| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:55.15 | Steven Woodside | All right, good evening and welcome to the Sausalito City Council meeting for Tuesday. January 7th, 2025. I'll call the meeting to order and ask Walford, will you call the roll? |
| 00:01:10.62 | Walfred Solorzano | on Summer Blossy. |
| 00:01:12.07 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:01:12.09 | Jill Hoffman | See you. |
| 00:01:13.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:01:15.82 | Jill Hoffman | Here. |
| 00:01:16.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Sobieski? Here. Vice Mayor Woodside? Here. And Mayor Cox? |
| 00:01:20.71 | Sergio Rudin | Here. |
| 00:01:22.42 | Steven Woodside | Here. All right, we will be journeying to closed session to consider items D1 and D2. D one is conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation initiation of litigation. And item two is conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, name of case, yes, in my backyard versus city of Sausalito. Is there any public comment on closed session? |
| 00:01:47.76 | Walfred Solorzano | See you, nun. |
| 00:01:48.98 | Steven Woodside | All right, with that, we will adjourn and we will reconvene. |
| 00:02:12.20 | Steven Woodside | I will call the meeting back to order and ask Walford to call the roll. |
| 00:02:18.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilman Blofstein. |
| 00:02:19.82 | Steven Woodside | here. |
| 00:02:20.58 | Walfred Solorzano | I also remember Hoffman. |
| 00:02:22.05 | Steven Woodside | Here. |
| 00:02:22.07 | Walfred Solorzano | Here. Councilmember Sobieski. Here. Vice Mayor Woodside. Here. And Mayor Cox. |
| 00:02:23.97 | Steven Woodside | YEAR. |
| 00:02:28.04 | Steven Woodside | Here, next on our agenda is Pledge of Allegiance. Scott Thornburg, would you kindly lead us? |
| 00:02:36.88 | Scott Thornburg | 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. |
| 00:02:41.24 | Lorna Newland | to. |
| 00:02:41.29 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:02:41.32 | Lorna Newland | Thank you. |
| 00:02:51.99 | Steven Woodside | Okay, there are no closed session announcements. Is there any public comment on closed session items? |
| 00:02:59.56 | Walfred Solorzano | members of the public that would like to make comments. If you're on Zoom, you can use the raise hand function. And if you are in-house, please fill out one of the speaker slips over by the television and hand it over to the city clerk. |
| 00:03:15.71 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:03:15.73 | Jeffrey Chase | AND I'M GOING TO BE |
| 00:03:15.93 | Walfred Solorzano | And I think Jeffrey Chase is going to make public comment. |
| 00:03:20.17 | Jeffrey Chase | This is on the consent count. Thank you. |
| 00:03:21.97 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 00:03:22.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Then we do have Babette McDougall online. |
| 00:03:23.12 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:03:25.72 | Steven Woodside | On closed session items? |
| 00:03:27.37 | Walfred Solorzano | I assume that we'll ask her right now. |
| 00:03:32.25 | Babette McDougall | Good evening. Thank you all. Yes, actually, I tried to come in at six o'clock when you would have been calling the meeting to order for the closed session. But unfortunately, I only got a failed signal that only just cleared up a couple of minutes ago. So yes, I saw two things. But on the closed session items in particular, I would like to call the attention of the public to the Yes in My Backyard lawsuit. I think this is something that is attendant to the housing element challenge that we have been facing from the beginning and has reached critical mass now. So the sooner that the public is fully informed of the risk that we face and the powers that are coming after us to bring us to our knees so that we fail to even control our own lives, Housing element plans going forward into the future. should this organization prevail, I just shudder to think what might happen next. So I invite you please to consider strongly daylighting more. of what you are discussing in closed session, especially as it relates to the future of this community and who is in control. Thank you so much. Thank you. |
| 00:04:41.03 | Steven Woodside | Public comment? |
| 00:04:41.78 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment? |
| 00:04:43.24 | Steven Woodside | Okay. We'll move on to approval of the agenda before we move approval of the agenda, I would like to announce that we will be removing item for he to allow additional time for staff to study this matter. And so I'll be seeking approval of an amended agenda with the removal of item for he, although, of course, we will still take public comment on item for each mayor. |
| 00:05:05.00 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, if I may, that's for F. |
| 00:05:07.78 | Steven Woodside | Oh, I have an old agenda. So sorry about that. It's 4F. It's authorized the city manager to purchase a parking enforcement vehicle for SPD. Okay, may I have approval of the amended agenda. |
| 00:05:21.58 | Steven Woodside | I so move. |
| 00:05:23.17 | Steven Woodside | Second. |
| 00:05:23.61 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:05:23.93 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 00:05:23.98 | Jill Hoffman | All in favor? I, Mayor, excuse me, I need to look... At the agenda. I believe I would like to remove one of the consent items. You can do that. This is just approval of the agenda as a whole. You'll have an opportunity to remove an agenda. Oh, pardon me. |
| 00:05:37.95 | Steven Woodside | opportunity. you. |
| 00:05:40.35 | Jill Hoffman | I just, sorry, I wasn't aware there was an amended agenda. |
| 00:05:43.67 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:05:45.04 | Jill Hoffman | We just, |
| 00:05:46.04 | Steven Woodside | added a proclamation at item 4a |
| 00:05:49.51 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, okay. |
| 00:05:54.49 | Jill Hoffman | When was the agenda amended? |
| 00:05:56.04 | Steven Woodside | on Friday. |
| 00:05:56.30 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Oh, all right. Thank you. |
| 00:05:59.21 | Steven Woodside | So, |
| 00:05:59.28 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:05:59.49 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Aye. All right. That motion carries five zero. Next, we will have mayor's announcements. I just wanted to announce what is obvious to those who have reviewed our agenda, which is that we have taken action to increase transparency and public comment while reducing, hopefully, the duration of our meetings. And so we have included... prospective durations for each item. We are limiting our public, our comments on business items to an initial round of three minutes each. We will be timing one another. Then we will have one minute for rebuttal. We, can take additional time if necessary, but that is the preliminary constraint. We are requesting that if any council member wishes to remove an item from consent, that they give at least 24 hours notice to staff so that staff does not go through an emergency on Tuesday. Um, And those are the primary revisions that we're undertaking for now. Okay next we'll move on to special presentations and we have with us the Marin Sonoma mosquito and vector control district presentation. We anticipate it will take about 10 minutes, and we welcome you. |
| 00:07:24.75 | Peter Boncrude | Fantastic. Thank you, Mayor, Council members, staff. My name is Peter Boncrude. I am the District Manager of Marin-Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control. I'm going to talk a little bit about what the district does, but I'll start by introducing your appointed representative, Vicki Nichols, represents Sausalito on our board. Marin-Sonoma covers both Marin and Sonoma County 2,300 square miles, and obviously Sausalito's a part of that, and we're really happy for the insight and time that Vicki's given to us to work on our, what we think is a very important mission. So as soon as the PowerPoint opens up, We'll get going, but as it starts to roll, I'll start by introducing myself. So my name is Peter Bonkrud. I've been with the district now since April of 2024, but I've been in mosquito and vector control for a long time. So 25 years I've been doing this. I love what I do, and I love the mission that we work towards, which is basically protecting people. We're a public health agency, and our goal is to try to reduce people from getting transmitted from infectious diseases, pathogens, things like West Nile virus, Western equine encephalitis, St. Louis encephalitis, all the things that we in our mosquito control world think about all the time. So here we go. Next slide, please. Brief history of our district. We've been around a long time. In fact, we're one of the first districts in California. In San Rafael, there was a lot of moving into the area and basically trying to identify a place to stake their claim in California. And with that came a lot of mosquitoes. People noticed those mosquitoes and they wondered if there's anything that it could do to reduce those mosquitoes. So actually the initial mosquito control effort was almost more of a real estate effort than it was a public health effort. But once we identified that malaria was also a key component associated with mosquitoes, it shifted quite a bit. So post that malaria component, we started to see more mosquito districts crop up. And ultimately, our district became more formal. We then annexed all of both Marin and Sonoma County over the course of the next 45, 50 years, and ultimately changed our name at the end of it to Marin, Sonoma, Mosquito and Vector Control to reflect the idea that we no longer just focus on mosquitoes, but also incorporate things like ticks, rodents, yellow jackets, and also any insect ID and things that we can provide from an entomological standpoint. We cover 76,000 residents between both Marin and Sonoma counties, and we're headquartered in Cotati. So we're right just up the road from here in Sausalito, and we've been there now since 2004. So we've been in that spot for quite a while. Next, please. Just a quick agency at a glance. So we have 36 full time employees, six to eight seasonals that we bring on every year. We have 18 trustees or board members that are currently sitting. We have 24 actual vacancies. And we're continuing to always recruit and look for additional people that are interested in serving their communities and being on our board. Those vacancies being in Roanoke Park, San Anselmo, Ross, Sebastopol. We have a Marin County at large and then also a Sonoma County at large position. Obviously, it's not always easy to get people to volunteer for a super lucrative position on our board of $100 a meeting, but we're always happy when we get people like Vicki that are interested in helping their communities out and can make the trip to our district and participate. As I've already mentioned, we cover a pretty big area and on average, our budgets around $12 million annually. What do we do? So obviously the main component that we provide is mosquito and vector control. Within that, we have biological control, namely our mosquito fish. We also do yellow jacket control for ground nesting yellow jackets, surveillance for adult mosquitoes, ticks, and other pathogens, rodent control, advice, and inspections. And then we also have a huge education component where we're doing educational outreach in all the schools through K through eight, which we have curriculum set up for each of those grades. And then, as I mentioned, etymological identification for residents. Next. We prescribe to something that's called integrative vector management, which if you've ever been in agriculture or maybe even are a gardener, you might have heard of integrative pest management. And it's a very similar idea. We just have kind of distilled it down to the vector world. Basically, what it means is we find the right tool for the right job. So we have this toolbox. This toolbox has a variety of different things. Every single situation based on our surveillance, we pick the right tool. We don't have a set set of tools for any set, any one issue, every issue we treat as a brand new one. And we basically prescribe whatever the right option is for that area. So it could be something like, purely education, could be outreach to the community, could be control interventions, could be just surveillance. Everything requires a slightly different kind of a slightly different world that we would build for each of those problems. And just a couple things to look at. Public education, chemical control, physical control, biological, preventative or source reduction, and then the name of the game for everything that we do is surveillance. Next. So what are we always concerned about? There's a couple different mosquitoes here. A lot of people just think of the one that they slapped, but there is actually 22 mosquito species between the two counties. So a high variety of different mosquitoes that we are interested in. Of those, there's only about four to five that transmit diseases, so we really focus our efforts on those. There's also a few that come off in such large numbers because of our salt marsh habitats that we also will work on those because as we know public health can be a component of just nuisance and enjoying your existence out in the world not having to deal with such a huge amount of mosquitoes that you're unable to enjoy the beautiful Sausalito that you all currently live in. So Culex tarsalis is one of our main targets. It's a carrier of West Nile virus. We also have ones called Culex pipiens similar also transmits West Nile virus. And then some of the other species are lesser components of that disease cycle, but still are ones that we find West Nile virus in fairly regularly and will work to control next. How do we do it? So we have inventoried over 20,000 sites within both Marin and Sonoma County. All of those are mapped. So we have this huge data collection system that we track and manage all of the different potential mosquito breeding habitats throughout both counties. And they're inspected on a regular basis. So those 36 full-time, 20 field staff are busy. They're out there going to all those different sites between every seven to 15 days, depending on the type of site, ensuring that it's not breeding mosquitoes. If it is breeding mosquitoes, we're identifying those mosquitoes and then finding the right control strategy based on whatever abundance level we identify at the time. Next. So just a quick little snapshot of 2024. So last year we did just under 6,200 service requests within the two counties, separated out there for you. We have our 20 full-time field technicians in addition to the full 36 full-time staff. We removed almost 2,500 in-ground yellowjacket nests. We did 401 rodent inspections. We did 2 and 2825 mosquito control applications. And then we delivered mosquito fish to almost 500 different residents throughout the area. And then you can see from our educational standpoint, we've hit almost 300 classrooms. just under 10,000 students and hit as many events as we can with our, our small staff and large area. Thanks. As I already mentioned, West Nile virus is, Still our main threat. It's our main focus. Good news for 2024. We had no West Nile virus incidences in either Marin or Sonoma County. So that's great news. We did see just a general reduction statewide. So not completely unsurprising that we would see a reduction here at Marin Sonoma as well. But it's always encouraging when we don't have human disease or even disease incidences within the mosquitoes or the birds or the different things that we see are part of that cycle. Statewide, as I mentioned, we already did see some reductions. Unfortunately, still 124 human cases, 12 of those being fatalities, and then a lot of positive mosquito samples as well. St. Louis encephalitis, again, we saw a reduction in 2024, which is encouraging. That's one of these diseases that used to be fairly widespread in California. Then when West Nile virus hit in 2003, it kind of went away. And then actually in 2011-12, we started to see a continual build of St. Louis encephalitis cases starting in Southern California. working our way all the way up to Shasta County in Northern California area. So we're keeping an eye on SLE to see if that's going to continue to be a problem for us or it's still going to be West Nile virus. That's our main focus. Some interesting things did happen in 2024 in terms of mosquito borne diseases, and that's dengue. So we've been watching dengue from a transmitted basically a transported dengue cases here in California. We'd never had locally acquired dengue in California until last year. So 2023 was the first time we had locally acquired cases in Pasadena and Long Beach. There's only three cases that year. This year, we actually had quite a few more. The numbers cut off there, but I believe it's 12 total. And that's in San Diego, Orange County and the L.A. area, which includes East L.A. as well as the greater L.A. area. So what does that mean for us? Nothing yet. But it does definitely open up the potential that dengue is not something we can ignore anymore. You know, it's typically been something that's not been locally transmitted in California. Now it is, and now it's going to continue to be something that we'll be focusing on as a potential. Good news with dengue is it's transmitted by two mosquito species that we don't currently have in Marin and Sonoma County. So that's great news. Part of our efforts are doing surveillance to try to make sure that we don't have those two mosquito species moving into our counties. And then if we do, responding to control and potentially eradicate those mosquitoes before they grab a foothold. But just in a general sense of the Bay Area, we've seen them in Contra Costa, we've seen them in Alameda, we've seen them in Santa Clara, we've seen them in San Mateo, we've seen them in Solano. So you can kind of get the sense that we're getting claustrophobic and there is |
| 00:17:55.00 | Fred Moore | Yo. |
| 00:18:00.59 | Peter Boncrude | this kind of creeping of these two mosquito species, not only into the Bay, but up and down California, we've seen quite an increase in there and their spread. Thanks. Our lab is a very, very essential part of our overall program. So they do all of our surveillance and all of our identification. We identify both larval mosquitoes or immature mosquitoes and adult. The idea being that we want to make sure that what we're doing is the most appropriate and environmentally compatible for the type of situation that we're dealing with. And you can just see the numbers here that we set over 1,600 mosquito traps. We've identified over 40,000 mosquitoes and tested 15,000 of those for diseases. Again, zero of those. In addition to the mosquito side, they're also identifying and collecting ticks. Ixodes pacificus is the main one we're focused on because that's the one that transmits Lyme disease. So we kind of highlight that one is an important one. And then we also do disease surveillance for other diseases like West Nile virus through our dead bird collections and also kind of other surveillance with different types of traps and things that we'll be using. I don't have a slide that shows all the different traps, but just know that we have eight different types of traps that are all targeting different species at different life stages. Next slide. Tick testing. I'll just say that we do tick testing. We don't do it for humans. So that will go through your public health department or somebody else. But we will test ticks. Typically, we will not test ticks that have bitten you. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But the main one is because we don't want to either provide a false sense of security that you don't potentially have Lyme disease and vice versa that you might. So basically, the idea is tell your doctor that we will idea it will let you know that it's a sodia specificus or something else. And there may or may not be. have Lyme disease and vice versa that you might. So basically, the idea is tell your doctor that we will idea it will let you know that it's a Xodi specificus or something else. And there may or may not be a risk there associated for Lyme disease. And then you just communicate that to your doctor and they'd know the right, the right strategy to go in terms of reducing your impact, but for any potential bacterial disease. Next. Just to give you a general sense, the nymphal ticks are the ones that are most dangerous for us. There's a lot of reasons. I won't get into the biology of it, but that is a nymphal tick. That's one of the reasons why they're a lot harder to deal with than the adult ticks is that they're that small. They're about the size of a sesame seed. So it's very challenging to identify that you have one on you. And this area, both Marin and Sonoma County is great spot for ticks. So always make sure when you're out enjoying the beautiful countryside that you're doing your tick checks when you come back in. And if you've identified them, get them off as quickly as possible. Next. I'm not going to hit the slide, just some numbers. Overall, our pathogenicity within our ticks is fairly low. We don't have a ton. That's normal for California in general. You see... between two and 5% infectivity in our ticks here in California, which is considerably lower than what we find in the Midwest or the East coast. There's a lot of different reasons. Part of it is we have a slightly different species. And then also we have some, um, Borrelia cidal basically killing the Lyme disease bacteria, um, within one of the lizards that our ticks bite. So it's kind of a really cool, uh, way that we prevent some Lyme disease here in California next. Rodents, want to touch on this. It's winter. We do see an uptick in rodent calls at this time because the rodents are really enjoying the nice warm places that we provide ourselves during the winter. We have food, we have water, and we have warmth, and the rodents love that. We don't do any kind of rodent trapping. So the work that we'll do is we'll come to your property, we'll come to your home, we'll identify areas that you can reduce potential rodent activity, either through reducing foraging opportunities, exclusion, basically making sure that if you do contact a pest control operator to do rodent trapping, that you're going to get the best bang for your buck because you'll have done the work that will make that trapping effort be impactful. next. And then, as I mentioned, ground-dwelling yellowjackets. Specific species, that's why I always add to that part, because there are a variety of yellowjackets that are out there. And these are the only ones we focus on, because they're non-native and they can become pestiferous. So the others, I mean, yellowjackets, there are other yellowjackets we completely ignore. They're pollinators, they're great. But these are the ones that we target for those reasons. Next. As I mentioned, public outreach. We try to get out to as many places as we can. You'll see our billboards. You'll see our, hopefully, our media, both print, radio, and digital. Basically, we try to get as much information out as we can. It's a great tool empowering those local people to do the work for themselves. And if they can't, calling us and knowing the right place to get the help that they need. Next. Social media, I'll hit that. We're active on Twitter. We're active on Facebook. We're active on Instagram. So please follow us. Please get that information. It's another great place for us to get that info out to people. Thanks. Okay, invasive Aedes, I'll hit on this real quick. I talked about it. You can see the red line there is where we're seeing that increase in Aedes aegypti, Aedes albopictus. Those are their two mosquitoes that transmit dengue, as well as a variety of other things, chikungunya, Zika virus, yellow fever. You know, it's a nasty, they're nasty mosquitoes. They're beautiful, actually, mosquitoes. But from a disease standpoint, they're not fun. They're also very what we call peridomestic, which means they like to live near people. So it's a very different misc actually mosquitoes, but from a disease standpoint, they're not fun. They're also very what we call peridomestic, which means they like to live near people. So it's a very different mosquito than we're used to dealing with for West Nile virus because they like to breed in containers. So something as small as a coffee cup that has a little bit of extra irrigation water in it, or a gutter that you didn't get the last of the leaves out of. It's really only a cap full of water that they'll need in order to breed. So it makes it really challenging, not only to find them, but then also to control them because they could be in somebody's backyard and we would never know. So it's become a real big problem. Emerging technology, I'll talk a little bit about that. I think Vicky was talking about our biologist, our lab director, Dr. Fury. She is actively working on our 3D printer, which is a real fun little piece of technology. Most of you probably are aware of 3D printing. We love it in mosquito world because if you didn't know, there's not a lot of special, there's not a lot of Walmart mosquito control tools that are out there. So we have to build a lot of what we use. It's a very specialized world, a really specialized industry. And so having a tool that we can kind of create in our brains, anything that we need, and then actually print it physically is great. And so Dr. Fury has been working on completely replacing our surveillance traps with this 3D printed surveillance trap, which will do a couple of things. One, it's going to increase a lot of the different components that we like on the traps that we currently have. So we can make things stronger. We can make things better. And then, too, we have this never ending supply of traps. So when we need one, all we need is a few hours to print up a new trap and get it out into the fleet uh and it works out really well so she's actually presenting at the the state conference on this and also at the national conference on this um here in the next three months so this is just a quick little snapshot but hopefully if you're ever interested you can take a look at our website and we'll have good information on there regarding that go back one more for me real fast Really want to touch on some of the sterile insect techniques and how that dovetails to Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Basically, there's three new technologies that are being released in California to some degree, definitely in the country and also in the world. The biggest one is Wolbachia. That had already done some work in Fresno. The idea is an old agricultural idea, which is you basically release males that are sterile, and they mate with females, and their progeny is unviable, meaning they don't have babies that exist. And so with that, we've identified three different strategies to do that sterile insect technique. One is irradiation, which is a very classic method. Basically, you use x-ray technology in this case to make sure that the males no longer are able to breed. You release them into the wild. They breed with the females and they don't have viable young. And that one's actually being currently done in Southern California. So Western LA area, also in Riverside, Ontario area, and then out in Orange County as well. They're actually testing these releases of these mosquitoes to see how effective they are to control Aedes aegypti. Wolbachia is a very similar idea, except they're injecting a bacteria into these mosquitoes so that they're unable to have viable young. This was tested in Fresno County with Alphabet or Google under an umbrella called Verily. Very exciting project. They were seeing over 90 percent control in those environments where they were. releasing those sterile mosquitoes. And then the last one is called self limiting mosquitoes, which is basically these mosquitoes are engineered that once they are released into the wild, they're unable to have at least for the first few generations viable young. And again, the idea is is suppressing the populations, making sure that we can reduce populations of 80s Egypt die or 80s elbow picked us and potentially reducing the potential for dengue. Next. Awesome. I tried to rock it fast as I could. I don't know if I have any time for questions. If not, I apologize. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. |
| 00:27:24.65 | Steven Woodside | We're already 10 minutes past our time, Vice Mayor. |
| 00:27:27.57 | Steven Woodside | I know. I have one quick question. You mentioned your budget is $12 million. What's the source of your revenue? Thank you. |
| 00:27:34.20 | Peter Boncrude | So the majority of our well, all of our money comes from a version of property taxes. We also have some special benefit assessments, which are basically like property taxes as well, but about 40 percent ad valorem property tax. And then the rest comes from benefit assessments and then also service charges for areas that are producing mosquitoes above and beyond. |
| 00:27:52.70 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:27:53.17 | Peter Boncrude | Yep. |
| 00:27:54.38 | Steven Woodside | All right. OK, this is a special presentation. Typically, we don't take questions on special presentations. But go ahead. |
| 00:28:00.80 | Jill Hoffman | I feel like we might have Peter, thank you so much for coming. I assume that all of these different species that you mentioned, even though you work to keep their populations in control. there are some positive benefits that we derive to the environment from these different species. |
| 00:28:22.08 | Peter Boncrude | Yeah, so mosquitoes are just a general part of a biota. So they do get fed on by a variety of different things. So birds, bats, you know, other insects. So mosquitoes do are a part of that. Nothing feeds specifically on mosquitoes, but they are part of most generalist diets. |
| 00:28:37.96 | Jill Hoffman | they are part of the general part of our environment. |
| 00:28:39.85 | Peter Boncrude | And our goal is never to eradicate non-invasive mosquitoes or native mosquitoes. It's just trying to reduce those ones that cause human diseases to healthful levels. So basically trying to drop them below thresholds where they can't transmit diseases. |
| 00:28:52.55 | Jill Hoffman | And we don't use harmful pesticides. |
| 00:28:55.39 | Peter Boncrude | We don't use harmful as a hard word, but we don't use chemicals that are environmentally incompatible with the areas that we use them. So yeah, so the areas that we use them. |
| 00:29:03.03 | Jill Hoffman | that we use them. Those questions are coming and I just wanted to get those before we got to it. Perfect. Okay. |
| 00:29:05.23 | Peter Boncrude | Yeah. Perfect. |
| 00:29:07.39 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:29:07.64 | Peter Boncrude | Thank you. I'm so sorry I took extra time, but I appreciate it. |
| 00:29:08.20 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:29:11.20 | Steven Woodside | No, thank you, Mr. Goncrude. Welcome. And thank you, Vicki Nichols, for serving on this board and for really spreading the word. We very much appreciate it. |
| 00:29:26.10 | Steven Woodside | All right. For those who are watching, Vicki wanted us all to know she didn't know about the hundred dollars per meeting compensation before she joined the board. |
| 00:29:30.22 | Unknown | She didn't know. |
| 00:29:37.37 | Steven Woodside | All right, we're going to go ahead and move on next on the agenda is communications. This is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda, except in very limited situation state law precludes the Council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. However, the council may briefly respond to statements made or questions posed by a member of the public, ask clarifying questions, make a brief announcement, or make a brief report on his or her own activities. The council may also refer matters not on the agenda to city staff. or direct that the subject be agendized for a future meeting. Please make sure you fill out a speaker's card and give it to the city clerk if you'd like to make a communication. patient. City Clerk, may I have the speaker cards? |
| 00:30:21.40 | Walfred Solorzano | I have none right now. |
| 00:30:22.58 | Steven Woodside | Okay, anything online? |
| 00:30:24.99 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, we'll start with Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 00:30:31.81 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening, counsel. Couple of things. One is I was very surprised to hear the approval of the agenda when that item is not listed on the agenda. And if that had come up, I would have, during public comment, which also was not called, for that item, I would have brought this to your attention. Item seven, item two E. |
| 00:30:49.68 | Lorna Newland | Item seven. |
| 00:30:52.28 | Sandra Bushmaker | Ms. Bush Baker. Oh, thank you. Somehow I missed that. along with a few other things on this agenda. So with regard to item 7a that grant is properly called the Bridgeway bike lane project. Princess Street to Richardson. That's the official name of it. It's not the Bridgeway Safety Project grant. So I also wanted to point out under that item that for you |
| 00:31:18.98 | Steven Woodside | five of the Ms. Bushmaker you can reserve your comments when we get to this item this time is for communications regarding items not on our agenda Okay. |
| 00:31:33.15 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. Thank you. |
| 00:31:36.34 | Steven Woodside | Any other? |
| 00:31:37.09 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, we have Sandra, sorry, Bette McDougall. |
| 00:31:44.51 | Babette McDougall | Good evening. I can appreciate Ms. Bushmaker's confusion because the itinerary. the Agenda does not exactly go according to the agenda that you're looking at. So obviously some of us have an outdated version. However, I do want to say, first of all, I want to thank and accept this challenge to reintroduce democracy into the council chambers. I want to thank the mayor for bringing the public Opinion back to the beginning. as it ought to be. Thank you so much for doing that. I also want to applaud and thank you for offering three minutes per spokesperson. I really appreciate that too. I hope you can care. And I hope this is just the beginning, because what we really need most is an engaged citizenry. The best way we can stay engaged is to be engaged. is to be very much above board and transparent So we need to speak more openly about the challenges that we are facing as a community. I'm really concerned about this housing element thing. You know, it only came up on the agenda once last year, as I recall. And that was toward the end of the year. I think it was October. with just this whole concept of an overlay, like, gee, why don't we invent a software so we can all become acculturated to 10 story buildings. I mean, really. There is so much for all of us to think about. And this whole idea of being constantly being drained financially by, I believe it's your law firm, Madam Mayor, and also our city attorney, both of you as partners listed. that there are how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are we into your law firm just on the EMB thing alone last year, let alone what we're looking at this year. So I think it's time to just daylight it. I also think we need to think carefully about the issues of ethics and standards of conduct, especially as it benefits those standing on the council. who stand to profit. by the woes of our community. So there's a tremendous amount of transparency here that is lacking, and I'd really like to see more of it improve as time goes on. And with that, I shall yield the balance of my time. Thank you. |
| 00:33:43.01 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Ms. McDougall. I will just clarify for the record that the city attorney has not worked for my law firm for over a year. And so there is no connection between my law firm and the city attorney. All right, next I have Fred Moore. |
| 00:34:02.06 | Fred Moore | Good evening, Council. I've been recently kind of going through the website of the city and Can you talk into the mic? Right in the mic? Is this better? Yes, thank you. |
| 00:34:10.68 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:34:11.29 | Fred Moore | going through the website and I'm not technically advanced, so maybe I'm missing a few things with the website, but I thought one thing that you might want to consider is adding a tab on the website that find your passion and open the website to the various volunteer organizations in the city, which are many, and allow them the opportunity to post something on that find your passion. So if citizens aren't sure where they want to go to volunteer to help the city out, they might be able to go on that website, find various organizations that they might be interested in. Also, it may be worthwhile updating the website a bit. I kind of went on a few of the little click spots, and one of them was the Parks and Recreation Commission. And in that, it showed there was three vacancies and four expired terms, which I'm pretty confident that that's not the case. And I think that has been appointed, and those are outdated information. Similar to what happened if I go on the public works projects, the majority of the summaries were dated back in March of 2022. A lot of the projects were noted as almost complete or active. Some have been completed. For example, the project description of the Sausalito encampment shows the status under construction, which obviously that's not the case. So there may be some opportunities to update that with correct information so people can have an idea of what's going on with the infrastructure in the city, which I know is important to all of you. And the last item was months ago, Mr. McGowan presented various infrastructure projects and priorities to the council. And at the time, I mentioned that it would be nice to have that on the website so people could see and identify which portions of the streets are high priority or low priority to see if they might provide some additional input to adjust those moving some streets up, maybe some streets down. I wasn't able to find it on the website. Could be my fault. But if you could look at that and see if it's not on there, that would be a good addition so the public can see what's going on with those public improvement projects coming up. Thank you very much. |
| 00:36:15.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Mr. Moore. Jeff Jacobs. |
| 00:36:23.76 | Jeffrey Chase | Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council, and citizens of Sausalito. I wanna congratulate you for reinstating public comment before the meeting. and that it's three minutes. I've come to so many of these meetings and Sometimes it can feel like I'm a gadfly and being negative and I love being positive. And so I'll also congratulate Sausalito for the pickleball and the tennis courts. That's a special place for the people at Camp Cormorant 1, 2, and 3. Our so-called Black Swan, we want to call it a Purple Swan event, part of it. And there are people enjoying those courts, and the parking lot is open. So thank you for doing that. I want to read a little bit of the Torah portion for the week. I feel that it's very important that we become united in whatever ways that we can and that religion sometimes seems so divisive. even in our own, even in our own churches, synagogues, and mosques like that. So the portion is about Joseph, the suffering Servant. His brothers betray him. These are of the 12 sons of Israel, Judah, and Reuben and Simeone and the rest. First they want to kill him, then they end up selling him into slavery. He tricks them, into recognizing him and repenting what they've done. And so now their father dies, Jacob, that's my name. So they had the mess, this is in Genesis. They had this message conveyed to Joseph. Before he died, your father gave this instruction. This is what you must say to Joseph. Please now forgive your brother's crime and their transgression of treating you harshly. So now please forgive this crime of the servants of the God of your father. as the messengers spoke to him, Joseph wept. His brothers also went in and threw themselves at his feet And they said, we are hereby your servants. And Joseph said to them, Do not be afraid. for I am not in place of God. Although you intended me harm, God intended it for the good in order to bring things to their present state and to save the lives of many people. |
| 00:39:05.50 | Jeffrey Chase | So, What's happened to the Anchorage and what's happened to some of my friends out here have seemed really rough, but now many of them have apartments. Many of them are doing very well, so I thank you for that. Okay. |
| 00:39:21.10 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 00:39:21.11 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:39:25.77 | Steven Woodside | Anyone else online, Mr. City Clerk? |
| 00:39:27.51 | Walfred Solorzano | See you then. |
| 00:39:28.39 | Steven Woodside | All right, we'll close communications, move on to the consent convention. |
| 00:39:36.91 | Walfred Solorzano | I had it, but that was for consent. |
| 00:39:40.33 | Unknown | Oh, |
| 00:39:40.55 | Steven Woodside | It was for consent. We're on communications on items not on the agenda right now. |
| 00:39:40.57 | Unknown | It was for consent. |
| 00:39:44.50 | Gregory Taylor | That's what I'm gonna speak about tonight. Thank you. Yeah, what I'll talk about. Talk about today. |
| 00:39:49.34 | Steven Woodside | You can identify yourself, sir. Thank you. |
| 00:39:50.43 | Gregory Taylor | Thank you. My name is Gregory Taylor. Tonight, I'll be talking about mass immigration. Trump likes to talk about mass deportation. I can tell you right now, the good news is we're not going to have mass deportation in this. |
| 00:40:03.10 | Steven Woodside | Sir, I'm going to stop you there. So we only hear in communications items that are not on the agenda, but are within the jurisdiction of the Sausalito City Council. |
| 00:40:11.54 | Gregory Taylor | Council, immigration and deportation. But I believe this does have a lot to do with you and your immediate future. |
| 00:40:12.75 | Steven Woodside | and deportation. immigration and deportation are not within our jurisdiction. So if you have something. |
| 00:40:19.97 | Gregory Taylor | I believe my message to you is that if you have an illegal alien, or some people like to call them undocumented workers, and you're thinking about giving them that old Tesla or that Volvo, go ahead and give it to them. Go ahead and let them stay in your house and encourage all their relatives to come to America. because I am here to welcome them And if you're not with me, then you are against me. Thank you. |
| 00:40:44.39 | Steven Woodside | All right. With that, we'll close communications and move on to our consent calendar. We have items 4A through 4H on our consent calendar. 4A, proclamation observing and honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 4B, adopt the minutes for the December 17, 2024 City Council meeting. 4C, review and adopt amended City Council, City Manager, City Attorney operating protocols. 4D, receive and file report regarding changes to Brown Act regarding attendance at remote meetings. 4E, receive and file annual listing of expiring terms on the various boards and commissions for calendar year 2025. 4F, this will be continued, but authorize the city manager to purchase a parking enforcement vehicle for SPD. For G adopt a resolution declaring to public works vehicles as surplus and authorize the city manager to dispose of said equipment at auction and for H receive and file a report related to increasing visibility near crosswalks near under California Assembly Bill 413. So I will ask first if there are any questions from council members or requests to remove an item from consent. |
| 00:41:55.59 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I'd like to remove four seeds. |
| 00:41:57.65 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, we'll open it up for public comment. First, Peter Van Meter. Actually, Mr. Van Meter, you're on 4C, and that's going to come off the consent agenda, so we'll call you later. |
| 00:42:18.44 | Jill Hoffman | Madam Mayor, don't we still receive public comment for matters that are removed from the consent council? |
| 00:42:23.48 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, but we hear them when we hear the item. We hear it's going to become a business item, and we'll hear it when we hear the business item. Greg Taylor. Okay, thank you, sir. And Jeff Chase. |
| 00:42:44.46 | Jeffrey Chase | So I want to congratulate you again. This is the first time I've come in, and there are no consultants fees in the consent calendar. Not a one, not a penny is being paid to anybody that doesn't work for the city, because I think the lack of transparency for a private company sometimes to tell us what we want to hear. But I'm really happy as well about the proclamation commending Dr. King, whose birthday is a little close to mine, and he made a speech. In 1967, specifically against the Vietnam War. that he had been before that. fighting the fight for his people. for black people and for civil rights, for voting rights, for transportation rights, and against their poverty. But now he opened it up to all the people He said, a time comes when silence is betrayal, Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. that Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policies. And he says this, he says, beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is the vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the father is deeply concerned, especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. He says, our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty. to racism, and to militarism. With this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust moors, and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. So thank you, Dr. King, and thank you for the commemoration of his life. |
| 00:45:12.35 | Steven Woodside | Next is Aaron Roller. |
| 00:45:16.67 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Anyone online? |
| 00:45:21.93 | Aaron Roller | Hello, everybody. Good to see you in three dimensions. I am here to talk about the 4-H, the daylight, the daylighting law that got passed. It's a very great thing. I'm so happy to see it because it's all about just allowing us to cross the street safely and then also be seen. So it's really nice for drivers as well because none of us want to have interactions with pedestrians trying to cross the street. We have been requesting these daylighting throughout the city for some time. A lot of safe routes to school. There's some crosswalks near the school that have cars parking close to them and all that kind of stuff. And as you know, painting curbs is not that difficult. It can go pretty quick. We haven't actually achieved any of those that we've requested. I think a lot of it is because parking is so important to Sausalito. And in my opinion, Sausalito doesn't have a parking problem. It has a walking problem you know, a good chunk of us can park far away. And then we can enjoy our walk. And there's a lot of enjoyable walks in this town. And so having reducing a little bit of that stress, it can be very valuable. And this daylighting law is helping the cities implement this and helping advocates like me really work with the city to say, let's do this. In the staff report, I had read that there's it's now we're in a study, you know, to see if there's hey, is there anything else we can do? And I think that that's great because it is actually a pretty broad law. But let's go to Caledonia Street, for example. You know, there's two spots on Cal on each block on Caledonia Street that should be. blocked right away. They should have been blocked actually four years ago when Caledonia street got painted. We on the pedestrian bicycle advisory committee were not consulted. I learned about that restarting on my way here. |
| 00:47:35.25 | Unknown | All right. |
| 00:47:37.00 | Aaron Roller | to have a meeting. And so that's an example of how we could be collaborating a little bit more with our infrastructure projects and actually then |
| 00:47:44.58 | Fred Moore | No. |
| 00:47:45.02 | Aaron Roller | I don't know if they would have done it, but at least we would have had a say. in asking it. Now it's going to come. And as much as this study should be looking at maybe where the stop signs are and that kind of stuff. Hey, yeah, let's maybe see if we can leave that parking spot by the stop sign. But I would ask that we get this really low hanging fruit, the ones that really could help right at the corners. And let's get those painted red right away. So people know not to park there. Thank you. |
| 00:48:18.45 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Mr. Roller. We'll go to online. |
| 00:48:22.84 | Walfred Solorzano | We have a but MacDougal. |
| 00:48:26.82 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. Well, first of all, I'd like to echo the gentleman in saying that the daylighting law, in my opinion, for Sausalito is long overdue. And I'm really glad to see it finally passed into existence. But I am not heartened by the idea that so many communities have decided to kick the can down the road in terms of its implementation. Now, in Sausalito, we have a unique opportunity because we have more. parking lots and we have cars to fill them up with, it seems day in and day out. And so I don't think we're going to have a real big problem trying to relocate certain vehicles to a place like one of our parking lots, for example. And as another thing, It just looks so chock-a-block on any given weekend day, in particular along Bridgeway, as well as many of the other parallel streets to Bridgeway, my own included, that it's just downright dangerous. I know now that I have to walk with an ADA-compliant tool. I have a lot of hard time just walking it myself. And just like the gentleman said, for those of us that choose to park distance and walk, because we can. We'd like to be able to do that safely. Thank you so much. And the pedestrians do have a problem. Now, having to do with daylight, what a wonderful choice of words, because I'd like to also comment on the issue having to do with new council protocols. Has any of us ever seen the... |
| 00:49:43.99 | Steven Woodside | single. That's actually going to be business item 6D and you can public comment at that time. |
| 00:49:50.45 | Babette McDougall | Is that right? 6D. Oh, we have a revised calendar that is not on the website. I do beg your pardon. I'm just reading off. The council member requested that it be. |
| 00:49:55.65 | Steven Woodside | just reading off. removed from consent. Is that item B? |
| 00:49:59.68 | Babette McDougall | Is that item B is |
| 00:50:00.71 | Steven Woodside | boy. Council member, sorry, Thank you. Brown Act items. |
| 00:50:06.89 | Babette McDougall | The Brown Act, item C was removed. That's true. |
| 00:50:09.80 | Steven Woodside | I don't know what was removed was the city council protocols. |
| 00:50:13.80 | Babette McDougall | Oh, I see. I thought it was item C for Charlie, as in brown axe. |
| 00:50:17.86 | Steven Woodside | it was. |
| 00:50:18.02 | Jill Hoffman | It was, sorry. |
| 00:50:18.90 | Babette McDougall | you Thank you. |
| 00:50:19.09 | Jill Hoffman | It was item 4C on the consent calendar, and I requested it be removed, but the mayor now just announced that it is now item 6D. D is in Delta. So it is now item 6D for anybody else who's listening. So thank you, Mayor. |
| 00:50:29.01 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE It isn't. |
| 00:50:33.82 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Mayor. Ms. McTruth, we were looking at an old agenda. An amended agenda was published on Friday, which added Martin Luther King proclamation. And so all of the items were moved down by one. |
| 00:50:40.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:50:40.91 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 00:50:40.94 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:50:46.69 | Steven Woodside | Oh, I see. Yes, I got that. |
| 00:50:47.98 | Babette McDougall | But, I still show item B for boy council protocols. I don't mind delaying this to a more open discussion, if that's what you're really saying, ma'am. That's fine with me. Okay. Well, then let's just hear it for transparency. I shall yield back my time. Thank you. |
| 00:50:55.91 | Steven Woodside | That's what you want. |
| 00:51:04.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:51:04.07 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 00:51:04.09 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:51:04.63 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 00:51:05.04 | Steven Woodside | Anyone else? |
| 00:51:06.56 | Walfred Solorzano | See you then. |
| 00:51:07.48 | Steven Woodside | All right, then I will entertain a motion approving items 4A, 4B, 4D, 4E, and 4G and 4H. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries 5-0. All right, we will move on to business items, the first of which is 6A Economic Development Advisory Committee presentation regarding proposed priorities for the calendar year 2025, and we will welcome To the podium, Community and Economic Development Director, Brandon Phipps. |
| 00:51:41.30 | Unknown | Thank you very much, Mayor, and good evening to you, Vice Mayor, Council Members, and members of the public, as well as staff. And Happy New Year to you all. Happy to be joining you this evening, as always, this time to introduce item 6A, as stated by the mayor, presentation from the EDAC, Economic Development Advisory Committee, regarding the committee's proposed priorities for calendar year 2025. Staff's recommendation in connection with this item is to receive and file the forthcoming special presentation from the EDAC and reference this presentation and edac stated priorities when evaluating and considering citywide priorities and direction for 2025 as part of the upcoming city council strategic planning discussions council may also provide direction to staff as well as the edac as they see fit As far as outlook for the year to come, My outlook is positive. And CDD is enthusiastic to continue collaborating with the EDAC in addressing and implementing their goals for the year to come following council endorsement. The EDAC chair, Scott Thornburg, is in attendance this evening and will be providing the EDAC's presentation before City Council. Scott, thanks for being here this evening and I will open the floor up to you. |
| 00:52:58.32 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you, Director Phipps. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council. Great to be with you this evening. I did want to start with just a few comments as we get into this. We are we're really excited as a committee. We are excited about the progress we've made to date and excited to hear more from you after your strategic planning session. So with that, let's just dive into the next slide, please, City Clerk. There was a rather pointed public comment on this, which I'll just address really quickly right away. As you all know, sitting there on the council, everything we do is a team sport and economic development is definitely a team sport. And I just want to clarify that EDAC this year had the wonderful opportunity to partner with some really incredible organizations, many of which you'll see represented here on this slide as partners that we worked with to execute specific events. Some examples of that are the Sausalito Boat Show, where there was a team in place to do this really incredible event, where there was a comment specifically about that one. So I'll just mention briefly that our role in that is in advocating and supporting the planners, in partnering with them and providing contacts in the city and making introductions and advocating for resources. There are a number of people. I saw Council Member Hoffman out there working in the parking lot, volunteering. There are a number of people involved. We are so excited for the second year of the boat show. And we're not taking credit, just to be clear, but we are saying that we are advocates and supports. And it was an event that we had been long advocating for. So we're excited to see it happen. Other examples here on the slide, you'll see our Restaurant Week. This was an initiative led by the Chamber. Similarly, EDAC had been advocating and kind of encouraging several restaurateurs to come together and make this happen. And that happened this year for the first time. the above category Invitational Bike Show is another one where we're so excited that this happened at the end of happened this year for the first time. The above category invitational bike show is another one where we're so excited that this happened at the end of August this year. Sausalito has this incredible wellness and outdoors environment. We would like to encourage that. So our role in that is just being support, being advocate, helping them with some marketing as we could and helping just answer answer questions. So much of what needs to happen in these situations is just oftentimes answering questions and being a source of information. So we're happy to do that. Other things briefly, the Maker's Fair that was at Holiday by the Bay this year was another great example of community collaboration. So this was a program that EDOC launched a couple of years ago in partnership with the Chamber and others. Our very own Monica Finnegan spearhead this effort of a Maker's Fair trying to bring in many of the artisans from the Marin ship and around Sausalito to come together and have a space where they could bring people in together and celebrate the holiday season. This year, despite the really tremendous storm we had that day where the city lost power, we still saw about a thousand people come through the SCA, which was gracious enough to host this event before we lost power and before it got too bad. So we're really excited about that progress. And then finally, you all know, and many of you voted on endorsing a property business improvement district. And I'm proud, pleased to say that the interim board has made significant progress. And I'm sure you'll hear an update on that soon as part of your 2025 planning. Next slide, please. When I think about some of the focus areas for EDAC going forward, I listed a few. Many of these have come from discussions with members of the community, with members of the council for current and past, with other volunteer leaders, from business leaders in the community. So I'd like to just highlight a few of these and encourage you to consider these as part of your strategic planning discussion, and then come back to us with your feedback. So in 2024, then Mayor Sobieski introduced a Blue Ribbon Parking Committee. We believe this is something that EDAC can pick up going forward. And we had two of our members that were on that committee. Given the nature of our role with the city as advisors and our connections to the business community and the community at large, we feel like this is a great area for us to continue supporting city revenue. Streamlining business permitting processes is a process, is a project that then EDAC Chair Tom Riley began with the committee. We handed many of these recommendations off to city staff, many of which have been implemented. There are a few that we would like to continue to see implemented. and we also would like to potentially take a look at our business license tax and make sure that we're still competitive compared to other neighboring communities. So business development to fill vacancies. I think that's pretty apparent. We do have a few vacancies around town. There are vacancies on Caledonia Street in particular, which are concerning that fall outside the bounds of the new property business improvement districts. This is an area where I think EDAC can provide support. partnering with the Chamber of Commerce, the historic Downtown Peabody Association, and other organizations to continue to drive foot traffic and support local businesses. We also would recommend researching and coming back to the council with proposals or recommendations around a Marinship Community Finance District or an enhanced infrastructure financing district. In other words, a way to raise money through public-private partnerships and see infrastructure projects prioritized in our waterfront. Continue to promote Sausalito's legacy. And finally, one thing that is coming up that we would also like to weigh in on is just considering the revisions to formula retail requirements. This is something that the whole community, I think, is very sensitive about. We would like to support those discussions by bringing in community feedback. One of the first projects that I personally led was an effort to think about how we would curate retail in Sausalito and what are the businesses that residents care about. So that's something we're very keen to support. Next slide, please. And I'll breeze through this. Apologies here. There was in one of the notes to my note to staff, there's a confusion about some of the terms related to EDAC members, specifically Cass Green, Don Daglow and Teresa Ancona. We had an issue briefly when last year in February 20th, City Council reappointed EDAC members and adjusted the terms. a unnecessarily complicated list of terms that were intended to be staggered and helpful, but became quite messy. City Council cleaned that up, reappointed some members, but we had some members whose terms had not yet expired, and we would make the recommendation that those three individuals be reappointed to the committee. And we also, as you see, have a few vacancies to fill. |
| 01:00:05.12 | Fred Moore | I know. |
| 01:00:05.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:00:05.41 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 01:00:26.92 | Scott Thornburg | Um, next slide. Along that note, things that would be really helpful as a part of our discussions, entrepreneurship and small business ownership, urban planning and transportation, thinking about sea level rise as being a threat to our business community. Sustainability and resilience planning, I think, would be particularly helpful. Marketing and public relations backgrounds, business retention and expansion, folks that are invested in businesses, workforce development, thinking through how our employees that are supporting and servicing our community are coming into town and how we can best support them to have the best experience here for us and for them. Thank you. And finally, event planning and community engagement. Next slide, please. |
| 01:01:23.14 | Scott Thornburg | Oh, sorry. Finally, a couple of changes. As you'll know, we had a request from the council to reduce the number of EDAC meetings last year. And I would just be boldly, I would very boldly say that did not work. As a committee meeting only four times a year, we really felt like we lost a lot of momentum. And while we want to be respectful of staff and council time and our volunteer time, meeting only four times a year is a really difficult way to get anything done as volunteers. What we recommend, and it's one thing that I would like to try before we make any changes, again, to be respectful of the council's wishes and be respectful of staff time, we would like to implement a new communications protocol where we just have subcommittees He's reporting into the chair and the chair reporting out to you, myself reporting out to you on EDAC priorities for this year, and we'll see how that goes. We may want to revisit that. And finally, on the next slide, just a few action items for you to consider. You know, please do evaluate our list and priorities and consider holding interviews and appointing those open roles. With that, that's all I have. Thank you for your time. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you. |
| 01:02:36.84 | Steven Woodside | Any questions of staff on this item? Seeing none, I'll turn it over to public comment. Any public comment on this item, Mr. Clerk? |
| 01:02:50.97 | Scott Thornburg | You had questions? Thank you. Okay. |
| 01:02:55.53 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, we have a couple people online, Beth McDougall. |
| 01:03:02.61 | Babette McDougall | Well, I really am grateful to have this chance to speak on the issue of the EDAC group and how they're doing. I want to thank Mr. Thornburg for a very thorough presentation. Also, I just want to point out I didn't realize that there had been a formal request to reduce the number of meetings I certainly agree with Mr. Thornburg that that's rather antithetical to progress going forward, considering how much is going on in our town on any given day lately. So I would like to encourage not to consolidate power in the hands of a few. Do not introduce a bunch of funnels We're a task force of people. who are working together to try to make things in a forward motion happen, Ultimately, have to funnel it down to one guy, for example, who might be the chair or whomever. And then in turn, that person is going to funnel it back to you. I think that creates The antithesis, shall we say, of transparency. So I encourage you to think carefully about that. The other thing that I would also like to encourage you to think carefully about is as we go forward in this public venue forum that is Sausalito, You know, we used to do the art festival and it was really successful. And now we have this opportunity to move forward into a new era. And I really do encourage people to think benevolently, generously, but also for the greater good. We have so many carpetbaggers that we have to be wary of and people who are here to simply exploit the opportunity for self gain. But we really have to be very mindful of the fact that this is a... community investment. And if we're going to move forward and reinstate democracy as it used to be, with everybody rolling up their sleeves and getting involved, way it used to be. and we'd like to see it returned. Just remember one thing, Sausalito is a town of volunteers, and volunteerism is probably the most proud badge any one of us could ever wear. So I would encourage all of you to lift that standard to its highest possible level of excellence. each of us within ourselves. putting self-gain well behind the greater good. And with that, I shall build back the balance of my time. Thank you. you Thank you. |
| 01:05:20.63 | Walfred Solorzano | Curtis Havel. |
| 01:05:23.96 | Steven Woodside | Welcome, Curtis. |
| 01:05:26.42 | Curtis Havel | Good evening, City Council. Thank you. My name is Curtis Havel. I serve as the harbormaster for Clipper Yacht Harbor. And I was reading through the report tonight and I, Wanted to mention that I noted that I was surprised to learn that that EDAC has a liaison to the Saucido Boat Show during the planning of the boat show. We were never approached by a specific liaison. That said, I want to give Scott Thornburg huge thanks and credit for helping us out during the process of planning. He did connect us with folks within the city, you know, resources to help promote the boat show. But Mr. Thornburg isn't listed as the liaison. So that was a little bit confusing. It was also surprising to read that There's a blue economy working group. Again, the uh, business operators along Sausalito's waterfront, at least the ones that I've talked to, uh, Skumacher Marina, uh, Sausalito Yacht Harbor, Pelican Yacht Harbor, Clipper Yacht Harbor, KKMI, all the big businesses. Nobody has ever approached about any sort of a blue economy working group. Um, When in 2024, there was a blue economy initiative put forward by the Working Waterfront Coalition and presumably EDAC, But this, that initiative, incorrectly called an initiative, that effort, was created in a vacuum. None of us were ever communicated with or reached out to about that. Um, That blue economy initiative would have been disastrous for the waterfront and it would have been contrary to any sort of productive economic development along the waterfront. I mean, it would have been contrary to economic development. If there is an EDAC liaison for the matters, you know, for the working, this Blue Economy Working Group, and there is somebody who's supposed to be working on the boat show, we'd be open to talking to them. One of the neat byproducts of the boat show was that. A number of the business operators along Saucyote's Waterfront got together and realized that we have more in common. And the, you know, I'm talking about people who are multi generational business owners. So Clipper Yacht Harbor is. third generation family owned and operated Marina. Same goes for Sassado Yacht Harbor. Um, Schumacher Marina, same way that, you know, it's, these are really small businesses, homegrown local businesses that are concerned with and in favor of revitalizing Saucyos waterfront and making it something that everyone can enjoy. And at the same time brings economic prosperity to the city. So anyways, I'm open, you know, I hope to, you know, continue conversations with Mr. Thornburg in the EDAC and look forward to hopefully revitalizing Saucelito's waterfront. Thanks for your time tonight. Appreciate it. |
| 01:08:19.91 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Mr. Hobble. I will just clarify for the record that EDAC did not put forward the Blue Economy Initiative. That was put forward by the Working Waterfront Coalition. Thank you. All right, any other questions? |
| 01:08:33.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 01:08:35.20 | Sandra Bushmaker | I'll be real quick. Um, I wanted to recognize Sausalito Yacht Club for being co-sponsor of the boat show. Sausalito Yacht Club provided all of the volunteers for all the various venues, including myself, who sat out in that hot sun at the front gate for two days in a row. So I think that's really important that we recognize that local, um, organization and the work that it did to co-sponsor and co-host the boat show. Um, I have a question whether EDAC should be involved in a parking plan. My understanding is that that was the jurisdiction of the Planning Commission. And likely, I don't understand why EDAC is involved in sustainability when we have a sustainability commission. So those two points, I think, need to be looked at very carefully as redundant and perhaps not within the purview of the charge. for EDAC, which I reviewed before I gave my testimony tonight. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:09:38.64 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment? All right, we'll close. Oh, actually, sorry, Charles Melton. |
| 01:09:39.97 | Steven Woodside | All right, we'll go. |
| 01:09:40.69 | Sandra Bushmaker | . |
| 01:09:40.76 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:09:47.93 | Charles Melton | Good evening, my name is Charles Melton. I really appreciate the opportunity to provide comment here tonight. I really appreciate the update from EDAC. I do think the work that EDAC does is critically important and I don't see the work simply in one silo. I see the work transversing across multiple other commissions that may exist, if it's the Planning Commission, the Sustainability Commission, the PBAT Commission, even working directly with the City Council. They cannot exist in making decisions on their own without input from the other commissions. And I really think we need to look holistically at looking at the entire piece together. I also appreciate Ms. Bushmaker's comments in regards to the work of the Yacht Club in regards to contributing to the boat show. I think this is one of the great aspects about Sausalito is bringing a community together in so many positive different ways. If it's a boat show, if it's the artisan fair at the SCA, if it's improving our downtown and the PBID, everything like that. Every community member coming together, every business, every commission, every committee, every volunteer makes our community better. And I really support that. So I wanna thank Ms. Bushmaker for comments regarding providing that community and look forward to future engagement and future community building in these types of initiatives that EDAC is putting forward to really enhance our city and make our city so much better for the residents who live here. Thank you. |
| 01:11:07.58 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City Clerk. |
| 01:11:11.31 | Walfred Solorzano | I've seen none. |
| 01:11:12.39 | Steven Woodside | All right, with that, we'll close public comment. The action before us tonight is to receive and file the special presentation and reference EDAC's stated priorities when considering and evaluating and considering citywide priorities and direction for 2025 as part of our upcoming strategic planning discussion. Bearing that in mind, is there any comment from Council members on this item? |
| 01:11:35.27 | Unknown | And I just want to thank the members of the EDAC who give so much of their free volunteer time and energy to make a real commitment to improving the economic vitality of our community. And I only wish we had more time to hear from you to see some of the amazing data about the number of visitors we've had. I know you mentioned the winter market, which I had the chance to attend, but that's just one of the many opportunities and events that you and your team members have brought forth. So it's really invaluable, Scott, and I look forward to seeing what the PBID brings as well in partnership with the EDAC. And I appreciate it. you and your team members have brought forth. So it's really invaluable, Scott, and I look forward to seeing what the PBID brings as well in partnership with the EDAC. And I appreciate that you brought this for us before our strategic planning session so we can take it into consideration as we move forward on Saturday. So thank you again for all the great work EDAC that you all do. |
| 01:12:19.96 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City Clerk, will you set a timer for three minutes for comment by council members? Thank you. Go ahead. |
| 01:12:27.81 | Ian Sobieski | The first thing I ever did with government in Sausalito was volunteer to be on the EDAC. And so thank you for appointing me to it. I was its first vice chair. And I remember back then one of our... ideas on the whiteboard was a boat show. So one of my favorite sayings from the venture businesses, is that a success has many fathers and failure is an orphan so it's certainly a nice you certainly know something is successful when people start arguing over who's getting too much credit for it and i just want to echo um councilmember velocity in his comments to thank the yacht club and all the volunteers to thank mitch perkins who pulled it together to thank clipper yacht harbor that sponsors it to thank tom riley the chair of edak and the other ed EDAC members who first walked the grounds of Clipper Yacht Harbor with the Pendersons with the idea of the boat show, which didn't take off and only took off when other leadership took some steps forward and drew upon the many volunteers in our community to pull that event together. So I love that this event is such a point of pride that everyone wants to make sure that they're acknowledged for it, and they rightly should be. So thanks for everyone who's involved, and let's make that pie bigger and bigger and have a more and more successful boat show going forward. |
| 01:13:46.82 | Steven Woodside | Great. I do want to address Councilmember Blaustein's comments and announce that another updated protocol is that we will now be receiving and filing minutes from our key boards and commissions as part of our monthly meetings. So we will get to see the minutes for EDAC, for Planning Commission, for Historic Preservation, and for Sustainability, among others. We won't take action. We'll just receive and file so that we're aware of what our very important volunteers are up to. Okay, seeing no. |
| 01:14:17.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:14:18.35 | Steven Woodside | further. |
| 01:14:18.96 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. like to thank Walford for starting the three minute clock for the mayor, but you didn't actually start the clock for the mayor. And that we haven't actually adopted these protocols yet because they are our next, our next, there are, what do we say it's going to be? Item 6, Charlie? 6D. 6 Delta for our discussion as a council, whether or not we're going to adopt these new protocols. So that will be an exciting discussion. And since we have not adopted these protocols, we'll see if I go for three minutes for this comment at this point. |
| 01:14:37.04 | Steven Woodside | C6D. |
| 01:14:53.61 | Jill Hoffman | But I would like to call out, it's not just, you know, the other... The other things on the slide weren't just the yacht club, or not just the boat show. The other things on the slide were some of the incredible things that our parks and recs Karen DePauw, Department had done so I was hoping Brian would be here tonight, so that I could call out the things that were on the slide that he accomplished this year which were which was quite amazing. Karen DePauw, Our parks and rec director which are the incredible jazz and blues by the bay, which he has in incredibly expanded on and which just grows every year and draws hundreds of people every Friday night throughout the season. and is incredibly successful and the new What do we call it the toast to sauce Delito? Um, Taste of Sausalito. I don't know. No, are you sure it's taste or toast? It's toast to Sausalito, right? The second year, which has been even better this year, which who knew that was going to be such a great thing. And all the other things that he's done, and the pickleball courts that was mentioned today, and all the other great things that our Parks and Rec director is doing. So kudos to him and the rest of our staff who are just knocking it out of the park. So thanks to them and the cumulative effect of the positive things that they're doing here in Sausalito. So great job, team. |
| 01:16:07.60 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. All right, with that, we'll move on. Next item on our agenda is 6B. Receive a presentation and accept the fiscal year 2023-2024 audit with fiscal year 2024-2025 mid-year financial update. And we will welcome our finance director, Chad Hess. |
| 01:16:28.29 | Chad Hess | Right. Thank you for having me, Mayor, Council, members of the public. Let me get my screen set up here, and I will gladly share a presentation with you tonight. |
| 01:16:45.00 | Chad Hess | Right. Are you guys able to see my screen? Yes, sir. All right. Awesome. So here we go. We tonight are going to discuss the audit of the city of Sausalito. This is our fiscal year ending. June 30th. 2024. um, |
| 01:17:07.31 | Roger Taylor | Over. |
| 01:17:07.78 | Chad Hess | Thank you. All right. Um, Tonight we're gonna cover the deliverables and the scope of the audit. The areas of primary emphasis for the auditors, what are those transaction cycles that they looked at? What are those significant risks? that they pursue. We're going to talk about the audit report and the financial statements. any required communications and a letter addressed to the governance of the city, city council. We will provide a quick status update on the mid-year for fiscal year 24-25. And then we'll open it up for questions and discussions. So with the audit, we have three different deliverables that are attached to tonight's agenda. We have the basic financial statements. That is the result that tells us the inflows and the outflows of the city. tells us the net position or the cash on hand and other resources that the government has um, ability to to deploy. The next deliverable is the independent auditor's report over financial reporting. on compliance and other matters. This is also the generally accepted government auditing standards, which is issued by the GAO. This report focuses on the internal controls of the government, the things that we do as a finance department, to safeguard the city's resources and have our good internal controls to help reduce error and fraud. And finally, the last document or deliverable is a communication with those charged with government. This is attachment four to tonight's agenda. That was a late mail attachment. My apologies for that. This letter summarizes the communication for various significant matters to those charged with governments, and that is part of our presentation this evening. Areas of primary risk. So these are some of the things that the auditors really pay close attention to. You know, they look at the The, the risk of the environment. They bring in unpredictability to the audit. Each year they bring in new tests just so that the audit process is not stagnant and that it becomes predictable to the city. They bring in new tests each year to help create unpredictability in their process. They look at journal entries. Journal entries are riskier than other cycles, meaning accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll. So they pay really close attention to those and make sure that there is a good business rationale. for all journal entries or any unusual transaction. Um, they confirm and validate all of our revenues. So they get confirmation sent to So, various entities. They confirm with the county, they confirm with the state for sales tax. They send out letters to multiple different entities to confirm revenues and receivables. They send inquiries. Each of you have received a letter from our auditors. They're looking for any fraud-related . issues. Is there anything come up over the last year that needs to be looked at? in closer detail. Um, They also review all of our general ledger transactions, and then they do analytics, kind of budget to actual, look at key ratios and how they are changing. All right, next, the auditor's reports. Um, This is the generally accepted auditing standard. We received an unmodified opinion, which is a clean audit opinion. And it means that we have complied with the GASB standards. in all material respects. apply the accounting rules correctly. and consistently Our estimates are reasonable. and we have proper disclosures reflected in the financial statement. So that is the clean audit report that the city has been receiving over the last last several years. Now we'll look at some of the activity on this screen here. It summarizes three years worth of the balance sheet items, so assets. deferred inflows. of resources. As you can see here, cash has been increasing over the years. just under a $10 million increase from fiscal year 22 to 24. I'm currently at 33 million. That is outside of our OPEB trust. just for clarification. The other big thing that I'd like to draw your attention to, a significant increase in lease receivable, This is related to the new Laissez-Français school lease that was entered into in fiscal year 24. Here we're gonna look at our liabilities and our deferred inflows of resources. The big things here to look at is our long-term debt. This is our bonded debt, so our COPs. our 2006 A and B bonds, our sewer revenue bonds, and you can see that those balances are decreasing. over as we pay off that debt. The other area that I'd like to draw your attention to is our net pension liabilities, and our net OPEP liabilities. |
| 01:22:27.75 | Unknown | Um, |
| 01:22:30.62 | Chad Hess | As you can see here, our net pension liability has been increasing over the years. And that is a result of the CalPERS pension system not meeting their expected returns. I'm not sure. or changing their assumptions based upon their actuarial values. I'm. When we make our pension payments, there are two components of that pension payment. There's the normal cost when employees earn service credit for their current efforts and their current Wages. but there's also that pension UAL liability. And that unfunded actuarial liability, that is a significant payment the city makes every year. is a result of past service credits or past performance of former employees. and current employees that have performed work |
| 01:23:17.70 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 01:23:17.71 | Chad Hess | Yeah. Each year the city has made their normal cost contribution into the system. But CalPERS expected return hasn't been met and market volatility is resulted in this pension liability. that the city is responsible for. Here on this slide, you can see our restricted net position. Overall, net position is increasing. You can see that our investment in capital assets is holding fairly stable. Restricted net assets are increasing slightly. This is due to some increase in pension restrictions. We've made additional contributions or appreciation in our pension assets. And then our unrestricted net position, which is deficit, and that's a result of the recognition of GASB standards for pensions an OPAP. But as the city continues to have positive years, that unrestricted net position deficit has been slowly reducing and hopefully we can achieve positive net position in future years. Here we're going to look at the net cost of revenues for governmental activities. Governmental activities are not an exchange type transaction and They are typically activities that are supported by tax dollars. It looks at what is the net cost of service. So that's going to be your expenses, less those revenues attributable to that activity. And you can see that we have Had some volatility in that, but our tax dollars have been fairly stable and have been increasing. over the years. On this slide here, we're going to talk specifically about the general fund coverage. And this is really looking at your total expenditures as a percentage or your fund balance as a percentage of your, your, your expenditures. You can see here that our expenditures have been trending down in the general fund. Again, that is an intentional move. We've moved out the parking wages out of the general fund. And then we've also been much more intentional about how we record our expenses. We code record. expenses in the proper fund. utilizing other resources or those restricted resources first and foremost. before we expend general fund resources. You can see here that that increase has been increasing over the years. A portion of this is measure L funds and I want to pause from the presentation real quick just to better explain this unrestricted fund balance. So I'm going to pause my presentation real quick. and I wanna open up our audit report for a brief segue. I'm sorry, that is the wrong... the wrong screen. |
| 01:26:07.44 | Chad Hess | All right, here is our audit report. |
| 01:26:09.11 | Steven Woodside | Can you make that bigger? |
| 01:26:10.45 | Chad Hess | Yes. Yep. My apologies there. So this is a note in our financial statements. This is the note 7B. on page 76 of the PDF. And here you can see that 16,000 936,000. That is our unassigned fund balance. And a portion of that is our restrictions or our designations for emergency shortfall reserves These are our measure L dollars. that we have pledged to spend on infrastructure. And then also our budget stabilization reserve And then this is our unreserved undesignated fund balance. So that would be in excess of our reserves. So I wanted to just explain what that is a little bit in more detail, and we can certainly answer additional questions on that. So, if council so chooses. |
| 01:27:04.18 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, if I can, he said 16,000. It's 16 million. |
| 01:27:06.83 | Chad Hess | 16 million. Yep. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you, Chris. The city's pension plans, as we talked on a previous slide, the city's pension plans have been increasing. A lot of that is a result of the market performance. We have had several years where CalPERS has missed their expected return. of 6.8%. I do want to share some positive news that, in fiscal year that ended. 6.30 of 2024, CalPERS exceeded Their expected return, they had a 9.5% return compared to an expected return of 6.8. So that will provide some relief to the city. in fiscal year 27, 26, 27. our pension debt will or our pension obligations will be decreased. win that. valuation comes out. But this has been increasing, again, as a result of factors outside of the city's control. Here is a sensitivity to discount rate. We have our current discount rate. and if there is a 1% increase or decrease in that discount rate, you can see the impacts of that change. Here we look at the OPEB status. Here you can see the plan assets that the city has in our Section 115 trust. Those assets have been slowly increasing or accumulating due to appreciation of our investment. But unfortunately that actuarial liability has been increasing faster than those plan assets. and the city has not been making contributions trusts or unfunded liability has been increasing. over the years. On this next slide here, you can see the sensitivity to again, a 1% increase or decrease in the, plan investment discount rate. |
| 01:29:05.71 | Chad Hess | And on this slide here, you can see what would a 1% change in the healthcare trend assumption rate due to our OPEB liability. So what is that sensitivity to a rate change? Next, I'm going to go through the required communication. This is really a summary of attachment for the letter that is addressed to those charged with government. Um, And here it's gonna define what is the responsibility the auditor. And what is the responsibility of management? Um, The auditor's responsibility is to issue an opinion. You know, are our financial statements fairly stated? They are to evaluate our internal controls. and evaluate our compliance with laws. And then they need to communicate that information that they find with the governing body, city council. Management, that would be us. has the responsibility to prepare and produce financial statements. They are our financial statements. We need to maintain, establish and maintain internal controls. over financial reporting. really to make sure that we are safeguarding the city's assets, and able to produce easy and reliable and accurate financial statements. We need to make all of our records available to them at um, We need to inform them of any known or suspected fraud. and our responsibility to comply with laws and regulations. And lastly, to take corrective action on all audit findings. So more to come on that. One thing to note that this is an independent auditor. They are an independent auditor. They are. required to maintain independence by the AICPA, Board of Accountancy rules. by the state. And they are external and independent of the city, in fact. and appearance. The timing of the audit was communicated in that letter. We had our field work during the first early weeks of October. And we implemented a new GASB standard, GASME 100, which deals with changes in reporting entities. Um, They disclose what are the management's judgments and estimates. What are those things that we have to assume or predict a balance, and that's really our claims payable for our self-insured liabilities. There is an actuarial study on those. So again, it's not an, No number, it's an estimate. So that is a significant estimate. Um, how capital assets are depreciated, Our pension plans, actuarial assumptions, and those are driven by CalPERS. And then also our OPEB plans. Again, those are assumptions and you evaluated or determined by actuarial. Here they disclose what are those sensitive disclosures, what are those disclosures that need to be paid attention to and have a little scrutiny put to. were there any difficulties with performing the audit. positive news, there were none. um, any significant, um, audit adjustments that were considered immaterial or unadjusted differences, and there were none all immaterial items were adjusted, but there were no significant or material audit findings or adjustments. Um, Down here, deficiencies in internal control over financial reporting. And here is a big change for the city of Sausalito. We have received a clean yellow book or report, this governmental auditing governmental auditing standards report over compliance. This is the first time the city's received a clean finding free audit since fiscal year 23, 24. So really big improvement, really great news for the city there. And that is a requirement of our federal dollars that we're receiving for The Ferry Landside Project, that we have and maintain a finding-free audit and that we have strong internal controls. over financial reporting. |
| 01:33:11.24 | Chris Zapata | Chad, can you please go back on the length of time? Yes. 2324. Did you mean 2014 or? |
| 01:33:11.46 | Chad Hess | Um, Yes. |
| 01:33:19.22 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:33:19.41 | Chad Hess | Fiscal year 2000, 13, 14. is when the last time the city had a finding free audit. they've always received a clean audit opinion, meaning they've had financial statements that are truthful and accurate in all material respects and comply with the auditing standards or accounting standards. but there's always been internal control findings. that there has been weaknesses in the city's policy. and procedures. On this slide here, they discuss some additional communication You know, they received representation from management on various assertions. that are disclosed in this letter. They're not aware of any significant accounting estimates or matters that we consulted with other accountants. or auditors. And then there were no material uncertainties related to events and conditions. and they're not aware of any fraud or legal path. I think that's a good question. on our radar for coming years. So this year we implemented GASB 100. Next year we've got a couple of new GASB statements coming down the line for compensated assets. absences and risk disclosures. So with that, we're gonna move forward into a kind of a mid-year review, a real brief mid-year review. More will be coming at next. council meeting, but I wanted to give you some real brief updates here. So as you recall, we started the fiscal year on July 1st, 2024. In our budget, general fund budget, we had a deficit spend of just over a million dollars. And that was a result of lower than expected sales tax revenue, higher insurance costs. and increasing UAL payments So, for our pension liabilities. Now, We have been evaluating the budget. We've been looking at our assumptions, looking at our revenue, And looking at last year, and there's fierce budget variances as well. We've taken the feedback from council to really let's get better at budgeting and look at those variances. One of those things that we uncovered is this educational revenue augmentation fund also known as ERAP. And you can see on the screen that this was a program developed in the early 1990s. And the goal is to shift or redirect some of this revenue that was deposited into a countywide account. and then reallocate it to schools, community colleges, to offset some of the funding these entities were otherwise or would receive from state general funds. So it was a revenue shift between the state. and municipalities. Now, In a few counties, and there's five counties in the state of California that have, what's called excess ERAF or ERAF funds above and beyond the needs of the schools in that community or in that county. Um, So those five counties are Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara. And we get a rebate Um, from the county. twice a year based upon these EREF funds. My analysis shows that the city has not been budgeting for these funds and has had significant positive variances on our property tax line item for a number of years. So, So when we include this in our budget, I am anticipating a $550,000 dollar. ERAF. revenue source coming in this year, which is in line with last year and the previous year. Now, one word of caution on ERAF is this is a contentious item. There is a lot of discussion going around the state about how to handle this excess ERAP So it is maybe cautious revenue that we need to continue to monitor and be aware of. how the state is going to handle this going forward. Some other adjustments on the revenue side. We are having very strong revenues, as we've disclosed previously on the planning and building So we are going to make a recommendation to increase our projected revenues in those departments by 175,000. at 141,000. There's also about 125,000 or 105,000, I'm sorry, of miscellaneous revenue adjustments throughout our chart of accounts um, that aren't significant, so I didn't want to disclose here, but in total, we're gonna increase our revenue budget by about 970,000. So that's positive news that we're bringing forward and we will bring all of the details at the next council meeting. Our expenditures for the first six months are trending in line with our expectations. There are some areas that I'm able to start to reduce some of our budgets, but there are unfortunately are areas that we need to increase our budget, our expected budget, Some of those being the climate act agreement that was approved previously. And then also a game room build out, we need to have some additional space for our staff within the city hall. And there's a request that is going to be coming for some additional space that would be built out in the lower level of City Hall. With that said, I have brought our million dollar deficit down to about 230,000, and we are continuing to look for areas of opportunity. to really bring that down to a balanced budget. So, I know there are areas of our budget that there are some additional pockets and they will come in under budget. Um, I'm not sure how. how tight I want to be with our budget, because that's going to create some challenges in the event we need some resources. But I am confident that we will be closer to a balanced budget, even more so than this 230. So again, more information will be forthcoming at a next council meeting, but I wanted to get some positive news. on that. With that, I have a feeling I'm pretty close to time, so I will open it up for questions. |
| 01:39:32.57 | Steven Woodside | You're two minutes over, Chad. Thank you. |
| 01:39:34.37 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:39:34.39 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:39:35.86 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:39:36.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:39:36.35 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:39:37.07 | Steven Woodside | Any questions of council members? |
| 01:39:41.48 | Unknown | I can start. Or Stephen, your way. Okay, so in the late, well, first of all, congratulations on a clean audit, very exciting. I wanted to ask you, when was the last time our city had a fully clean audit? |
| 01:39:55.43 | Chad Hess | Well, so that's all. when we talk audit, I want to talk financial statement audit, and that's the numbers, the balance sheet, the income statements. That has, we've always received a clean audit opinion. I wanna make sure that we're clear on the clean audit opinion is, We comply with the financial reporting framework and our reports are truthful. it. We've always received a clean audit, but the last time we received a clean internal control memo, memorandum of external controls is another word, was fiscal year 2013, 2014, over a decade. |
| 01:40:31.61 | Unknown | So this is the first time in over a decade. So that's a big deal. |
| 01:40:34.53 | Chad Hess | huge. It's huge. |
| 01:40:35.97 | Unknown | Thank you for your hard work. And I noticed in the internal memo though, there was a couple of areas for risk. Interestingly, it said revenue recognition. So we're in trouble for not knowing how much money we're making. |
| 01:40:47.64 | Chad Hess | No. |
| 01:40:47.96 | Unknown | So, That means it's true. |
| 01:40:49.48 | Chad Hess | So in auditing standards, revenue is a very risky area of audit. |
| 01:40:50.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:40:56.54 | Chad Hess | Now, in the auditing process as a former auditor, you have to evaluate your risks. And the AICPA has said, revenue recognition is a significant risk for all entities. So that is a significant risk area. Regardless. Um, So that will be in there. But they spend a lot of time looking at revenues. They look at all of our revenue sources. They look at all of our cash receipts. And really look at how are we being intentional with this and really monitoring how and when we recognize revenue. So, It's nothing unique or specific to Sausalito. |
| 01:41:34.77 | Unknown | Okay, great. I just wanted to confirm because that was exciting, but also wasn't sure if it was related to the ERAF. And so forward, should we anticipate the same amount of revenue for our ERAF funds that haven't been accounted for? |
| 01:41:42.40 | Chad Hess | No. |
| 01:41:49.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:41:49.02 | Chad Hess | THE END OF |
| 01:41:49.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:41:49.17 | Chad Hess | Yes, I did an analysis and I went back five or six years and looked at what are those balances. that we've received. Um, And I feel confident we will receive our $550,000 that I am going to put in the budget. Just, We received our tax dollars. after I've, put this together and we received like 300 and 25,000 of excess ERAF in December of this year. So I'm confident we will exceed that. Um, when the full fiscal year is over. |
| 01:42:22.38 | Unknown | Fantastic, and to confirm the unrestricted fund balance, which had previously been a 10 million in light of the audit is that 16 million |
| 01:42:29.47 | Chad Hess | It is, but with the caveat that 3.6 million of that is Measure L funds. |
| 01:42:36.99 | Unknown | But it's still important. |
| 01:42:37.36 | Chad Hess | They're technically unrestricted, but we want to honor our pledge to the community that it would be infrastructure. |
| 01:42:43.98 | Unknown | Absolutely. But so then that still leaves it at about 13 million, which is more than 10 million over what we had expected. |
| 01:42:50.61 | Chad Hess | Yes, the general fund had a positive increase. The general fund operating had a positive increase So, to point $2.6 million, I believe. Let me go find the actual number. |
| 01:43:06.83 | Chad Hess | But yes, the general fund had a really good year. Um, And we've added to our surplus. were accumulated surpluses over the years. Um, And that's how we got there. So if we look, oh, one second, let me find the right schedule. |
| 01:43:25.09 | Unknown | I believe it was on page 16 and 17. |
| 01:43:26.60 | Chad Hess | you Paige so Paige Page 127 of the audit report, I think, is going to be the best place. Let me share my screen real quick. Because this is an important thing for pre as well as our community to see and understand So our general fund, can you guys see my screen? |
| 01:43:50.42 | Unknown | No, we can't quite see it. If you could zoom in more. |
| 01:43:52.14 | Chad Hess | Thank you. Bye. Okay. |
| 01:43:52.80 | Unknown | Great. Um, |
| 01:43:54.48 | Chad Hess | All right. |
| 01:43:55.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:55.90 | Chad Hess | So this is, this is called a combining schedule and our, our, Our front-facing general fund is really three internal funds. We have our general fund, which is operations. that pays all of our wages, that buys all of our supplies, professional material, professional services, Really, that's the operation side. There's also the measure L where we get our sales tax dollars, and then we also have our pension trust and their resources. So if we look at just the operation column, we had 18.8 million in revenues, We had 18.8 in expenditures. But then here's where we're getting our surplus is the transfer in from the parking fund and MLK fund. that's really driving that, that increase. But overall we had a, $2.6 million dollar surplus in the general fund. help. |
| 01:44:46.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:44:46.49 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Director Hesse. |
| 01:44:47.84 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:44:47.96 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:44:48.04 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:44:49.06 | Steven Woodside | Vice Mayor Woodside. |
| 01:44:51.13 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Since this is my first opportunity to ask you questions in public, Director Hess, can you just very briefly explain your qualifications to be our treasurer and to review this audit? |
| 01:45:06.07 | Chad Hess | Yes, sir. Yes. So I hold a bachelor's and master's degree in accounting. I am a certified public accounting accountant, and I hold a CPA designation, uh... since 2016. issued by the state of Minnesota. In my background, my previous working career, I spent six years in public accounting, working for or working in audits of local government, so municipalities, school districts. special districts in the Minnesota market. After that six years, I left public accounting for a brief stint, and then I rejoined it. and spent two years with a national accounting firm, CPA firm, doing consulting for local government special districts in the California market. That is where I was introduced to the city of Sausalito. working for this, this, accounting firm as a consultant in the municipal space. |
| 01:46:05.40 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Focusing on the audit, you presented the work of the independent auditor. Correct. Their conclusions, your reporting on, they were preceded by closing the books. That happened earlier, well, excuse me, late last year. Yeah. |
| 01:46:25.58 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 01:46:25.78 | Steven Woodside | That is correct. And that's a typical pattern for a local public agency such as Sausalito? |
| 01:46:32.31 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so the fiscal year closes 630. And the, the, the required date or it is a required date is six months after the issuance. the municipality should issue their audit report. In between that time, there's a period of time where we are waiting for payables to come in, waiting for receivables to come in. And we start our audit preparation where we slows the books and make different adjustments to prepare for our audit. That process takes about two and a half to three months to really get things organized. before we can turn over our trial balance to the auditors to audit and do their testing. Um, Like I said, our field work audit where they do the test of balances took place the second week in October. which is shortly after we finished closing our books and brought information forward to Council. as well as the finance committee at that time. Okay. |
| 01:47:34.57 | Steven Woodside | Now, looking ahead, we've had the same auditor for the last, what, three, four, five years? Thank you. |
| 01:47:42.19 | Chad Hess | Two years. |
| 01:47:42.24 | Steven Woodside | Two years. |
| 01:47:42.94 | Chad Hess | So, Prior to our current auditor, we had Maize & Associates for six years. |
| 01:47:48.64 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 01:47:48.98 | Chad Hess | And this is our second year with Badawi & Associates on a three-year contract. |
| 01:47:54.33 | Steven Woodside | Okay, and typically you would rotate auditors over time so that you're assured of independence? |
| 01:48:00.18 | Chad Hess | Yes, yes, it is good to rotate auditors. You know, I think three years is probably too frequent. I think... Seven, eight years is too long. I think maybe in that five year range is good, is maybe an adequate space. There's a lot of work to change auditors. So that's maybe part of my comment is it's a lot of extra effort. But yes, it is recommended to change audit firms just to get fresh eyes, to get a fresh perspective. and to again, Maintain that independence. You know, I'm going to be working with these people. you know, for, several months a year for the next five years or three years. And yeah, we become familiar and it's good to get new people looking at things. |
| 01:48:41.86 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Focusing on the unallocated, if you will, fund balance or at the end of the year results and rather than looking at the higher number that includes Measure L, there's more than $10 million that are in unallocated funds that could be |
| 01:48:50.06 | Fred Moore | Yeah. |
| 01:49:00.97 | Steven Woodside | allocated going forward to various things. |
| 01:49:04.44 | Chad Hess | That is correct. |
| 01:49:04.98 | Steven Woodside | that. the Paying down pension obligations further, investing in different things, infrastructure, et cetera, on top of what Measure L provides, correct? |
| 01:49:16.51 | Chad Hess | That is correct. Yeah, I believe that we have a surplus of resources in our general fund that could be deployed to meet the community's needs. Our goal is to to maintain adequate reserves in the event of an emergency, but not to over accumulate resources simply to accumulate them. Our goal is to deploy them. |
| 01:49:38.40 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. And the $10 million or more than $10 million is on top of the 25% reserve, correct? |
| 01:49:45.92 | Chad Hess | That is correct. |
| 01:49:46.60 | Steven Woodside | That is correct. I just wanted to make sure of those facts. And I'll try to be brief. There are two areas that were either surprising or large dollar amounts or areas of concern I want to focus on. First is the education. |
| 01:50:02.32 | Fred Moore | Yeah. |
| 01:50:03.86 | Steven Woodside | Relief augmentation fund ERAF and the fact that five counties including Marin Actually receive more in tax dollars than necessary to fund the state's obligation to schools so that excess gets returned The cities to the mosquito abatement district and others who have property tax No |
| 01:50:06.90 | Fred Moore | Yeah. |
| 01:50:06.98 | Unknown | But... |
| 01:50:18.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:24.36 | Chad Hess | That is correct. Every taxing agency, so everybody who shares that 1%, contributes into this ERAF pool, and then the rebate is allocated proportionally back based upon their contribution. |
| 01:50:38.50 | Steven Woodside | And I noticed that the five counties that are involved, two of which I served as county council, are in the Bay Area and have had to, over the last 20 years plus, vigorously defended the ability to retain the excess because others in the state would love to get their hands on it. Is that kind of a fair statement? That's a fair statement. |
| 01:51:00.51 | Chad Hess | Yes. So they are cautious dollars. Um, I mean, we are receiving them, we have been receiving them, we need to continue to monitor activities statewide to, to be prepared in the event that they are, no longer redistributed back to the city. |
| 01:51:19.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. So we received ERAF that has been accounted for and accounts for some of the increase in the fund balance for last year. And you're confident in budgeting for that similar amount in this year? |
| 01:51:28.66 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:51:34.14 | Chad Hess | Yes, I am. We received our first property tax settlement And we get the excess ERAF shortly thereafter. And we've received over 300,000 already this year in excess ERAF. |
| 01:51:45.87 | Steven Woodside | And then lastly, just to focus on CalPERS, I noticed you were describing the fact that we've had increased costs due to the fact that in previous years, Caltrans did not meet its expediate. CalPERS. Not Caltrans. Sorry about that. But that you think they've had a good year now recently and that will show up, what, two years later? Is this always two years behind? |
| 01:52:15.06 | Chad Hess | There is always a two year lag between when CalPERS closes their fiscal year and our UAL payment comes into effect. So each August, CalPERS issues a new valuation report um, that will go into effect in two fiscal years. So you're correct. Our relief will come in fiscal year 26, 27. |
| 01:52:38.01 | Steven Woodside | And periodically, this city, I think it was more than two years ago, or maybe two years ago, had an independent entity come in and assess our future liabilities for CalPERS. |
| 01:52:52.63 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so we engage Bartels and associates to help the city look at A potential spend down of our Section 115 resources to help smooth out those those increasing UAL payments when they when they kind of reach their apex, if you will. But yes, we had Martels and Associates, and that report is, |
| 01:53:10.68 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:53:14.12 | Chad Hess | on the public record. |
| 01:53:15.22 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Um, And do you enter? anticipate retaining them or some similar group anytime soon? |
| 01:53:22.19 | Chad Hess | Yes, Barclos & Associates was acquired by another entity. But I think it would be worth the city's interest to continue that discussion and really look at what is our strategy going forward to managing that. |
| 01:53:35.94 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 01:53:37.04 | Chad Hess | Each, it's a moving target. in many ways. Each year we get a new valuation. And each year there's always a new amortization base that has a new 20-year 20 year amortization. So that, that, that, is always going to be shifting out. It's always kind of like a 20 year rolling average with this UAL payment. So, It's a tricky it's a tricky thing to manage, but I think we need to develop a strategy and a plan on In two years, when we've successfully made a $3.5 million UAL payment, a $3.5 million UAL payment, and then in 2017 or 2017, 2027. Our UAL payment is a half a million, $700,000 less. What do we do with that? Because those dollars were in our previous year's budget, but what do we do with that savings then? do we, attack our pension debt keep paying what we've been paying to manage that. that obligation. Or do we use those excess resources to you know, invest in other areas of the government. But that's a discussion that needs to be had is how do we want to approach this pension debt and how aggressive do we want to be? |
| 01:54:53.74 | Steven Woodside | to be. you Okay, so that's for a future discussion, and you've answered my questions. Thank you very much, Director Hess. Thank you, Vice President. Thank you. |
| 01:55:00.05 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.68 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any other questions of Director Hess? |
| 01:55:05.31 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:55:05.35 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:55:05.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Director Hess, for all of your hard work on this. I know it's a huge task. And so I wanted to go back and ask some follow-up questions on the general fund increases, specifically from the parking. from the parking fund and the MLK fund One of the things that we, that you and I always talk about are the, capital costs of those, running those funds. And the the cost of managing those capital assets |
| 01:55:47.54 | Sergio Rudin | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:55:47.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:49.21 | Jill Hoffman | and that we're still waiting on. One is the facilities assessment for MLK. So even though it's a revenue generating asset MLK, we obtain revenue off of it, but it also costs. There's a cost to |
| 01:55:56.43 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:55:56.78 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 01:56:05.19 | Jill Hoffman | having that revenue generating asset. So even though we have revenue that comes from it from our general fund that goes into the general fund we still don't know how much the um, the costs of that and the capital costs are Karen Hollweg, going to we're going to have to you know bank against the general fund do we have any idea, I guess, that maybe that's it sorry that may be a question to the city manager, we have that timeline on that. Karen Hollweg, assessment was going to come to us sometime in January. |
| 01:56:32.37 | Steven Woodside | Look, |
| 01:56:36.27 | Steven Woodside | Hold on, Chad. I think the city manager is going to answer. |
| 01:56:36.56 | Chris Zapata | you Councilmember Hoffman, we're close. My understanding was early February we'd be getting our report back from Veritas. |
| 01:56:46.87 | Jill Hoffman | So early February that might, well, okay. So that in the context of the general fund, so we're talking about, And as a follow up, I think to the vice mayor's question of You know, we have 10 million or something in our, you know, unallocated in our general fund. we really don't have 10 million in our general fund because we don't know how much that MLK capital asset is going to cost in Do we have any estimate in our set aside Chad in our budget anywhere for estimated capital costs. |
| 01:57:18.64 | Chad Hess | So in the MLK fund, let me go up one more page. the balance sheet. In the MLK Fund, we currently have you know, 713,000 of cash as of 630. We have more now. Thank you. Um, Those are the resources that we have in that fund available to service the debt service and make our repairs. Do we have large set-aside dollars for major improvements in that fund? No, not at this point. We will have a schedule of what are those expected repairs that we can start planning to implement and reserve some of those funds within or some of our revenues within this fund for those improvements. So yes, we have been transferring dollars out of this fund to bring them over to the general fund. But I believe in the future that will start to be tapered back so we can continue to invest in this property and maintain them as a productive investment for the city. |
| 01:58:17.56 | Jill Hoffman | that goes yeah and so that for us as a council member that goes across the board sorry that goes across the board when we're talking about unallocated funds of 10 million, but we don't know how many millions are kind of hanging out there, for all of our capital assets that we have for our facilities assessment. And city manager, can you remind me how many, how many facilities do we have that we're trying to determine our, |
| 01:58:34.63 | Fred Moore | and, |
| 01:58:46.39 | Jill Hoffman | deferred maintenance across the board. |
| 01:58:48.44 | Chris Zapata | All of them. |
| 01:58:49.35 | Jill Hoffman | But when you say all, is that 20 buildings? What is that? |
| 01:58:52.30 | Chris Zapata | What is it, 54, Chad? I'm not sure, I can't remember. |
| 01:58:54.92 | Chad Hess | Bye. |
| 01:58:54.97 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 01:58:55.00 | Chad Hess | It's going to be all of our MLK buildings. It's going to be Old City Hall. It's going to be... |
| 01:58:55.02 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:58:55.03 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:59:01.18 | Chad Hess | City Hall, the fire station, the police station. It's all of our tenant space. And then we're also inspecting the peers for our Tidelands Fund or our Tideland land leases, so the piers for like Spinnaker, Trident, So, so. |
| 01:59:18.51 | Jill Hoffman | So, so all in the list is about 50 different Yeah. |
| 01:59:22.51 | Chad Hess | Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's all encompassing. It's a very exhaustive list of parcels that we're inspecting. |
| 01:59:30.35 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, it's surprising, but we don't have ongoing maintenance or facilities. maintenance control systems or permit, you know, ongoing maintenance schedules for these buildings and even more scary we approve the climatex climatex plan so Okay, so thank you for that And my next question is The attachment for which is the late mail letter that we got, which is dated. I think it was December 31st. |
| 02:00:07.90 | Chad Hess | December 31st, the same as the audit report. |
| 02:00:09.25 | Jill Hoffman | Someone was working on New Year's Eve. I was. |
| 02:00:14.41 | Chad Hess | I was. |
| 02:00:14.95 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yeah, and thank you for sending this out to us. You were working today or working hard today to get us informed. And I was quickly looking through today. Here's my question. On page two of that letter, there's a heading that says, Significant Risks Identified. And it says, we've identified the following significant risks. And I think the second one actually is a follow up on Council Member Blaustein's question. But let me ask the first question, or is the first risk identified? And that's on page two of the late mail, and that's attachment four. And it says, risk management override of internal controls, and that's in italics. And it's kind of a general thing, and I'm going to read it, and then I'm just going to ask you what it means. A risk of management override of internal controls exists at any entity where management can change or decide not to perform that entity's internal controls, period. So that's the first question. bullet and there's only two so what does that mean in the context of this report for Sausalito what's your understanding of what that means in the context of our audit |
| 02:01:19.35 | Chad Hess | What is it? |
| 02:01:23.28 | Chad Hess | You're right. Yep. So these two risks, the second one, revenue recognition, we talked about being a required significant risk under auditing standards. This risk of management override of internal controls is the second. required significant risk that must be considered under auditing standards. So this is going to be a significant risk on almost all management letters across the state. And |
| 02:01:54.57 | Alice Merrill | in, |
| 02:01:55.19 | Chad Hess | What this is looking at is we have a defined set of internal controls. This is how we process transactions. This is who does what. And we segregate the activities of the accounting, the authorization, and the access of cities resources. Those are the three segregation is that we need to make sure that not one individual can do, you know, an overlapping attached. So the risk is, is that, okay, we have these controls that are in place, this process in place, the risk is that we, don't follow our control. |
| 02:02:33.94 | Charles Melton | We |
| 02:02:34.43 | Chad Hess | don't. segregate the duties or we say, okay, this is our process, but I'm running late today. I'm gonna ignore that. um, So the auditors have to look for instances of non-compliance with our our controls looking for exceptions. And they do significant testing around our transactions. They pull samples of AP items of cash receipts of payroll items, and they'd look for noncompliance with those internal controls. Um, So that's a significant risk area that they must evaluate as part of their audit. |
| 02:03:11.75 | Jill Hoffman | And so this is something that they found that Sausalito has |
| 02:03:16.38 | Chad Hess | No, no, it's an area that they have to evaluate in their risk assessment. They have to evaluate How is the control environment How is management their opinions on internal controls. It's not saying there's significant risk or overwhelming risk in Sausalito specifically. It's a required risk for auditing standards. |
| 02:03:41.76 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Got it. Okay, so then the second one, It's a... We've talked about a little bit. It says revenue, recognition, rest. |
| 02:03:50.60 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:03:51.19 | Jill Hoffman | And it says, errors in revenue recognition can affect bond covenant ratios. And the net position of the city. |
| 02:03:57.84 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:03:57.86 | Chad Hess | Mm-hmm. So there's two types of, There's two types of fraud. There is misappropriation of assets, which is theft. And then there's also, you know, I'm not sure if you're I'm drawing a blank, sorry. |
| 02:04:15.57 | Unknown | Good point. |
| 02:04:16.47 | Chad Hess | You know, minute. incorrect financial reporting or manipulation of the financial statements. In that regard, Revenue is a very key component of of the government. And the risk here is that if the city is at risk of violating a bond covenant, The auditors have the perceived risk that the city could inadvertently or intentionally recognize revenue early to avoid noncompliance with their bond covenants. So revenue has been an area of Rick. in the auditing world for a number of years. If we even think back to like Enron and WorldCom and some of those frauds, A lot of that was around revenue. and revenue recognition. So the The Auditing Standards Board and the AICPA came together in response to a lot of that and said revenue must be. a significant risk on all audits. unless you can articulate and document why it would not be. . And it's hard to document why it would not be a significant area. |
| 02:05:29.02 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Okay. Thank you for those explanations. I appreciate that. Thank you. |
| 02:05:32.46 | Chad Hess | You're welcome. |
| 02:05:32.49 | Jill Hoffman | You're welcome. Let me ask you, finally, I guess two years ago, we switched from doing a... A CAFR, or whatever. |
| 02:05:43.63 | Chad Hess | an ACFER, Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. |
| 02:05:46.55 | Jill Hoffman | Right, right. Yeah, we switched from that to do just an audit. I'm sorry. |
| 02:05:50.06 | Chad Hess | basic financial statement. |
| 02:05:51.81 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, we discussed earlier this year switching back to that. |
| 02:05:55.32 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 02:05:56.28 | Jill Hoffman | What are your thoughts on that? |
| 02:05:58.11 | Chad Hess | My thoughts are I have other areas of opportunity to improve our department and our cycles. that would be... bring and yield more benefit to the city than producing an ACFER. At this point in time, I think an act for has value and I think it It is a longer-term goal. but I would much rather devote time to developing our 10-year plan building better budgeting methodologies and really focus on improving continues to improve our department and our capabilities within our department Now that way in the future, we can get to an ACFER in a more manageable effort. |
| 02:06:45.24 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, gotcha. |
| 02:06:46.79 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:06:47.57 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, yeah, no, I got that. |
| 02:06:50.69 | Ian Sobieski | Hi, Director Hess. It's Ian. Come on. Thank you, Councilman. |
| 02:06:53.44 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:06:53.61 | Unknown | you |
| 02:06:53.76 | Chad Hess | Bye. |
| 02:06:54.44 | Ian Sobieski | So you closed our books in October. thereabouts and reported to the city council an upward revision in our budget surplus for the fiscal year. That's the budget. That's the year that this audit's about, right? It's the same one. Yes, yes. Yep. I forgot what the actual surplus was. Originally, it was something like 500K. And then after closing the books, you revised it upwards to what? |
| 02:07:17.28 | Chad Hess | Yeah, to 2.5, 2.6, it ended at 2.6. |
| 02:07:21.13 | Ian Sobieski | So now we have a budget. Now we have an audit of those closed books. Did that number? How much did that number change? |
| 02:07:27.60 | Chad Hess | I'd have to go back and look, but it's less than a hundred thousand. It's, it's a rounding difference. Okay. |
| 02:07:33.99 | Ian Sobieski | So the audit then confirmed the closed book number that you have talked about. |
| 02:07:38.53 | Chad Hess | That is correct. |
| 02:07:39.09 | Ian Sobieski | Uh, So now, so thank you for that. Going forward, you have this, and we're going to talk more about it next time, but you highlight that you are revising our, are going to suggest a revising our budget prediction for the current fiscal year, the one we're in, |
| 02:07:56.84 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:07:57.35 | Ian Sobieski | When we started the year, we budgeted, made a forward looking projection that we would have roughly a million dollar deficit. And now halfway through, you're gonna revise that downwards to something like a quarter million dollars. So 75 is less. |
| 02:08:09.88 | Fred Moore | All right. Nice. |
| 02:08:13.21 | Ian Sobieski | I just want to make sure I understood that right. And then the third question then was about these, this whole thing about, uh, accounting for our obligations as a city. You know, it's something that I pointed out and it's why I always advocated for this fiscal facilities. condition assessment is that in our financial reporting under GASB, we don't have, there isn't a requirement to have a, liability on the balance sheet for the repairs and maintenance. That is a it's a. |
| 02:08:46.52 | Chad Hess | or deferred maintenance. No. |
| 02:08:49.02 | Ian Sobieski | And so this is one of those cases where, in our practical way of being, we would think you know, you save money for the roof because you know you're going to need but under the general accounting principle, |
| 02:08:57.98 | Fred Moore | But, |
| 02:08:58.03 | Roger Taylor | Yeah. |
| 02:08:58.27 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:09:00.90 | Ian Sobieski | policies. That's not a thing that's done the way that way. the way depreciation is done by a formula rather Right? |
| 02:09:09.03 | Chad Hess | Yeah. |
| 02:09:09.37 | Ian Sobieski | you |
| 02:09:09.49 | Chad Hess | Thank you. |
| 02:09:09.50 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah. |
| 02:09:09.52 | Chad Hess | Oh, gosh. |
| 02:09:09.57 | Ian Sobieski | SHOW. Yeah. |
| 02:09:09.81 | Chad Hess | Yeah, so in the general fund, we don't recognize capital assets. We don't recognize depreciation. It's more of a cash basis in the general fund proper. um it, Yes, we recognize the assets to the historical value. They are depreciated. systematically over their estimated useful life. But they're at that value and we don't record the deferred maintenance. You know, if we neglect our buildings for a period of time and there's a deferred maintenance liability to improve them back, we don't recognize that. And that's what that facilities assessment will tell us. |
| 02:09:51.83 | Ian Sobieski | So for instance, we have a road condition index of something like 58. And the director of public works has told us that to bring that to a level of 75 would take something like 30 million dollars. |
| 02:09:55.61 | Chad Hess | We do. |
| 02:09:56.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:02.95 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:10:03.28 | Ian Sobieski | That fact, does that in any way change the amount of cash that we have invested in US Treasury bonds? Does that change the fact? |
| 02:10:12.02 | Chad Hess | No, it hasn't. |
| 02:10:12.75 | Ian Sobieski | I mean, that's cash in the bond. So when we talk about how much money the city has, that's a statement of fact that we have $13 million in unallocated assets in cash or equivalents. It's just a fact, just like a fact is poor. |
| 02:10:13.41 | Chad Hess | I mean, I'm |
| 02:10:23.03 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:10:26.79 | Unknown | Yep. |
| 02:10:27.11 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:10:29.26 | Ian Sobieski | All right. I just want to be clear that, that, that money actually does exist. So similarly in our parking and our MLK we, we don't have what we don't have for many of our assets. It's why we're doing this fiscal. We haven't brought everything up to a hundred percent. There is some expense we know if we wanted to have it be a hundred percent, but whether we have our roads be a hundred percent, 90% or 75%, that's a choice we make, whether we have a, |
| 02:10:29.47 | Fred Moore | Yeah. |
| 02:10:47.24 | Chris Zapata | That's gross. |
| 02:10:57.62 | Ian Sobieski | or the repaint our house every year or do it every five years. That's a choice. Yeah. |
| 02:10:57.93 | Fred Moore | No, no. |
| 02:11:01.82 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, thank you very much. Director, congratulations indeed. And one last question, you have did this professionally for many, many municipalities. |
| 02:11:01.91 | Unknown | I'm not sure. You're very welcome. |
| 02:11:09.40 | Ian Sobieski | How common. |
| 02:11:09.60 | Chad Hess | Yep. |
| 02:11:10.43 | Ian Sobieski | is a clean audit. |
| 02:11:12.99 | Chad Hess | It depends on the size of the municipality, but it is rare. I mean, there's a lot of times where there's internal control findings. in smaller, smaller municipalities because of limited staff and it's hard to segregate duties, Yeah, there were a lot of communities that I've audited that always had findings. So this is a big win for the city. |
| 02:11:35.10 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Blaustein. |
| 02:11:36.38 | Unknown | I just had a quick follow up on some of the questions from Councilman Hoffman and Councilmember Sobieski with regards to the properties that we do own because we are undertaking an assessment of their current conditions. Could you just clarify those are all for the most part revenue generating assets, correct? |
| 02:11:52.23 | Chad Hess | Most of them, yes. With the exception of the police department, the fire department is revenue. I guess we get $100,000 a year. Um, |
| 02:12:02.20 | Unknown | be generated in leases from some of these |
| 02:12:05.48 | Chad Hess | it's two over 2 million over 2 million a year. |
| 02:12:10.08 | Unknown | Okay, just wanted to clarify that we would be keeping up our property where we are revenue generating from. |
| 02:12:14.62 | Chad Hess | Yes, yeah. |
| 02:12:15.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:12:16.73 | Chad Hess | You're welcome. |
| 02:12:23.82 | Steven Woodside | Just one clarifying question, Chad. Thank you for your really thorough report and your really thorough presentation. The on page 127, which you shared before, it shows a net change in general fund balance of 2.6 million dollars it shows a separate column for measure l of net change in fund balance of 2.9 million dollars and so the measure l fund monies are not included in the 2.6 million dollar surplus that you announced to us at the end of last year is that right |
| 02:12:51.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:02.60 | Chad Hess | That is correct. Yes, we are our measure L balance. on that same page increased 2.9. No, Ian. |
| 02:13:13.15 | Steven Woodside | Okay, and so we are not transferring monies set aside for- our streets, sidewalks, storm drains into our general fund. |
| 02:13:21.26 | Chad Hess | to our general. It's in the Measure L Fund and it's segregated until we are ready to expend those on an identified project. Um, |
| 02:13:31.84 | Steven Woodside | We're not considering that unassigned general fund balance. |
| 02:13:35.12 | Chad Hess | No, it's technically unassigned, but it's not in what we're communicating as that 10 million. It's in addition to that. |
| 02:13:44.99 | Steven Woodside | And by the way, Measure L was a majority measure. It was not a supermajority measure. Isn't that right? |
| 02:13:51.70 | Chad Hess | It was a 50% plus one. It was a general general. |
| 02:13:54.44 | Steven Woodside | And so we're not required to set to establish a separate fund to manage it. But nevertheless, we have chosen to segregate it to ensure that we confine our expenditures of Measure L funds for those purposes that we advertised in the measure. Is that right? Absolutely. |
| 02:14:02.60 | Unknown | to. |
| 02:14:02.64 | Jill Hoffman | Yep. |
| 02:14:02.86 | Jan Johnson | Thank you. |
| 02:14:02.88 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:14:08.14 | Chad Hess | Really? |
| 02:14:12.70 | Chad Hess | That is correct. The whole purpose of the separate fund is to really honor that, that informal pledge that we made. |
| 02:14:20.63 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you. I'm gonna open it up for public comment. I will call first Kieran Culligan. |
| 02:14:39.43 | Kiran Culligan | I'm here on Culligan, South Dakota resident. I get all of my news from election mailers and anonymous newsletters and ghostwritten messages written by other people sent. And I thought it would be pretty bad. So I was pretty happy to see the report tonight. I'm very buoyed by the positive changes. I know that we still need to work on the top line. We need to keep an eye on costs. does it make sense if we have continuing surpluses to kick a little bit more money towards... changes. I know that we still need to work on the top line. We need to keep an eye on costs. Does it make sense if we have continuing surpluses to kick a little bit more money towards those pension liabilities, even on an annual basis? It kind of scares me when I see those increases that can happen in just one year. But on the net, it's really positive. It's a testament to strong leadership, to strong city staff. And I hope you can all keep it up, because we have a lot to do on many fronts. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:15:26.24 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:15:26.71 | Kiran Culligan | Thank you. |
| 02:15:26.76 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:15:26.78 | Kiran Culligan | Thank you. |
| 02:15:26.96 | Steven Woodside | Adrienne Britton. |
| 02:15:34.78 | Adrian Brinton | Adrian Brinton, also a South Dakota resident. I just wanted to come up and say, you know, I've worked in IT for most of my career. I've gone through tons of audits every year. We were subject to a lot of different regulations in my professional life. And I can count on much less than one hand, the number of clean audits I ever had. So very impressed with that. I think, you know, there's been a lot of concern expressed around the finances in Sausalito. We're not a rich town, but we have a lot of resources and this is great to see, uh, moving forward in, in a way that's confirming, you know, what we have so we can talk about what we need to do to get to where we need to get to. Um, we spend a lot of time talking about kind of, does this exist? Is this real? Is it not real? seeing a clean audit and seeing the financial controls that, Um, you know, director has and his team have put in It gives me a lot more confidence in that. And now we can have those conversations, as Councilman Hoffman said, about how do we actually plan for these costs that we have coming up? We know we have the pensions. We know we have our streets and roads and our infrastructure. We know we have our buildings. So having those conversations and being ready to have them during our budgeting cycle, when we can actually apply those funds to those things, will be really, really good. So it's great that we're We're getting these things out of the way now and really building a solid base that then we can have those conversations on. It is all about choices. What are we going to do with our resources? We've put aside a lot of money in our reserves. So we have, you know, something for a rainy day or if not, something unexpected happens, which is great. But now is really the time to start to improve our roads, improve our buildings, and actually use the resources that we've collected. So super excited to see that happen and great to see these conversations happening. Thank you. |
| 02:17:19.45 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Adrian. City Clerk, anyone online? |
| 02:17:23.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Babette McDougall. |
| 02:17:29.16 | Babette McDougall | Well, lucky me that I get to follow Adrian because frankly... I appreciate all that he had to say. I concur. with the remarks, I do believe that perhaps an answer to his question How does it happen that we continue to kind of devolving back into some kind of questioning scrutiny, like why doesn't it quite seem to add up one way or the other? Are we in debt or are we not in debt? Are we in a surplus or are we in a deficit? My gosh, I think it all depends. Like for me, for example, I'm a little confused. I do not understand why now since I've been paying attention. since 2023 that we keep hearing this $10 million number bandied about. I just wonder if it's for infrastructure and why aren't we spending it? How much have we spent, especially by losing our own place in the very insurance pool that Sausalito helped establish? We've got thrown out on our ear because we've been sued so darn much. Now, surely that exceeds $10 million. So why aren't we spending it on infrastructure if that's what it's there for? I don't get that. On the other hand, I hear someone say, well, it's $10 million and it's part of a reserve. Well, I mean, is it meant for infrastructure spending, or is it part of the reserve? Now, Measure L is so clean-cut, this predates most of you. However, Measure L... is specifically because Sausalitan's themselves said, we will tax ourselves for our own roads. Just get on with fixing the darn roads. I just don't understand why it's still so confusing. And I do appreciate the fact that we are having this candid debate I'd like to encourage Councilmember Hoffman to get more down to the nitty gritty of those numbers. She is like a dog on a bone when it comes to numbers, and I really applaud that. I'd like to see some certification while we're on the subject. I believe during the campaign, one of your candidates said that he's a money expert, a finance expert. I would like to see documented proof of that, please. Is there an MBA or... credential we can all see. And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you again for this more open, candid discussion. |
| 02:19:39.02 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:19:39.25 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 02:19:39.97 | Steven Woodside | the city clerk. |
| 02:19:40.81 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment? |
| 02:19:42.15 | Steven Woodside | All right, I'm going to close it and bring it up here for comment. The action is to receive and file the fiscal year 2023-2024 basic financial statements and report on internal control over financial reporting, so there will be no motion to be approved. Does anyone wish to comment? And would you put the clock up? |
| 02:20:04.32 | Ian Sobieski | Well, maybe I'll kick off. Just peeing off what Ms. McDougall said, I think she was referring to me. Since I'm not a lawyer, but I did have been working with investing in companies. One of my contributions, Ms. McDougall, is when I joined, I noticed that most of our cash was sitting at 2%. And by making recommendations to staff, we moved that to more than 5%, earning us more than a million dollars so I would put that trophy on the wall for the king for the benefit of all the |
| 02:20:40.52 | Walfred Solorzano | I get you. |
| 02:20:41.14 | Ian Sobieski | but it's not about me. It's about Sausalito. This is public service and we've got a bunch of volunteers up here. I want to commend though our paid staff. Uh, You know, you get what you pay for. Part of our debate was about how to spend our money, and we did raise the salaries of our staff up to the median of our competitors, and that in part was why we were able to get people like Chad Hess and the team that works for him. And I just want to, I can't look him in the eye because they don't have him on the screen anymore. But I'm looking at you, Chad, and I'm saying congratulations to you. And through you, congratulations to your team. A clean audit is not easy to get. You have been saving us money. I'm by how you do your job and how your team does its job. You've been helping Sausalito, you've been helping the taxpayers and you and your team is the best investment we could possibly have made. So congratulations on your contributions to the $2.5 million surplus last year. Congratulations on helping reduce our deficit for the upcoming year to a quarter million dollars. There are a lot of challenges ahead and not least is trying to uh, translate this very complicated matter into a way that can be comprehensible to regular people. It is super complicated and easy to demagogue and exploit for confusion. Fear is the foundation of paralysis. And if you're uh, And it can serve many goals. But I would ask us, as we continue to work on this, to always do what we have to do under GASB, but also to try to really attend to the fundamental questions of how much money do we have, what are our needs, and how should we spend that money to meet the needs of our town. The fact is that, as you've said, multiple years of surpluses have led to an accumulation of cash on our balance sheet. It's unrestricted. To Ms. McDougall's question, again, we could spend it on pensions or on infrastructure or on people or on something else. We get to choose, and we have to balance that choice. But where we confuse ourselves is where we can't even agree on the starting point. Until you have reformed the finance department and until the leadership of this council has helped you do so, we couldn't even agree on the basic facts. And we're getting closer to a clear set of indisputable facts, no matter how much some people are disappointed by the good news. Thank you. |
| 02:23:07.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I we received another speaker card after we had already heard from everyone in the room. So I'm going to reopen public comment and invite Vicki Nichols to the podium. |
| 02:23:23.28 | Vicki Nichols | Vicki Nichols, I just really have a question. One thing I'd really like to see reinstated is we used to be able to see budget reports on the web fairly easily. I think a lot of this confusion comes you can't find anything on the web anymore. And I don't know if it was called open government or whatever, I know you don't all like that. But people would come in and be upset about the budget, and they'd come in and hear a presentation, and you'd hear them say, well, it looks like we're in good shape, because they could understand it. So I'd really encourage you to do that. I have a question. I kept hearing the... the amount that all of a sudden we have $2 million surplus or over. I did corporate budgets. That was alarming to me. How can you have that much of an increase without this showing up a little bit before this? So I'm not sure how all this accounting is, but tonight it was not clear to me where that surplus came from. It's not a surplus. It sounds like it's an addition. But I did hear one thing that I'd like to have clarified. The parking fund that used to be a line item and the MLK fund that used to be line items, I heard those had been moved into the general fund balance. Is that not correct? That would account for about $2 million. So if it's semantics, or can we specifically get an accounting of where this $2 million is? Like you, Council Member Sobieski, I'm thrilled that this is here. But all of a sudden for it to pop up, let's figure out where it is, and then to know what it's really there it just doesn't sound um doesn't sound like we have things under control to me specifically thanks |
| 02:25:11.31 | Steven Woodside | All right, I'm going to close public comment again and invite any other council members. Okay, Vice Mayor Woodside. |
| 02:25:17.23 | Steven Woodside | I'm just. |
| 02:25:17.88 | Steven Woodside | But just. |
| 02:25:18.50 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:25:18.53 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Go ahead. |
| 02:25:21.50 | Steven Woodside | Just so that we're very clear, the $2 million that we see as a surplus from last year has been clearly identified dollar for dollar. I can't explain it all, but a big chunk of it was the excess ERAF. that wasn't budgeted, But when it became clear that the legislature wasn't going to take it away from those five counties, we got our share. That's a half a million of it. That's a big deal. I would also invite at the appropriate time, the city manager can explain how we budget for staff and how he was able to manage well below the amount in the budget by perhaps another half million or more. Those are big chunks. They're all identified. And it is a slog to go through that 140-page audit. It's a slog to figure out. all the detail that is behind that two million. The same is true for the $10 million and perhaps $16 million, if you want to include those other funds. But my understanding, and I wasn't here at the time, but my understanding is historically, year after year after year, revenues from MLK and revenues from the other source you mentioned go into the general fund, okay, the net revenue after expenses. They are accounted for separately, so you can match up the expenses versus the revenues. But they are the net is the general fund. It's unallocated at that point until we as fiduciaries decide what's the best use of those dollars. That's the best explanation I can give. So I'm comfortable that we have |
| 02:26:52.46 | Unknown | you |
| 02:26:52.51 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:27:09.22 | Steven Woodside | a little more money than I thought we would have, but we're not rich. We've got to make some hard choices in the next year, and this sets us up so we shouldn't have any debate that there's actually $10,463,871 of unallocated revenue that we have to decide what to do with. We're not deciding that tonight, but it sets us up for what will be interesting budget discussions going forward. End of my comments. |
| 02:27:36.76 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:27:40.91 | Steven Woodside | Who would like to go next? Thank you. |
| 02:27:42.63 | Unknown | Please, I'll be very brief, but you can restart the timer if you need to, Walford, although I'm sure I could have done it in the 40 seconds. Just to say, I really appreciate staff's effort in bringing this forward. It is not a small feat that we have a clean audit. It's a demonstration of the hard work that staff has been doing under city manager Zapata's leadership and Director Hess's work. and given that we can all agree i emphatically reiterate the point of the vice mayor regarding the 10 million dollars and that i think it was truly our job here from the dais and in conversation with community to determine where that's best used. And that will hopefully happen as we start these conversations this Saturday at our strategic planning session. So I really look forward to engagement from the public on how that money should be spent going forward. And I appreciate the time spent on this critical issue and thinking about how we can make strong investments in our future. Anything? |
| 02:28:38.55 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yeah, same. I'll echo the comments that have been made. Tremendous amount of work by Director Hess and his team. And I appreciate his comments of the... tremendous amount of work that still needs to be done in the finance department to bring online his recommendations for streamlining the finance department and the reforms that he still wants to do. And I totally support 100% report. support what he wants to do and the additional work and the infrastructure that he wants to implement there. And I think that needs to be done as quickly as possible. And whatever it is that we need to do to implement those reforms that he wants to put in place, I think we need to do that as quickly as we can. And, um, furtherance to make his life a lot easier and to get the reports out more quickly. and to implement some of the controls from the audit from last year that were that may or may not have, uh, been put in place, um, up to now. I can't remember if those have been put in place or not. I hope they have. Um, and, and to help make his life easier and to take some of those burdens off his plate. Um, and going forward, um, you know, with the thought of, you know, we say we have 10 million unallocated funds, but we still have significant risk to our budget with regard to our um, our insurance risk and the increased risk with our $500,000 deductible and our increased litigation costs that follow that $500,000 deductible and the other risk that we have to our budget. So we have significant risks, and hopefully, we will put some of that money toward increasing our payment index, remember that, and devoting some of the money. or a lot of that money to our infrastructure. So all of those risks still remain, and I hope that that will be the main part of our discussion on Saturday. |
| 02:31:04.71 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I'm just going to reiterate with respect to the concerns raised about how we're managing the various risks for our facilities and our streets, et cetera. At our November 19, 2024 meeting, I enunciated 10 areas that I wanted to fully understand the data so that we could then decide how best to spend our unallocated fund balance. Those 10 areas were, and I memorialized this in an email to the city manager and others. One, streets including PCI index. Two, climate tech assessment and recommendation. Three, facilities evaluation. evaluation for storm drains assessment that we expect to have in three to four months five sea level rise assessment six existing stairs seven implementing landslide task force recommendations eight geologic hazard report nine a da transition plan 10. Um, resources needed to fund resident repairs of sidewalks so all the residents are responsible we're going to have a revolving fund to help them finance those repairs and of course the last one is pensions and so. I will say that I will be reiterating this again for one of my priorities for our work on Saturday, and something I really want us to accomplish as we put together our fiscal year 2025-2026 budget. And with that, I'll thank everybody, and we will accept and file the report from our finance director. Thank you very much, Mr. Hess. We'll now move on to item 6C, This is the Dorothy Gibson House. We're going to receive a report from... Um, City Manager Chris Zapata and Human Resources Manager Kathy Nikitas. |
| 02:33:07.96 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, members of the public. I'll be brief. I wish I could have known Dorothy Gibson. What a generous person. And her book on stairs is one of those things that everyone in Sausala should read. But I also want to take this opportunity to thank Councilmember Hoffman and Councilmember Blaustein for their work over the past three years and the city council's support for the Dorothy Gibson House vision being realized, which is to create housing for a city employee. And so working toward that, bringing in new partners, and I'd like to praise our partnership with Senator McGuire, who worked with the state of California to get the city half a million dollars, with the county of Marin, Supervisor Mullen Peters, who worked with the staff there to get us a matching grant of half a million dollars Dan Eilerman, Assistant County Manager So the city is the beneficiary of Dorothy Gibson The state, the county, and the work by the council to create housing units for unhoused persons And persons that will be employed by the city of Sausalito So Ali Ikebal and Kevin McGowan have been working very diligently on the project itself Thank you. will be employed by the city of Sausalito. So Ali Ikebal and Kevin McGowan have been working very diligently on the project itself. It's mostly done. One of the things that needs to happen is in order to move someone in, Kathy Nikitas has been working with Homeward Bound to figure out an employment situation. We have an existing employee who was on a boat. He has given up his boat. He would be a logical tenant here with respect to being a city employee. And in terms of the county's fund and the McGuire funds, that million dollars is predicated on that person being unhoused. So both of those things all match up. And so we're there now. But one of the things that needs to happen is we need some type of landlord-tenant agreement. So our city attorney and his team have been working to put what you have in the packet. The request tonight is that you authorize the city manager to use that template to house two people in the Thorpe-The-Gibson House Improvement Project, which is two units at 429 1⁄2 Johnson Street. I'd also like to really thank the neighbors for their involvement and their patience with the disruption and so on and so forth. But we truly are at the point of something we talked about three years ago, something the Dorothy Gibson bequeathed to the city. We're close to getting someone in those units, and that'll be a good day for Sosli and a good day for the people that will become housed and become one a city employee and one a new city employee to honor the bequeathment and the grant requirements. I'll be happy to answer any questions if you have any. Kathy's here. Do you have any questions of her? |
| 02:35:51.46 | Steven Woodside | Any questions from council members? Seeing none, we'll open it up to public comment. I have no speaker cards for this. Is there anyone online? City Clerk. |
| 02:36:00.44 | Walfred Solorzano | Babette McDougall. |
| 02:36:06.21 | Babette McDougall | Well, thank you. I'm just sorry. I cannot be there in person tonight. Y'all have so many fun things to discuss. So I'm just a little confused about whether or not, does this now become a property, for example, that Bruce Huff would undertake to manage for us? And was Bruce consulted at all on putting together this arrangement? And I mean, I don't really see, I've looked through the data, I don't really see a direct reference So I'm just kind of wondering, is this part of an integrated picture? Exactly. And by the way, Dorothy Gibson was a fantastic woman. She was really rugged. I rarely ever saw her in anything except her uniform, including that wonderful hat, you know, that the Park Service wears. She was always dressed like that. So, yeah. Saw her a lot on the litho pathway. And elsewhere around town. So if it's possible to kindly articulate the big picture and then the narrow focus, I'm delighted to know that we're going to move innovatively into an unhoused versus housed. That's wonderful. Off the water, onto land. That's probably really great, especially if you have balance issues. So I can imagine we're moving in the right direction here and Dorothy would be pleased. But could someone please explain this to me within the context of the big picture? Thank you. And I yield back the balance of my time. City Clerk? |
| 02:37:35.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Don't further public comment. |
| 02:37:36.75 | Steven Woodside | No further public comment. All right, I'm going to bring it back up here. And I'm going to move that we adopt a resolution approving template lease agreement for city owned affordable housing units at Dorothy Gibson House, 429 1 1 1 Johnson Street, and delegating authority to city manager to execute lease agreements. I'm going to propose two revisions to the draft resolution in the packet. The first is to add a whereas clause, to add to the last whereas clause, the phrase provided so long as a copy of any such leases or a summary of their terms are um, provided to the city council on consent at the next regularly scheduled meeting. And then I'm going to add. I propose to add under the now therefore a second which is city manager shall provide a copy of any such leases or a summary of their terms to the city council on consent at the next regularly scheduled city council meeting. And I'll now open up that motion for a second. Second. And any discussions? |
| 02:38:46.69 | Sergio Rudin | Mayor, if I'm may suggest one modification. The |
| 02:38:48.72 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 02:38:53.04 | Sergio Rudin | Operative clause of the resolution says that the exhibit eight entitled template lease agreement for city owned affordable housing units is hereby approved and the city managers authorized to execute such lease agreements for city. owned affordable housing units. I envision that on case by case basis, we may need to make minor modifications to these. So I would recommend that that read The city manager is authorized to execute such lease agreements with any changes approved by the city attorney. for city-owned affordable housing units. |
| 02:39:24.48 | Steven Woodside | OK, and you didn't have a chance to review this before the meeting? |
| 02:39:27.57 | Sergio Rudin | I did not know. |
| 02:39:29.66 | Steven Woodside | Okay, because the staff report says that you reviewed it. |
| 02:39:38.43 | Sergio Rudin | I reviewed the template and prepared the template lease agreement. |
| 02:39:42.35 | Lorna Newland | Okay. |
| 02:39:43.44 | Steven Woodside | All right, so I accept that friendly amendment. Will you second the revised motion? |
| 02:39:49.03 | Steven Woodside | Yes, I will. |
| 02:39:49.74 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any discussion? |
| 02:39:51.26 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:39:52.78 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:39:52.79 | Jill Hoffman | I have some comments. I don't really have discussion. But my comments are to thank the staff. |
| 02:39:59.78 | Unknown | Yeah, you're cool. |
| 02:40:01.89 | Jill Hoffman | My comments are just to thank the staff over the four years that we've worked on this. And the concept has changed a couple of times. But I'm delighted that we're finally at the finish road. I'm delighted with our partner in Homeward Bound, and we're working on this. Thank you to Kathy Nikitas, who's done a spectacular job working with Homeward Bound. And I hope that, I think we're gonna have a great program and I'm delighted that we're moving forward. So thank you to everybody involved in this and the council for their support. |
| 02:40:31.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any other comments from council members? All right, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries five zero. We'll now move on to our new item 6D, which is consideration. |
| 02:40:36.38 | Unknown | . |
| 02:40:36.42 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 02:40:44.78 | Steven Woodside | to review and adopt amended city council, city manager, city attorney operating protocols. We have a staff report. We have redlined version of the protocols. I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Hoffman to explain why she asked to have it pulled from consent. |
| 02:41:01.22 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Mayor. So I'm... I think generally, principally, I'm in favor of most of the red line changes that we talked about. I actually pulled them out because of Mr. Van Meter's. letter that he uh his public comment um And I believe he probably, I think I recall that he sent the same, it might have sent the same public comment in last year. Oh, no, he didn't. Okay, somebody might have sent it in or commented about it, about emails and emails. what may have been actual or perceived communications during meetings from the dais of council members during meetings. And I know that during training that I've gone to at various Cal cities for council members, that during public meetings you're not supposed to have communications with council members um on the dais certainly via text or via emails um that's a brown act violation and with council members uh during you're not supposed to have communications about matters that you're discussing um because you're supposed to have public communications about public things at public meetings. There's supposed to be a public communication. That's the point of a public meeting. And so the public perception, of course, if you're typing or if you're having email or texting, is bad. And if you're actually texting or having emails with other members on the dais, that's an actual violation of the product. And so... you know, I was thinking, well, okay, we're talking about protocols. Maybe we should just have a protocol that we agree not to do that, and then we don't have to worry about a public perception. And so then I just called Sergio, and we were talking about that. Sergio's our our city attorney. And so I asked him, hey, do you have any language? Do you wanna talk to us about it? And do we wanna talk about that as part of our protocol discussion? |
| 02:43:10.77 | Fred Moore | attorney. |
| 02:43:11.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:43:11.23 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:43:20.36 | Jill Hoffman | And then I started reading through the protocols. And then that's when I got down to the three minutes for discussion and You know, and then I was like, well, I don't know. Maybe we should discuss that instead of just having it on consent and whether or not we want to limit ourselves. And so I don't know, Sergio, did you come up with do you have a two or three sentence? And do we want to talk about that as a council? And that issue, I mean. |
| 02:43:42.95 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so all we asked was that you advise why you've pulled this. So you've advised us why you've pulled it. We're now, we, Council, I'm going to open it up for Council Member questions, then public comment, and then we can discuss whether we want to make any revisions. So any Council Member questions regarding the protocols? Yes. |
| 02:43:48.88 | Unknown | That's why you've Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:43:54.93 | Unknown | then |
| 02:44:03.45 | Steven Woodside | Okay. I have public comment. Mr. Van Meter. |
| 02:44:13.90 | Jill Hoffman | Well, yeah, and then I want to talk about all your other edits. |
| 02:44:17.19 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you for the benefit of public what Councilmember Hoffman is referring to as a letter I wrote to the City Council. commenting on some recent thought that's basically popped into my mind, and that is that, Looking at these protocols, of course, the city council calls for public comment, often during meetings and that meeting that public comment is made from here at the microphone or by zoom and that is out in the public domain people is know what's being said who's being said. And my observation was that if there's electronic communications from members of the public, not among council members themselves, but members of the public, that are being received by council members during that public debate, that is basically in the context of what I call private communication to council members in a public comment format so that looked like private communication that is not part of the public record not available for everybody else in the room to see in here and therefore that would be, in my opinion, not appropriate. because it's not part of the public domain, not part of the public record. So what I had suggested, in my communication earlier was adding a bullet point to your protocol. meeting management section that would simply say council members should not receive private messages from members of the public during council meetings That would be basically usually through texting on a cell phone or maybe you're getting emails on your laptops or whatever. So basically those devices, One solution would be, They're turned off, they're not here, whatever. So then there's no temptation. to be receiving messages from the public because the public may not know. that you have this protocol. of not getting messages. So the only way the public is going to know that you're not getting them private public communication. is by not having those devices available. So that was my idea. Simply add that bullet point to your meeting protocols. Thank you. |
| 02:46:09.90 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Anyone online? Thank you. |
| 02:46:12.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, Babette McDougall. |
| 02:46:13.85 | Steven Woodside | All right. |
| 02:46:17.32 | Babette McDougall | Thank you, Mr. Van Meter, for your letter, because in fact, It does reflect a broad swath of opinion among Citizens in Sausalito. I happen to also have been wondering for some time now, started when I started watching the TV in 2023 from my hospital bed, getting my body rebuilt. And I couldn't understand how come there was all this tapping going on. And after a while, I realized, oh my God, that's, Well, who's talking to the mayor, for heaven's sakes? And one day I heard the mayor gush, I'm getting a text from another mayor. Oh, how exciting. And I thought, really? That's terrible. So I totally concur with the need to not have the cell phones, just put them in a bag like they're asking schoolchildren to do. I think it's a good example to live by. We can learn a lot from our youth after all going forward. There are other things about this thing that kind of trouble me. For example, who said that we wanted Rosenberg over Roberts, like one gentleman said to you one evening? Just whose brilliant idea was that anyway? Because let's face it, the gold standard is Roberts, Rosenberg is called Rosenberg for dummies for a reason. It leaves out so much and it does a great job of gutting the citizen voice. So why not return to Roberts? What are you afraid of? Let's embrace that democracy thing wholeheartedly, I say, because I personally am not in favor of Rosenberg. So many technicalities. And who wants to argue technicalities within the context of a city council meeting after all? And it certainly doesn't make a very good off-site or off-moment with the city attorney, because we're not allowed, I'm supposing, maybe this will too be reinstated, where we get to question our people directly. After all, we pay their fees and their salaries, and about what doesn't pop up on budgets would sure be nice to know about those legal fees. Somebody's getting paid a lot of money year in and year out. So I'd like to know how come it's not being accounted for. So there's a lot of revision here to scale down public input that I personally just object to. And I, in the spirit of how this whole season is starting out, under a new system. re-engaging citizen voices from the beginning, giving three minutes even to me. which you might end up using this time. I just want to say, please be mindful. Go back to Roberts. Go back to the gold standard. Let us raise ourselves to a higher standard that we all really enjoy. We will profit from it. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:48:47.97 | Steven Woodside | Anyone else? City Court? |
| 02:48:48.96 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 02:48:49.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:48:49.13 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 02:48:49.54 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, Senator Bushmaker. |
| 02:48:53.98 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening, counsel. I agree with Peter Van Meter's position about not having the cell phones operational between the public and the council members during a meeting. I also would like clarification of out. exactly why it is improper for council members to be texting each other during the meetings. I just would like the city attorney. to clarify that particular position. As for the three minute warning for council members to express their opinions, I think that's going a little overboard. I think that sometimes it takes longer, but often not. And that should be available to a council member. For those of you who haven't been in the public for a while, You have no idea what it's like to get cut off in mid-sentence. when you're trying to express a complete thought. And that is very difficult. I don't think the council should be limited in that way. Thank you. City |
| 02:49:53.97 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF |
| 02:49:54.59 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment. |
| 02:49:56.11 | Steven Woodside | All right. We'll bring it up here for discussion, and pursuant to Rosenberg's rules of order, I'm going to make a motion that we adopt the amended City Council, City Manager, and City Attorney operating protocols. Please go ahead. |
| 02:50:15.87 | Steven Woodside | about to second it. Yes. Thank you. I second that motion. |
| 02:50:16.70 | Steven Woodside | Yes, thank you. With respect to the communications via cell phones, there are no municipalities I know that forbid cell phones on the dais, but the communications that Mr. Van Meter and Ms. McDougal and Ms. Bushmaker, who used to send me texts all of the time during meetings until I blocked her from texting me. um, The way to address, those are actually ex parte communications. They are not public comment because they're not intended for the public. They are ex parte communications. So what I would like to do. what I am going to do. Um, as part of the agenda setting committee is add to each business item um a section before the staff report for the revelation of ex parte communications and so many of us communicate with members of the public about various items many fighters to receive emails not copied to the entire Council and so I believe that increasing transparency can be accomplished by revealing ex parte communications. All right, so we have a motion and a second. I will open it up for discussion. Please. |
| 02:51:30.78 | Steven Woodside | I just want to say thank you very much to the mayor for working so hard on this and making so many important revisions. I agree with him. Let me speak to a couple of the comments that were made today by Mr. Van Meter. Thank you very much. I agree with you that it raises a question. When you see Council members looking at a laptop or looking at a cell phone, you wonder what's going on. And for public confidence, I think it's appropriate to be very careful. I think my own personal practice will be, if you're going to try to communicate with me on a matter that is being decided during the meeting, maybe you can't get on Zoom for whatever reason, I'm going to insist that it be done in email so that I can make it part of the record. Now, I'm not sure I agree with the suggestion that the mayor has made that every ex parte, everything be called ex parte because, as we all know, we're going to be talking to members of the community all the time about issues that are coming up before the meeting. And unless it's an appeal, where we have to disclose X party in a land use matter, for example, I think we should be free to have all kinds of conversations with members of the public that go all over the place and to try to disclose them all could be a, a real burden number one and not very productive, but that's, that's only on that one specific suggestion you just made. I think overall, I've been an advocate of trying to end the meetings by 10 o'clock. It's now five of 10. We're going to get there pretty close. And I want to thank the mayor for running a pretty tight meeting. It's a little tough for some of us to take, to be cut off in mid-sentence, but having been cut off by... A long time ago, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, I know what it feels like. Half hour per side, done for the biggest cases in the country. And that's it. So we can be disciplined. And that's what this is all about. It's not just rules. It's can we be disciplined to not say so much. And I'm already talking too much, but I want to give credit to a local person who had a little sign. It said, wait. It was given to him by his wife. He's a very talkative, local, colorful person. And wait stands for why am I talking. |
| 02:54:01.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:54:04.51 | Steven Woodside | I'm done. I support these protocols. |
| 02:54:08.02 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Vice Mayor. Anybody else like to comment? |
| 02:54:12.34 | Jill Hoffman | Please, I would. because I removed this. I think... Initially, let me just say, I think we're a little bit out of order because normally when you remove an item, you have a staff report and you have a presentation and then you get to ask questions of the staff report the person giving the presentation, so we had so I think. we jumped the gun a little bit. So normally I would have had somebody, a staff person who's telling me why we're having all of these changes to the normal protocols. And I would ask questions of, well, why are we having these changes? So I would ask at this point, Sergio, why don't you give me your Um, your explanation of why we have a Brown Act and why, um, why we have an issue with the Brown Act and why you can't have council members texting each other and why that's a violation. So I'm going to ask him that if you want to cut me off or you want to cut him off, that's fine. But I think that's appropriate, and I think we've jumped the gun in doing the motion and jumping ahead. So, Sergio, if you could give us an explanation, and you have two or three sentences about why that's a violation, I think that would be appropriate. And I might do an alternate motion and have that inserted into the protocols or suggest that we do that at some point somewhere in here. |
| 02:55:09.12 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:55:13.75 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:55:33.14 | Jill Hoffman | Or maybe have pause the clock. |
| 02:55:36.36 | Sergio Rudin | And so, yes, in three short sentences, the Brown Act requires that all of the city council member discussions and deliberations on an item business be held in an open and public meeting. And there is a concern about you know, when council members are texting each other, whether or not you're going to run into serial communications and come to a decision, you know, outside of the presence of the public. That being said, you know, I think there are some comments out there. you know, People use their electronic devices for all sorts of purposes and just because you're looking at a cell phone doesn't mean you're communicating with each other. Additionally, You know, we, you really can't control how the public tries to reach out to you. So, you know, a rule saying you can't receive text messages from the public, I think would be very hard to enforce in practice. Um, so I think that there is a fine line and a, you know, a middle ground to be walked on that sort of restriction. |
| 02:56:35.05 | Jill Hoffman | So here's the issue that Peter, I think, was coming up with. And the issue that he was talking about is How am I influenced by an email that I received that you guys didn't have the benefit of receiving? And how has that influenced my decision-making process? So Peter's shaking his head no. So maybe he wants to see the email and he wants it attached to the public record. And he's shaking his head again, no. Let me read his email. Well, it's already attached. So, Then I'm not going to try to interpret Peter's letter because it's attached to the public record. So I'm trying to struggle within my next thing with Jones, with the mayor's. edit. And that is the curtailing our discussion, right? And the interpretation that some people might have and maybe I might have. that we don't have free-range, full, robust discussions at the council level, and that we don't have the benefit of free-range, full discussions at the council level, and then we get cut off at three minutes. |
| 02:57:36.27 | Steven Woodside | Can I just address that briefly? |
| 02:57:37.83 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY IS |
| 02:57:38.03 | Steven Woodside | I finished my comment. |
| 02:57:38.67 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:57:38.69 | Steven Woodside | Because it's in the protocol how that So you get an initial three minutes, then each council member gets an additional one minute each until debate has ceased. |
| 02:57:47.85 | Jill Hoffman | Well, yeah, but that's just one minute. But it goes over and over. Yeah, and you just interrupted me at my 40-minute mark. |
| 02:57:50.40 | Steven Woodside | And it goes. |
| 02:57:55.39 | Jill Hoffman | So. So, I mean, it's awkward, right? And so I don't know that it's even necessary. Like, I'm a really fast talker anyway. And so I don't. I don't know that I support this. I think it's a really awkward sort of, a very awkward sort of imposition of, curtailment of free ranging discussion amongst the council members. I don't remember a time where our meetings went on Because council members kept blathering on too long. I don't know. |
| 02:58:37.51 | Steven Woodside | Do you remember your 15-minute soliloquy criticizing a council member and saying she should be arrested for a misdemeanor for not properly noticing her attendance at a meeting? |
| 02:58:49.98 | Jill Hoffman | I remember that I was surprised that I had to bring it up and that we, that I was really surprised that there wasn't an acknowledgement that we should follow the rules that are set forth very clearly under the brown act and that you as a as a city attorney did not acknowledge that I was very surprised. Yes, it should not have taken me more than one minute to say that. It did. |
| 02:59:19.21 | Steven Woodside | That's it. Thank you. |
| 02:59:20.53 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:59:20.56 | Steven Woodside | IT'S A LITTLE BIT. |
| 02:59:20.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:59:20.93 | Steven Woodside | It took over 15 minutes. Can we have our discussion here on the protocols, please? Yes. |
| 02:59:21.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:59:21.07 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:59:21.10 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:59:21.17 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:59:21.18 | Steven Woodside | It took over 15 minutes. |
| 02:59:22.97 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:59:27.06 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Let's stick |
| 02:59:30.03 | Steven Woodside | the actual thing before us. Sure. Okay. So, Any further discussion? then I will call the question. Okay. All in favor of the pending motion, say aye. Aye. All opposed. All right. That motion carries for one. Okay, we will move on to city manager reports, council member reports, city council appointments, other council business, city manager information for council, and I will hear the report and then take public comment on the report. |
| 03:00:07.64 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor, members of the Council. A couple of things, and I'll be brief. On January 11th, the Strategic Planning Workshop of the City Council will be how the agenda is attached, was put in current. There is a memo that I sent out earlier this afternoon, this evening, regarding the priorities and goals from departments, along with a review of the strategic plan from 2026. And so that's really important. And in order to make that date productive, the idea was to have council members provide their three to five priorities to myself and the Noelle Gonzalez and Walford so we can summarize them and put them into a format that the facilitator can see. So if I can get your priorities and thoughts about what the city should be doing in the next couple of days, that would be really helpful. I wanted to also say that- |
| 03:01:04.09 | Steven Woodside | City manager, can you actually give us a deadline that will enable you to put it in the agenda report? |
| 03:01:09.20 | Chris Zapata | So the tail's going to wag the dog. Do it by 5 o'clock on Thursday. |
| 03:01:15.11 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 03:01:18.15 | Chris Zapata | or else. Sorry, is that gonna go on the agenda? No, we're gonna send it to the |
| 03:01:24.22 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:01:24.24 | Unknown | No, no. |
| 03:01:27.21 | Chris Zapata | facilitators and we'll have it as part of our PowerPoint. Okay second thing is one of the things that the agenda setting committee of Mayor Cox and Vice Mayor Woodside asked and it's a very good request and we will honor it is that we work more closely to get information to the public and the council out earlier so beginning on the meeting of the 21st agenda packets will be posted on Wednesdays rather than Thursdays. So that would give everybody one extra day to look at the work that's been done, the items around the agenda, and hopefully give us a more productive Tuesday night that follows. I also wanted to tell you, and you all know this, that February is going to be a very busy month. You have four city council meetings planned. The one that I want to highlight is the meeting to talk about the Bridgeway Grant. The date that makes the most sense is February 22nd. The issue with February 22nd is the sister cities group is having an activity event that's important to them. It's important to the city. So I would guess that if we could start that February 26th community meeting on the Bridgeway grant at 2 o'clock, that would probably allow people to do both, which I think is what I'm hearing. So but that meeting is going to be preceded by a meeting of the Sustainability Commission. In February, that meeting is yet to be agendized and the date selected, but we are waiting on some more consultant review of the Bridgeway area to incorporate it into the work that's already been done by Mr. Parisi and Parametrics, and then we will meld those two together and bring those to the council and community on the 22nd of February. And again, I'm asking if you could consider starting that meeting at 2 or later. |
| 03:03:23.02 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any questions of the city manager? All right, I'll open it up to public comment. I'll call first Roger Taylor. |
| 03:03:39.27 | Roger Taylor | Good evening, Mayor Cox and the City Council. I'm Roger Taylor, a long-time cyclist and Sausalito resident. Thank you. Thank you. I'm here to strongly oppose eliminating Bridgeway's center median lane. So, Thank you. |
| 03:03:53.01 | Steven Woodside | So, sir, I'm just going to clarify the item that the city manager discussed this evening is the scheduling of the date for the hearing, not the merits of the matter. And so we will hear public comment on regarding the scheduling of the date for the hearing on February 22 at 2 p.m. |
| 03:04:13.17 | Roger Taylor | Thank you and the city council does have a letter I've documented some of my major concerns and I guess my only comment about the meeting is. I'm just confused why the city keeps spending time money and public meetings on this when it's been advised multiple times about chaos and danger that eliminating the middle lane would cause. Thank you. |
| 03:04:34.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. Jan Johnson. |
| 03:04:42.49 | Jan Johnson | for giving you my letter with its diagram |
| 03:04:44.56 | Steven Woodside | No. |
| 03:04:47.83 | Jan Johnson | Thank you. |
| 03:04:47.87 | Steven Woodside | You might not want to hear this, but. Yeah, I'm going to confine your comments to the topic of the scheduling of the hearings. of this by the City Council to February 22. at 2 p.m. |
| 03:04:59.51 | Jan Johnson | Okay. In which case I won't say anything and I wish I hadn't sat here for the last two hours. but you might want to say that this is not necessary. If you look at the map, that I attached. The claim that this area of Bridgeway is dangerous is wrong. I looked at every accident off the source material, and there's been only three to four accidents versus 17 |
| 03:05:26.04 | Steven Woodside | I'm not sure. |
| 03:05:26.50 | Jan Johnson | Thank you. |
| 03:05:26.88 | Steven Woodside | Ms. Johnson, I'm not going to allow people to testify on the merits of the matter this evening. Thank you. |
| 03:05:27.07 | Jan Johnson | Johnson, I'm not. |
| 03:05:32.50 | Steven Woodside | The, the, the, Mayor, I think that's within the scope of... The item is agendized as scheduling of the February 22nd... |
| 03:05:34.59 | Jill Hoffman | The item is. |
| 03:05:39.76 | Jill Hoffman | of the 20 seconds. I think that's probably within the scope. |
| 03:05:42.09 | Steven Woodside | Please don't interrupt me. And then you can comment, but please don't interrupt me. So I'm explaining to Ms. Johnson why you can express your opinion after I finish my sentence. Go ahead. So the item is agendized as scheduling a February 22nd special city council meeting regarding Bridgeway Safety Grant. We are going to discuss scheduling, not the merits of the item. |
| 03:06:05.97 | Jill Hoffman | But I think scheduling, I think that's properly within the issue of scheduling. They're saying that scheduling, that the issue of scheduling scheduling the matter that it's not necessary to schedule it because, um, Yeah, if someone wants to discuss that, that's fine, but I'm not going to hear merits on the matter. But they're saying that it shouldn't even be scheduled because the issue is already, it's so egregiously been decided that it shouldn't be scheduled. Well, the city council has not. |
| 03:06:23.21 | Steven Woodside | I'm not going to hear me. |
| 03:06:38.03 | Steven Woodside | given direction so the city council has |
| 03:06:40.22 | Jill Hoffman | Well, that's why I'm saying they should have their three minutes during public comment to talk about it. It's within the scope of what we're talking about. |
| 03:06:47.88 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I understand your perspective. |
| 03:06:49.76 | Steven Woodside | Very briefly. |
| 03:06:49.81 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:06:51.61 | Steven Woodside | As a matter of fairness to everybody who has issues with this, it needs to be agendized on the merits, on a date, separate from everything else, and that's what is being recommended that on the 22nd in the afternoon they'll be hearing where everyone can present their views. That's a matter of fairness to everybody. That's why we have a Brown Act. That's why we put things on the agenda. So everybody knows it's going to be discussed on the merits on this day, and we can be prepared. And as far as I know, there's been no city council decision on this matter whatsoever other than to authorize The initial work to be done, there's still work being done. So I just think it's a matter of fairness to everybody, and I'm very sorry that some of you came thinking somehow |
| 03:07:35.30 | Fred Moore | The initial work. |
| 03:07:45.80 | Steven Woodside | that the merits were appropriate for tonight. That's too bad and I'm sorry that that happened. |
| 03:07:51.37 | Steven Woodside | All right, I'm gonna call Kieran, thank you Vice Mayor. I'm gonna call Kieran Culligan. |
| 03:07:59.23 | Steven Woodside | No, I'm calling public comment. The time for our discussion will follow. But the issue of public... The time for our discussion will follow. I'm calling public comment right now. Go ahead. |
| 03:08:07.75 | Kiran Culligan | Hi, Kiran Culligan, South State resident. I want to comment on the agenda for the strategic planning session. That's also part of- Please. |
| 03:08:15.43 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 03:08:15.45 | Fred Moore | Peace. |
| 03:08:15.83 | Kiran Culligan | Yeah, I know that you will get into topics that you want to prioritize in terms of what is in the strategic plan. I would love to see time in the agenda dedicated to how we get things done. Because when I read previous strategic plans, when I read previous general plans, going back now three of them, there's so much in there that hasn't happened. Um, They're good ideas. They're maybe not all good ideas, but like their ideas and our inability to execute. Right. Like I think that little microcosm was like a perfect example of like trying to not get things done. How do we shift the script? If we think about housing, we think about infrastructure, we think about sea level rise, the need to get things done is only going to become more and more critical. And the implications of not getting things done are only going to become worse and worse. And so the how is just as important as the what, because whatever we've been doing has not been working, and we need a new playbook. So I hope you can dedicate that on your strategic planning session. Thank you. |
| 03:09:26.24 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Karen. Adrienne Britton. |
| 03:09:34.37 | Adrian Brinton | Hi, Adrian Brinton. And I just wanted to comment quickly on the timing of the scheduling for the meeting on the bike lanes. There's a lot going on in February. There's still a lot up in the air about the report that came out. It didn't document a lot of the things well. |
| 03:09:35.82 | Steven Woodside | I'm sorry. |
| 03:09:48.90 | Adrian Brinton | You know, I wonder why we're rushing this. It seems like we would do ourselves a favor to actually give a little bit more time You know, on this issue already, there's been 193 residents who have engaged on this issue. A hundred have showed up in favor, 93 have showed up opposing. That's a lot of people to come out to a meeting. It's probably going to be a massive meeting when we have it. So I would highly recommend, you know, I think that there was a lot of work done looking at the timing of the grant and when we need to make a decision. I understand we have some extra time to decide, I think we should use that. Joan shaking your head. |
| 03:10:23.33 | Steven Woodside | Our deadline is February 25th. |
| 03:10:26.38 | Adrian Brinton | Okay, and that's not a self-imposed deadline? |
| 03:10:29.18 | Steven Woodside | No. |
| 03:10:29.91 | Adrian Brinton | Okay. Okay, I was under a different assumption about that. Okay, if the deadline is the deadline, then we should have the meeting. But yeah, that's my comment, thank you. |
| 03:10:41.32 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Erin Roller. |
| 03:10:49.63 | Aaron Roller | Okay, thank you. I think I'll keep this brief because I was going to talk the story about how we've gotten it to this point. to be discussed. And I will just say thank you for removing this forward with conviction. It has been a lot of effort to get it here. And I look forward to seeing the results on that day. Thank you. |
| 03:11:16.13 | Steven Woodside | THANK YOU. Anyone online? |
| 03:11:20.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, we have Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 03:11:24.63 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hello there. I first want to discuss the incorrect title of this item with regard to the bike lane. The proper title for the grant is the Bridgeway Bike Lane project. Princess Street to Richardson, Street. That is the proper title. It is not the Bridgeway Safety Grant. And I request that it be made Clear. in all future communications and all future agenda items that the grant is called by its correct title. I do not think the meeting should be scheduled. You've had ample meetings. It's time for this council to ask, act, And you have it. ample information from which to make your decision. I think you should just say no and be done with this. Thank MTC very much and start over if you want to start over. I also want to point out the error of four of the five emails that were relating to the Bridgeway Bike Lane project. were listed under strategic planning, and I would request that those be moved under the bike lane project. By the way, approval of the agenda is not posted on the city website. I'm Madam Mayor. I just went, I went and took a look. It's not on the city website. |
| 03:12:47.24 | Fred Moore | man. |
| 03:12:51.20 | Sandra Bushmaker | The agenda item to a is mosquito vector presentation. No, I said it was to be it's to. you |
| 03:12:59.45 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF |
| 03:12:59.66 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 03:12:59.79 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:13:00.16 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 03:13:00.18 | Steven Woodside | It's not on there. It's just not there. It's on my hard copy, so I don't know how it disappeared, but I had to. |
| 03:13:06.24 | Sandra Bushmaker | I'm happy. We took a look at it. We need to get better coordination with the what is actually the agenda and what is posted on the city website. And lastly, my text to the mayor, |
| 03:13:15.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:13:16.11 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 03:13:19.48 | Sandra Bushmaker | had to do with Zoom technical issues. They were not substantive. They were technical issues with Zoom because I appear by Zoom. So thank you very much. So just for the rest of the day, |
| 03:13:31.97 | Steven Woodside | record. Council member Blaustein just pulled up the agenda online. It has listed at item two Roman numeral two E approval of agenda. And with respect to the Um, former mayor Bushmaker's comment about texts to me. She texted me asking me to have the mayor take some action on an item that was presently being discussed, then wrote a follow-up letter criticizing me for not conveying her message to the mayor. And that's when I blocked her from texting me during meetings. All right. Any further public comment online? |
| 03:14:12.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Babette McDougall. |
| 03:14:15.83 | Steven Woodside | Oh, yeah. |
| 03:14:15.97 | Babette McDougall | I got to say, we're starting to sound like the old Sausalito I've known and loved for so long. I love this girlfriend stuff. All right, listen, the reason I really wanted to chime in here is because I'll start with the city manager. First of all, thank you, Mr. City Manager, for saying that you're going to start distributing data to the public. as many days as you can sooner than you are currently. It used to be a minimum of a week, and that helped a lot. And it could continue to help a lot. we get the data to the public. the happier everyone will be. Thank you for putting that out there. Also, to schedule or not to schedule. I think the bottom line is there seems to be a majority sentiment. There's petitions being signed, there's all kinds of stuff going on. I think the majority of the sentiment is do not take away the emergency median. After all, that is what it is. And, you know, the misnomers on how to That's the very contract that was probably misassigned to that three item budget box that yours truly discovered. And it was so long and long. So, you know, bureaucratic. I just went straight to the terms and conditions because I was running out of time and filing a letter to you all. That was July 18, 2023. I still remember it well. I can still recite those three terms and conditions. They were that earth-shaking to me. Couldn't believe anybody could not recognize the signature. But someone signed on the bottom line for Sausalito for a mere half a million dollars, signing away control of the city's future. Really? What a cheap date. Honest to God. Yes, we do need to make sure that these things are appropriately identified and debated. And maybe we do need one more big rousing to, you know, everybody just get together and talk it out. I thought both Adrian and Kieran both, I thought they made excellent comments from the dais and the lectern there. Sorry. And they should be on the dais. That's what I'm hoping for is future. material for this community. Whether I always agree or don't disagree, I think they make very eloquent statements, just as I've known many of you to do the same. So with that, I yield back my time, and I thank you for your consideration. of trying to fetter out. It's like teasing out And there's a certain game I recall playing as a child where you had to move one colored stick away from another colored stick. whatever that was called. Anyway, I agree. I grew up a lot of places. It just feels like that kind of thing where you have to tease it all out. So thank you for taking the time to do that. And I yield back my time. Thank you. |
| 03:16:47.99 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:16:48.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Alice Merrill. |
| 03:16:48.08 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:16:48.13 | Babette McDougall | I love you. |
| 03:16:48.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:16:56.85 | Scott Thornburg | Alice? Hello. |
| 03:17:00.55 | Alice Merrill | I just want to say that when When anyone is speaking, I'm Alice Merrill. I live in Sausalito at 117 Caledonia Street. I remember that people used to say their addresses when they spoke. It didn't matter if they lived in Sausalito or they didn't. but it does give us an idea of the person's interest. So I notice in this bike and ped thing, with the bicycle lane. It's often the people who are for taking the median out. that aren't residents, I would really like to know. I would like it to be stated. whether you're a resident or not, when you speak. about everything so that it doesn't single any one thing out. But, This is our town. And we are the ones who live here. and that we should be the ones who are, or accept acknowledged as residents. So thank you. |
| 03:18:04.43 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I will close public comment. There is no action to be taken on the city manager. information I will note for the record that a majority of this City Council voted to schedule a special meeting to hear and make a decision on the Bridgeway Bike Lane Grant. And so that is what we're doing. All right, I'm gonna move on to... |
| 03:18:31.08 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry, pardon me. Have we decided that 2 o'clock is going to be our start time on the 22nd? I just have a... So any objection to 2 o'clock from the council members? |
| 03:18:36.51 | Steven Woodside | I just... |
| 03:18:41.07 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. She's our sister city liaison. Yeah, we have our annual meeting that day, so that's what I'm trying to confirm. Okay, good. Okay, I'm going to consider that confirmed. |
| 03:18:45.00 | Steven Woodside | our sister city liaison. |
| 03:18:52.02 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. I appreciate that. All right. Next, council member committee reports. In the future, I'm going to go ahead and publish the lists of committees that each council member serves on to trigger our memory about whether or not we have a report. but I don't have that this evening. Are there any council member reports? Yes. |
| 03:19:12.75 | Scott Thornburg | Councilmember Blasco. |
| 03:19:13.01 | Steven Woodside | I can. |
| 03:19:13.07 | Unknown | I just want to. |
| 03:19:13.62 | Steven Woodside | Uh, |
| 03:19:13.98 | Unknown | share out, I was appointed by the Transportation Authority of Marin to the Executive Committee on their Funding Programs and Legislations Committee membership, so I will be attending that meeting next Monday. Additionally, I was appointed by the Women's Caucus of Cal Cities to serve on the Revenue and Taxation Committee on behalf of the Women's Caucus, so I will be attending those policy meetings in Sacramento January 23rd and 24th. Just wanted to share that out. |
| 03:19:37.48 | Steven Woodside | Congratulations and thank you. Any other council member reports? All right, we'll move on to any public comment on council member reports? |
| 03:19:47.61 | Jill Hoffman | No, and I'm just adding this to my calendar. I'm not texting. |
| 03:19:50.00 | Steven Woodside | Okay. All right. Moving on to appointments. There are no appointments. Future agenda items. Yes, go ahead, Councilmember Blas. |
| 03:19:59.17 | Unknown | I think in light of what we're seeing in Southern California right now and the similarities in the landscape and the hills and the lack of egress, it's bringing up the necessity to have an disaster preparedness, but in particular fire safety drill and a conversation about what we would do in the event of a fire. And so I just want to get that to be back of top of mind and we can discuss it further at the strategic planning session as well. Thank you. |
| 03:20:24.60 | Steven Woodside | I didn't talk with Melissa about this topic, but I would echo that. Apparently, the fire is really bad in Southern California. And having owned a home that I fortunately sold in Santa Rosa in 2015 that was burned to the ground in 2017, along with 600 other homes, with the fire generating its own speed at 60 miles an hour we really need to take this seriously and I would encourage us to really do our best to secure as well as we can our community from the threat of fire The other thing that I would like to suggest, and I think it's in light of what Chad told us about audits, et cetera, et cetera. I think it might be appropriate to try to schedule before we get deeply into budget what is our latest view of our pension obligations and funding from the consultant like Bartels or someone like that to review. It was last done about two years ago. And I'm just thinking that might be good for all of us. to take a closer look at as a separate item. |
| 03:21:36.59 | Ian Sobieski | I could just add on to that. I think an open item is really explaining the pension liability. to the general public. It is an extremely complicated and confusing subject. And Bartell, we've heard their presentations before, address it in the sort of bean counter fashion that leaves you none the wiser when you're done and really being able to figure out what's going on. So it is not an easy task to explain this. And so I would love to emphasize second what you said, but actually be more ambitious in the goal, which is that we actually get our hands around it. in a way that everyone can understand it and ask for us to set that as a goal. |
| 03:22:16.34 | Steven Woodside | I endorse that as well, and we actually are also considering changing our, our, um, Investment the firm that makes our investments to a firm that will provide a higher yield. And so I think we're going to combine the eight bar tells report as well as that recommendation to the Council that was heard by the Finance Committee. last month. Um, And I also would like us to discuss financial transparency and restoring something like open.gov or something similar so that people can access our finances online as they used to be able to do. You know, I forgot to mention under Councilmember Committee reports that the city manager, Southern Marine Fire, the mayor, will be meeting with PG&E on Friday to discuss the recent outage and ways that we can prevent similar outages in the future and we'll report back to that afterwards all right I'm going to open it up to public comment for future agenda items |
| 03:23:27.91 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Lorna Newland. |
| 03:23:36.33 | Lorna Newland | Hello. Mayor, I apologize. I couldn't get my hand up in time about the committee reports. And Lorna Newland, a 31-year Sausalito resident, 22-year Sausalito small business owner, I... Ebbing. Rented from the city at MLK for 19 years now, and I love it there, but I used to go often to the OMIT meetings, and I know they haven't happened in a long time, so I look forward to seeing um the mayor's list of Council members on different committees, and I hope that the OMIT will come back. because that was one way I could learn more about what was going on. through the city, for the, especially the MLK property. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:24:30.97 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Babette McDougall. |
| 03:24:37.42 | Babette McDougall | Hi, thank you. looking at we're talking about future agenda items and possibilities. Um, I definitely think the more we tease out these details, the better it is. I most certainly agree with this unfunded pension liability situation. It's like the multi headed hydra, you cut off one head and six more grow back. So it really does need to be understood. And I think we should also address within the context of that. What does it meant? Because we have more than one retired Sausalito employee. who could be classified as a double or triple dipper. And so I think we ought to get kind of a little technical on what the jargon implies when we revisit this. subject. And then the other thing I would like to also approach is there was something that was mentioned earlier in the meeting. Perhaps we need to circle back on a special subject, but somehow I gather the Dorothy Gibson house and what it represents is somehow a separate category. from the rest of the portfolio which is held by the city of Sausalito. And if that is the case, I should like to know what that definition is. what its plans are. in terms of being morphed into some kind of institutional framework for going forward. So I think there was something that was sort of dropped there that is lingering somewhere nearby that needs to be. dust it off and revisit it. There are some big implications to what was not said about the Dorothy Gibson inauguration. program upcoming. Thank you. The ditty gritty is what we need. |
| 03:26:12.92 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:26:12.93 | Scott Thornburg | staff report. |
| 03:26:13.56 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:26:13.96 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment. |
| 03:26:15.83 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you. |
| 03:26:20.81 | Steven Woodside | All right, I'm going to move on to other reports of significance. I wanted to remind all of us that January 9th, in two days, is designated as a day of remembrance for President Jimmy Carter. |
| 03:26:31.31 | Fred Moore | All right. |
| 03:26:32.29 | Steven Woodside | um, Jimmy Carter was an alumnus of my... my institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, and I had the distinct privilege of voting for him while I was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. I won't say how long ago that was. All right. Any question or comment on other reports of significance? Any public comment? |
| 03:27:02.78 | Walfred Solorzano | See none. |
| 03:27:04.39 | Steven Woodside | And with that, we will adjourn. The next regularly scheduled City Council meeting will be this Saturday at 830 a.m. Hope to see many of you there. |
| 03:27:19.84 | Unknown | . |
| 03:27:30.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
Babette McDougall — Against: Raised concerns about the 'Yes in My Backyard' lawsuit related to housing element challenges, urging the council to inform the public and maintain control over local planning. ▶ 📄