since we're not going out for a typical competitive RFP. |
| 03:07:58.86 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I will have some discussions with city staff about that issue. |
| 03:08:03.35 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. All right, back to Councilmember Blasdine. |
| 03:08:04.36 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. I would just say my concern is stemmed from that we are negotiating eight years of fees with the software provider and having spoken to not only community members but employees about, difficulties around the speed or pace or efficiency of programs like track it or granicus or others. I don't know that it's the best decision for us to be wed to one SAS provider for eight years without everyone testing it, not to mention, the rapidly evolving technology, the fact that we might be able to share information on the blockchain, the fact that this, I just, I don't know anything about Tyler other than that we got a good deal about it. But I want to support staff if it's really clear that staff wants Tyler and this is going to help make their job easier and provide better services. But I'm asking a lot of questions about it because I know there are a variety of providers available. For example, the visualizations provided by OpenGov aren't offered by Tyler for budgeting, and that might help us going forward. So that's why I'm pressing on the issue. |
| 03:09:03.74 | Unknown | City Clerk, it looks like Chad has joined by phone, but he's an attendee, not a panelist. |
| 03:09:13.87 | Councilmember (not in known list) | And I often feel that items like these where we might just immediately give direction because it's choosing a vendor require more consideration for whether or not it'll provide top services to our residents as well, since everyone will be impacted by how permit efficiencies operate or how we make payments online. So it actually, in my opinion, deserved a little bit more consideration. |
| 03:09:35.05 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, if I can, while Chad's getting ready to get on, let me jump into this. I'm back online. Thank you, Chad. Let me just say a few words. You know, what I hear very clearly is pumping the brakes is something that we need to be doing on this. We're not trying to approve anything tonight. We really just want to surface this idea that we need to integrate and consolidate for savings if it makes sense. but you you know, going out and checking on, you know, the piggybacking aspect of it, making sure that, you know, this is the deal that we want. That's not the intent of tonight. We don't want that decision to be made. We want to provide you the insight that we have in terms of looking at this suite of products. And if there is the desire of the council to do a formal RFP, we can do that. If there's a comfort level with the work that's been done or there's more questions, and I believe there are more questions, then we should come back to you with answers to those questions and then ask the question at that point. It was never intended tonight to have a decision made to go with Tyler. It's just to show you what Tyler could do. |
| 03:09:38.62 | Councilmember (not in known list) | I'm sorry. |
| 03:09:39.89 | Chad Hess | I'm back online. |
| 03:09:41.38 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 03:10:44.40 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, city manager. That was my impression as well. And so I understand that, you know, Thank you. Thank you. Caution as Councilmember Blaustein, but that was my understanding of the scope of what we were doing here tonight, and that's why I was ready to go ahead and give direction. I do think we absolutely need to move forward on this, and we can't delay much longer. But I know also because I watched the Finance Committee meeting that Chad has already done a lot of research on this about how to integrate all these systems, which I think is an excellent direction. So thanks to him for all that work. |
| 03:11:22.91 | Steven Woodside | Okay, have we given our direction? Are we taking public comment? We'll take public comment, please. |
| 03:11:27.45 | Unknown | Are we taking public comment? |
| 03:11:33.78 | Steven Woodside | seen none post public comment. Is there any other comments? All right, we give that direction and we'll move on to the next |
| 03:11:41.80 | Councilmember Kelman | I think the direction is maybe like, sorry to speak for you, but do we want to hear who else they looked at? And I don't know why we have an eight year, Yeah. Like eight years. That's a weird number. |
| 03:11:52.39 | Steven Woodside | Well, I'm sorry to have cut it short. Does someone want to summarize what you'd like to characterize? |
| 03:11:54.53 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. Well, that's just the question that I have, but it sounds like we want to understand why this was selected. Are there others that were looked at that were more efficient? I mean, I want to – No, that's right. That's right. Yeah, I think that's right. |
| 03:12:04.69 | Chad Hess | No, that's not. Yep. So, Mayor, Council, if I may, we did evaluate other solutions. We evaluated OpenGov. and Central Square's financial package in conjunction with Tyler. There are others out there that we could evaluate if we chose to go up for a formal RFP. The reason for the eight years, I just wanted to make sure that we had a not-to-exceed amount um, In the contract, we certainly are not obligated to fulfill the full eight years. Thank you. As a point of reference, we have been on spring work for over 20 years. as it currently stands. that we're going to be So the eight years was just as far out as it would commit for the not to exceed amount? And I was just trying to protect the city from excessive cost increase. |
| 03:12:53.51 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Okay, then I think the direction is, I mean, we do need further consideration of why this provider was selected. Is this the timeline that makes the most sense? Is this decision in partnership with the consortium for the contract deal legal and, in fact, in compliance with our RFPs? And I would also like to understand how does Tyler interact with community development and park and rec, and is that as seamless as possible with regards to the needs for finance and also how does Tyler iterate for technology changes and impact, for example, generative AI will have a significant impact on how we use city services and what is the plan, if there is one for Tyler's adaptation to that technology as well. |
| 03:13:37.49 | Steven Woodside | Any other comments? Okay. Then we'll move on to the next agenda item, communication for items not on the agenda. This is a time for members of the public to provide public comment on any item not on the agenda. City Clerk. |
| 03:13:53.89 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Alice Merrill. |
| 03:13:56.03 | Alice Merrill | Oh, that would be me. Um, I walked out of my house the other day and a young man who works at driver's market pulled something off his windshield and I asked him what it was and it was a ticket for $45. Something's got to be done for these people who work. They work by the hour. I just talked to the police chief, and what she keeps saying is, well, they can get there, they can buy a ticket, they can buy a permit for $6 a day. That's a lot of money for a person who's making $18 an hour. It's not like a professional job. It's not some fancy place where you have a place to park. It's going out every 10 minutes, every two hours, and finding another place for your car to park. You never get a break because you have to be doing that. And it's not just drivers, although that's certainly the people that I know. And then somebody today got a parking ticket, and she's a single mom of three kids in Marin City. She doesn't have any money. you know, somehow, this parking group that you put together I don't know what they're working on, but they need to be working on this. And they need, and I understand that earlier there were, actually there were people situations, they did have some kind of system and that's gone now. And we really, it needs to be figured out because it's just, it just doesn't seem fair to be, to be running out every two hours and trying to find another place to park. And, and I know that, that Ming is always asking me to say something because people that work, the restaurants park as soon as it's six o'clock, they park, take up all the spaces and, And then then she doesn't, her clients can't come in. Well, same with drivers, except for the 50 minutes. So I'd love it if you guys would figure something out. Thanks. |
| 03:16:04.01 | Walfred Solorzano | next speaker online is uh tom hoover |
| 03:16:18.44 | Walfred Solorzano | Tom. |
| 03:16:27.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh. |
| 03:16:27.49 | Tom Hoover | Can you hear me now? |
| 03:16:28.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 03:16:29.99 | Tom Hoover | Okay. I wanted to register a bit of frustration about the disappearance of the second disability parking space by the by the back door up in the parking lot. and with not knowing and Like today it was filled up and then you've got it only for vans and electric vehicles. and I'm not able to walk because of my breathing. I had to drive around the block. I finally found a place that was near to the front door so that I could walk in easily And so I'm wondering if... you're going to be replacing that. Um, disability. parking spot. that you have taken away. And I had no idea that it was even happening, and I wasn't the only one. They were surprised. So I'm wondering, what if it's going to be replaced and you're going to redo that so that there'll be at least because like I didn't used to be, but now I'm one more person. And I do come to City Hall quite a bit. now to work on other projects. And so, That's my question. Will it be replaced? And how soon? Thank you. |
| 03:17:43.56 | Steven Woodside | So thank you. Thank you for your comment. City manager, if you have a quick, can you include that in your city manager report perhaps? Just a second. Okay, next public comment. |
| 03:17:56.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:17:56.44 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:17:56.47 | Walfred Solorzano | Great woman. |
| 03:17:56.91 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:17:56.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Amen. But that's from Google. |
| 03:18:03.96 | Babette McDougall | I thank you. Actually, I was really glad to hear this gentleman's remarks about the, uh, disappearance of ADA parking especially at City Hall. It's kind of ironic, isn't it, that you're, promulgating a resolution about how it's so important to embrace senior citizens when in fact we have quite a contingent of citizens within Sausalito that may be aging or they just may have disabilities. And I was in city hall parking lot Last week. and drove round and round and round because there was one ADA spot available already taken. Oftentimes it's remarkable to me that you have people occupying ADA spots that seem to have a fine ability to comport themselves from their vehicles to the front door of wherever they're going, and yet they need that ADA spot I've been told many times that sometimes you just simply don't see what they're dealing with. And I appreciate that because that can be there, but for the grace of God, go I. So I thought it was just a temporary problem So to find out that you're actually bringing in more electrical charge stations to the detriment of the ADA places. is not a great thing. So I'd like to encourage you to think more broadly if you're really going to embrace people in Sausalito that are not 100% fit and fiddle. that you really need to have a much broader perspective here and not be so so much focused on tunnel vision because it's the flavor of the month and everybody and up and down the state of California is expected to file a resolution to play along. I mean, it really would be nice if Sausalito would return to its concept of being able to think for itself again. Thank you. |
| 03:19:54.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Next we have Linda Pfeiffer. |
| 03:20:04.96 | Linda Pfeiffer | Hello, can you hear me now? |
| 03:20:07.20 | Steven Woodside | We can hear you. Go ahead. |
| 03:20:08.99 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay, great. So thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Jill Hoffman for... |
| 03:20:30.34 | Unknown | It looks like she got disconnected. |
| 03:20:34.57 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 03:20:35.53 | Unknown | Oh no, I see her. |
| 03:20:41.29 | Unknown | Can you ask her to start over? |
| 03:20:46.55 | Linda Pfeiffer | Can you hear me? |
| 03:20:47.62 | Steven Woodside | Yes, we can hear you. Can you reset former council member Pfeiffer's clock to two minutes? Ms. Pfeiffer, go right ahead. |
| 03:20:59.50 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay, I'm trying this again. Can you can hear me now? |
| 03:21:03.85 | Steven Woodside | Yes, we can. Go ahead. |
| 03:21:05.00 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Jill Hoffman for the transparency of her questions specifically around terminology. Questions like the fact that disclosures, you know, should be included. on reports that include unaudited numbers and what that means. It was interesting to hear that the GAAP standards did not require disclosures, whereas GASB does. It led me to wonder whether or not the council should consider using the GASB standards for reporting for more clarity. I also am very happy that there is more of a spotlight on the situation of the North Street steps with regards to the underbound sewer storm drain that needs to be fixed. The steps have been closed for going on five years now and it's just one more example of the city's neglected infrastructure. I also wanted to, express concern regarding the $30 million pension liability. I recently heard it's actually $34 million with regards to comments about contributing money to the 115 trust or directly to CalPERS, it doesn't help if you keep increasing your expenses. without actuarial analysis on employee raises. So I just wanted to express those concerns and I also wanted to thank council member Jill Hoffman again for asking the hard questions. Thank you. |
| 03:22:55.44 | Walfred Solorzano | All right, no further public comment. |
| 03:22:57.47 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we'll close a comment. We'll move on to council member committee reports. Does anyone have one? you Councilmember Kellman, then last thing. |
| 03:23:07.00 | Councilmember Kelman | Sure too. I got to join Katie and Michelle Orr from the Sea Level Rise Task Force to give a presentation on the short line adaptation plan to the Chamber last week. And thank you, Councilmember Hoffman, for coming to support that as well. Really great dialogue, good cross section of people. Casey Peterson was there, Curtis Havel, and then a bunch of business owners sort of along the way. not even along the waterfront, just throughout the town. So that was great. So thanks to the chamber for Darrell and Amy for facilitating that. And then I was at the MCE board retreat this week as well. They do such amazing work, really trying to figure out governance around regional strategy for keeping the grid online and avoiding burnout. So just a shout out. If you're not taking your energy from Marine Clean Energy yet, you can. It's very competitive with PG&E, if not the same. So take a look. |
| 03:23:59.55 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Councilmember Bostein. And then Hoffman? |
| 03:24:03.25 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. I just wanted to note that I attended the Transportation Authority of Marin meeting this past week, and we had a series of reports that were all rather interesting, just kind of overarching look at how all of the different transit agencies in Marin are spending and what funds are available and how we're allocating funds from the varieties of different measures, Measure AA, which looks at, you know, how we're going to be allocating different dollars for transit across Marin. And I just wanted to report back that I'm really impressed not only by the work that Director Richmond is doing at TAM to really prioritize all of these topics, but to coordinate across different organizations. This is the first time that we actually heard from a new coordinated committee that looks at transit, not just in Marin County, but across the Lumens, Noma counties to make sure that all of the different transit authorities are working together and collaboratively putting forward our best foot on how we think about the future of transit, whether that's our ferries, our buses, or even our roads and our bikes. So just a big shout out to TAM as they finalize the countywide transit plan, which you'll be seeing going forward, that there's a lot of great work being done there. So just wanted to share that out. |
| 03:25:18.58 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, council member. Councilmember Hoffman, anything? |
| 03:25:21.55 | Jill Hoffman | Last week I attended the Marine County Council of mayors and council members. And it's a monthly meeting that we have of all the electeds in Marine County. And we had a um, Good update from the county on their efforts on homelessness from Gary Nagerese. So that was a good discussion. So that was it. |
| 03:25:45.65 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Vice Mayor, anything? |
| 03:25:47.89 | Unknown | No, thank you. |
| 03:25:48.46 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 03:25:48.60 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you. Also though we were. |
| 03:25:48.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:25:48.70 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Bye. |
| 03:25:48.73 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:25:48.75 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:25:48.85 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 03:25:49.09 | Councilmember (not in known list) | Thank you. |
| 03:25:49.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:25:49.48 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. |
| 03:25:49.54 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:25:49.73 | Councilmember (not in known list) | So that we were. We also all, the three of us, myself, Councilmember Kelman and Councilmember Hoffman, were all at the League of Cities conference last week. And I'm sure that we, yeah, that kind of a big deal because Councilmember Kelman was elevated to president of the North Bay League of Cities. So big round of applause to Councilmember Kelman. Great representation for Sausalito. I attended an amazing, I know, it's a big deal. I attended an amazing, I'm biased, but BBK put together what they called the housing law jeopardy panel that I really enjoyed. So proud to be represented by BBK, learned a lot. My team did not win, but it was definitely eye-opening and it's always fun to see our colleagues at the League of Cities. |
| 03:26:33.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City Manager, do you have a report? |
| 03:26:37.20 | Chris Zapata | I don't know. I do, Mayor, and I'll be brief, council members of the public. First of all, you know, the American with Disabilities Act isn't just a law. It's the right thing to do. So the gentleman's concern about the loss of the parking space is something that we will look into in the macro sense. You know, talking to Richard Scaff, who is one of the predominant activists for rights for people with disabilities in California, I've agreed to sit down with him and see how Saucena could do better. So, you know, this is a concern on a broader scale than one parking space. The one parking space is a big concern, but the bigger concern is how Sausalito does better to the disadvantaged population or the disability population in the future with all of its facilities and infrastructure. So that's one. The Halloween festival that's going to happen on Thursday night begins at 545 at the fire station with the march. At 615, there's going to be the trick-or-treater lane at the basketball courts at Robert Sweeney Park. And then at 630 or 45, don't quote me. Um, there's the best dress puppy dog competition. So, uh, everybody should come out for that on Thursday and be safe. |
| 03:27:52.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you, city manager. Any future agenda items to add to the list? |
| 03:27:57.91 | Unknown | I actually had a question, Mayor. |
| 03:27:59.19 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. That's right. |
| 03:28:00.70 | Unknown | For the city manager. So it used to be that the park and recs department would invite council members to participate in the trick-or-treat lane. That did happen last year and prior years, but I didn't see it this year. |
| 03:28:15.68 | Chris Zapata | If it didn't happen, Vice Mayor, that's a miss. We should make that up in the next day. So understood. Candy in a place, right? |
| 03:28:21.30 | Jill Hoffman | Understood. To be clear, though, council members can't attend. Yeah. You're free to attend, even if you don't have a booth. |
| 03:28:23.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:28:24.74 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. |
| 03:28:24.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:28:25.52 | Chris Zapata | Amen. |
| 03:28:28.46 | Unknown | Well, but if we don't have a table, we can certainly attend, but we won't be passing out. It used to be that we would get a table and we'd get a bucket of treats to hand out. |
| 03:28:37.16 | Jill Hoffman | You know, the Lions are looking for help. I got an email today. |
| 03:28:37.38 | Unknown | the Lions? |
| 03:28:40.59 | Jill Hoffman | I don't think they'd turn you away. |
| 03:28:45.18 | Steven Woodside | Any future gen items? Is it coming? |
| 03:28:48.84 | Councilmember Kelman | Yeah, I just want to note that we were told that the RFP for the geologic hazard monitoring plan was expected to provide proposals tomorrow. And then there's 120 days to develop the plan. I want to keep pushing to get that back on the agenda, which is separate than the hillside ordinance, which I also think needs to have started this discussion sooner rather than later. City Clerk, could you? |
| 03:29:11.54 | Steven Woodside | Did you note that distinction? Thank you very much. Council Member Hoffman and then Vice Mayor. |
| 03:29:16.53 | Councilmember Kelman | Thank you. |
| 03:29:16.55 | Jill Hoffman | And then vice mayor. Thank you. I think when we talk about our, I think this is folding into our budget discussions for next year, but I think we need to talk about whether or not we want to go back to the comprehensive annual financial report instead of just an audit. One of the meetings that we had last year with our working group, I think with that we had talked about the advantages of the comprehensive annual financial report as opposed to just an audit. And I think it's something now that we're seeing both, And I don't. I'm not advocating one way to the other. one way or the other, but I think we get more information and it's not a lot more money, I think. So anyway, just for discussion. it does remind me that Thank you for the reminder that we were at the legal cities last year or sorry last week. Um, One of the meetings that I attended was about budgeting or not budgeting but economic development and dollars for grants and that one of the most effective things you can do to increase your ability to get grants is to change your focus or at least focus your efforts of your economic development in the context of climate action because of the number of of grants available within the scope of climate action. Almost any project that you can think of like the North Street stairs. in the hillside next to the North Street stairs would probably fit into that budget of climate action and response. So that was one of the best presentations that I went to, and that's just to incorporate into our future planning. The next one is protocols for boards and commissions. Other than our historic preservation and our PC, I don't think we have protocols for our non-statutory boards and commissions. And I think it might be helpful for us to come up with some protocols for them as well, as well as our annual sort of remit for the focus of those boards and commissions. And we can talk about that in January, but I wanted to get that on our schedule. So thank you. |
| 03:31:19.57 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City Clerk, you took note of those, I assume. And Vice Mayor? |
| 03:31:23.55 | Unknown | Thank you. I endorse Councilmember Hoffman's calling for a CAFR going forward. We used to get a CAFR as well as we also used to get our budget. printed out as a document that we could carry around. It had, it was bound and, you know, with a ring, a spiral binder ring that we could, I still have budgets going back to 2014. So, I'd like us to resume that practice. There was something else that you mentioned, Councilmember Hoffman. What was the last one you mentioned that I also, oh, the protocols. I really liked the protocol idea for our boards and commissions. I also Um, have mentioned before a joint meeting with the City Council and the Planning Commission. So that's something that used to happen every year. Um, And I think it's overdue. And I also would like us to start planning for our strategic planning session In the context of future agenda items, I'd like to get a strategic planning session on our calendar for early in the year. so that we can really focus the work of the Council next year. Thank you. |
| 03:32:44.30 | Steven Woodside | Anything else? Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. |
| 03:32:45.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:32:45.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:32:47.13 | Councilmember (not in known list) | I'd like us to also have a consideration based on I so many of us attended a save our Sausalito event recently and they had sent a survey to all of the Sausalito residents and one of the pieces of feedback that came back was that there's a concern about. a lack of transparency or access to information from the council and I think we should just have a conversation about steps we can take effectively as a body to do more whether it's through more city town hall forums or using technology or otherwise just get that on our radar as well |
| 03:33:18.18 | Steven Woodside | I got that city clerk. Great. |
| 03:33:19.58 | Councilmember Kelman | I'll just mention, you may remember this, Mayor, but early in the year I sent you, there's a platform called REPT, R-E-P apostrophe D. That's okay if you remember, there's lots on your mind. But the point of it is that they offer a platform to develop videos to do just that, that if you have questions and answers and they curate the way the questions are exchanged online so it doesn't fall into the next door rabbit hole, but instead it gets real questions answered by the Mayor, the Vice Mayor, the City Manager. They've offered us a three-month |
| 03:33:20.04 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:33:45.37 | Councilmember Kelman | free pilot if we wanted to test something like that. So if there's interest, I will reconnect. |
| 03:33:46.97 | Babette McDougall | THE END OF |
| 03:33:47.16 | Sybil Boutillier | one. |
| 03:33:52.47 | Steven Woodside | a future agenda item on the city clerks list. Thank you for that list. Thank you for everyone's attendance. Happy Halloween. See you at the dog parade, at the parade and the dog competition. Good night. Well, |
| 03:34:04.98 | Walfred Solorzano | like, |
| 03:34:05.20 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:34:05.23 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm not sure. |
| 03:34:05.32 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 03:34:07.51 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:34:07.61 | Steven Woodside | Public comment. So public comment, please, on all the items you heard. Councilmember Committee reports, city manager report. |
| 03:34:13.52 | Kieran Culligan | Thank you. |
| 03:34:13.55 | Walfred Solorzano | They have a... here in Kalagat. |
| 03:34:14.90 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:34:16.22 | Kieran Culligan | Now I feel really bad for taking your time after you basically broke the meeting, but I'm the chair of the, Kieran Callaghan, chair of the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee. I know you have a very lengthy list of future agenda items. I would be very pleased if you could add on an update from our committee so that we could align with you on priorities. To Council Member Hoffman's point, one of the best things you can do for climate action is to reduce vehicle miles traveled. And that means walking around, taking a bicycle, getting on your subway, taking the bus. And there are an increasing number of grant-funded opportunities to do that. We are well-positioned because we have a ferry. We have a regionally important path that is Bridgeway. And when we get bicycle or pedestrian oriented funding, like it can repave the whole road. It's good for drivers. It's good for everyone. The more people we get on these types of transportation, the more parking spaces that are available for people who truly need it, as we heard from the concern around accessible parking. So we'd love to talk to you more about this topic. It fits in in many important ways and hope to talk more soon. Thanks. |
| 03:35:24.61 | Walfred Solorzano | All right, we have Babette McDougall. |
| 03:35:29.76 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. You know, I want to also just add for you all to think about That very council chambers in which you all currently sit, with the exception of Ms. Hoffman, who like myself is remote. At the moment, neither one of us is sitting in the council chambers directly. But I attended the city council meeting. last week. And I really have to say that I was really impressed with the level of brain trust in that room. and the way very professionally Extremely well done. that the whole meeting comported itself. It really just absolutely... made me feel great about this being my town. And I love that level of professionalism and that whole commitment to the democratic process as it can possibly be lived. was really a refreshing thing. I finally got a copy of this so-called policy That is being promulgated among you folks on how you say you are circumventing a 100% democratic engagement as we have traditionally known it in this town. And I go back to, you know, the late 80s and the 90s, so I go back a ways. And the engagement and an exchange is something that we can all really think of with great pride. So to decimate that in the name of post-COVID era, nobody cares and why would you want to bother them anyway with your local government? I don't think that really fits in Sausalito. I don't think it ever did fit in Sausalito. So I'd like to encourage going forward, if there is anything that needs to be examined. It's the way the democratic process is respected by the council, in this community. Council we have now doesn't see it. I'm not talking about all five, but certainly Those of you who are newer to the community in general, I don't think you quite get that there is no us and them. So seeking to deploy divisions within the ranks of our community. You're either a positive person or you're a negative person. I really take issue with that. And I hope going forward, as we're now seven days away from our general election, |
| 03:37:34.60 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comments. |
| 03:37:37.21 | Sybil Boutillier | Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 03:37:40.30 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. Um, and it's a future agenda items um what about thinking about a a shuttle here in town that the city just has or it can be paid but um when i work at the ice house people say well where are the houseboats and it's well it's a long walk or it's um that was one of the places that i really thought of it but Even if people were parking further away, worker bee's, if they had a shuttle to get to their jobs, if there could be a lot that's, I don't know where, but, um, It's something to think about. Might be kind of fun. And maybe it could work. |
| 03:38:30.00 | Steven Woodside | Any other public comment? I've seen none. We'll close public comment. Thank you again for your patience and enjoy. Engagement this evening. Happy Halloween and see you tomorrow night. |
| 03:38:43.97 | Unknown | you |