| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:30.24 | Walfred Solorzano | City Council, it is now 9 a.m. |
| 00:00:37.17 | Jill Hoffman | Good morning everyone and welcome to Sausalito's strategic planning meeting on Saturday, January 11th at 20, 2025. I'll ask the city clerk to call the roll. |
| 00:00:52.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Blasdine. |
| 00:00:54.62 | Melissa Blaustein | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:00:55.84 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:00:58.67 | Melissa Blaustein | here. |
| 00:00:58.96 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:01:00.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Sobieski. Here. Vice Mayor Woodside. Here. And Mayor Cox. |
| 00:01:07.56 | Jill Hoffman | Here. THE END OF So as a preliminary matter, Jill, Councilmember Hoffman and I both need to make announcements regarding our remote appearance. It sounds as though we are sharing the same malady. So unfortunately, the day after our last city council meeting, I came down with the flu. And although I am feeling better today, the last thing I want to do is spread the wealth to the public and my fellow council members. And so I'm seeking leave to participate remotely pursuant to our, the emergency procedures enunciated in the Brown Act. City attorney, is that adequate? |
| 00:01:57.31 | Sergio Rudin | I think the only other disclosure that you need to make is whether or not there's any adults present in the room with you. |
| 00:02:03.15 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 00:02:04.00 | Sergio Rudin | Um. |
| 00:02:04.40 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. No, there are no, I am in my home office and there are no other adults in my home. |
| 00:02:12.77 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah. And to be clear, you're seeking the city council to approve your participation under the emergency circumstances exception under government code 54953. |
| 00:02:24.58 | Jill Hoffman | Correct. And so on that basis, I will entertain a motion. Well, |
| 00:02:29.17 | Sergio Rudin | Bye. |
| 00:02:29.91 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, thanks. |
| 00:02:31.65 | Jill Hoffman | Same under the just cause. And there's no other persons over the age of 18 in the room with me as well. |
| 00:02:40.95 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so then I'll entertain a motion for the remote participation of both Councilmember Hoffman and myself in today's meeting. Thank you. |
| 00:02:49.22 | Steven Woodside | fines. |
| 00:02:49.64 | Jill Hoffman | of the |
| 00:02:49.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:02:49.84 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:02:50.33 | Melissa Blaustein | again. |
| 00:02:51.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, I will do a roll call vote. Council Member Blaustein. Yes. |
| 00:02:56.38 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 00:02:56.68 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:02:56.69 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:02:57.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman? |
| 00:02:58.77 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 00:02:59.63 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Sobieski? Yes. |
| 00:03:00.98 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yes. |
| 00:03:01.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Woodside? Yes. And Mayor Cox. |
| 00:03:05.06 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, that motion carries unanimously. Thank you. |
| 00:03:11.68 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, I do not have the... agenda in front of me. So give me one moment. |
| 00:03:16.32 | Chris Zapata | That's okay, Mary. You can turn it over to the city manager. We'll go from here. Okay, wonderful. Thank you, City Manager. |
| 00:03:20.15 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, wonderful. Thank you, city manager. |
| 00:03:22.33 | Chris Zapata | Lovely. Welcome, everybody. I'd like to begin by thanking you all for your attendance and certainly the council that's here and the council that's trudging through this in their illnesses. Thank you very much for that. I'd like to introduce our facilitator who's going to take us through this day, going to lead the discussion of the council, work with the community as well as staff. We were fortunate last year to receive her services. This is Amy Overworth, who is our facilitator for the day from MRG? MRG Solutions. And so she has been a fan of Sausalito's and now is a real fan of Sausalito because she was here last year and she is now here again this year. And so we're looking forward to her services. So Amy, do you want to say a few words? |
| 00:04:11.08 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. Yeah, let me borrow the microphone if you will. And I know that we are going to have public comments, Madam Mayor. Yes. |
| 00:04:18.34 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:04:19.11 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, but I'll just... I mean, I can save my comments for after the public comments. It is an absolute pleasure to be here. I am also currently the mayor of Manhattan Beach, which is in Los Angeles. Ooh. Um, And i'll make some comments regarding what we're going through in a bit, but really this it's so great to be here to be here for the residents and Council, I know that everybody wants the best for Sausalito, which is such a great place, so thank you. |
| 00:04:52.85 | Unknown | and, |
| 00:04:53.18 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 00:04:53.98 | Unknown | Very, very good. |
| 00:04:54.84 | Amy Overworth | Totally. |
| 00:04:54.84 | Chris Zapata | Any... If I can. |
| 00:04:55.71 | Amy Overworth | like, |
| 00:04:56.05 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 00:04:56.07 | Amy Overworth | you |
| 00:04:56.22 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:04:57.01 | Chris Zapata | We still need to do the Pledge of Allegiance as well. Thank you, Babette. |
| 00:05:00.41 | Jill Hoffman | All right, great. Let's go ahead and do the Pledge of Allegiance. I'll ask that Babette lead us. in the pledge. |
| 00:05:13.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:15.22 | Babette McDougall | But I would likely acknowledge the substance in the room. Keep talking to me, join me. Thank you. Yep. I pledge you. Thank you. |
| 00:05:27.73 | Jill Hoffman | I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. |
| 00:05:29.85 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. So, okay. |
| 00:05:32.75 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:05:32.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:32.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:32.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:32.98 | Unknown | . |
| 00:05:33.14 | Jill Hoffman | and to the republic for which it stands. One nation. under God. indivisible. with liberty and justice for all. City manager, I'm just going to let you know, I'm having a hard time hearing what's going on there. So I don't know if there's anything to be done about that. |
| 00:05:52.74 | Chris Zapata | We'll we'll try except mayor we can hear you very clearly |
| 00:05:56.50 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 00:06:00.77 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, we are going to take public comment. in just a moment. But before we do, I had a couple of remarks that I wanted to make to kick us off. Then we'll take public comment and then I'll turn it back over to Amy, if that's okay with everyone. |
| 00:06:20.51 | Jill Hoffman | Again, I'm not hearing anything from anyone, city manager. |
| 00:06:23.51 | Chris Zapata | It's fine. It's silent. We're waiting for you, Mayor. Thank you. |
| 00:06:26.75 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, all right, thank you. |
| 00:06:26.77 | Chris Zapata | Okay, all right. |
| 00:06:28.64 | Jill Hoffman | All right, good morning everyone, and welcome to our 2025 strategic planning workshop. I want to thank all of our city council members, our city manager, our city attorney, and all of our department heads for investing their time this morning to this important planning effort. I also want to thank and acknowledge you for the work you invested in putting together your five priorities for 2025. I really believe that investment of effort will facilitate our public process today. Some of you may know that this is year six of a six year strategic plan that we developed in 2020 and a little later this morning you'll hear a report card from the city manager on how we've measured up over the last six years. But at the time we developed that plan, We had a different city manager, a different city attorney, a different police chief, a different finance director, a different community and economic development director, a different community services director, and a different human resources director, just to name a few. So as former Mayor Sobieski liked to phrase it, Sausalito has truly gone through a renaissance in the last six years. But something I am proud to share with you is that in 2020, we listed staffing levels and turnover as a weakness. And I don't consider that to be the case anymore. I am pleased and proud that some of you sitting here today have been offered the opportunity to work elsewhere, probably for a higher salary, and yet you have chosen to invest your time and your future in Sausalito. Our city manager who has worked in far larger cities than Sausalito tells me that Sausalito is the most challenging city he has worked for. I think that is because we are a small town with big town challenges. But with those challenges come opportunities. And each of our council members is uniquely qualified and equipped to address those challenges. And each of our carefully chosen staff members and department heads are similarly uniquely qualified and equipped to address those challenges. And so against that backdrop, I am pleased and excited to embark on this strategic planning effort this morning and to see what we can create in the coming year and for the future. Thank you. |
| 00:08:59.56 | Walfred Solorzano | Do we want to take public comment? Yes, please. We'll start with Adrian Brinton. |
| 00:09:12.70 | Adrian Brinton | Good morning, Adrian. I'm a resident and I didn't expect to go first, but thank you for taking my comment and thank you to the city council and our city staff for coming in on this beautiful Saturday morning and spending the day here in the city council chambers. Appreciate that. You know, it's great that we're talking about the strategic plan and having a strategic planning session. And, you know, I was thinking about it this morning and thinking about the quote that every system is perfectly designed to achieve the outcome, which it gets. And our city is like that as well. And right now we're achieving a lot of good outcomes, but we're also achieving outcomes like, a few too many empty storefronts, a little too much vacant and fallow industrial land, and a little bit too much crumbling infrastructure. And I think those were really hot topics in the election, and they're ones now with the strategic plan to try to put those pieces together, something we can take forward. Those things are all related and, you know, focusing on our economy and our empty storefronts helps us build up an economy that can pay for the infrastructure. So I think it's great that these things are on the table. Really excited that we're talking about them today. And again, thank you guys. Thank you to the mayor and councilmember Hoffman for coming in, feeling the way that you do today. That's going to make it even more challenging. So I appreciate that as well. Thanks. |
| 00:10:38.70 | Unknown | THANK YOU. |
| 00:10:41.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Beth McDougal. |
| 00:10:47.30 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:10:48.13 | Babette McDougall | Good morning and thank you for recognizing me. All right, lesson learned number one. Now that the current mayor has returned us to inviting a member of the attending public to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, I'd like to officially request that that person step up to the microphone. That way, people who are looking from Zoom can hear everything. I'm not sure, did you hear the acknowledgement of both Chief Tubbs and Chief Gregory, who joined in leading the pledge? No. I didn't think so. I'm sorry. going forward. Lead the pledge from the mic so everybody knows what's going on. All right, thank you. So the reason I'm really up here, thank God I have an extra few seconds. |
| 00:11:24.63 | Unknown | God, |
| 00:11:27.86 | Babette McDougall | As we go forward in today's exercise, I would like to just point out a couple of things that I have found confusing since I started paying attention regularly to the council meetings in 2023. And, um, So here's the one thing. Items that are approved for expense, either on the consent calendar or elsewhere, they fail to be recognized as whether or not they are, in fact, part of the current budget cycle, or is it a new add-on? And if it's a new add-on, is it added on to the current budget cycle or some future budget cycle? I don't know. So that's one question of confusion I'd love to see somehow addressed and clarified, because actually a lot of people in town are of the impression, I don't know what to think, frankly, but I have heard. That if it's on the consent calendar, that means it's not in the budget. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. And because we spend a lot of money on the calendar, we sure did last year. Over a million more, more than a million, wait, some millions. Anyway, so going on, density issues. Well, there's just nothing like redesigning Southern California as we speak to really have to ask again, is Sausalito taking density issues seriously? This whole concept of being pushed and pushed by outside forces, being sued in a court, saying Sausalito doesn't deserve to be in charge of its own development future, especially where housing or other needs are concerned, to me is unacceptable. UNTIL THE FAMILY. acceptable. And the more that the citizens are involved in this process, I think the stronger we be. We are united if we get behind the idea that none of us want to see this place overbuilt It's exactly what the city council member representing Pacific Palisades Vice Mayor and I were speaking of this earlier. A new word, I'm going to call it a new word, densification. Density is now a noun. All right, densification is something that we have to deal with. So all of these issues are so relevant. We're lucky to have someone from Southern California leading us this morning on these very kinds of questions. So finally, I'd like to address this remark by one of my good neighbors about vacant fallow land. One of the things that makes Sausalito great is the fact that we still have open shoreline. Original matters. |
| 00:13:51.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Next person is Joe Novitski. |
| 00:14:02.09 | Joe Novitski | Good morning, Madam Mayor. Excuse me. City Council members. My name is Joe Novitski. I'm not a Sausalito resident. I live in your area of influence. I drove through a flooded parking lot to get here today on a 6.7 foot tide. Thank you. Okay. I am, however, a board member of the Open Water Rowing Center, which is a taxpaying business in the city of Sausalito. And on behalf of the open water flowing center and also all of the houseboat residents that I I'm on the board of the floating homes association as well. I would like to today... to bear in mind what we consider to be in most planning efforts, except of course in the case of the resilience, the sea level rise adaptation plan, I would like you to not lose sight of what we call the elephant in the room. level rise is a reality we suffer it in on the on the line with every every tide above six feet above mean low or low water. And we would like you not, in your strategic planning discussions, to lose sight of the fact. that that is a reality that is going to flood the infrastructure in the Sausalito shoreline within the next 25 to 30 years. Thank you very much. |
| 00:15:24.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:15:26.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Fred Moore. |
| 00:15:34.47 | Fred Moore | Again, like everybody's mentioned, thank you very much for coming in and spending many, many hours on this beautiful day helping the citizens of Sausalito. I'm hoping that part of your strategic plan can be seeking the contribution of volunteers and many non-profit organizations in the city. I think this is an amazing city with so many people who are willing to give their time and efforts to participate in making the Sausalito better and helping alleviate the load a lot of the governmental departments as well as the elected officials. I think you can take advantage of their expertise some of their private funding to help accomplish some of the city's goals. One in particular I know the Sausalito Foundation is working on some interesting ideas that they would like to come before that council with new welcome sign of potential artists walk along the waterfront. And I hope that those can be met with some city assistance in helping to expedite approvals, permits, etc. to help those come to fruition. And I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed or the lightest bulb in a chandelier, but I would like to offer myself two hours, a couple hours a week, a couple hours a day, a couple hours a week to act as you want any of your assistance. I'm kind of bipartisan, but to the extent you have things that you have to get done but don't have time, please feel free to reach out to me and I'll contribute my hours and time to help do some of the research or background that you need. Thank you very much and look forward to a great 2025. |
| 00:17:11.16 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Sharna Brock. |
| 00:17:19.50 | Sharna Brockett | Hi there, I'm Sharna Brockett, and I'm a Sausalito resident. So I think there'll probably be a lot of discussion around our housing element and how do we get shovels in the ground and produce some housing. I just wanted to add a little, I thought this was really interesting information. I went to an event that was about affordable housing in Marin, and that slide, I have it here on my phone, I was going to read it, really impacted me. And I think it's good for us to educate ourselves on by not having enough housing in Sausalito, what that means. So, you know, a long wait for a doctor's appointment, it's a housing issue. Can't find a dentist, it's a housing issue. A car inspection, not a repair, costs $300. It's a housing issue. As you get older and you're old town and you want to downsize and live in a more manageable, smaller perhaps condo or apartment, and you can't find one and you have to leave Sausalito, it's a housing issue. You can't find a caretaker to help yourself or your parents. It's a housing issue. Your school can't find a math teacher or hire a math teacher. It's a housing issue. Your kids are starting families in Portland, Oregon, or in Petaluma, California, it's a housing issue. You're stuck on the Richmond Bridge in traffic, it's a housing issue. Favorite restaurant closed at eight, because they can't find people who will work in the restaurants to serve you, it's a housing issue. Want to reduce greenhouse emissions, it's a housing issue. Want to reduce homelessness in California, it's a housing issue. I just wanna put that out there. I mean, I know we're all upset about the possibility of changing our town and producing more housing, but it really is more than just that. I do believe that we'll have a better town, a better quality of life. If we can have our teachers, our police, our fire, our waitstaff, Just a lot of people who can't live here now live here. |
| 00:19:19.51 | Jill Hoffman | I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE City Manager I am seeing lots of flickering in the city signal. It keeps flickering and saying low unsupported signal, low signal coming from the city. I don't know whether Council Member Hoffman is seeing that Yeah, she is seeing that as well. I recommend someone Check your internet connection to be sure It is strong enough to support this meeting. |
| 00:19:47.42 | Chris Zapata | We're working on it, Mayor. I'm not sure that we'll be able to fix it, but we're working on it. |
| 00:19:51.39 | Jill Hoffman | All right, thank you. |
| 00:19:53.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Online, we have Morgan Pierce. |
| 00:19:59.30 | Morgan Pierce | Hello, thank you everyone for joining us today. Members of council, members of staff, members of the public for this important conversation. Sorry, I'm joining remotely, but I just wanted to offer that as a Saucida resident and community volunteer, I wanna make sure that we don't lose sight of our green infrastructure as an important component of our community and how it supports not only our health and livelihood, but those of our supporting flora and fauna. So as we discuss ways to reduce liability and improve our public spaces, let's not lose track of our green infrastructure. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:20:40.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Alice Merrill. |
| 00:20:47.57 | Alice Merrill | Very sorry for being late. I had a little glitch. Yeah. I totally agree with Sharna that we have an issue, and I would love it if we had our worker bees and our teachers and our everybody's being able to live closer, and this wasn't such an exclusive, wildly crazy, exclusive town. But I, the old but for me, but... the marineship is not the place to look to clear out the housing issue the marineship is um a vital place that is on the seashore one of the few places um that are still working there are lots of them that have closed down for big fancy housing i know that some people are interested in workforce housing down there, and maybe that can be worked out, but if it turns into... big restaurants and big hotels and big restaurants condos. that is the absolutely wrong way to go for that particular area. What can I say? If we have housing in some of the properties that are close to that, that would be obvious for housing, then what happens is the people who live there complain, and it gets closed down. The only place that that doesn't happen is probably an airport, because that's obvious. But we really, really have to be thoughtful about this. And I'm willing to have houses crowded in here and there. I think that there are lots of properties that are big and empty and have lots of beautiful gardens. I would love one. But please don't just look there. Thank you. |
| 00:22:01.68 | Chris Tubbs | Well, I think that's it. |
| 00:22:51.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:22:53.27 | Alice Merrill | Charles Mouton. |
| 00:22:54.13 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:23:01.03 | Charles Melton | Good morning city council and thank you for the opportunity to provide comments today really appreciate the work you're doing to get the priorities for our city set forward and appreciate. of all of our wonderful city council members working overtime on a Saturday to be part of this process. For me, some of the key priorities here and before this with Sharna and Miss Merrill's comment was regarding housing. We do need more work for workforce housing for our workforce, our teachers, our first responders, our city staff and our aging population so that way they can remain in Sausalito. The impacts of not having housing include or can lead to labor shortages, impacting our local businesses and the economic conditions of our city. If we are to have successful businesses and a thriving working waterfront, we need workforce housing. A lack of housing also leads to economic leakage. It reduces local spending. When workers commute from outside Sausalito, they spend less locally, which diminishes sales tax revenue and affects local small businesses, including armoring ship businesses. Pure residence means less demands for local goods and services, slowing economic growth And when workers commute in from outside Sausalito, it causes increased traffic and pollution, undermining our city's sustainability goals. It also means missed revenue sources. Fewer housing units result in lower property tax revenues, which fund critical city services like schools, public safety and infrastructure. Sausalito also misses out on fees collected during the permitting and construction process. Also, we talk a lot about our city about our liability risk related to sidewalks, trees, our payment conditions, but the cost of the city's liability for not complying with housing could result in additional financial penalties, loss of local control over land use decisions, and ineligible B-net-net- eligible for state fighting or grants. When we talk about our state's liabilities, we need to talk about the liabilities of not having workforce housing here in Sausalito. We also need to focus on resilience. We've seen the absolute horrific devastation that's occurring in Los Angeles due to wildfires. Given Sausalito being subject to high winds and a highway at the top of the hill, we too can be exposed to this. We need to have the defenses against wildfires and also address the impacts of flooding and sea level rise that impact our city. This first starts with infrastructure. where we talk a lot about our PCI and improving our payment index, it doesn't make sense to me that we repave our roads just to tear them up to then later bury power lines and fix our sewer systems, which we also need to do. Infrastructure improvements are also needed to improve our critical corridors allow for multimodal transportation and improve our transit hubs, including our ferry landing bus stops parking lots and we need to optimize those as much as possible. So how do we do this? We grow the economic pie of our city. We grow the economic opportunity. Infrastructure projects and resilience projects are expensive. Instead of raising taxes on residents, we must find additional ways to generate revenue and make meaningful growth. to our city. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments and I look forward to the future discussions during today's meeting. |
| 00:25:57.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:26:00.63 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Jeff Chase. |
| 00:26:13.27 | Walfred Solorzano | and unmute yourself. |
| 00:26:20.17 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh. We can hear you. |
| 00:26:25.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:26:27.95 | Unknown | Bye. Right, turn another window. |
| 00:26:32.04 | Unknown | you Thank you. |
| 00:26:32.41 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 00:26:32.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:26:32.61 | Jill Hoffman | You're cutting in and out, Jeff. |
| 00:26:32.64 | Unknown | You're kind of. I am on corner. |
| 00:26:35.97 | Unknown | Hello? Can you hear me? |
| 00:26:38.97 | Jill Hoffman | I love you. |
| 00:26:39.34 | Jeffrey Chase | Hello? |
| 00:26:39.95 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:26:40.51 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:26:40.81 | Jeffrey Chase | Can you hear me? |
| 00:26:41.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:26:41.74 | Jeffrey Chase | We can hear you. Oh, I... Hi, Madam Mayor and city council. And people of Sausalito... I'm going to speak about the the Anchorage on the Sausalito side. Jill Hoffman, as a sailor, knows that in a storm, people have to take refuge from very high winds. So on the Sausalito side, it's protected. especially from the east wind. So people have to necessarily go there and do go there now for that. that it seems And I'll just stick to that. for beer and, uh, Have a great day. Bye. |
| 00:27:25.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:27:25.16 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:27:25.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:27:29.34 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, no further public speakers. |
| 00:27:32.82 | Jill Hoffman | All right, thank you, Wilfred. With that, I will invite our consultant, Amy Haworth, to make an introduction and provide us an overview of our day. |
| 00:27:46.94 | Amy Overworth | Thank you, Madam Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, council members, public and staff. So, as I said earlier, my name is Amy Haworth. It's my second time up here. I love local government. And I don't play pickleball. I, uh... There's no I don't kayak down in Manhattan Beach. This is what I do for fun. I am the mayor currently in Manhattan Beach. I have 18 and a half years of elected experience. For those of you who weren't here last year and heard all my fabulous credibility, that's why I'm doing this. All of you know this. So for eight years, I was on the Manhattan Beach School Board and then eight years on the city council where I had to take a term limit break of two years, and now I'm back on the council. I was not on during COVID. so anybody who has been on city staff or served during COVID you know what it's like to really be in a existential threat. I want to thank you for asking me back here and hopefully my only goal is to be of service to all of you to the Council and to the residents and I apologize that I have my back to the residents right now. That's very uncomfortable as it would be for any of you right because we want to hear from the residents and we never want to turn our back on you. Thank you. So please accept my apologies for that. A little bit of housekeeping, how this is going to go down, if you will. Your city manager is going to be talking about some of the accomplishments, if you will, and what has been done and how it has met the goals of the strategic plan, which as the mayor mentioned, is in its final year. department heads are going to present up to five priorities for for their departments for the coming budget year and beyond and then i'm going to sort of frame how the council is going to then discuss how you want to approach what's facing the city. It may be different from the staff. That's what you get to do. You get to give direction. Right. and I'm going to help you navigate that. And then what I want to end up with at the end of the day is a process for going forward. This, by the way, this is not a complete strategic plan design meeting. I want to make that clear. That takes a lot of time. That's not what we're doing. This is kind of more of a strategic goal, priority setting for the year, a work plan perhaps. But the council members will be working during lunch I'm going to hopefully get the council members to prioritize. You do have some big issues facing you. And while plans can feel limiting, I know that a plan that was done six years ago may feel limiting. It can also... allow you to move forward on these big, huge, heavy items before you. So I'd like you to maybe approach it with that. But anyway, I do want to leave you with a process. I have suggestions for how staff can set up a process for tracking what we do today, what you do in the future, and reporting out to the public. You have such a wonderful, engaged community, much like ours in Manhattan Beach. And then the last thing I want to say before I turn it over to the city manager, somebody mentioned, yes, I'm from Manhattan Beach, which is part of Los Angeles County. We are completely safe. We are south of the airport. But it's not to say that we're not affected. Everybody I see on the dais and the metaphoric dais or the virtual dais knows that if something like this happens, you will be involved, right? You are the people who take responsibility for your community. So it might be everything from, helping the emergency operations center, might be baking banana bread for the fire department, it might be finding homes for somebody, helping the school district. Right now I've been working with Chevron to get 5,000 N95 masks donated to the elderly in our community because they don't have air purifiers. The devastation is horrific. I don't know how we'll rebuild. Los Angeles will not be the same. AND I THINK THAT'S A Yet here I am. In addition, my computer died, and it's hard to get fixed when there's a wildfire going on. So I will ask for your patience if my PowerPoint looks like a ninth graders. theirs would probably be better. But I will be here in service of you. This is so important. But going back to the fires, if you will, I want you to indulge me and I want everybody to take a deep breath of air right now. All y'all. All y'all at home, because I got off the plane and even at the Oakland airport, I was like, oh my God, this air. I'm so grateful. And I also now want to ask the council members, each one of you, I want you to think about for a second. God forbid that what happened in the Palisades would happen here. What would you miss most? about your community. And I'm going to start, I could start with you, Madam Mayor, but maybe I'll start with Vice Mayor, since he's sitting in front of me and we'll do that. |
| 00:33:15.03 | Steven Woodside | I'd probably miss, if this may sound a little too much, I'd miss so much I'd be overwhelmed. And I would miss all those opportunities that support living, |
| 00:33:23.23 | Chris Tubbs | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:33:30.59 | Steven Woodside | just living on this earth. I know many people who lost their homes up in Santa Rosa in the Tubbs fire. That's right. I think we have an employee here who lost a home or was displaced from paradise. I know people who were in Lahaina who knew people who perished. What you miss is so overwhelming. Thank you. |
| 00:33:54.58 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 00:33:54.75 | Steven Woodside | It's hard to say I'll miss the air. I'll miss my friends, I'll miss getting up in the morning and being able to walk my dog in the neighborhood that used to be there. I mean, I don't know where to start. |
| 00:34:06.21 | Amy Overworth | I appreciate it. Councilmember Sobieski. |
| 00:34:15.10 | Unknown | Yes, if we had a tragedy of that scale, I would miss... Thank you. the loss of the luxury of being able to fight so vociferously and angrily about trivial stuff, which is what we do all the time here, instead of focusing on the really big things that matter and being grateful every day for the blessings we have of liberty and comfort, security and health. |
| 00:34:31.62 | Chris Tubbs | them. |
| 00:34:39.40 | Unknown | So I'd miss the indulgent luxuries. |
| 00:34:39.47 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:34:39.52 | Amy Overworth | . |
| 00:34:39.57 | Unknown | So, |
| 00:34:42.84 | Unknown | getting so pissed off. about little things. |
| 00:34:46.27 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. Appreciate that. Councilmember Blaustein, before we turn to Zoom. And would you mind repeating the question again? Yes, of course. In and out a bit. |
| 00:34:53.48 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, of course. |
| 00:34:56.41 | Amy Overworth | Oh, I know it's so frustrating, I'm sure. I'm asking everybody and it's going to be Councilmember Blaustein and then I'll turn to you both. |
| 00:34:56.43 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, I know. |
| 00:35:03.79 | Amy Overworth | if, God forbid a tragedy such as the Palisades happened here and everything's gone. What do you miss most about your community here in Sausalito? Councilmember Blasstein. |
| 00:35:13.76 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah. There are countless things I could mention about the beauty of our town, of the gorgeous views of the Bay, of walking the neighborhoods. But I think I would really miss the people in our community because after a tragedy like the one that Los Angeles is facing, many people will never be able to go back to their homes. And the Palisades community will never be what it was before. And Los Angeles will never be what it was before. And if we were faced with that sort of tragedy here, we would lose core members of our community, not just through the loss of the destruction of their homes, but being able to directly link to some of the conversations we're having today about housing. How would we be able to, how would people be able to afford to return to their homes and to rebuild, especially given the age of some of our community members. And so that would be, you know, the people in our community is what makes it so special and full of richness and history. And to see that change, I would really deeply miss it. |
| 00:35:29.79 | Chris Tubbs | us. in the |
| 00:35:39.39 | Unknown | with. |
| 00:35:59.56 | Chris Tubbs | So |
| 00:36:11.03 | Amy Overworth | Madam Mayor or |
| 00:36:11.91 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm sorry. |
| 00:36:12.10 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 00:36:18.90 | Jill Hoffman | Sure. You know, I am old enough to be the child of parents who grew up during the Depression. And Uh, when my dad passed away, I found Bags and bags and boxes full of empty cans in our attic. because he was saving carefully in the event of another huge event where you couldn't find groceries, you couldn't buy gas, things really came to a great standstill. And so I have a little bit of understanding of living in a parsimonious way to hedge against an uncertain You know, one of the unfortunate things for those in the Palisades is that their insurance, many of them had their home insurance canceled by insurance providers and weren't able to obtain insurance. replacement home insurance because of the high risk of the area in which they lived. And so many of them do not have the backup of insurance. And so they are going to be forced to rebuild without that financial benefit. So I definitely would miss the things that we take for granted, like being able to jump on the internet and handle everything remotely. I think it would force us to go back to a simpler, And perhaps in some ways, better way of living where we don't do everything virtually, we're forced to, pull together as a community and devise creative solutions to a disaster. So again, I'm going to refer back to the vice mayor's using of the word renaissance. You know, the opportunity when you're facing a tragedy of incalculable magnitude is the opportunity to create something new and better and to grow stronger from it. So I hope that is what we would be able to do if we faced that sort of tragedy. I also hope that some of the tasks we are, many of us have already listed on our priorities and that we'll be working with today will help to hedge against and prevent us from experiencing that sort of tragedy. |
| 00:38:58.40 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. And Councilmember Huffman. |
| 00:39:02.18 | Jill Hoffman | So I, yeah. you know, I guess I have a different perspective maybe closer to maybe to Councilmember Cox. I'm from the Midwest, you know, so farm folk. you know, we regularly face you know, environmental disasters where we have tornadoes regularly or we have floods regularly, where we're wiped out. Your farm is wiped out, but your community is not wiped out. You just sort of pull together and it's unthinkable that you would leave your land. You know, you just all pull together and you build back. you know, your communities there and you all work together and you build back and you just keep going. You know, it's it's the community. It's there. It's it's your land that's there. You just keep going. And that's what's important. And so you just keep moving forward. And I would think that that's what we would do to pull together in Sausalito. if something like that would happen. You know, we had a, tremendous, horrific mudslide. in 2019. you know, we pulled together. It wasn't catastrophic, but it was pretty significant. and horrible. It was miraculous that nobody died. I mean, it was just miraculous. I don't know how that happened, um you know pull together and and we're able to rehouse uh you know the people that were um that were affected by it but um you know i think the community here is pretty tight um and we take care of each other at least we try to so um i think that's the most important thing for us here |
| 00:40:39.30 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 00:40:39.46 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 00:40:39.95 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. And I know that's a really somber way to begin, but I also think, you know, everybody is Mindful, you mentioned these big things of pulling together community people and uh, Iain, appreciating the luxury of being angry about little things made me chuckle as a council member. in a very good way. I mean, Just going to say, you know, they don't even have coffee shops to gather at. The grocery stores are gone. The schools are gone. Um, they will rebuild because of people like you and people like the engaged folks in this room. There's a lot of needs here. Somebody said a big, a small city with big city needs. there's a lot of conflict. You've got density and then you've got housing, right, or density and housing versus open space and character, right? And we're going to we're going to try to move through this. I'm here for you and I'm going to turn it back over to the city manager who's going to talk to you about the realities of the past year and so on the ground. And then I will step back up at a later point to work with all of you. So thank you for digging deep. And hopefully today there will be some steps that you can take towards the future. Thank you. |
| 00:42:00.89 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Amy. Thank you, everybody, for their input and their words. Mayor Cox, you said, I said, Saucer was the most difficult town I'd ever managed in 33 years. Thank you. |
| 00:42:13.00 | Jill Hoffman | I think challenging was the word I challenging, sir. |
| 00:42:13.04 | Chris Zapata | I think challenging was the Yeah, it's the most interesting town that I've ever worked in. And that's the best way to put it, because people here really care. They absolutely do. And I want to give kudos to the past city council and staff that put together the strategic plan in 2019-2020. It's a very good document, and I've seen lots of them. And unlike some that sit on a shelf, this one has not sat on a shelf. It's been actively worked on. And, you know, that saying of fail to plan, plan to fail, that's true. But the other pieces that's evident today is that even the best planning can be overtaken by events. We do not know what's going to happen. So I love the exercise of strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threat analysis, which you did in that plan. So I'm going to run through a little bit of that so you can have my sense of it as somebody that came, you know, three years after it started. Under strengths, I want to highlight three things that you talked about. The city's location and physical attributes, world-class, absolutely world-class. What's behind Mary Cox on her screen is known throughout the globe, and you're right at the doorstep of that. The other thing that was under strength was customer service focus. Okay, that's something important. And the other thing I noted was infrastructure investment. And I know that that was on the heels of building a police and fire station, on the heels of passing a measure to get parks built, and on the heels of passing Measure O, so that made sense when you did that then. In terms of weaknesses, again, emergency management, hillsides, and infrastructure needs. Still relevant today. So I am gonna read through the, opportunities in total and threats because i want everyone to hear what the council then thought and see how relevant it is today Climate change and sea level rise was seen as an opportunity. Marineship. Innovation Center. undergrounding, a changing population, alternative service delivery, retail land use changes, new infrastructure resources, technology utilization, economic development, relationship with Marin County, transportation, and definition of identities which I didn't quite get, but it was seen as an opportunity Now I want to get to the threats. I'm not sure. Climate change and sea level rise. Hillside's recessions and the fiscal impact of a recession, state housing requirements, the competing divisions for the marineship, staff turnover and loss of knowledge, school and family impacts, decline of tourism, again, emergencies and disasters, lack of diversity, increase in homelessness, and the speed and advancement of technology. So that's excellent work. And I would say 75% of it's still relevant today. What I think I want to point out is some of these things caught my eye in terms of I thought maybe they're missed or maybe they could be emphasized, amplified. We didn't talk about risk management and insurance in any of that, which you you could obviously you couldn't force you a global pandemic covid which nobody could there's no conversation about gate five and gate six road which there could be affordable housing the opportunity for waterside activities organizational development missing property management could have been in there, and grants chasing other people's money or outside resources. Those things to me are things that if I had to do it again today, they'd be in there somewhere in those four categories. And then certainly, I want to say and end on a high note with respect to the SWAT strengths. You've invested in public safety, whether it's the buildings, whether invested in public safety, whether it's the buildings and whether it's the people, whether it's the labor contracts and police, and certainly the community at large is invested in fire. And one of the things that I do when I come to the city is I want to know what the ISO rating is, insurance service organization rating, because if you have a 10, that means you don't have a fire department. If you have a one, that means you're best of the best. And Sassou was fortunate to have a fire district that has an ISO rating of one. |
| 00:46:58.14 | Chris Zapata | That's what you want to know. That means the training, the equipment, the water pressure, all the things needed to provide that type of service has been looked at by someone outside of the fire district and rated. And here you have an ISO rating of one. So that's really important. Next slide, please. Now I want to talk about the progress, and I'll be brief. So in 2026, you had a mission statement, and you can spend a lot of time on these things, and you did, and I'm glad you did because we don't have to today, but they're still relevant. And the mission statement was Sausalito serves those who live, work, and visit in the city, fostering new opportunities to protect and improve the quality of life in our unique waterfront community. And you follow that up with the statement. SOSTA will bring together its residents, businesses, and visitors to create a thriving, safe, environmentally welcome, and friendly community that cultivates its natural beauty, history, the arts, and waterfront culture. That's all very important, and I'm glad you did that. Go to the next slide, please, Katie. Thank you. You had values, which are also extremely important. Innovation in creating informed risk-taking. Creating an environment where people excel to their full potential. Transparent and accessible government. Professionalism and accountability. Respect for equity and inclusion. Excellence in public service. Teamwork. Next slide, please. So that's the work that councils do to kind of set the foundation for what their goals and then their strategic objectives are and their implementation plan is. And there's 166 tasks identified in this plan. But let's start with the goals. Five goals. And these goals are still all relevant today. They all make sense today. Utilize comprehensive planning to balance the community's character and diversity with its evolving needs. And everything is evolving. Strengthen our community identity. Enhance our fiscal resiliency. Continually improve and maintain infrastructure while addressing climate change and ensuring resiliency. I said it twice. And I want to make sure that you all understand. Three ago when i came i said infrastructure finances and people those were the three things that i thought the council should focus on and it was in your plan and then ultimately maintain a strong organization to deliver it efficient and sustainable municipal services those are all extremely relevant and I want to talk about how we moved the needle on some of those this past year. Every year I do a presentation of the end of the year council and mayor achievements, and it's a laundry list. I did it with Councilmember Hoffman, did it with Councilmember when she was the mayor, Councilmember Kelman when she was the mayor, Councilmember Blaustein when she was the mayor, andmember Blaustein, when she was the mayor, and Councilmember Sobieski, just December. So those are all part of the public record in terms of what's been happening in Sausalito. But I'm going to tie these specifically to the strategic plan. Next slide, please, Katie. So I mentioned there's 166 tasks assigned in the strategic plan, and in calendar year 2024, some of the work that was done that touched on them, and I won't go through all of it, but I'll go through some things that I think matter. One of the strategic objectives under your goals was to broaden Richardson Bay management. And what have we done there? Advancing goals in the management of Saucera Waterfront. Very proud of the work the police department did with partners to remove the Vadura and to take our responsibility for vessels in the bay, in the Sausalito section of the bay from 93 to two. That's phenomenal. After 10 years and then some, the city council developed citywide improvements to the new ferry landing. You approved the execution of a longstanding grant and construction of a ferry project to include Tracy Way and the continuing name of Tracy in the project. You did that. In terms of quality education, two large long-term agreements with two schools have happened, one with the New Village School and one with Licee Francais. They not only provide educational opportunities, they provide significant revenue to the city of Sausalito. In terms of protecting historic resources, if you look downtown near El Portal, you'll see the historic Saucero Hotel and what's going on there. And it's being done with every bit and work of the Planning Commission, the Historic Preservation Commission, the Community and Economic Development staff to make sure that we do protect historic resources. Next slide, please. in terms of the city and its position as an age-friendly city, Sastolo is pretty unique in that it's part of an international conglomerate of cities that value their elderly. That's on our website. There is extensive support to our community that is my age and older, and that's a good population. That's something like the CARS program. I misspelled that. I'm sorry. And then the city council wants to remind us that these residents and this population matters. And so resolutions this past year acknowledging Alzheimer's and loneliness and isolation in older adults were passed. We always want to support our businesses in Caledonia as a resident serving retail and services district. Thanks to the work of our recreation and parks department and our police department and the chamber of commerce and others, the second annual toast to Sausalito was held, and that drove a significant number of people to Sausalito that will come back, may have never been there. And so that is a big, big thing. You know, stimulating Sosilo's identity as an artist's environmental innovation hub. This year, the city council finalized a long agreement with the Sosilo Center for the Arts. Improving the visitor-serving experience in downtown. The funding and formation of the Property and Business Improvement District was also done. You know, foster our reputation for maritime services and activities. We worked, many people worked on this, and we heard the harbor master, Curtis Havold, speak about Clipper Yacht Harbor's work on and all the partners, but the city of Sausage was certainly a partner in that effort to have the second annual Sausage Boat Show. And the beloved sea lion was restored after much, much community care and concern and work, and work with not one, not two, not three, but four different permitting agencies. So you see it like it never left, and there it sits as a sign of Saucelero's maritime heritage. Next. |
| 00:53:57.53 | Chris Zapata | So, creating long-term economic development strategies, we work every year with the Economic Development Advisory Committee. The Department of Community Development was expanded to be Department of Community and Economic Development, and that has been stabilized under the leadership of Brandon Phipps. They support business vitality, and there's an emphasis on trying to help retain and grow businesses in Sausalito. I think the proof will be in the pudding in the next year when you look at what's going on, provided we can get council and community support for various projects. You will see a different downtown Sausalito. We'll continue to try to work on Caledonia. The Marin ship is obviously something that we need to fix the infrastructure at as we work there. And then we need to seed some of these areas with activities. And, you know, that's what recreation and parks do. do you know our pensions and post-employment benefit obligations the city of Sausalito has done a very good job in setting up a 115 trust in 2015-16 you put funding into it the total amount as of this last statement I got I think it it was last week, is $6,111,184 that is used to hedge against our cost increases in pensions and post-employment benefits. And then ensure adequate cost recovery. The city council approved a user fee study and an updating of our cost allocation payment, And that is being worked on by a company called will Dan. We have an impact fee study going on to figure out how we can have new growth, pay for new growth. And then last but not least, you did some work with the sanitary sewer enterprise by creating a rate structure that is not five years, not four years, but three years, so that the rate or the district sewer in the city transfer can continue, which was a priority last year. And then that's part of, you know, improve, implement the sewer distribution system consolidation. Last December, this past December, you authorized a memorandum of understanding that will do just that. We have some work to do with the Saucydeo Marin Sanitary Sewer District to implement it, but we're moving forward aggressively to try to get that done. Thank you. Next slide. hazardous mitigation plan and a focus on hillside and waterfront risk resulted from climate change. You know, the work that was done by former Councilmember Kelman and her team in the Sustainability Commission to get $1 million from the state of California to work on that resulted in us hiring a resiliency and sustainability manager, Katie Tho Garcia, who has worked extremely well and hard with the community and other stakeholders to implement the vulnerability and adaptation plan with the community. That's a half a million dollar investment by the city. There is also a contract that had been completed with Miller Pacific for the completion of a geologic hazard monitoring plan and related work. So yeah, 2019 was a horrible event for the people involved, the community, and it's impacted the city to this day. proactive risk management and asset or proactive asset management. The city council worked long and hard making sure that we got it right, but we issued a request for proposals for comprehensive review of our facilities in the city. And that's being done by a company called Veritas Consulting. They should be done with this by February, Kevin. I hope I'm right. I know Council Member Hoffman is asking me. February is the date. And then also, just this last month, December, you approved a $1.9 million investment in our buildings and our facilities to become more efficient and more sustainability by entering into a contract with Climatec. And then then it really matters when you have good people and so develop an employee retention and recruitment plan to ensure high quality staffing. Our business model now has a 36 hour work week for non-management and non-public safety and non-enterprise folks. So that allows people. |
| 00:58:37.41 | Jill Hoffman | We lost you. City Manager. |
| 00:58:40.85 | Chris Zapata | Can you hear me? |
| 00:58:41.68 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, we hear you now. |
| 00:58:43.45 | Chris Zapata | Where did you lose me, Mary? Mary? |
| 00:58:45.94 | Jill Hoffman | I think we lost about two sentences. |
| 00:58:49.08 | Chris Zapata | All right. So retention and recruitment and succession planning. Our business model now includes a 36-hour work week. It's important because we have many of our employees live outside the city limits, so this allows for one day less of travel and gasoline, impact on the environment. We use the new world of remote work for those that can, and it makes sense to, so that some people work three days in the office and one day remotely on top of the day that is not Friday so that's important the City Council adopted a philosophy of mid-market pay to make sure that we didn't lose people you created some sustainability in departments and workloads by adding two project managers, a resiliency and sustainability manager. And then you gave a strong direction to create succession plans by not having so many consultants. So a lot of consultants that we have are in the past. Those that we do have, they're there for a limited duration or because we cannot get the position filled, but we continue to try. But we've taken that model way down post-COVID to the point where we're happy about our workforce being all city employees to the extent we can. And then addressing new technologies to enhance and streamline city services. Public safety is really important. The police department was just to prove new council. The council just approved new cameras for the police department, which is very, very, very important for crime reduction. And then we also implemented our rock solid RC click fix app finally for problem solving and problem help and solutions from the community to help us and help us develop metrics in some of the problems that we see that are pretty common. And then we added EV charging stations to City Hall. And you added and approved the creation of a new risk manager position so that we can lower our risk profile and future insurance costs. Next slide. |
| 00:58:56.63 | Jill Hoffman | Yep. |
| 01:00:58.48 | Chris Zapata | Okay, that's my recap of the strategic plan and where we've made some progress in that plan. I wanted to cover the SWAT to the Strength of Wings, Opportunities, and Threats because that's in the agenda. The public would expect that. And I'd also like to note that as this meeting is recorded, it'll be a record of this day. So if residents were not able to attend the meeting or sign in on the meeting, zoom in on the meeting, this will be part and parcel. All of the attachments that we have will be part of the record as well, so people can go back and look at those if they feel the need to. So that concludes mine. Any questions? If no questions, we'll go to the department's. |
| 01:01:42.84 | Jill Hoffman | Any questions of council members? Yes, council member Hoffman. |
| 01:01:46.34 | Jill Hoffman | them. Thanks. Can you hear me okay? |
| 01:01:49.68 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, thank you. |
| 01:01:51.16 | Jill Hoffman | Chris, I had a question about fire insurance. And this is just, I'm sorry, this is just because of what's going on across the state or in Southern California right now. And I haven't, you know, this is just, I'm sorry, this is completely off the cuff, but A few years ago, we had some information that many people in Sausli were having trouble getting fire insurance. Do we have any update on that or is there any update on that situation? Do we know is that resolved or is there any, do we have any updated information on that at all? |
| 01:02:24.47 | Chris Zapata | Councilmember Hoffman, thank you for the question. I do not have that information, but that's certainly an important question that we should get the information to, and we will, and see what the status of insurance in Sausalito and people's ability to attract that insurance. I'm sure people in the fire service, people in the finance, and people in the risk management field can give us some insight into that. I'm happy to get that to you at an upcoming City Council meeting. Okay, thanks. |
| 01:02:49.42 | Jill Hoffman | you Thank you. |
| 01:02:49.70 | Chris Zapata | Yep. |
| 01:02:49.94 | Jill Hoffman | And if I might, city manager, I don't know if you know, but, um, |
| 01:02:49.96 | Chris Zapata | And, |
| 01:02:56.25 | Jill Hoffman | We convened and attended with Southern Marin Fire and the Sausalito Police Department, a gathering at the Spinnaker midway through last year with an HOA who had some of those same concerns. And at that time, we learned from them and others that, you know, Southern Marin Fires Firewise program that communities can sign up and get certified by. And it entails, you know, clearing of brush, inspection of homes, rating of homes by Southern Marin Fire that they do for free and as a courtesy to the community has been helpful in facilitating the obtaining by residents of insurance, even where existing policies have been raised or canceled. So I know it's something that Southern Marine Fire is actively collaborating with the community on, but who knows what impact is, you know, the fires in Southern California will have because it's going to make the insurance market even more risky, just as the Tubs and other fires, you know, Paradise fires did. several years ago. So who knows what lies ahead for the California insurance industry. |
| 01:04:09.25 | Jill Hoffman | Is that a future agenda item maybe? Is that within our scope of city council? I don't know, but that's- |
| 01:04:14.59 | Jill Hoffman | I would love to undertake that as a future agenda item, a study session and call in. We, you know, we called in some brokers from State Farm and other large California insurers to speak to us so we could do the same. I think it's a great idea. Thank you. |
| 01:04:32.61 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. If I can just jump in for Hoffman's question, I can answer a little bit anecdotally. Recently in my neighborhood, a number of us, including myself, received notices of cancellation. So it's happening on a very accelerated rate. And apart from how I feel about it personally, it's a huge problem, and it's only going to get worse because of the Southern California fires. All of these things are pooled in such a way that a fire in one part of the state is going to raise rates and create changes throughout the state. and I agree with both of you that we should have a session on this and try to bring resources together so we can help members of our community navigate this very challenging problem that we're all going to face. |
| 01:05:26.54 | Jill Hoffman | When was that, Vice Mayor? When did you get that notice? |
| 01:05:33.09 | Steven Woodside | I got the news about six weeks ago and went back to insurance broker, and they found a coverage for much more money and much less coverage. So we're going to do that because we've been continuing to search and finding no real alternative that is adequate as far as I'm concerned. But we're not alone. I know we're not alone. And I wouldn't be surprised that as we take a close look at our hillsides and hear from our fire people, we're going to see that we're more vulnerable, perhaps, than we thought to catastrophic fires. |
| 01:06:18.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:06:20.00 | Jill Hoffman | Any other questions of council members? All right, thank you. With that, we'll move on to the department head priorities. |
| 01:06:32.76 | Jill Hoffman | All right, first one is Sausalito Police Department. I guess we'll hear from. Stacey. Gregory. |
| 01:06:40.99 | Stacey Gregory | Good morning, Council. I'm happy to be here and happy to go first. Today you'll see my top five priorities on the screen. What I'm going to do is go through each of them and just kind of give you some thoughts and strategies that we plan to look at and implement to reach those goals. The first is retention, focusing on retaining our current staff. We put a lot of time, money, and energy into hiring the right people that fit here in Sausalito. Oh. because that's very important for our community. And so we want to continue to work on strategies that will keep those employees here. Our turnover at this point is low, and so we want to work to keep it that way. The obvious one is competitive compensation and benefits, but others are to prioritize career development, mentoring, and succession planning, enhance our work-life balance, modernize equipment and programs, improve engagement and communication within the department and outside into the community, and then build stronger organizational pride |
| 01:07:47.28 | Chris Tubbs | And |
| 01:07:52.02 | Stacey Gregory | Number two, recruitment and hiring opportunities. It's a really competitive market right now. I mean, you'll see signing bonuses up to $100,000 for lateral officers. And so, you know, with that competition for law enforcement officers between agencies, you know, we have to try to keep our competitive edge as well. So some thoughts around those are, you know, internal recommendations for employees. We're currently down three. That does not include the two frozen positions. You know, creating a recruitment website and even a recruitment video. Southern Marin has a pretty amazing, actually a few. And, you know, putting those on social media and just really getting our brand and our name and our culture out there. Financial incentives to entice applicants, offering flexible time and other alternative perks like that. Conduct focus groups, I think, you know, talking to our current officers to see what What do we need to offer or provide, or how do we get out to the people who we want to come have apply with us? And then the well-being agency culture, again, is big. Training and development. Our current average time on patrol is just less than five years. we have one officer with about two months and on his own and up to 20 years as a police officer. But so, you know, five years down is the majority of our, our staff. That experience gap is a big deal. So focusing on training and developing them to be safe, to be able to protect the community in an efficient manner is important. So we need to focus on that basic training. We need to reinforce and demonstrate our quality of service. quality of life service style because we do operate in a manner that is different than some police departments. We do a lot that most police departments aren't going to look at. And so, helping new officers understand that, yeah, you're wearing a badge and a gun. There's a lot more to it that we expect from you here in Sausalito. You know, well-trained officers are better prepared to handle complex situations. They make sound decisions under pressure, and they're going to respond appropriately to those kind of diverse calls for service that we receive. Community engagement, that's obvious. You know, we want to get out and be a part of the community. I think we do a pretty good job. We're going to be, um, starting another Citizens Police Academy. That will be happening in February. We are taking applications for those that are listening. We need to do more activities like the Coffee with a Cup. We do National Night Out, but getting out in the community and letting not just be me or the lieutenants. We need to get the younger officers out and have their faces known to the community, their names, and so people feel like they can approach us. we're also recruiting for volunteers and known to the community, their names, and so people feel like they can approach us. We're also recruiting for volunteers in public safety, so if you're interested, please see me. Chamber of Commerce and strengthening our partnership there. I think that's a huge opportunity. You know, Sausalito Village, knowing where those vulnerable people in our community are is also something that we've been working on, but we would like to and should enhance. And then lastly, our waterfront management. We want to achieve the compliance of the BCDC at the end of 25, having zero boats in our waterfront. We currently have two, as the city manager mentioned. Another goal and desire of ours is to purchase our own patrol boat. Um, it's very hard to manage a waterfront without the asset to do it. Right now, we have to rely on the RBRA harbormaster and the sheriff's office to let us know there's boats in our water that shouldn't be and or to help us get out to those boats to mark them for 72 hours or whatever we need to do. We do have an agreement with the Marin County SO to use one of their patrol vessels, but that vessel is in, you know, fairly poor condition. It's our secondary boat. So for us, you know fairly poor condition it's our secondary boat so for us you know we we see a our own vessel to to be a you know an opportunity for us to get out and do more on the water. So those are our five top priorities. And I'm open for any questions. |
| 01:12:35.59 | Melissa Blaustein | I have my hand raised, Mayor. I know you're, I don't know how we're doing questions. |
| 01:12:39.28 | Steven Woodside | Since I'm here, I'll just lead off and- |
| 01:12:42.67 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm not going to be a |
| 01:12:42.98 | Unknown | and they're the last. |
| 01:12:44.43 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, it's hard for you to see, I think, Mayor. Member Blasin has a question. |
| 01:12:53.59 | Melissa Blaustein | Thanks, Chief Gregory, and thanks for all of the great work that Sausalito PD does, and we're so excited that you're officially the chief and doing a fantastic job. With regards to the patrol boat, would that require additional training for the staff to receive their captain's licenses, or do we have to hire someone new to be able to direct the boat, or is everyone already fully trained on that? |
| 01:13:16.42 | Stacey Gregory | Not everyone. We do have two employees with captain's licenses. And we do have employees that have training to operate the boat. If we were to obtain our own boat, we would We would certainly make sure that we sent people to the training to acquire their captain's license. So we have redundancy. |
| 01:13:33.62 | Melissa Blaustein | And do you know if previously we've applied before my tenure for grant funding for a boat vessel or have received any sort of additional federal funds for that? That might be a city manager question, but it just seems like. Yeah. |
| 01:13:47.15 | Stacey Gregory | Yeah, I have no knowledge of it now. |
| 01:13:48.74 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:13:48.77 | Stacey Gregory | Thank you. |
| 01:13:51.69 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 01:13:51.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:13:54.14 | Unknown | Chief, I'd like to echo my thanks for your work. Chief, congratulations, and for your whole department. Thank you. So many different things, as you said, not just... enforcement of law, but service to the community. So thank you. In terms of retention, can you just help educate me, remind us all, most of our police officers don't actually, do any of them live in Sausalito? Most of them commute elsewhere, right? |
| 01:14:17.63 | Stacey Gregory | We have one that rents here in South Slido. |
| 01:14:19.76 | Unknown | So what's the average commute time for one of our officers, our force on average, you think? |
| 01:14:25.16 | Stacey Gregory | 50 minutes to an hour each way. |
| 01:14:26.89 | Unknown | 50 minutes to an hour each way. |
| 01:14:28.26 | Stacey Gregory | Most of us are in either Sonoma or Napa County. |
| 01:14:30.98 | Unknown | So most our entire police force lives in Sonoma or Napa County. |
| 01:14:34.77 | Stacey Gregory | Correct. We have, I think, only two officers in Marin County. |
| 01:14:39.79 | Unknown | I think that's an important level set that's easy to miss. And I wanted to emphasize that. Thank you for that. |
| 01:14:42.42 | Stacey Gregory | Thank you. |
| 01:14:48.24 | Unknown | Just another thing that was mentioned by city manager to be approved, something called a flock camera system. Can you just remind everyone what that is? |
| 01:14:55.92 | Stacey Gregory | Yeah, so the FLOT camera system is an automatic, automated license camera reader who, you know, it picks up the vehicles that are coming into town. So we're not looking at the license plates and monitoring it that way. The license plates that are actually alerted are those that are stolen, you know, attached to a violent criminal, or wanted in some manner that they trigger the license plate reader, then we get the alert and we're able to respond and look for that vehicle. You know, the great part about the Flock camera is we now have cameras, prior to with the vigilance system, it was only at the entrance and exits. Now we have internal cameras inside the city. So dispatch can actually watch as long as they hit one of the internal city cameras. We'll know the direction to travel and have a lot better opportunity of obtaining that vehicle. |
| 01:15:53.19 | Unknown | Thank you. And then just two more questions. One, And I didn't forewarn you about this, so I'm not asking you for any answer, then just a request. I'd looked or just began to get information about the number of citations that the city of Sausalito Police Department has issued over time. And there's been a real change over the last, let's say, 30 years. |
| 01:16:08.28 | Chris Tubbs | Thank you. |
| 01:16:12.55 | Unknown | And I wonder if I could put it to you or just have it be a – get your reaction on maybe explaining the basis of that change, whether it's a change of attitude around enforcement, a change of staffing, what's the – maybe to research and report on the change in citations, traffic citations in particular, and the costs. So good luck. |
| 01:16:31.41 | Stacey Gregory | Yeah, I am aware of that as that was brought to my attention at the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee. So I have been forewarned. There's a lot of reasons for that. Staffing. um, Training. COVID-19. homeless encampment. You know, I haven't really, you know, been in my role as a lieutenant, which I was promoted lieutenant 2016. Definitely the philosophy around it has also changed. And... So, but I would say staffing is the number one. And then with the, you know, we have two cops that Yeah. were hired in COVID and they were not taught to make a traffic stop for probably a year into their career, for the most part, because we didn't want them talking to people. So the homeless in Cam, and we had no other time to do anything but... So there's a lot of reasons behind it. So that's kind of my initial reaction. |
| 01:17:29.95 | Unknown | My only other question is none of these five says the word parking isn't on your slide. Parking revenue makes up more than 10% of our city's budget. Correct. It's a major business model of the city. It pays for resident services without taxes. Do you have any goals around parking or any thoughts around it? |
| 01:17:49.11 | Stacey Gregory | Parking is a hard, parking is a hard animal to tackle. So there's, you know, there's the enforcement side and then there's the managing of the lots and the permits and the residential. So those goals change all the time. You know, you poke a balloon, you fix one problem and it causes another one. And so that's happening all the time with parking. So, you know, our goal is just to create a parking infrastructure that makes as many people happy as we can. Because it is tough, as you know. |
| 01:18:27.04 | Stacey Gregory | Thank you. |
| 01:18:27.06 | Jill Hoffman | I think, I assume, oh, I cannot hear what Amy is saying. |
| 01:18:34.69 | Amy Overworth | you |
| 01:18:34.70 | Stacey Gregory | Yeah. |
| 01:18:35.31 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 01:18:35.36 | Stacey Gregory | Thank you. |
| 01:18:35.94 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 01:18:35.97 | Stacey Gregory | FOR THEM. |
| 01:18:36.04 | Amy Overworth | THE END OF THE END OF THE Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was just asking the Vice Mayor if I could step in. And I see that Councilmember Hoffman has her hand raised, so I think we'd need to allow that question. |
| 01:18:36.73 | Jill Hoffman | I was just asking. |
| 01:18:38.36 | Stacey Gregory | THE END OF |
| 01:18:45.74 | Amy Overworth | Um, These are incredibly valuable questions. One thing, though, we're concerned about is getting through sort of hearing all of the priorities which you have in front of you as well, so then we can actually get to your discussion. So... If council could maybe keep their questions, maybe write them down. I know it's really frustrating, right? Because, and you have such great staff. So I would like to allow. |
| 01:19:09.65 | Chris Tubbs | you have such a great |
| 01:19:12.57 | Amy Overworth | Councilmember Hoffman, and then continue to go through the other department priorities, if that's amenable to all of you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:19:20.28 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Two things. City Manager, can you get Amy a microphone so that she can speak from her desk without having to get down? |
| 01:19:30.20 | Unknown | out. you |
| 01:19:30.69 | Amy Overworth | Yep. |
| 01:19:31.03 | Unknown | Thank you. Okay. |
| 01:19:31.54 | Amy Overworth | you |
| 01:19:31.56 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 01:19:31.98 | Amy Overworth | out. to get to the next one. |
| 01:19:32.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. All right, great. And two, may I ask council members to please write down, record your questions. These are questions, many of them that are super appropriate as we undertake the budgeting process and really drill down into each department heads priorities and what they need funding for in the coming year. So we allotted five minutes per, department head to produce present their priorities to us. So if we take 15 minutes per department head, we will then not have any time to do our own strategic planning. And so I appreciate your Um, courtesy in complying with the direction offered by our facilitator. But I do want to take the questions from council members. or Hoffman, since we heard from other council members. You're on mute. Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:20:34.92 | Jill Hoffman | I'm happy to pass. I can follow up with achievement later. |
| 01:20:37.45 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. Very good questions. And thank you, Chief, for presenting your priorities. |
| 01:20:50.77 | Jill Hoffman | All right, next up we have, I assume, Chief Tubbs for Southern Marin Fire. |
| 01:20:59.69 | Jill Hoffman | Chief Tubbs, welcome. I'm so sorry I'm not able to be there in person and shake your hand, but we are so happy to have you attending. It's great to see you. |
| 01:21:09.33 | Chris Tubbs | Thank you, Mayor, and likewise great to see you. Mayor Cox, Vice Mayor Woodside Council, thank you for the opportunity to be here before all of you today. It truly is a privilege. For the record, Chris Tubbs, Fire Chief. Before I do our presentation, if I could just take a moment to thank the council and the community for their outreach and support given events in Southern California this week. We have 14 firefighters deployed down there, additionally here at home in order to ensure that we provide constant staffing. We have members working seven to 10 days consecutively, great sacrifice to their families. Very, very proud of my team for the work that they're doing. |
| 01:21:21.61 | Fred Moore | I'm not sure. |
| 01:21:48.38 | Chris Tubbs | the percent containment. So we have a long way to go, but we definitely appreciate the support from the community. Thank you. And especially given in light of the events this week, I'm going to touch very briefly on the subjects except for the risk reduction piece. I'd like our fire marshal maybe to speak a little bit more in depth on that for the brief time that we have. you So very quickly for our agency this next year, we're continuing to look at our work around diversity, inclusion, and belonging. And the values that we derive out of that as an agency from bringing a variety of experiences and knowledge that help us create really good solutions. Again, I won't go into a lot of detail on that right here. We've embarked on a new three-year strategic planning process with the Jacob Green Associates. And that's going to be somewhat built off of our recently completed master plan where we had 38 findings and 21 recommendations from that. That plan is available on the website in case anyone would like to see that. Technology strategic plan. Given a lot of the changes that our industry is experiencing these days, especially with the rapid growth of technology around AI, machine learning, augmented reality, and virtual reality, we're going to embark on a strategic planning process looking at the technologies that we have, the softwares and hardwares, and make sure we're using that effectively and efficiently, and we're poised for what the future impacts will bring. And then finally, Public Safety Cloud. This is an endeavor that began with the California Fire Chiefs Association. The Western Fire Chiefs Association of Microsoft build a public safety cloud. We're participating in that process that began when I was the president for the California Fire Chiefs Association. So we're excited to see what that will bring. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to our fire marshal, Chief Hilliard. |
| 01:23:44.88 | Unknown | Good morning really quick to blast through this because I know you have many other people to talk um I just want to give you a quick overview of some of the items that we're doing in fire prevention for the city of Sausalito So we've established community fuel breaks and forest health restoration projects. We're going to have five new projects within the city um, we have Seven existing major fuel breaks were 85 complete. So we're planning to complete those other fuel breaks in the city in the upcoming year. We've done between 900 and 1,000 residential home inspections this year, which is the most that we've done in any year. And we will be completing the entire wildland urban interface zone within by next year. So we'll have all those homes and properties inspected. We continue to do occupancy inspections in our commercial structures and businesses. That's ongoing, and we will continue to do that this year with hopefully getting a majority of the older businesses or the newer businesses completed this year. We're working with the community development with the city staff on large projects, including a proposed larger facility on Bridgeway and Prince. We're going to continue our on-demand chipper program. That program's open to the public. where they can call us and, you know, if they're removing brush, we'll come and pick it up for them. Uh, we're also going to continue the Southern Rind hazardous tree removal program. So that's for dead and dying trees, um, at no cost to the resident or the, um, the city will remove any dead trees that are standing, um, in the city. We're also going to continue our evacuation evacuation route clearing, which is we call it the paved roads clearing. So basically we go up and we make sure that the roads are wide enough for our fire apparatus and any type of evacuation to facilitate that. And then we're going to continue to bolster And, train our existing citizens and new citizens with our CERT and neighborhood response programs. And then just on a side note, because we're talking about insurance, I'm actually flying down to Los Angeles next week. I've been asked to sit on the California Home Fire Insurance Workshop as part of the state fire marshals. So I'll bring back a lot of information, which I will share with you. |
| 01:26:29.21 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. I say thank you. next |
| 01:26:38.44 | Kevin McGowan | Good morning, Mayor, Council Members, Kevin McGowan, Public Works Department. I'll make this fairly quick. Public Works has at least four major budget centers from streets, engineering, park maintenance, and sewer. So we were asked to do five major points for our department, and I broke it into two slides. I'm so sorry. So the first slide has to do with our Department of Public Works priorities, And that has to do specifically with what we need to do our job. In the next year, we're going to find that we're going to need more vehicles. Several of our vehicles are failing. We need to update those. In addition, we have space planning issues. We have an older building and we have more staff coming in. Where are we going to put people? I have one engineer who's working underneath the stairs. Not quite Harry Potter-ish, but close. So we would like to get him moved. Oh. Our facility, our corporate yard, needs a new roof on several different areas. We have to decide what we do with that building and that entire site, what its disposition will be. And in addition, we use consultants for specialty items such as geotechnical engineering and traffic engineering. We do not have the staff to cover that. So we definitely need to have consultants to cover some of those. Next slide. And then from a city perspective, looking at the city in general for the next year for capital as well as public works type of priorities. I'm recommending that the city council take a look at flooding aspects, specifically on gate five. This has been happening for quite a few years. We've installed a new tide gate this week, and it works okay. It doesn't solve the issue. We have more issues to deal with down there. Now, in each one of these bullet items that you've seen on your handout, you'll see that trees are coming up more and more. This is a liability to the city itself. We have sidewalks that are being pushed up that are hazards. What's the cause of those? And generally, it is street trees. So we have to have some disposition of the city, the council to say, we need to take out some of these trees in order to deal with these issues. And we have quite a few of them. I wanted to bring it up because it is going to be a major issue in the next year. We also have our street repair. We have to update our streets. As you all know, I've made several presentations on this. As far as our pavement condition index is at 58, a good standard is about 70, and it will take quite a bit of resources to pick that up. And I know that we'll be discussing that this year. You've also mentioned things such as the capital program, that's our buildings. And we also want to be careful about how much more maintenance we take on for some of our buildings. They are getting older and older. We'll find in the last year, 2024, we put in a whole lot of funding for one of our buildings, Old City Hall. And we want to be careful of all the other buildings that we have as well. Thank you very much. You'll notice that on my list on the screen, I'm not going to go through every one of them, but trees comes up several times. So I do think that's an important issue we need to take a look at. Thanks so much. |
| 01:30:07.81 | Brandon Phipps | Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members, staff, members of the public. Happy to be here today to summarize CDD's priorities for 2025. And I'll just say, very grateful to be on this excellent team in this amazing community. |
| 01:30:09.24 | Unknown | Yeah, sure. Thank you. |
| 01:30:21.23 | Jill Hoffman | And for members of the public, can you introduce yourself, Brandon, please? |
| 01:30:24.85 | Brandon Phipps | Absolutely. Brandon Phipps, Community and Economic Development Director with the City. Thank you, Mayor. |
| 01:30:29.49 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, welcome. |
| 01:30:30.61 | Brandon Phipps | So I'll dive right in. The first three priorities you see here are Probably no surprise to you all. They're all interrelated and related to compliance with state housing element law. and the adoption of new development standards that will apply to the majority of our city. It is no mistake that these items are the top three. It's imperative that they be adopted this year. or addressed this year, excuse me, and be addressed in line with the timeline that staff have developed and shared with you all. This timeline and adoption is only one piece of a larger puzzle. However, follow-on implementation of these plans and policy documents will become a new focus for CDD once we're able to address these most immediate priorities. As related to the other priorities, these are actions that are ongoing and have been in progress since I joined the city in October of 2022. Regarding priority number four, in the coming month, the council will see ordinance amendments brought forward by CDD in connection with ADU and JADU policy for compliance with new state laws related to same as well as formula retail and more to come after that. Pre-35 is one we in CDD are always focused on. Providing exceptional service to our community is one of the elements of this job I'm most passionate about. And improving our internal processes is one way we can do that particularly as related to our permitting and review processes the way we structure our applications and how we interface with this community I will end there. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. |
| 01:32:10.51 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Director Phipps. All right, next we'll hear from Katie Throe-Garcia. |
| 01:32:17.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:20.40 | Katie Throe-Garcia | Good morning, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmembers, members of the public. I'm Katie Thao Garcia, the city's resiliency and sustainability manager. Here I have my estimated priorities for 2025. Nearly all of these priorities seek to address goal D of the strategic plan, continually improve and maintain infrastructure while addressing climate change and ensuring resiliency. However, I would be amiss to admit the strategies outlined in goal B, strengthen our community identity. It is my goal to embed community resilience in nearly all city processes and to make sure our identity as a Bayfront community can continue in the face of future changes for climate change. since my position is a little different from all of the other department heads some of my priorities are rather project-based the first is to complete or nearly complete the city's shoreline adaptation plan in 2025. This will set us up nicely to fulfill many, but not all, of BCDC's requirements for SB 272 and includes a holistic view of sea level rise vulnerability and opportunities for the shoreline. For members of the public who are online, we have community meeting number two coming up on January 25th at the Bay Model. um second priority in December 2024 council approved the first favorite phase of infrastructure modernization energy conservation sustainability program which was um approved on December 3rd you should see significant progress on this project in 2025 um Also in 2025 Council may consider future phases of this project, which could include significant upgrades to City Hall, resulting in further greenhouse gas emission reduction. So those are two rather project-based goals. In addition to this, I continue to work on state law compliance, which is a heavy lift, you know, resulting... |
| 01:34:27.72 | Chris Tubbs | Thank you. |
| 01:34:27.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:34:30.96 | Katie Throe-Garcia | from regulations from SB 1383. Future examples of future work in 2025 include a Sausalito restaurant workshop for SB 1383 compliance, which I'm partnering with. bay cities refuse and the chamber of commerce on additionally i anticipate that our findings from our sb 1383 audit will be coming to council in 2025 and making any potential corrective act actions that are outlined in that For community resilience home planning, I will continue to work with the Sustainability Commission, Marin Climate and Energy Partnership, and the Marin Microgrid Working Group to identify funding or other opportunities to get backup electricity storage in Sausalito, whether it's at City Hall or somewhere else. And finally, my last priority is to integrate resiliency and sustainability planning awareness into all city departments and community organizations. Examples of progress on this in 2025 will be to work in collaboration with other departments on grant applications, organizing trainings, workshops, and tabling at community events, and participating in community-led projects for resiliency. So I look forward to seeing many of these projects as your accomplishments at the end of 2025. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:35:57.48 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:35:57.85 | Katie Throe-Garcia | Thank you. |
| 01:35:57.97 | Jill Hoffman | Dr. Garcia. |
| 01:36:02.62 | Unknown | Next slide. |
| 01:36:09.07 | Kathy Nikitas | Hi, I am Kathy Nikitas, and I am the Human Resources Manager for the city of Sausalito. So I really looked at budget priorities within HR, and certainly I am glad to say that in most aspects, we are doing really well with staffing, and the police department is one area where we're working on, and a couple of other positions that we have a hard time with, but otherwise, we're not in crisis mode crisis which is a nice thing to say so for budget priorities I indicated an ERP system we are looking at some software that will really really help help us improve our efficiency citywide I'd also like to look at ergonomic review for all of our staffing. Last summer, we were lucky to get some free sit-stand desks, a batch of those, and a lot more people are interested in them. And I'd like to be able to make sure everybody's working safely while they are working. also looking at increased external training funds, and also looking at opportunities where we can do training with people who are volunteering. And we do have people who have offered to help us with some team building and staff building type of training. I heard the mention of office space and someone working in an alcove. Um... and a sit-stand desk and an alcove, which is very impressive, I have to say. But there's an ongoing project with turning our game room into some office space, some cubicles, that is a huge budget priority that relates to HR, And the last would be changing our half-time admin assistant in HR to full-time. That would be a fabulous thing. We have many more priorities, but budget priorities, that's what we have. I look forward to the rest of the day. Thank you. |
| 01:38:15.38 | Unknown | Thank you, Director Nkitas. Next we'll hear from our library. |
| 01:38:22.42 | Brian Vitale | Right. Thank you mayor, vice mayor, council members. and managers and staff and members of the public. For the record, I am Brian Vitale, the Acting Community Services Director And as acting director, I have the great opportunity to help our city evolve by streamlining our operational efficiency, improve community engagement while still preserving the independence of parks and recreation and library services. |
| 01:38:45.52 | Jill Hoffman | And Brian, are you able to adjust your volume up at all? |
| 01:38:45.99 | Brian Vitale | Are you- |
| 01:38:50.87 | Brian Vitale | maybe I love We'll see. It looks like this is the loudest. that this. and go. Maybe I could take the headphones off and it will be |
| 01:39:05.43 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I don't know if the council chambers are able to hear you. I'm having difficulty hearing you. |
| 01:39:11.69 | Steven Woodside | It's not all that clear here either. is, |
| 01:39:16.03 | Brian Vitale | Let's see, is this a little bit better? |
| 01:39:17.61 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, yes, much better. Thank you. |
| 01:39:19.59 | Brian Vitale | Oh, great. Okay. Well, the computer microphone wins over these headphones. All right. I'm going to start with the library and I'll come back with Parks and Recreation soon. Our acting city librarian, Jeffrey Jackson, and I worked on these priorities and I feel confident that these priorities can be addressed and accomplished in 2025, maybe a little bit in 2026 as well. So the first one is to enhance facilities and accessibility. We want to continue creating a welcoming, safe, and accessible environment for all community members by improving infrastructure and ensuring accessibility standards. So that's facility upgrades, widening the aisles, adding automated doors providing better seating options for that would meet our community needs, provide a reservable quiet room for small meetings, for tutoring or online using an online reservation system, establish a storage room for supplies, programming materials, books, AV equipment and shelving hardware, and finding alternative program venues for library events. Next is effective staffing and support. We'd like to ensure the effective service. and finding alternative program venues for library events. Next is effective staffing and support. We'd like to ensure the effective service delivery and resource management by expanding staffing capacity to support library growth and enhance the user experiences. We'd like to create a permanent part-time library one position and this will increase the current position by six to nine hours weekly, and then hire one to two substitute library assistants. to fill some vacant shifts and address attrition. Number three, increase community outreach and partnerships. We want to strengthen our collaborations with local organizations and position the library as a hub for community engagement. We want to launch targeted marketing campaigns, create collaboration and align efforts with parks and recreation, and expand partnerships and community collaborations with the schools, nonprofits, and local businesses where we can host events and share resources. Sausalito Marin City School District, Laissez-Français, New Village School, Women's Club, Sausalito Historical Society, and more. Next, number four, we would like to enhance services and collections. We want to expand and modernize the library offerings to better meet the needs of our community. Start tech help programs where we could do workshops with one-on-one assistance for patrons navigating digital tools and platforms. Expand the collections and increase availability of Spanish language and large print materials. And evaluate and reimagine collections. that So reconfigure underperforming or outdated collections to better align with our patron interests. And then lastly, update policies and procedures. Ensure that the library operations are transparent, efficient, and aligned with legal and best practice standards. So update the circulation manual, review and revise the library policies, create an up-to-date disaster preparedness plan, and access the needs, excuse me, assess the needs for strategic planning. So those are our priorities and our goals. We want to continue having a robust library that serves the needs of our community each and every day. And we're excited to move into 2025 and start working on these priorities. |
| 01:42:39.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:42:39.98 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Director Vitali. |
| 01:42:45.55 | Jill Hoffman | All right, next we'll hear from our city attorney. |
| 01:42:49.13 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 01:42:51.51 | Sergio Rudin | Hi, counsel. Thank you for taking the time. As you're aware, the city attorney's job has typically two components. There's a proactive side and a reactive side. On the reactive side, you know, we are dealing with claims and potentially litigation against the city. On the proactive side, we are trying to work with the departments and the council and all the city boards and commissions to do the work up front to minimize how much time we spend working on the reactive side. So, As the council is aware, the city attorney's job is to advise the city council, the city boards, commissions, and all the departments in the conduct of their business and their priorities. So as such, typically the city attorney doesn't really have things the city attorney wants to prioritize. Rather, we want to help you all do your work and what you think is important. That being said, to minimize the amount of time we spend on the reactive side of things, you know, we have identified certain things that we think the departments and, you know, the council, you know, with the departments should work on. One of those big issues is keeping the municipal code up to date. In your emails, you'll see a Thank you. update on the status of some of those efforts, which I would like you to review after this meeting, rather than during this meeting. Additionally, you know, I will continue working on advising the City Council and the department on its operations and related matters. One of the big projects currently being worked on, CDD did overview as their priorities, which include the amended housing element, the draft rezoning, the ballot measures, all of those issues are likely going to take up, I would say, a substantial amount of time for January, February, and possibly part of March. Additionally, we're working on helping the department and city manager address risk management opportunities. I will say that since the city has hired George Hills to provide risk management services. They have provided some additional recommendations to the departments. Additionally, they are a valuable resource for helping the city attorney you know, deal with handling of claims and investigation of claims. So I think that that has been a valuable effort that the city has done in the last year, and we're going to continue working with them and streamlining some of those processes for claim handling. And then lastly, of course, prioritizing the city's best interest in litigation and contract negotiations. In terms of figuring out what those interests are, frequently touching base with the department heads, with the council. you know, is important, but also, you know, time consuming for all of us and very frequently a subject of our city council meetings. So I thank you for your time. If you have any questions, let me know. |
| 01:45:45.57 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Sergio. |
| 01:45:49.49 | Jill Hoffman | All right, next we'll hear from our finance director, Chad Hess. |
| 01:45:53.94 | Chad Hess | All right. Good morning, Mayor, Council, members of the public. Um, So our priorities in the finance department, is to invest in a new, are you guys able to hear me? Yes, we are, thank you. Okay, it froze on my end. |
| 01:46:07.49 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:46:09.41 | Chad Hess | I'll keep going. Invest in a new enterprise-wide software application to manage finance, payroll, permitting, licensing, and event registration. We're going to continue to look to implement and monitor risk reduction efforts from the risk management perspective, working with our consultant, George Hills. And then also reopen that in-house risk manager position in the coming months as we, informed counsel that we would. Also always looking for resources to continue invest in my staff to help develop and cross train my staff within the department. looking to expand their abilities through GFOA or CSMFO trainings as well. uh, Another priority is looking to implement the CARES plan that we came up with earlier this year, the cost and revenue efficiency plan. So again, really to help strengthen the city's financial position by looking at what are the costs we're incurring and are there ways to streamline them. but then also look for new revenue resources. And then lastly, develop our 10 year budget tracking tool and develop a long term plan. that helps us make better decisions and helps with public engagement. in the budget process. Thank you. So those are my priorities from a finance perspective. I also oversee IT, if we can Next slide. I guess I... There we go. Also want to go over move our ArcGIS solution. Currently we have an on-premise solution that is very old, very outdated. not configured in the optimal way. So we would like to move that to a cloud-based environment to help our planning teams, our DPW teams, work in a more efficient manner. We're looking for a more robust data backup solution for our data, the city's crown jewels, if you will, all of those resources, files, and documents. We have a backup solution in place, but I just want to make sure that we have the best that we can do. we can have and we can afford. With the climate agreement, we started with a public Wi-Fi network in the parking lots one and two. That discussion needs to continue on to expand that down Bridgeway and other areas of town where We have communication challenges for our parking infrastructure. Um, Fourth on the list, I need to continue to stay focused on the city's cybersecurity posture. We need to make sure that we have users well-trained, that we have the hardware and software in place to help us safeguard the city's assets and reputation. And then, Unfortunately, I have the second one, but I think it's important. So I'll leave it here as well. Develop that 10 year long term plan. Um, just because that is an important task for the city and the community. So with that, I'll yield back Thank you. |
| 01:49:01.54 | Unknown | You are muted, Mayor. your meeting. out. |
| 01:49:06.53 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:49:07.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:49:08.00 | Jill Hoffman | uh, Thank you, Chad. Next we'll hear from community services director Brian Vitale again regarding parks. |
| 01:49:18.10 | Brian Vitale | Right. Thank you again, Mayor. Every day I work with Public Works Director Kevin McGowan, Maintenance Division Manager Pat Glasko, and Park Supervisor Kent Basso to address the priorities for the parks. And these are specific for recreation within the parks. And we have a lot of really great parks in town, and there's a lot of great projects that are taking place. So the priorities that we have are ever evolving with the parks, and we're always working with a wide variety of people to better enhance these parks to make sure that they stay community gems. And one of the things with our parks that we need to always make sure to do is facility upgrades and safety, making sure that that's a priority, that the amenities that we have are working and that the improvements that we plan on are outlined appropriately to make sure that they are safe for all of our facilities to use. So the immediate actions within year one is going to be making sure that our gym floor is refurbished and installing new carpets in that area. The MLK gym gets a lot of use throughout the year and making in that gym floor has not been refurbished in a good long while. So we have a lot of community partners and a lot of renters and contractors that are interested in helping get this effort happening. along with that is proper signage in all of our parks, making sure that all our municipal codes are clear for visitor guidance about what can and can't take place inside of those parks. And that is a As I said, we have a lot of parks, so there's a lot of work that needs to be done there to make sure that we have our proper signage. Our court and facility maintenance, creating a schedule and conducting annual maintenance of our bocce courts and volleyball courts, our pickleball courts and tennis courts, our basketball courts, our outdoor basketball courts, our playgrounds, walking paths. They're all very important to our community and very important to make sure that we start creating a schedule, um, where we can make sure that our staff is able to assess any of the needs that need to take place. Scheduling semi-annual professional cleaning for floors and carpets for these facilities that get high use, the Edgewater room, the game room, and a variety of others. Court resurfacing, developing a five year resurfacing plan for tennis. It looks like my battery is about to die, so I'm just going to continue to talk and transition inside of the house. And then for future projects, installing lights for the volleyball court and adding a second court as well. a effort from our community to add some fundraising efforts in there. Just have a little bit. at this real quick, my apologies. And then, in the two to five year upgrading the brass at Marinship Park and enhancing its usability and additionally adding windscreens to the courts. Then moving to recreation. I will be quick with this. I worked with our recreation supervisor, Carly Bartlett, and recreation coordinator, Candice Panisi, to continue where we left off in 2024. The goal, our first priority, is to increase inclusive programming for diverse populations. We want to expand programming to reflect the needs of our diverse community, ensuring inclusivity across all ages and abilities. So we want to launch more social sports leagues and adult and senior programming, such as walking clubs, pickleball leagues, bocce tournaments. We want to provide age-friendly programming tailored to adults, including fitness classes, art workshops, and the social events, and expand family-focused programming with activities for youth, toddlers, and parents, such as play groups, events, and family yoga. The second one is increasing grants and sponsorships and partnerships. We want to encourage collaborations to secure funding and maximize the utility of city-owned spaces, work with our resiliency and sustainability manager and community and economic development director to identify and pursue sustainable projects, grant opportunities and community services, collaborate with the library for enrichment and leisure programming, and collaborate with local businesses and organizations to develop cross-promotional sponsorships for events and programming. The last part is we wanna optimize our city-owned facilities by promoting them for rentals, public programming and special avenues. Our next number three is to develop an art in the public places program. This was something that my predecessor, Mike Langford, had envisionment for in 2020 and 2021, but COVID had other plans for us during that time. So we want to start the process of activating parks and open spaces with art installations that reflect Sausalito's cultural identity and creativity. We want to collaborate with local artists and organizations to install exhibits, identify funding sources such as grants or partnerships for public support, art initiatives, integrate art with the community in events to create immersive and cultural experiences, and collaborate with the Parks and Recreation Commission, City Council, and the community to plan for the locations and the appropriate approvals. Next, we want to host special events with a high return on involvement. We want to evaluate our current special events, plan engaging events that are cost-effective, draw significant participation, and enhance Sausalito's community spirit. We want to prioritize collaborative events in the winter and early spring to increase off-season engagement, introduce more activities such as seasonal markets, themed fitness challenges, or one-day tournaments, and focus on low-cost, high-return programming to maximize resources while delivering value to the attendees, i.e. a Super Bowl event that is taking place next month that engages a community through walking around town, getting into businesses, and tasting some soup the day before the big game. And then lastly, we want to grow the recreation department. We won't be able to really do much of these other priorities without growing and investing in our staff because we've broke the demand to ensure a high quality experience for our participants is ever growing. So with the transition that we had from library and recreation to community services, we wanna hire a half-time to three-quarter time recreation specialist with the potential to transition to a full-time based on program growth and revenue. And this would also add in an additional three to five part-time staff to support this increase with leagues and program enrollment. And then this will help provide ongoing training and development opportunities for staff to enhance service deliverables. So that is Parks and Recreation. |
| 01:56:29.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:30.13 | Brian Vitale | Ryan. |
| 01:56:35.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:35.19 | Brian Vitale | it. |
| 01:56:36.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:36.27 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:56:36.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:36.44 | Chris Zapata | Okay. Can I interject one thing real quick? So I think it's important. I want to just go briefly over another function that matters to the community council, and that's the city clerk's office, who doesn't just do agendas and minutes and administrative tasks for us, but the window operation and Public Records Act requests, they handle that. And some of the things they need to do really are important for the council to hear is we have a multitude of records at the old fire station that we really need to get our arms around so that we can digitize those in accordance with law and so forth so that we don't have the bad space and the bad record keeping that is going to only get worse if we don't do something about it thank you |
| 01:57:20.92 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, city manager. All right, and again, thank you to all of the department heads for the thought and time that you invested in putting together your priorities They're inspiring in their depth and breadth. Uh, And it's a really great way to start off this strategic planning process. So with that, I believe it's time for us to take a 10 minute break for personal convenience. We are roughly, let's see, 10, 35, all right, so we're about 20 minutes behind. So hopefully we'll catch up a little bit. But let's go ahead and take a 10-minute break. Yeah. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Welcome to the club. |
| 01:58:19.55 | Jill Hoffman | Let me know when folks are ready to resume. |
| 01:58:23.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:28.61 | Amy Overworth | Okay, with a button, it worked. Okay. |
| 01:58:30.02 | Unknown | or something. |
| 01:58:30.11 | Kathy Nikitas | Bye. |
| 01:58:35.38 | Amy Overworth | Okay, I'm going to join as a panelist. Let me know Mr. Vice Mayor and Madam Mayor when we are knowing that I think we're |
| 01:58:43.96 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:58:44.03 | Amy Overworth | ready to roll with the |
| 01:58:44.49 | Jill Hoffman | We're going to turn it over to you, Amy. |
| 01:58:46.02 | Amy Overworth | you All right, thank you so much. In a moment, I'm going to share my screen. I wanted to frame sort of the rest of the day here. We heard from the excellent staff, all the things that they'd like to be able to do And I'm sure the council is aware and probably the public too. You know, those are not all things that have been put on the agenda that have been budgeted. But these are the things that these experts see as really critical for their own departments. But it is the council's job, you know, elected by all of you, to also now give direction as to what they think is most critical. And as I said in the beginning of the day, this is not to be confused with an overall strategic planning process. Some of the things that you may end up with today may be very task oriented. Some of them, but and some of them may be only achievable. They may be short term. It doesn't mean you're not going to be setting some long term priorities or defining some parameters. But, um, As we're discussing priorities, is it achievable? Is it attainable with where you are now or want to be? you And that does seem like limiting function, but again, we will create some sort of pathway forward so you can do a plan. And as the mayor mentioned, keeping your questions in mind for the upcoming budget session. So here's how I propose that we proceed. And I believe all of this will be made available to the public, but we have all of the council |
| 02:00:38.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:00:38.55 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, we do. |
| 02:00:38.56 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 02:00:38.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:00:38.70 | Jill Hoffman | Exactly. |
| 02:00:38.92 | Unknown | Thank you. like Thank you. |
| 02:00:40.47 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:00:40.47 | Amy Overworth | Okay, can you hear me now? |
| 02:00:40.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:00:41.80 | Jill Hoffman | Council member priorities have already been uploaded to |
| 02:00:44.67 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:00:44.94 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 02:00:44.98 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:00:45.06 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:00:45.09 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. I did not know that. Thank you, Madam Mayor. |
| 02:00:45.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:00:50.61 | Amy Overworth | Okay, we're pivoting all over the place here, folks. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my screen and we're going to go, through everybody, we're going to allow the council members to state their priorities. Council members should feel free to take up, you know, five minutes if you can do that since staff did. |
| 02:01:02.32 | Chris Tubbs | information. |
| 02:01:07.18 | Amy Overworth | Um, And then we'll start to look for sometimes your priorities are going to align with staff and with each other. And, you know, as we work through lunch, we're going to we're going to come up with achievable goals for the year. So let me please be. Please be patient with me and the technology. Um, let's try it. On mine, I have them. I have them. I just, I'm trying to open my screen. Okay, there's my settings. Don't need my settings. Can you see? |
| 02:01:45.76 | Amy Overworth | Okay, I haven't shared it yet. Let's see. |
| 02:01:53.15 | Amy Overworth | Black arrow. Yep. I tried that. Google Chrome. Let's try that. Thank you for your patience. I don't want to open system. Oh, Grant, I'm very, go ahead. I can share my screen, Amy, if all else fails. |
| 02:02:04.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:02:07.95 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 02:02:08.74 | Amy Overworth | Okay, I need to allow Zoom is all. So give me two seconds. Thank you. Okay, I'll talk fast. Tell some jokes. Thank you. I got it. It might make me leave the webinar. Uh, Karen Hollweg, Mayor if you could share Councilmember Hoffman's while I re sign in or yeah great. |
| 02:02:31.40 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 02:02:39.20 | Amy Overworth | Okay. |
| 02:02:40.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:02:40.94 | Amy Overworth | And again, I will be |
| 02:02:46.36 | Amy Overworth | logging back in, but if you could put up council member Hoffman's, um, going to our mail from last night, so give me one second. |
| 02:02:53.87 | Unknown | Well, |
| 02:02:55.15 | Walfred Solorzano | I can do it on my end. |
| 02:02:57.24 | Unknown | All right, great. |
| 02:02:58.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Go ahead. |
| 02:02:59.27 | Unknown | Oh. Okay. |
| 02:03:00.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:03:07.05 | Unknown | And then I'll be back in if you want. |
| 02:03:10.27 | Amy Overworth | Look at this. |
| 02:03:13.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:03:13.66 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:03:13.81 | Jill Hoffman | a little bit. |
| 02:03:14.27 | Amy Overworth | panic? |
| 02:03:14.74 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. It started to share Walford and then it disappeared. |
| 02:03:19.70 | Walfred Solorzano | Sorry, I had opened up the PDF instead of the other. |
| 02:03:24.43 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:03:25.17 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:03:25.76 | Jill Hoffman | Who gets first? Thank you. |
| 02:03:26.99 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:03:27.01 | Walfred Solorzano | I got it. |
| 02:03:30.05 | Jill Hoffman | I think it's good that the city clerk do it so that you can talk, Amy. |
| 02:03:34.03 | Amy Overworth | Love that. I would love that so much. All right. |
| 02:03:38.31 | Jill Hoffman | All right, let's go to Councilmember Hoffman, as mentioned by Amy. |
| 02:03:41.69 | Amy Overworth | Love it. Okay, Councilmember Hoffman talk talk us through your list. This is Jones, so we're going to move to, that's Jones. Yeah, let's move. There you go. |
| 02:03:55.41 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thank you. Ahem. Sorry, my voice is coming and going. So top is prioritization of infrastructure projects. All of our infrastructure projects, it would be prioritization of those. The second is to adopt council meeting general protocols that includes Brown Act, Levine Act, and all other California ethics rules as part of our part of our general operating protocols. I'm not sure. and completion of the facilities assessment by February 1, 2025, for all city-owned properties. I would suggest that we just adopt that as our, even though our city managers told us that we're going to get that, I would say that we just adopt that as a priority. And then Following on with that, completion of a preventive maintenance schedule for all city-owned properties. So, That follows on with we have a facilities assessment but preventative maintenance schedule follows a facilities assessment. And that's something you should have for all of your facilities, which is you have preventative maintenance, which keeps all of your facilities protected. all of the maintenance schedule. You have a schedule for the maintenance for all of those, all of your facilities. I was surprised that we didn't have that. that's kind of a standard thing that you should have for all of your facilities. Um, And then we just adopt as a policy that we have a balanced budget. I mean, that's just that we just have that as a council priority. period. And those are just my top five. Those are pretty standard, basic, Do you know? Surprise we don't have those in place already. But anyway, that's it. |
| 02:05:36.44 | Jill Hoffman | Otherwise we don't. Thank you, Council Member Hoffman. Who's next, Amy? |
| 02:05:43.97 | Amy Overworth | I believe we, Council Member Blaustein? |
| 02:05:48.69 | Melissa Blaustein | pulling it up sorry that this is a text heavy slide and i will try to be quick but and it seems that there are a lot of already overlap with councilman hoffman because i have infrastructure improvements on here i was thinking in these goals more in the context of a five-year strategic plan so it's less specific but investing in our pvi rating which is our pavement index and our roads using measure l dollars to make our roads accessible and safe the next one uh decreased risk. I think we heard a lot today from our city attorney, but also from our fire department about what we're up against in terms of mitigation and planning. And so I want us to really find a way to focus on addressing our risk and dealing with smaller slip and fall incidents, but also more larger scale, mitigating climate change and disaster preparedness, which brings me to item three, which is climate change risk mitigation and disaster preparedness. I continue to think that we are And we have declared from this dais that we are in a climate emergency and we need to assess all of our infrastructure issues with a climate lens. And the same goes for disaster preparedness. Obviously, this week has been a difficult reminder of how critical it is for us to start taking immediate steps to address infrastructure challenges with regards to disaster preparedness and emergency. And this also includes for me sea level rise, lowering our carbon footprint more generally and mitigating serious climate risks. And then, of course, thinking about our economic prosperity and how do we continue to have strong economic growth and encourage encourage increased revenues for our community to thrive. To me, that looks like investing in longer term climate economic solutions to drive our TOT and sales tax and grow tourism downtown. It looks like applying for and obtaining more grants, both federally and at the state level. And also, I would like to see more of a push towards curating public art and making our downtown a real place for visitors that treasures our historic past as an artist's enclave, which I think will encourage economic activity. And finally, there is no way our city could exist or run without our incredible staff. So I want to continue to see it be a priority that we retain our amazing staff and that they are well respected and receiving the support that they need to continue to provide an extremely high level of service and customer service to all of our residents. |
| 02:08:02.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Councilmember Blaustein. Thank you. |
| 02:08:04.94 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:08:05.02 | Jill Hoffman | you I think we're going to Councilmember Sobieski next. |
| 02:08:11.71 | Unknown | Hi, so I actually didn't have a model for this so I had two pages it's lengthy as well But... but there's only really one. I had goal A and goal B, I had two, but then I decided to make, Leave the title of goal B, goal B, and make goal A priority one. I only have one. it enables everybody else's priorities every other council member and the entire community My reflection of the last four years is that we have a lot of ambitions, but we're not serious about funding them because a lot of the real ambitions that are going to move the needle on the quality of life of our town are going to cost money that we don't have. We've been having budget surpluses for many, many years, but it's not significant enough Our operating surpluses haven't been significant enough to fund our own ambitions. So, The priority I would love us to agree on a serious top level, highest level parity. is to organize ourselves in our consideration, our lens and our staff around how to add $3 million of new annual recurring revenue to the city's budget annually. And if we want to add a constraint on this to help avoid it being spent on things that are considered non-priority, we could have that money from these additional activities directly go to the current capital improvement fund. So the reason we want this money, for instance, and it's one of my related goals, is to actually set time-based metrics on improving our infrastructure. We have facilities and other infrastructure, sidewalks and whatnot, but one that's already quantified and quantifiable in a very easy way is our roads. And so I propose the ambitious goal of getting to an A grade of our roads within 10 years. and a C grade within five years. Just that C grade would cost, by the way, $25 million. just to get our roads to 75. Remember the thing Kevin McGowan gave us this graph with his report, $25 million to get to 75. So it does us no good to have a bullet point that we're not serious about attaining. If we are serious about improving our infrastructure, if we're serious about sea level rise, if we're serious about fire resiliency, if we're serious about any of these things, We have to be serious about increasing the revenue in the city budget. That then gives us the rationale. for making the trade-offs because everyone loves the empty field where we used to run our dog or the way things are And when a proposal for a 30-room hotel or some other thing that causes economic activity comes down, it is easy to be then influenced by the people who argue for leaving things the same. But if we want to make things better for fire risk, for infrastructure, or any of these things, then we need to seriously consider some of the list of ideas that I list there below a significant number of additional hotel rooms. Every hotel room gets us something like $35,000 of tax revenue. Uh, Adjusting our franchise rules, perhaps on a very deliberate basis to help foster activity. Really changing our permitting process. You know right now, if you're a fisherman, you're not allowed to sell fish off the back of your boat in the Marinship. How does that fit in with the working waterfront maritime community? It retards economic development. If you want to throw a quick event on your private property, you have to get a conditional use permit that involves an appealable process instead of a ministerial permit. You have 30 days when you make an application for a permit to get a reply on that permit. It could be 72 hours, it doesn't have to be 30 days. These are all things which would help foster economic growth and we can talk about how to do them, but I would say that we ask ourselves to hold ourselves accountable. for economic growth as a way of funding everything else and bring forth an aggressive plan to add $3 million to our budget. The second part of that is that I think we can accelerate our infrastructure repairs with our current funding mechanisms. We do have Measure L in place that is a pretty reliable source of something like $20 million. We could bring a lot of that spending into earlier fiscal years. We can do it in a variety of ways, either floating a bond that's guaranteed against that revenue or by taking it from our own uncommitted cash that would then be replenished by Measure L. And in so doing, we could have a quicker investment in our infrastructure and our roads. By doing that, we would get economies of scale that would make that entire project much cheaper, and we'd get more done for the same amount of money if we do it all rather quick. And, by the way, we could take advantage of modern processes of water treatment and environmental design to help reduce the amount of payment that's done and attend to some of our sustainability goals. So I'm sorry, that's what I will quickly summarize on infrastructure. I want to be mindful of the time of others, so I'm just going to go to a goal B, which is the arena process is one we had to go through. It was state law. It was required. we are going to succeed at that, I'm confident. And we will avoid the builder's remedy in the near term. But if the city of Sausalito doesn't actually get housing built, we will always be under threat of losing our local control. And if private property owners don't build a property, then we may be in a situation where, just like Sausalito's population has declined since 1980, it may continue to decline. And we could face some serious sanctions and lose local control. We have, aside from the state mandates, we have our own interest in getting the kind of housing that would enhance our community. And so I would propose that we decide what that housing that's actually good for our community is employee housing, senior housing, artist, live, work, or maritime housing, and use the tool of community development agreements totally separate from and in parallel with the housing process separate from that to help work with private property owners to to incentivize and actually get built within five years or at least permitted housing projects that meet our societal community needs to enhance our community. And using the CDA, of course, as the lawyers here know, we would retain full local control in the look, feel, finish, and particulars of those buildings. But to do that, we need expertise urban planners architects and a agreed upon process to negotiate with private property owners and and understand that doing so would require a quid pro quo some kind of agreed upon trade off where there's a win win outcome. Those are mine. Thank you very much. |
| 02:15:04.99 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, we'll go to Vice Mayor Woodside. |
| 02:15:09.08 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. We haven't discussed these specific things until this date. That is among council members. We're brown-neck covered, and I'm just amazed already at the amount of overlap we're seeing. Maybe we use different words and different approaches, but there's quite a bit of consistency as I'm hearing it, and I'm going to add to that in a moment, and I apologize for the narrative form of this because I don't think we had a standard to follow, and that's fine, but I want to preliminarily say that I learned something today that I had not known, and that is that we're in the last year of the strategic plan. As I read the dates, it looked to me like we were in the next to last year. Now, why is that important? Strategic planning, well done, which I think this one was well done, does have a life and it does provide a guide for everybody going forward if we can come to an agreement on a true strategic longer-term plan. And I think we're, I guess, on the cusp of having to start again and see whether we can develop the plan for the next six years. So I think I have to add that to a list of priorities. If we're in the last year now, we better start thinking about how we're going to develop the next one. And it is an involved process that involves everyone in this room and members of the public. |
| 02:16:04.73 | Chris Tubbs | Right. |
| 02:16:32.83 | Steven Woodside | Now, hang on. |
| 02:16:32.93 | Joe Novitski | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:16:33.79 | Steven Woodside | Having said that, let me just take off with my quick list here, housing. We all know this is one of the most challenging things that we face for many reasons, not just the fact that there's a state mandate. My personal view is that we actually do need affordable housing, particularly housing focused on seniors, people who can perhaps work here, live-work settings, intergenerational housing so that as people age in place they can maybe age in place with family members or other who can perhaps work here, live-work settings, intergenerational housing, so that as people age in place, they can maybe age in place with family members or other supporters. We don't have that in this community in very large numbers. And to the extent we're mandated to build new housing, I think almost everybody in this community says we don't need luxury condos. We don't need high-rise buildings. We need housing that is sensitive to our neighborhood, to our quality of life, which I think you will say, |
| 02:16:48.60 | Chris Tubbs | and, |
| 02:17:33.88 | Steven Woodside | almost unanimously, were pretty proud of this city because of the quality of life here and the members of the community. So I would set an ambitious goal to actually approve housing, that is, plans approved, projects approved, on as aggressively as we can for the type of housing I describe, and actually have some shovels in the ground. I mean, we don't build it as a city typically, but we need to streamline our processes and do a number of things to make sure we're actually approving and that we will actually achieve the appropriate housing that fits in our community and serves the people who we hope will be able to afford it. Secondly, on infrastructure, I agree with much that's been said about the need to prioritize it. From my perspective, I've always used the concept of guiding principles. So we have a lot of infrastructure needs. We have way more infrastructure needs than we can afford. I think we all know it. Walk around town, you can see it. It's obvious. But what should be the priority? And my guide would be infrastructure needs, in this case, infrastructure needs, the top priority would be those that serve public safety. So a simple thing. How do we get out of town in an emergency? How do we get out of our home safely down the hill when the road is stacked up with cars and is dangerous? What about those stairs that are in repair? Those probably don't cost as much, but they may be the most effective way to escape the fire when it comes or a landslide or a flood if we can get those in good shape. So I would prioritize the things that we can actually do something about with the limited resources we have. And that's just the guideline. And so, you know, I don't want to say that stairs and such should be the number one thing on our list of to-dos, but it might well turn out that way if we apply the standards that I'm suggesting, which is to emphasize the public safety improvements. So, for example, I don't disagree with setting a target of getting our roads up to snuff. It's a very expensive process, but if we want the quality of our roads to be, you know, at the A or B level, how does that stack up with other things that affect public safety more directly, like perhaps a retaining wall to prevent a landslide or something like that? These are going to be things we have to balance as we go forward. It's very challenging, but I think I'm on the same page as Mayor former mayor sobieski when it comes to we really need to look at these things in the big picture long-term way have effective plans and then when we do prioritize let's make it clear why we're prioritizing what we do so i think that's pretty much it i tried to summarize what i kind of wrote down in narrative form but i really appreciate this and i want to also say i I appreciate the input from all of the people we've heard from today, members of the public and staff. And it's a little frustrating to all of us that we can't have this as a conversation. One of the reasons we're set up the way we are is so that everyone can be heard, people can attend remotely, that we have a good record of it. The room is set up for that purpose, not necessarily for the kind of conversations that we'd like to take place to move this forward. |
| 02:21:18.18 | Amy Overworth | I appreciate you saying that because there's y'all do want to have that conversation with your constituents. It's something that really stands out about your council. So I appreciate that, Madam Mayor. Thank you. |
| 02:21:29.61 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, could you? |
| 02:21:30.15 | Amy Overworth | HEAR ME? |
| 02:21:30.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:21:30.47 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:21:30.94 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, thank you. All right, well. It is so gratifying. to hear other council member priorities and the fact that we're already so aligned on many of the priorities that we've enunciated. So sort of like former Mayor Sobieski and Council Member Hoffman, I, my top priority is to create a short and long-term economic development strategy focused on addressing fiscal challenges, fiscal resiliency, and creation of an asset management plan. So, you know, first we have to identify the money that we need to spend, and then we can figure out how best to spend it. And so my second priority is infrastructure, Um, We have over $10 million in unassigned fund balance, not including Measure L monies, which are right now, I believe another $2.3 million And so I've identified 10 things that we should be considering as we decide how best to leverage our unassigned fund balance. And I mentioned these to you all on November 19th at our council meeting. So streets is definitely one of them, including increasing our PCI index. implementation of the Climatec assessment and recommendation. Um, Susan Nemitz, Director of Health Services and Health Fac Jane Linder, same thing with storm drains we expect to have that assessment done in two months when we have that assessment, we then need to figure out a 10 year plan to address deferred maintenance in our storm drains. Sealevel Rise Assessment. We are undertaking that now. We have grant funding available to start to address and mitigate |
| 02:23:32.00 | Kevin McGowan | do you? |
| 02:23:32.34 | Jill Hoffman | Ooh. Our existing stairs. I'm so happy that we're about to reopen our North Street stairs, but many of our stairs are in disrepair and need our attention. Susan Nemitz- implementing our landslide task force recommendations and addressing our geologic hazard report, this is part of risk mitigation. Susan Nemitz- But you know Councilmember Hoffman chaired our landslide task force in 2019 and came up with recommendations it's six years later it's high time that we invested the funds to actually implement those strategies as possible. Um, We have in place a required ADA transition plan that we need to be making progress on And finally, we realized last year that residents are largely responsible to repair their own sidewalks. Many of them don't know that. We need to get out a community service. notification system, but I also would like us to establish a revolving fund so that we can help to fund the resident repair of sidewalks and have them repay that fund. All right, third, housing. just like many of you, I've identified three things I think we can get done this year. Susan Nemitz, One finalize our housing element and our revised zoning ordinance to identify developers to construct senior housing on city properties, we are ready to roll with the corporation yard now we just need to find a developer who can feasibly build. and then identify grant funding to construct teacher housing on Nevada Street. Number four, regional engagement to advance Sausalito priorities through collaboration. gate five road drainage issues, that's the county and the state, the machine shop, you know, that's a great potential resource for Sausalito, and we can leverage our relationship with Congressman Huffman to help us with that. The Vista Point Trail for bicyclists, this is something we have been wanting to do since 20, 17? There's progress being made, but that's a great way to reduce bicycle accidents and increase rider safety and reduce our risk management protocol. Ongoing support of the Dorothy Gibson House. You know, that's, again, a county collaborative project. And then an undergrounding strategy, something else we can pursue with PG&E, the county and the state. And then five, restructure and streamline service delivery with a focus on transparency and customer service. We have great staff. We now need to change the way that the community perceives our staff. And we need to focus on customer service so that we don't ever receive complaints that an email went unanswered or, you know, someone took action without advising the property owner that they were going to take action or, you know, It took three years or four years to process a development application. Um, And I think we have to do all of this while advancing employee retention, recruitment, and succession plan to ensure high quality staffing for the community. In 2018, I characterized my mayorship as building bridges, not walls. This year I'm tackling what I call foundational building blocks. And so I'm really encouraged that my fellow council members share a lot of these priorities And, you know, we did this in a vacuum without knowing what each other was going to write. And so the amount of unicity amongst our priorities is really encouraging. Thank you. |
| 02:27:49.45 | Amy Overworth | All right. So we're done. No, just kidding. So I know that, um, I would like... to dive in a little bit I know we have like a working lunch scheduled so I don't know if people need to bring food or maybe you can feel free council members if you need to get up and get something because I think we should dive into things is that y'all good with that I'm not sure where that y'all came from, but I'm gonna go with it. So I do really think it is. Oh, I got joined as a panelist. I'm not sure. I do really you all have said that, wow, we did this in a vacuum. Right. There's so much similarities. And there's also been a comment that I'm on. Do I have to mute? Do I have to unmute? OK, sorry, guys. There's also been some comments that we wish this could be a dialogue. And I want to try to open it up for the council members at least to have a dialogue. Right. With each other. I am not here to opine on what I think should be the most important or what you should do. But if you will indulge me for two minutes, I might share with you an experience that I've had with a couple of things that all of you have mentioned. Your housing element, if I'm not... |
| 02:28:48.26 | Chris Tubbs | I am not. |
| 02:29:05.75 | Amy Overworth | Incorrect. It has not yet been approved. |
| 02:29:09.03 | Jill Hoffman | If we have an approved housing element, We are in the process, we were the first city and only city to in Marin County to timely adopt a housing element that was approved by HCD we're in the process of amending the housing element to address some comments. from HCD and some challenges, Um, we have an approved housing element in place. |
| 02:29:34.29 | Amy Overworth | Thanks. Thank you for the clarification, but, or not, but, but, and so ours has been approved. We had to submit amendments, be very, very careful with this process. Yes, there's a lot in it. I really appreciate in this community that people are saying we need affordable housing, we need workforce housing, we appreciate this. But there's also conflicts about density, right? That's a worry. Um, I'm going to say that the state is dead serious about this. And we nearly faced a builder's remedy action And we have a commercial corridor called Sepulveda. Thank you. And we now have, you know, apartments going up there, which I think is an appropriate use, but some it's very upsetting to our community because whether it's an appropriate area we're going to have 900 new people. So understand that it's not just where you put the housing, whether you put it over here or there, it's also the fact that that will, intensify the the use of your community so your police department your fire department your community development office right all those things will be impacted by housing um And... I wanted to comment on something that one of your staff members, I believe it was the director of human resources, was talking about an enterprise system that they're, you know, looking at that. I'm pulling this up, not as it's good or bad. I'm pulling, I'm pointed it out to you because we went through Yes, we approve that. You need to do that every now and then. You need to have all the departments talking to each other. This is an incredible undertaking. So I think that sometimes we council members pass a policy, which is improve customer service and efficiency through the human resource department. That could be a policy. But we may not understand how that impacts the staff on a day-to-day basis and how it could take over for a year or two or three. So I'm just, that's a caution. And I'm not paid by staff to say this. I'm just telling you it actually, it took us quite a long time. And once we got it done, guess what? Some of the software's out of date. I'm not kidding. I would like to do this, Madam Mayor, and this is all happening on the fly. Karen Hollweg, So please, if you don't like the process i'm going to suggest, I will do anything you want. Karen Hollweg, I would like to bring up a few items that I thought there was some agreement on and see if we can drill down on it and see if you guys can have a discussion about what it means. Um, and, and go from there. Uh, or the other way we could do it, you could all like say one thing and see if there's, you know, agreement and move on. How do you suggest? Thank you. |
| 02:32:30.75 | Jill Hoffman | Listen, you have fresh eyes, Amy. You're our facilitator. So I say, go ahead and identify points of commonality that you observed and let's move forward from there. |
| 02:32:42.75 | Amy Overworth | Okie dokie. So, um, I'm going to share my screen in a minute, hopefully. If not, I am going to move to the flip chart, Madam Mayor, which I know is not ideal. Everybody, including staff, mentioned infrastructure. So I think And that can be huge, but there has to be steps to take to go for that. I would like to turn it over to council members. If we're talking about infrastructure, I think everyone either mentioned in their comments to me or in their reports the pavement index and your rating, right, which impacts public safety. It impacts evacuation routes. It impacts risk management. So I would suggest you maybe start there. Talk about, and if you say it's 25 million, Councilmember Sobieski and a public works director, which I believe, yes, I understand you need to identify funding, but can we talk about what the steps would be to address that? |
| 02:33:54.05 | Amy Overworth | I'm. |
| 02:33:54.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:33:56.26 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:33:56.27 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. I think we can discuss the steps to address paving the streets. If you agree on it. I mean, that's the thing. I think we all agree. But how much of our fund balance to spend? is where I think there might be some disagreement because we have, you know, I laid out 10 things that are competing needs for that fund balance. So, and I didn't even mention pensions. So we certainly we have, I think Chad said, Chad, how much is in our... |
| 02:34:36.66 | Amy Overworth | CIP. |
| 02:34:37.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. in our Measure L funding. right now. |
| 02:34:42.36 | Chad Hess | So, As of the audit date, let me look that up for you. I don't recall off the top of my head, but I'll have a number for you in... you |
| 02:34:48.49 | Jill Hoffman | It was like 1.2 million or 2.3 million. |
| 02:34:48.50 | Chad Hess | It was like one. More than that. It was in the three million. |
| 02:34:53.99 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:34:54.36 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:34:55.47 | Jill Hoffman | 2.3 million. you know, Amy, I think we're focusing on what we can do in 2025. And so it would take 25 million, as the Ian said, over 10 years. I mean, $25 million to get us from our current index to a minimally acceptable index. But we're certainly not gonna raise 25 million this year or ignore all of our other infrastructure needs to focus only on streets. I really think we have to be having a holistic conversation about infrastructure. |
| 02:35:31.85 | Amy Overworth | So noted and Ian has his hand up and so I have a different approach, but Councilmember. |
| 02:35:36.95 | Unknown | Well, I was just going to say, I couldn't have framed it better than the mayor just did. And Councilmember Hoffman had a version of this too. There's short-term and there's long-term. And short-term, we have more resources than we have thought as our great finance team has begun to help us clarify and understanding our balance sheet. There are these millions of dollars, but we could do a couple things with the $10 million. We could decrease our pension liability risk by paying down some of our pension liability. We could improve our infrastructure, or we could use that money in some other way to increase our financial resilience against economic shocks. So that's a trade-off of what to do with that cash. And so this is a strategic planning session, so we're thinking about year one, as the mayor said, for 2025. What kind of strategic tactics are within the next 12 to 18 months, like pulling in with a bond measure or others uh the outer years of measure l to accelerate you are within the next 12 to 18 months, like pulling in with a bond measure or others, the outer years of Measure L to accelerate funding. But my question, and I leave it to you, Amy, to figure out how to delineate this, but it's a question to my colleagues. Like, if we're really serious about all these big items that I've been hearing about the whole time I've been on city council, |
| 02:36:43.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:36:50.97 | Unknown | I, my statement to you, my, my analysis of our budget, my experience last four years is we do not currently have a business model that will pay for what we say we want to do. I just want to be clear about that. We don't have a business model to pay for what we say we want to do. We can get there. I think we have a lot of unused competitive advantage as a city. We could have more hotel rooms that would generate $25,000 per hotel room. We could generate more activity in the Marin ship. We could have more bustle, dust, construction activity, but we'd have to be deliberate in how to do that. We'd have to really be aggressive. So I would propose that a way of talking about this is twofold. One, what do we do with our existing money to accelerate infrastructure? But separate from that, I'm advocating for the hard work actually, probably multiple meetings and engagements of actually laying out a economic development plan that adds at least $3 million every year to our budget. Because then a lot of the things we've talked about can be funded. But that means |
| 02:37:55.34 | Amy Overworth | that. |
| 02:37:56.88 | Unknown | actually making some choices. |
| 02:37:58.67 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:37:58.68 | Jill Hoffman | All right, recap, you know, it's a- I'm gonna ask Walfred to start the three minute clock as council members chat so that we can, or maybe a two minute clock because I don't want any one council member to monopolize this discussion, And I, you know, Ian, developing a way to generate 3 million a year is great, but we really need to be looking at what can we do this year? So, you know, I'm going to call next on council member Hoffman and then on, Vice Mayor Woodside. |
| 02:38:34.21 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:38:34.22 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Madam Mayor. So my comments are just for the pavement index. |
| 02:38:36.99 | Jill Hoffman | So, |
| 02:38:41.21 | Jill Hoffman | We had a presentation. from Kevin back in, I think in June of this year, a very measured, this is how much we would need this year, three different roads we could go down. You can increase it this much by devoting X dollars, X millions this year, you know, to just keep it steady. another million to increase it this much, another million to increase it this much. So The pavement index, it's not a lot to keep it steady. It's not a lot to increase it. So it's not an insurmountable question to increase the payment index. So it's not like it's insurmountable to increase our payment index. It's just, you just have to devote the money and stick to it, which we haven't done this year. And so I don't wanna say, that you throw your hands up and you just can't increase the payment. You can, you just have to agree to do it as a priority and then stick to it, which we haven't done. So I just want to dispel that narrative that seems to be going this year. It's pretty clear and you can just go on our, our website and just look at pavement index and look at his plan and we just haven't stuck to it so. And council member Hoffman, can you remind us of what those amounts were? |
| 02:39:48.32 | Unknown | And council members, |
| 02:39:49.08 | Jill Hoffman | I'm going to go. |
| 02:39:52.41 | Jill Hoffman | I can't right now because I, |
| 02:39:53.98 | Jill Hoffman | not in front of me, but it's not that much. While others are commenting, can you pull that up so that we know what he said? I can circle back. |
| 02:39:59.95 | Unknown | that. |
| 02:40:00.02 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 02:40:01.15 | Unknown | I can scan it. I have it here in front of me. How about I set it to you, Mayor, to put |
| 02:40:01.53 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:40:06.09 | Amy Overworth | Which one are you looking at? Or you could send it. What are you looking at, Yann? |
| 02:40:06.21 | Jill Hoffman | or you could send it. Thank you. |
| 02:40:08.84 | Amy Overworth | So I had to walk. |
| 02:40:08.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:40:08.91 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:40:08.98 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:40:10.75 | Amy Overworth | And I appreciate, I was sort of trying to get to that, that there's a phased approach. There could be things year one that you can do to address that, because I heard it from all of you, but I see Council Member Woodside, are you not finished yet? |
| 02:40:21.25 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, no, no, Ian, what presentation are you looking at? |
| 02:40:25.21 | Unknown | It is the one you're referring to Council member Hoffman and I'm holding it up here in my hand and just just in round numbers to get to 75 in four years costs $25 million. |
| 02:40:36.35 | Jill Hoffman | But which presentation are you looking at? |
| 02:40:38.46 | Unknown | Well, it's page six of something called executive summary from PEI. Okay. Okay. I'll go look for the one up. |
| 02:40:45.49 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:40:45.97 | Jill Hoffman | I'll go look for the one I'm talking about. |
| 02:40:46.98 | Unknown | I'm Kevin McGowan. |
| 02:40:47.38 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:40:49.24 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, so Ian, |
| 02:40:49.43 | Unknown | So Ian, |
| 02:40:50.69 | Jill Hoffman | Councilmember Hoffman is going to pull up the one she had in mind. |
| 02:40:50.83 | Unknown | Councilman. |
| 02:40:54.83 | Unknown | I'll send it to you, Jill, so you can. I won't. I'll wait. |
| 02:41:00.06 | Jill Hoffman | I'm going to let Vice Mayor Woodside speak |
| 02:41:07.13 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:41:07.15 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 02:41:07.60 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Mm-hmm. We're going to have to reach agreement at some point as to what the number is to achieve certain things. And I don't think we have that yet. So I hear phrases like it's not that much or it's insurmountable. There's a lot of room in between. I don't think we can do that today. But I did hear one thing from actually we all want to increase our pavement index somewhat within means. There are other competing issues. In my mind, there's some smaller, very much affordable items having to do with stairs and things like that that may be more critical in the long run if we're facing catastrophic problems. failures but having said that uh what um member sobieski suggested is that we look at the revenue stream from measure l and see if we can front load it so we actually have more money to spend in the short term to get some things like the pavement index moved further up. So rather than to try to settle on the exact amounts, I just think one thing that we might do strategically is ask the city manager and our finance person to say, is the climate such that we can take advantage of the revenue stream and front load a little bit more money so we have more money to spend now on these important priorities? |
| 02:42:24.97 | Unknown | Yep. |
| 02:42:41.80 | Amy Overworth | Could I ask a clarifying question, Madam Mayor? uh, When you say front load, do you mean use that money for then to bond a project? |
| 02:42:51.95 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. A bond and there are other financing mechanisms? Yes. |
| 02:42:55.23 | Amy Overworth | Yes. Okay. |
| 02:42:57.41 | Jill Hoffman | Um, Okay, so if so what I'm hearing are a couple of things as priorities one. identify ways to increase annual revenues. So that would be a priority for 25. for 2025. Another priority for 25 that I've heard is to include in our 25-26 budget an amount to increase our PCI index to an appropriate level given funding constraints. And that, I think, addresses Councilmember Hoffman's point about the need to increase the index, but it also addresses Vice Mayor Woodside's point about there are competing needs for that money. And then the third priority would be to consider whether it's appropriately appropriate to leverage some portion of our Measure L Uh, annual funds and our existing general fund balance to leverage Deferred infrastructure repairs now through some sort of COP or bond, rather than just using cash. So those are three potential priorities I've heard from the comments. |
| 02:44:20.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:21.49 | Amy Overworth | Okay, I see Councilmember Sobieski, did you want to- |
| 02:44:23.86 | Unknown | I don't want to step on in order, but I did have a comment just on your item there when you come back. |
| 02:44:28.23 | Amy Overworth | Okay, and then do you want to go first, Councilmember Blasen? Yes, correct. |
| 02:44:31.64 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, sure. I'll just go quickly. I mean, I would really like to see us, if we're having a conversation about, and I don't know where we're beginning or ending, specifically PBI or allocating for infrastructure. I just really want to, given what's going on in Southern California, consider an additional allocation for disaster preparedness, whatever that looks like, whether that's prioritizing road improvements that would allow for evacuation, as Vice Mayor Woodside pointed out, or providing a set-aside amount of grants for people who want to get to um zone zero in front of their houses uh but I would like that to be considered in the context of how we're spending this budget year given what what we're seeing unfold and just our general vulnerabilities so |
| 02:45:13.82 | Amy Overworth | Okay. |
| 02:45:15.26 | Unknown | I'm sorry. with, |
| 02:45:17.38 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:45:17.40 | Unknown | Thank you. So we have- |
| 02:45:18.90 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 02:45:19.10 | Unknown | Thank you. just on your first point. |
| 02:45:20.66 | Amy Overworth | Can you speak more closely into the mic? |
| 02:45:22.73 | Unknown | Yes, thank you. I thought that was a great summary, just on that first one since I was advocating for it. I feel like we wanna be ambitious in that revenue growth. Revenue growth is easy to say, okay, we added 100K to our budget. The real goal, the strategic goal, not for just over the next six years to move the needle for our town Councilmember Boston's point and everything else. We need... literally millions to solve this and we can do it. We can be a rich town without raising taxes. Thank you. I believe there are a bunch of ideas to do this that actually would be win, win, win all the way around. That's the ambition for that one. So I just wanted to put a marker of $3 million. I think it could be higher, but in your first idea, not just new ways to generate revenue, but generate at least $3 million annual recurring revenue to the city. |
| 02:46:12.45 | Amy Overworth | Okay. So... Go ahead, Madam Mayor. |
| 02:46:18.02 | Jill Hoffman | I was gonna say, are we aligned on those three priorities? We are not prioritizing them yet. We're not placing them in you know, highest to lowest, but are we aligned on those three priorities? |
| 02:46:35.09 | Steven Woodside | You're referring to the way you stated them, which I agree with. |
| 02:46:38.87 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, increased annual revenues. I'm happy to say a goal of by 3 million, although I don't know that we'll identify $3 billion in the upcoming. fiscal year. include Well, I already enunciated them, so. |
| 02:46:56.36 | Amy Overworth | I mean, I think if... I appreciate the goal. I agree with those. Okay. Um, |
| 02:47:00.52 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:47:00.56 | Jill Hoffman | I agree. |
| 02:47:00.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Okay. |
| 02:47:03.90 | Amy Overworth | I just want to clarify that when you say identify, When you say identify additional revenues and setting an ambitious goal, You're asking, this is going to require a lot of study. And a lot of like, I'm sure you have like a finance subcommittee or and there's going to be a lot of community vetting and engagement. And so it's it's it's an intensive thing. It's not somebody going away for a week and coming back and saying, here's what you're going to do. |
| 02:47:31.94 | Jill Hoffman | We already invested a city council meeting to it last year. This is an ongoing project. |
| 02:47:37.31 | Amy Overworth | Great, that's good. I think you restate it well and I wrote it down which I'll capture later. But Councilmember Woodside did bring up, or maybe it was you, Madam Mayor, So, I mean, I was the one who said, hey, I hear you all talking about pavement, right? I mean, I was just listening and that's what I threw out. I hear you talking about the stairs, I hear you talking about landslide, you know, other things, storm drains, in infrastructure, is there anything else that you want to talk about in terms of priorities that may be you know, will shuffle a little bit. I see Councilmember Blaustein here. Can I call on her and then whoever else? Doing my best here with the Zoom hybrid. |
| 02:48:21.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Zoom. I mean, if we're tapping into that, I'll just again make the case for stairs and exit routes and disaster preparedness. And I would add flooding, especially at Gate 5, as addressed and mentioned by Director McGowan. |
| 02:48:34.77 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, that was mentioned by staff, as you said, and I think it was also mentioned by the mayor and maybe council members. So I'm going to add gate five to list of potential priorities. Okay. So. |
| 02:48:45.55 | Jill Hoffman | So, I mean, may I just, I mean, we have, As I listed, we have 10 competing infrastructure needs. Amongst, you know, the ADA is something we are you know, by a consent decree required to do. So I'd like to put those 10 priorities, those 10 items back up on the board and see if any council member wants to ignore any of those 10 as we put together our 25-26 budget. if we wanna ignore facilities assessment and long term deferred maintenance. What I'm suggesting is that we include in our community. Fiscal Year 2526 budget. addressing long the deferred maintenance on all 10 of these issues Thank you. Um, and figure out how best to utilize our fund balance and our Measure L funds and our C-level rise funds and any other enterprise funds available to address them. But I'd like to put the 10 up. |
| 02:49:54.69 | Chris Tubbs | But I'd like to. |
| 02:49:56.75 | Jill Hoffman | and just see if anybody disagrees that we should be addressing these rather, because I think we have a lot of agreement on many of them. |
| 02:50:04.93 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, that's a great idea. So Walford, could you put up her slide again, focusing, I don't know if you can zoom in, on her, uh, Item number two, infrastructure. Because I did, I mean, this was everybody talked about this, right, and you all had very similar things. So if you can find a way to address these things. OK, back up one, because it's number two. |
| 02:50:33.81 | Unknown | There we go. |
| 02:50:33.84 | Amy Overworth | There we go. OK, so I think that we're talking about streets. I think there's agreement to include that, as you mentioned. Um, The climate tech assessment wasn't that was already budgeted and agreed upon. So the recommendation will come back. So that's part of your work plan. |
| 02:50:56.23 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:50:56.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:56.32 | Amy Overworth | Okay. |
| 02:50:56.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:56.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:56.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:56.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:57.91 | Amy Overworth | Facilities evaluation, and I know Councilmember Hoffman brought that up as well. That is in process, and you're supposed to get that? Okay, so that's good. That's great. With any kind of |
| 02:51:07.54 | Jill Hoffman | Does any council member disagree with including addressing uh, you know, needed repairs on facilities identified in the evaluation as part of our upcoming budget process. I can't see the council members. So if you could let me know if anybody raises their hand, Amy. |
| 02:51:27.79 | Amy Overworth | I will do that. Does anybody... |
| 02:51:29.33 | Steven Woodside | I agree. I don't disagree. I agree. |
| 02:51:31.79 | Amy Overworth | Agreed. You have agreement here. Okay. |
| 02:51:34.73 | Steven Woodside | I'm sorry. |
| 02:51:35.33 | Amy Overworth | You have agreement. You're right. You'll have this upcoming budget presentation and that will help that. Is a sea level assessment something that's already planned or is that something you want to have happen? You skipped storm drains. |
| 02:51:49.90 | Jill Hoffman | So the city manager told us last year that we would have a storm drain assessment in roughly four months. So I've shortened that because I believe we're now at two months. So... |
| 02:51:49.93 | Amy Overworth | So the. |
| 02:52:02.79 | Jill Hoffman | um, I think we need to do the same thing with storm drains as we're doing with our other facilities, but I'm asking to see if there's any disagreement on the council. |
| 02:52:12.19 | Amy Overworth | Does everybody agree with this assessment of the storm drain assessment? |
| 02:52:15.90 | Jill Hoffman | And then identifying a a plan to address deferred maintenance. Yeah, that's actually, All of these, I'm suggesting we include a plan to address deferred maintenance in our 25-26. So that's really the priority, but I wanna make sure there's agreement that we include these elements in that plan. Thank you. |
| 02:52:45.72 | Amy Overworth | So- I would like to ask a question because, so I'm not from here, but the existing stairs, I've heard all of you mentioned that in terms of public safety, in terms of evacuation in terms of infrastructure. Ah. Has there been studies, is there a plan to address this or something you're saying no, we have to add this to deferred maintenance. For the storm drains? No, no, for the stairs. |
| 02:53:17.41 | Steven Woodside | There's not a separate. |
| 02:53:17.56 | Amy Overworth | There's a number of. |
| 02:53:18.96 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 02:53:19.15 | Amy Overworth | Bye. |
| 02:53:19.18 | Unknown | So, |
| 02:53:19.43 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:53:19.45 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 02:53:19.47 | Amy Overworth | you |
| 02:53:19.54 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:53:20.47 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:53:20.57 | Amy Overworth | ahead. |
| 02:53:20.58 | Steven Woodside | Go ahead, Steven. |
| 02:53:21.04 | Unknown | Sorry. |
| 02:53:22.05 | Steven Woodside | I'm sorry, I'm just. No, please do. When I raise it, I think of the. |
| 02:53:22.74 | Unknown | No, please do. |
| 02:53:26.32 | Steven Woodside | great number I don't have the number in mind Throughout in the steep hillsides, there's overgrown, hard to use, dilapidated places for people to walk. |
| 02:53:40.56 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:53:41.00 | Steven Woodside | And it's not just for convenience. A lot of these were developed way back in the day in these narrow canyons with single-lane roads. They cross-cut them, et cetera. |
| 02:53:49.44 | Amy Overworth | Right. |
| 02:53:51.62 | Steven Woodside | And it's an evacuation route and |
| 02:53:54.53 | Amy Overworth | Okay. |
| 02:53:55.11 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 02:53:55.16 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. Sorry, I'm just, and then Madam Mayor, who I think just dropped off, did she drop off? Uh-oh. |
| 02:54:03.07 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 02:54:03.16 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 02:54:03.87 | Amy Overworth | I'm here. |
| 02:54:04.69 | Jill Hoffman | PLUS. |
| 02:54:04.86 | Amy Overworth | . |
| 02:54:04.90 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 02:54:05.08 | Amy Overworth | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:54:05.15 | Jill Hoffman | video. |
| 02:54:05.60 | Amy Overworth | Okay, good. I was going to say rut-roh. |
| 02:54:07.97 | Jill Hoffman | And to Melissa Blaustein's point, the stairs are a very crucial part of our evacuation plan for our residents. So it's not just, you know, we cannot all escape by driving on our roads. We have to escape using water, using our stairways to get either to higher ground or lower ground, and using our streets. |
| 02:54:18.85 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:54:32.35 | Jill Hoffman | So let me, Councilmember Hoffman, did you have a comment? Thank you. |
| 02:54:37.11 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. Yeah. Sorry. And these are from a risk assessment. These are city owned. |
| 02:54:37.13 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:54:41.94 | Jill Hoffman | pathways. |
| 02:54:43.39 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:54:43.51 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. True. |
| 02:54:44.40 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay. |
| 02:54:46.04 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 02:54:46.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:54:47.25 | Amy Overworth | But is there any disagreement on including stairs in this? I want to ask a question about it, if I may. I'm not the sixth council member, I promise. But I want you to all think about your ADA transition in line with the stairs. I think. |
| 02:54:51.03 | Jill Hoffman | the- |
| 02:55:01.93 | Amy Overworth | I don't know if the city attorney is still on. our public works director but I would imagine there's some issue with certain repairs of those stairs that would trigger ADA which makes it a very different uh procedure so do you want some guidance on that now or do you just want to keep that in mind for the future because we have faced this in our towns. |
| 02:55:25.07 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, so I will, let's have Director McGowan reach out to you as we address this. But for today, today is not about implementation. Today is identifying priorities. |
| 02:55:36.04 | Amy Overworth | Please. So does everybody agree with stairs, including stairs, for a number of reasons? Okay. Basically, A through J, these 10 items, you have, and then next is implementing landslide task force recommendations. |
| 02:55:51.97 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, this is to prevent another house sliding down a hill as it did in 2019. And we had. Um, You know, we have implemented A few, but not many. of the task force recommendations. And again, Councilmember Hoffman can speak more intelligently to that. |
| 02:56:12.57 | Amy Overworth | Okay, but everybody agrees that this should be included. I'm getting nods, Madam Mayor. Thank you. Geologic hazard report, that's already been done. So you wanna address those issues. Correct. |
| 02:56:24.18 | Jill Hoffman | All right. |
| 02:56:24.20 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 02:56:24.23 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 02:56:24.47 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 02:56:24.49 | Jill Hoffman | to you. |
| 02:56:25.48 | Amy Overworth | The ADA transition plan. THE END OF |
| 02:56:28.08 | Jill Hoffman | That we are required to do, and we've been remiss. |
| 02:56:28.10 | Amy Overworth | That's it. |
| 02:56:32.43 | Amy Overworth | and then studying the resources needed to fund repair of sidewalks. Well, I think... |
| 02:56:38.98 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I'd like us to set up some sort of fund to help our residents repair the sidewalks they're required to repair. and then repay the city. So I don't know if there's any agreement from the council on that. |
| 02:56:53.14 | Amy Overworth | Vice Mayor Woodside has a comment. |
| 02:56:55.47 | Steven Woodside | I was going to say, conceptually, we have to address the question of sidewalks. I don't know that the specific allocation of city dollars, you know, the specific mechanism we can talk about. But it's a big issue, and I think it was a surprise to many property owners that the sidewalk is actually the responsibility of the adjacent property owner legally. But we want to be in a position to help effectuate the repairs in the appropriate way. |
| 02:57:04.67 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:57:04.97 | Alice Merrill | Sure. |
| 02:57:09.00 | Unknown | Agree. |
| 02:57:17.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:57:17.58 | Amy Overworth | Yes. |
| 02:57:24.49 | Amy Overworth | Agree. So you're not prescribing the how, but you want to study it. |
| 02:57:29.42 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:57:29.76 | Amy Overworth | Okay. |
| 02:57:30.13 | Unknown | Oh, I, just right since we're commenting on it, It's a quick way to leverage private money to fix a communal resource. It's already a private property owner's obligation in many cases, not all cases. My own perspective, it's a dereliction on our part. If we don't expeditiously move forward with some sort of strategy to leverage that obligation, many people can afford it. And those that can't, we can try to help in the way the mayor has outlined. But it's a risk. It's a liability risk. It's an infrastructure task that we can help accelerate. And so it's an example of being serious. So I'm responding to your characterization. Amy, all we want to do is study it. No, I want to. Bye. My highest level strategic thing is let's get serious about all these repairs and really have ambitious time-based goals to achieve them. |
| 02:58:24.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:58:24.69 | Unknown | So we didn't talk about time-based goals in the mayor's list here, but I presume it's implicit that we actually want to act on these things in the timeframe she's talking about, not just come up with a, not just come up with a point of view. |
| 02:58:38.71 | Amy Overworth | Well, and the thing is, is though that I think you don't want to remove options for how to accomplish what you want to accomplish. So whether it's city funding those who need help or whatnot, I think you want to leave those options on the table. So that's 10 priorities for infrastructure. So, Madam Mayor, I think if it were me, I think it might be important to say what is the top three here. Um, No, you don't want to get that tactical or that. |
| 02:59:11.94 | Jill Hoffman | No, Amy, we are going to address all 10 of these within our budget. Amen. All right. Sorry, I'm not... |
| 02:59:17.32 | Amy Overworth | Amen. |
| 02:59:17.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:18.65 | Amy Overworth | AND I'M GOING TO BE |
| 02:59:18.72 | Unknown | All right. |
| 02:59:18.74 | Amy Overworth | like. |
| 02:59:18.97 | Unknown | that just |
| 02:59:19.43 | Amy Overworth | you |
| 02:59:19.45 | Jill Hoffman | Go ahead. As part of our budgeting process, we're going to address all 10. We're not going to handle all 10 this year. Hopefully we'll start all 10 this year, but I don't know. It will depend on what the council decides as part of the budgeting process, but we're identifying these as 10 infrastructure priorities to be addressed within our budgeting process for the coming year. And hopefully to adopt a long-term plan for addressing all of them so that we have some confidence over how much we're going to need to spend in coming years. And that's, Councilmember Hoffman, did you want to report back on the PCI index? You're on mute. |
| 03:00:05.99 | Amy Overworth | Nice viewing. Yeah. Okay. |
| 03:00:11.05 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:00:11.08 | Jill Hoffman | Great. |
| 03:00:11.39 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:00:11.66 | Jill Hoffman | We're going to hear from |
| 03:00:12.30 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:00:12.35 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:00:12.49 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:00:12.64 | Jill Hoffman | There we go. |
| 03:00:12.67 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF Thank you. |
| 03:00:13.23 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. No, yeah, we were looking at the same chart. Yeah, we could get us up. My point was we could get us up to a solid like fair. with a combination of like, you know, one to five million per year over what we were already doing. in a slurry or different methods. bids, right? But we weren't even doing that, or we're not even doing that. And we keep underfunding our what Kevin comes to us and asks for, we're not even doing that. And so Anyway, you can go back and look at the, you know, what Kevin's asked for us last year, you know, we're, were underfunding those procedures that he's asking us for. I mean, |
| 03:00:54.98 | Jill Hoffman | We have 3.6 million. sitting in our Measure L Fund right now. So that's certainly- And we promised to confine that fund to capital improvements, I mean, to infrastructure. So. Well, we should be spending more. |
| 03:01:13.22 | Jill Hoffman | I mean, you know, when I look at |
| 03:01:13.25 | Jill Hoffman | on our roads. |
| 03:01:16.22 | Jill Hoffman | when you look at our roads, it's pretty clear, you know, that we're not spinning on just basic how you're getting around town. So. Anyway. That's my point. We don't need to spend 25 million just to get a septic fair, you know? That's my point. |
| 03:01:30.04 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:01:30.08 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:01:30.09 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:01:30.19 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you for that. Very important. Thank you. |
| 03:01:32.20 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. And then council member Sobieski. |
| 03:01:35.86 | Unknown | I think Councilman Hoffman, we should probably look at the same graph because I'm looking at the same graph. |
| 03:01:41.87 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:01:42.19 | Unknown | Thank you. 3 million a year times the five years to get us to 75. is actually it's 4 million a year just 3 million a year times five years is uh 15 million dollars so that's the just guess the 70 |
| 03:01:48.81 | Jeffrey Chase | Yeah. |
| 03:01:56.81 | Unknown | Five. |
| 03:01:57.02 | Jill Hoffman | No, you're looking at the top line. You're looking at the top line, the 81. |
| 03:02:02.09 | Unknown | It's the blue graph. So the blue graph is 3 million a year, 2.9 million a year, starting at 58 to get us to, I'm sorry, I was wrong. It's 65 over five years. Is that if to get us to 75 is... |
| 03:02:08.43 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sorry. |
| 03:02:14.47 | Unknown | is shy of 5 million a year and we're currently spending 1.4 so 5 million a year times four is 20 million dollars uh you know it's a it's a matter of just the fact it's that it's that very graph that like i said i have from the and director mcgillen's here he authored that graph so it is we we have some money to make steps in that direction but But the current, you know, to maintain things as they are requires $1.5 million a year. To raise them from 58 to 60 over five years requires $1.8 million a year. To raise it from the current 58 to a score of 81 requires $5.7 million a year over five years. So that's 5.7 times 5 is $5. close to $30 million. to get it up. |
| 03:03:02.75 | Jill Hoffman | So I think it's the goal of the council to ascertain how much per year we can afford to spend given our other priorities, you know, not preventing landslides and all the other priorities we've just all agreed upon. But it's very reassuring. to hear that we can spend an additional between one and $5 million per year funded by Measure L, to really increase our PCI index. |
| 03:03:28.30 | Jill Hoffman | Yep. |
| 03:03:28.56 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So I wanted to make fair of this. |
| 03:03:28.91 | Jill Hoffman | Right, additional from what we've already |
| 03:03:30.46 | Unknown | from what we do. |
| 03:03:31.04 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY. Item A is. From what we're already. |
| 03:03:31.42 | Unknown | Item. On item A, you say streets including PCI index, if I could suggest just adding on to that. |
| 03:03:35.36 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:03:35.37 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. just Council member Sobieski, I don't want to debate now. Implementation, we've identified it as a goal. Let's continue to identify goals. |
| 03:03:48.97 | Unknown | It was a goal around, it was around your point. It wasn't implementation. It was just a question about, we talked about whether it's a policy goal to direct street reform to include, you know, modern sustainability techniques or not. And that affects the total cost also. So I didn't know if you wanted to include that in your goal articulation or not. |
| 03:04:08.55 | Jill Hoffman | And that goes back to the other, you know, page eight of this report, right? There's different types of things that we could be doing too, like heavy maintenance, slurry seal or chip seal or these other types of things that we can do that are cheaper. That also goes to it. You know, and the other things that I was looking at on this was. you know, the, the same, the same chart that you're looking at, you know, the average of 2.9 million a year, um, you know, that would increase the PCI by five a year. right under your blue graph. |
| 03:04:43.99 | Melissa Blaustein | Just as a point of order, I don't think that members of the public have that in front of them. And so it's difficult when we go back and forth. I was able to find it, but I'm not really comfortable with us going back and forth over the numbers without us having either it pulled up on the screen or. I agree. |
| 03:04:44.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:04:53.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:04:53.66 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:04:53.93 | Unknown | you |
| 03:04:53.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:04:55.66 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:04:55.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:04:55.70 | Amy Overworth | I agree. Thank you. |
| 03:04:56.32 | Melissa Blaustein | I agree. |
| 03:04:56.49 | Amy Overworth | I agree. But that's a great point. I see council member Woodside's Madam Mayor. Is that all right? Yeah, we can be one. |
| 03:05:03.48 | Steven Woodside | I just wanted to suggest that we move on and make it clear. |
| 03:05:05.27 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:05:05.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Let's move on. We've identified the priority. Let's, we'll figure out how best to implement it. when we can share our uh, documentation with members of the public and each other. |
| 03:05:23.17 | Steven Woodside | And it may cry out for a session that is longer than this, just devoted to that issue. |
| 03:05:23.29 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:05:23.32 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 03:05:23.37 | Amy Overworth | . |
| 03:05:29.70 | Amy Overworth | It may and you know your your idea of including you know making emergency access better ties into all of this as well. And I I do think the fact that you all get this chance to even just have this discussion is important. So we've kind of gone over infrastructure. And more will come up probably. What are, what's another area of agreement that you guys heard? I could tell you the answer, but I kind of want to hear from you. And I will need to plug in my computer. I have a plug if somebody can direct me to an outlet, but you all talk amongst yourselves. So I heard housing. Thank you. Yep, me too. Let's talk about that. |
| 03:06:18.17 | Jill Hoffman | I heard fiscal responsibility. as a common thread. |
| 03:06:25.24 | Amy Overworth | Fiscal responsibility and fiscal resiliency, very similar with housing. Um, If I'm looking over my notes here, your you know, you need to finalize your zone, your housing amendment. You don't even have to put them |
| 03:06:44.46 | Jill Hoffman | that is happening this first quarter, no matter what. We already have a timeline. It's already scheduled into our city council meetings. Our community and economic development director has a timeline. We can include that as a priority. It's certainly, I think, a top priority since it's already... underway. That's not something we have to align upon. We've already given direction and that's already being carried out. |
| 03:07:12.05 | Steven Woodside | And if I can just add, there's one ancillary issue that I know the mayor has raised last year, and I'm interested in it myself. it's an ancillary matter to take a look at and i think there's there'll be assignments to look at the possibility of our city becoming a charter city for purposes of preserving a greater control locally over such matters land use matters not exclusive control of course but right now we're powerless vis-a-vis the state so i just i just want to mention that now it's not a priority for |
| 03:07:48.41 | Jill Hoffman | Paul. Let's take a poll because that's going to take time and effort. Councilmember Hoffman has already engaged in a preliminary meeting with me and the city manager. So, Let's take a poll about whether this is something we want to invest time and resources on this year. |
| 03:08:04.76 | Amy Overworth | Madam Mayor, I think that's an excellent idea, but I would also, does everybody on council understand, the pros and cons of it. I think we've had two, we've had, On consideration, |
| 03:08:16.97 | Jill Hoffman | we've had a full |
| 03:08:18.33 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:08:18.47 | Jill Hoffman | report on it. We developed a task force to come back to the council. The task force has not yet come back to the council. |
| 03:08:25.79 | Amy Overworth | Okay, so you wanna take a poll right now? Yeah. And who wants to, you know, whether it's a priority or not, but how many in this room, and you can raise your hand on screen. want to pursue the charter council member blasting. |
| 03:08:39.71 | Jill Hoffman | Well, it's not personal. |
| 03:08:40.73 | Amy Overworth | And, |
| 03:08:40.96 | Jill Hoffman | It's not become a charter city. |
| 03:08:42.72 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:08:42.73 | Jill Hoffman | It's. study whether or not to become a charter city. |
| 03:08:46.67 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. I just don't, I would like to have a better understanding of the amount of staff time and resources being devoted to that given our limited staff time and resources for things like. where we're going to spend our infrastructure and disaster preparedness and otherwise. So it's not that I don't agree with it or think it's a wonderful thing if the council Members want to pursue all of that. on their own time, but if we're gonna use staff time for it, I'd like to have more information because I don't think prioritizing that from a staff time standpoint makes the most sense. I think it's zero. |
| 03:09:11.73 | Jill Hoffman | I think it's zero staff time. |
| 03:09:14.59 | Unknown | you |
| 03:09:15.02 | Jill Hoffman | Right. Like zero. I guess the mayor and I are looking at it, right? |
| 03:09:21.26 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, and the city attorney is already working with another, he's actually, write the guide. for how to become a charter city for the League of California Cities. And he's working with another city, I believe. His firm is working with another city on becoming a charter city. So I don't see a huge investment, but I'm happy to see he's turned his camera on. |
| 03:09:28.87 | Unknown | Thank you. THE FAMILY. |
| 03:09:40.68 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah. In short, to date, minimal staff time, minimal city attorney time, I think, has been dedicated to this effort besides conversations with the city manager. The council will need to, via a subcommittee or otherwise, work with the city attorney's office to prepare a draft. And there will need to be multiple drafts. meetings there will it's not a trivial effort to become a charter city and then we will need to work to prepare resolutions to put it on the ballot |
| 03:10:07.02 | Chris Tubbs | And. |
| 03:10:10.48 | Sergio Rudin | after having at least two public meetings on it several months apart, in accordance with the procedures of the election code and state law for forming a charter city. Um, So |
| 03:10:23.87 | Unknown | It's a |
| 03:10:24.46 | Sergio Rudin | capacity to do this work certainly as particularly if the council makes it a priority and if you know the council designates a working group i would anticipate that that would streamline things in terms of, um, you know, being able to quickly and efficiently resolve basic questions about what should go into the form of the charter. But I would not be surprised if it doesn't require 50 to 100 hours of city attorney and city council time in terms of getting this over the hump and getting something on the ballot. |
| 03:10:58.76 | Melissa Blaustein | And then we'd also have to pay the cost of putting it on as a ballot measure and running the election, et cetera. |
| 03:11:03.64 | Sergio Rudin | Correct. Yeah. And for that reason, actually, you need to, I believe you need to put it on as a on a general election. So you're not going to be able to call a special election for that matter. |
| 03:11:14.98 | Melissa Blaustein | It's a significant cost to the city. It's not without cost. Yeah. |
| 03:11:18.49 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. |
| 03:11:20.14 | Melissa Blaustein | It's 50 to 100 hours of your time, Sergio. That's significant cost. |
| 03:11:24.73 | Jill Hoffman | That's to carry it out. If we decide to carry it out, Council Member Blaustein. I'm asking whether we want to study it. |
| 03:11:28.60 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm Anna. Well, I mean, I think studying it is different than prioritizing it. If you want to study it and it's not staff time, that's great. But prioritizing it, given the conversations we've been having about our budget and how constrained we are, I'm not as comfortable with just from the point of saying about fiscal responsibility as a guiding measure. If this is a project that two council members want to take on and bring forward, that's very different, but making it a priority for us, given what we've talked about today. My feeling is I'm not comfortable with doing that, but I'm just putting that out there. |
| 03:11:58.89 | Jill Hoffman | Any other council members want to weigh in on this so that we can move on? |
| 03:12:02.67 | Unknown | I'm personally more aligned with what Melissa just, the council member of Austin just articulated. I definitely see the advantages, but we no longer have the list of priorities in front of us here. So it's always about stack ranking them. So I'm a little bit lost because I don't see what, |
| 03:12:13.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:12:13.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:12:13.94 | Jill Hoffman | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:12:15.41 | Unknown | I'm competing with. Yeah, and really, you know, Charter system |
| 03:12:17.17 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I really, you know, Charter City was not any of the five priorities that any council member identified so. |
| 03:12:20.02 | Unknown | you. |
| 03:12:25.75 | Jill Hoffman | I just- |
| 03:12:25.97 | Unknown | Yes. Thank you. |
| 03:12:26.80 | Jill Hoffman | We already have an ad hoc committee to study this. That was already authorized by the council last year. So I'm going to... have Have us move along. Um, |
| 03:12:36.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:12:36.98 | Amy Overworth | And I would just add that when you come back, clearly people want to know how much does it cost to put it on a ballot? How, what are the, you know, all of those things. So I'm sure your working group can figure that out. Okay, so housing we said that's fine. What about, Oh, golly. Sorry. You. There were issues around Bye. raising revenue, or no, you added that, you added to study uh, how you could raise revenue and- |
| 03:13:11.30 | Jill Hoffman | Well, that was... Thank you. |
| 03:13:12.25 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:13:12.30 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, we've already included that. Identify ways to increase annual revenues by $3 million. That's already identified as a program. I already... |
| 03:13:21.73 | Amy Overworth | Go ahead. |
| 03:13:23.36 | Melissa Blaustein | What about, we haven't talked about, many of us mentioned economic plan or economic growth or economic, I think articulating that into a clear goal would be a good use of time. |
| 03:13:32.53 | Amy Overworth | Great. |
| 03:13:32.88 | Melissa Blaustein | THE END OF THE |
| 03:13:33.68 | Amy Overworth | Love it. Um, How about we bring up And again, this is Yeah, because I'll tell you what I heard in a bunch of different conversations that we've had and also in your reports and I hopefully the city clerk will bring up some of the slides again but there's business longevity there's not just new businesses or you know there's you know supporting current businesses. revitalization of downtown. uh, And. I think also your infrastructure plays into a lot of this, but let's go into, um, Thank you. |
| 03:14:09.99 | Jill Hoffman | Clark, can you bring up the council priorities instead of the department head? |
| 03:14:13.32 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, it's going to be under um, Yeah. |
| 03:14:18.36 | Jill Hoffman | No, that's the department head priorities. |
| 03:14:25.21 | Amy Overworth | Mayor. We had mayor Cox had those. Sobieski Melissa. Sorry, I'm going back and forth between last names, titles, and first names. um, |
| 03:14:36.72 | Jill Hoffman | Let's go to Councilmember Blaustein first. |
| 03:14:39.88 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:14:39.93 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:14:40.97 | Amy Overworth | very galp. So economic growth and increasing revenues for a thriving community. How would you identify or state a goal for that? |
| 03:14:51.40 | Walfred Solorzano | How many minutes do we want for speaking time? |
| 03:14:53.58 | Jill Hoffman | Karen Hollweg, Two minutes each and i'll let Council Member blasting lead off, can you try to turn this into a discrete goal Council Member blasting. |
| 03:15:06.98 | Melissa Blaustein | I don't know if I can do that in two minutes off the cuff. identify new economic programs to drive TOT and sales tax. Thank you. |
| 03:15:19.97 | Unknown | Great. |
| 03:15:20.02 | Melissa Blaustein | I know that Councilmember Sobieski has some ideas on this and it was also in the vice mayor had some thoughts so but that's the first one I can think of. Also, I would love to put somewhere in there as a goal, obtain more grant funding. federally or nationally or federally. |
| 03:15:38.08 | Jill Hoffman | Is there anyone who disagrees with a goal of apply for and obtain more grant funding? |
| 03:15:45.71 | Amy Overworth | Do you have the ability on the staff |
| 03:15:50.03 | Jill Hoffman | We have a grant writer on staff, Amy. |
| 03:15:53.00 | Amy Overworth | All right. |
| 03:15:53.43 | Jill Hoffman | And we have Katie Thro-Gracia who has been amazing. |
| 03:15:57.65 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:15:58.55 | Jill Hoffman | Again, I'm not concerned with implementation today. I'm concerned with identifying the goals. So we have identified a goal of apply for and obtain new grants. That's a priority. |
| 03:16:09.21 | Amy Overworth | and identify programs to drive TOT and sales tax. |
| 03:16:13.80 | Jill Hoffman | Well, that was how Melissa enunciated it. I haven't heard council agreement on that yet. |
| 03:16:18.26 | Amy Overworth | Do we have council agreement? |
| 03:16:21.41 | Unknown | Well, I agree with it. Thank you. I said it also. One example, just add one Christmas ornament to the tree. I think it's a low hanging fruit one would be a quantifiable goal of adding 80, that's eight zero hotel rooms to the city of Sausalito that would generate just those 80 hotel rooms if they're like in above tides, that would generate $2 million in extra revenue to the city that we could spend on infrastructure while also having the ancillary benefit of all the other spending that those visitors would have in town. Right now we're giving money away to Mill Valley And people are staying at the Aqua hotel or Cavallo point instead of staying here, paying for our infrastructure. |
| 03:17:01.19 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, council member Sobieski, and do you believe it's a feasible goal to create 80 new hotel rooms in 2526, because we're looking at 2025 priorities. |
| 03:17:16.63 | Unknown | I apologize if I misunderstood the strategic plan was limited to just 2025. |
| 03:17:21.62 | Jill Hoffman | This is our 2025 strategic planning session. |
| 03:17:25.35 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 03:17:25.56 | Amy Overworth | It's not an overall, it's not a six year plan. |
| 03:17:27.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. will undertake a six-year strategic plan next year. |
| 03:17:32.34 | Unknown | Yeah, indeed. Well, then I apologize for kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of the scope of our conversation. And so I would then frame it more in this is the first step on something I already have an eye toward. We all know we have these huge bills for a variety of things. So it really would be. So the answer is no. You're not going to get a new 80 hotel rooms this year, but you could with that, we could start that journey today. And I would pay dividends. I don't see any reason to wait. The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. So if we are aligned around that goal, as you know, very well, mayor, we have a proposal from the Maddens for three hotel rooms in their hotel. That's just three. Well, now we're well, that's. |
| 03:18:04.81 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:18:15.13 | Amy Overworth | Well again, |
| 03:18:15.98 | Melissa Blaustein | Go ahead, Councilmember. Something like in the strategic year 2025, create a program to fast track an application for hotels. Or something that's more like gets us there. |
| 03:18:16.52 | Amy Overworth | Bye. |
| 03:18:16.53 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:18:16.74 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:18:24.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:18:24.95 | Jill Hoffman | So, |
| 03:18:25.04 | Unknown | Something like... |
| 03:18:25.80 | Jill Hoffman | about. |
| 03:18:26.31 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 03:18:26.74 | Jill Hoffman | a, and this is something the PBID is already working on, but how about ensuring full occupancy of hotel rooms because, you know, we had a week last year, last week, where I think the Inn Above Tide had nine rooms filled and a bunch of rooms empty. Same with Casa Madrona. So how about a plan to foster uh, full room occupancy of existing hotels as we identify space for new hotels. |
| 03:19:01.10 | Unknown | I'm certainly not opposed to that, Mayor. That was the argument for the PBID and others, is to fill our latent inventory. Again, I just think the opportunity for us as a town not to pay higher taxes, but to have much better infrastructure and services is to take advantage of our unique competitive advantage as a town. And our easy underused category, because we already have a TOT tax that's 14%, is to have more hotel rooms. We're giving that money away to our friends in Mill Valley right now. by not having enough hotel rooms. We don't have enough hotel rooms. |
| 03:19:35.16 | Unknown | Those rooms aren't filled. |
| 03:19:36.79 | Unknown | Carmel has more, yeah, but Carmel also doesn't have, has a lot of empty space in the winter, but they have more dollars per spent on residents, three times more than us, because they have a lot more hotel rooms. |
| 03:19:49.11 | Amy Overworth | I'm not sure. And if I may interject, that what Councilmember Blasphane did suggest was identify programs to drive to OT and so this fits under that I would and again it about the prescription or the implementation after there's been some research. I because, again, you're not committing to we're building three, we're allowing three new hotels. I mean, there has to be a capacity study, everything else. But I think if you identify the programs to drive to OT and sales tax, you're covering something. Yes, Vice Mayor has his hand up. |
| 03:20:25.53 | Steven Woodside | And I think we have our economic development folks and so forth looking at these same issues, and I'm wondering whether or not hearing from them on all of these, both strategic level and implementation level at some future date, is a focused discussion again, because I think we could debate quite a bit today as to what the right answer there is, but in concept, TOT brings revenue direct to the city. It's not shared with anybody else, and that's one main reason why there's high interest in it from a fiscal point of view. We can't ignore it. |
| 03:21:03.09 | Jill Hoffman | So, So vice mayor, do you agree of identifying this as a priority? for 2025. to, I think that's a good thing. identify long-term economic solutions to drive TOT and sales tax. |
| 03:21:15.95 | Steven Woodside | The way you phrased that then, yes. And I would just add, and we want to consult with our own experts in the community that are actually looking at this. |
| 03:21:25.40 | Jill Hoffman | Well, yeah, but we have to give them the go ahead. So they asked us to consider their proposed priorities as part of today's session. And this was one of those. |
| 03:21:33.74 | Steven Woodside | I totally agree, and I agree with the way you formulated it, yes. |
| 03:21:37.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Is there any disagreement with the way by any council member with that priority as I enunciated it? Yes, Councilmember Hoffman, you're on mute. Thank you. |
| 03:21:47.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Um, When you say our Experts. Are you talking about our hotel owners? |
| 03:21:54.58 | Jill Hoffman | He's talking about EDAC. |
| 03:21:57.11 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, EDAC, because my Like, My concern is that when we talk about TOT. We don't want to run afoul or run across are hotel operators in town. and what their, you know, their business models and their business revenue models. Because sometimes when I go back and talk to them about what are, you know, what are your efforts and what are your revenue goals, you know, What are you showing, right, about, um, what's going on in Sausalito and do we have room for another hotel? I'm hearing something different. And so, and what are your thoughts on, do we have room for another hotel? And do we have room for excess capacity for another hotel? you may get another response from them. So, I mean, you need to bring them into the mix before we start going down different roads, I think. So that's just a cautionary thing. |
| 03:23:00.81 | Steven Woodside | I think that's what the mayor is suggesting, is that we look at capacity. And when I say experts, I'm thinking EDAC, but I'm also thinking of the Chamber of Commerce and the PBID and the others who've been convened to look at these same issues. I assume we'll hear from all of them when the subject came back to us, if it does. |
| 03:23:06.01 | Jill Hoffman | And we'll not. |
| 03:23:06.57 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 03:23:06.62 | Chris Tubbs | Thank you. |
| 03:23:20.23 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so again, are we okay with enunciating a priority of identify long-term economic solutions to drive TOT and sales tax. However, we may decide to do that. |
| 03:23:35.24 | Amy Overworth | Oh, sorry. I think there's agreement on this. You know, it's not... It's not just an increase in hotel. I mean, there's a lot of discussions to happen, but you want to put a focus on this area. OK? Bye. |
| 03:23:52.97 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, while we've got Council Member Blaustein's slide, may I turn to number five? Because I think a couple of us talked about staff retention satisfaction. Can we agree to include that as a priority for this year? I see council member Hoffman nodding. Yes, I can't see the rest of the council. |
| 03:24:09.29 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. Yes, they're saying yes. |
| 03:24:12.78 | Jill Hoffman | THEY ARE SO FUN. THEY ARE SO FUN. Okay, great. So let's go ahead and I like the way that council member Laustein, um, framed this, so let's go ahead and include that as a priority for 2025. |
| 03:24:28.36 | Amy Overworth | Bye. Well done. Okay, don't worry. I'm making very official notes here on my post-it notes that at the next break I will write on a document and share with everybody on the screen. If I get Internet back, |
| 03:24:40.12 | Jill Hoffman | All right, we only have an hour and 15 minutes left. So when are you planning to take our next break? |
| 03:24:45.40 | Amy Overworth | Well, I was just going to ask. Um, I think what I'd like to do, what I think makes sense is to take a quick little bio break, as we call them, comfort break. |
| 03:24:53.15 | Chris Tubbs | Bioplasm. |
| 03:24:56.00 | Amy Overworth | and come back and talk about a little bit about looking back at staff goals to see if there's some alignment so that those things are more likely to be, you know, embraced or easier for direction. And the next steps. And, um, |
| 03:25:14.44 | Jill Hoffman | So, Amy, I absolutely want to look at staff goals, but I want to be sure that we've covered the areas of unicity amongst the council goals first. So during the break, could you identify any other points of intersection to be sure that we've actually prioritized Council goals that we already are aligned upon. |
| 03:25:35.30 | Amy Overworth | You betcha. |
| 03:25:36.30 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:25:36.79 | Amy Overworth | So right now it is one, no 1246. Do you want to come back at 1? |
| 03:25:44.26 | Unknown | Great. Is that okay with everybody? All right, great. Thank you, everybody. Great, great discussion. |
| 03:25:50.71 | Amy Overworth | I'll call y'all to order the vice mayor, but I'm just... Using my microphone to bring you all in, doing the dirty work here. Okay, I think we're all here, Mr. Vice Mayor or Madam Mayor. Um, So I actually let's see if I'm on the zoom. I might not be on the zoom right now. Over the break, I here's what I came up with, and I will put it up on the screen in a minute, but if you'll just bear with me here with the technology. The council areas of agreement that and there were so much agreement, infrastructure, Identify ways to increase revenue for infrastructure dedicate money to pavement leverage measure L deferred maintenance and then the 10 Items that actually the mayor had identified Identify programs to drive TOT and sales tax revenue and apply for and obtain more grants. Staff retention and satisfaction. And then I do have other notes that I will add for a summer report for everyone, but I also added kind of other ideas, Charter City, just explore what that would entail. And if it does give you the protections that you seek from some of the mandates. And so before we move on, I mean, before we move on to some staff goals, again, not a staff to-do list, as they have a lot of staff to-do lists. I just wanna be sure that I'm not missing something where there was a lot of council agreement. So let's turn that over. |
| 03:27:25.12 | Jill Hoffman | So let's turn that on. |
| 03:27:25.99 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:27:26.44 | Jill Hoffman | for the first time. |
| 03:27:26.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:27:26.81 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So council members, is there anything that one of you listed that you believe there was agreement from others that we haven't covered this morning because I don't want to leave anything out. Councilmember Blaustein and then Councilmember Sobieski. |
| 03:27:43.50 | Melissa Blaustein | I would like to see a clear goal and unseated around disaster preparedness. And I think we're probably all, in agreement with that. |
| 03:27:49.96 | Jill Hoffman | I absolutely think we're aligned on disaster preparedness. However, I think we have to ensure that we are collaborating with Southern Marin Fire on that because we are paying 40% of our property tax revenues each year to Southern Marin Fire. to ensure disaster preparedness. So I'd like to ensure we're doing our part, as you mentioned, Councilmember Blaustein, in improving our stairs and our streets to allow for evacuation. But I want to be sure that we are not undertaking a role that we're paying someone else to do at the same time. So I think we have to manage and collaborate and oversee their work and do our own work as well. |
| 03:28:34.80 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, but I think that at least enunciating a goal around having a community drill where we partner with Southern Marine Fire or enunciating goal around creating and finalizing. our stairs map for disaster repairness or something, I love Southern Marine fire and I love working with them. And I think a goal is that we're going to do that even not necessarily at staff costs, but I just, I'm not, I feel like given what's going on leaving here today without a goal that is clearly related to disaster preparedness is just, we'd be remiss. So I welcome, however, we write that, that integrates Southern Marine fire and I would welcome ideas from the dais, but I just really want to see it. |
| 03:28:50.48 | Kathy Nikitas | Thank you. |
| 03:28:50.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:28:50.53 | Kathy Nikitas | the same. |
| 03:28:50.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:29:08.45 | Melissa Blaustein | included somehow. |
| 03:29:09.73 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Councilmember Sobieski. And I'm not seeing the clock, Wolfred. |
| 03:29:15.60 | Amy Overworth | What? |
| 03:29:17.31 | Jill Hoffman | the clock, the clock quitting me. |
| 03:29:17.38 | Unknown | the clock. |
| 03:29:18.12 | Amy Overworth | Sorry. |
| 03:29:18.54 | Unknown | Thank you. the clock. I like it. It's there. |
| 03:29:21.63 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:29:21.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:29:21.71 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not seeing it. |
| 03:29:23.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:29:23.11 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:29:23.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:29:23.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:29:23.28 | Unknown | We're seeing it. It's on our screen, Madam Mayor. |
| 03:29:23.30 | Unknown | We're seeing it. |
| 03:29:26.41 | Jill Hoffman | I see it. You don't see it. |
| 03:29:27.47 | Unknown | You know, see, it's, |
| 03:29:28.63 | Jill Hoffman | No, I'm seeing council member priorities from Blaustein. |
| 03:29:28.68 | Unknown | No. |
| 03:29:28.99 | Amy Overworth | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:29:32.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:29:32.28 | Jill Hoffman | it's off to the side. If you look at, |
| 03:29:33.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:29:33.95 | Amy Overworth | So I will hold Councilmember Sobieski to the two-minute call. How's that? Okay. Great. |
| 03:29:39.65 | Jill Hoffman | That's weird. I see it. It's right down at the bottom. It must be your view, your gallery view. Click on your view. |
| 03:29:42.91 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. Bye. |
| 03:29:46.33 | Unknown | Oh, okay. I just, you asked Mayor about other areas of agreement. I think you are taking, it's not on my list, Amy. Well, it is actually later, but Mayor, you said... A bunch of housing related things around using community development agreements and actually where you and I had agreement in part was being a little proscriptive about housing, we actually want to build not. complying with the arena element of Thank you. allowing private property owners to build, but actually you wanted to build some housing of a particular kind. |
| 03:30:13.55 | Chris Tubbs | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:30:18.43 | Unknown | I also feel as a community we should. I think that's an area of some agreement that there's a subset of the housing goal that we actually all feel is creative to our community. and it will require a government partnered plan like a community development agreement plan or grant or cooperation if we do something on private property with a community development agreement. So I feel like that's an area of potential strategic goal. We need to establish the ontological category because we haven't done a community development agreement, I believe, in a long time around here. And so we need to agree that we're willing to do that and put some scaffolding around what we're looking for. And that would also, of course, tie into Wallstein's economic development agenda, because some of there could be win win. around mixed use, around creating more industrial, around housing. That's all around a community development agreement. So preserving the zoning, but making an exception to the zoning for construction that would be aligned with our community goals. |
| 03:31:25.27 | Jill Hoffman | I absolutely endorse embarking on that. And I also am very interested in an enhanced infrastructure finance district for the Marineship. Those are not things I think I can make happen this year, but I'd absolutely like to embark on those. But I was gonna embark on those Um, you know, I'm not asking the Council to prioritize that with staff time until we address some of these other priorities like passing our housing element and our zoning ordinance. So I'm absolutely willing to invest some effort to to position ourselves to do that. I just don't know that that's something I can say we're going to accomplish this year. |
| 03:32:16.86 | Amy Overworth | Um, Ew. Thank you. |
| 03:32:19.04 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:32:19.07 | Amy Overworth | So, |
| 03:32:19.29 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:32:19.36 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:32:19.37 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:32:19.39 | Amy Overworth | you Thank you. |
| 03:32:19.64 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:32:20.25 | Amy Overworth | put it in. |
| 03:32:20.47 | Jill Hoffman | I saw a council member. I didn't know if council member Hoffman had something she wanted to see and saw her. |
| 03:32:27.62 | Jill Hoffman | I was just going to echo that. articulate a response to that. I was really intrigued by how to |
| 03:32:32.91 | Chris Tubbs | It was. |
| 03:32:36.25 | Jill Hoffman | process that and how to formulate a response in the scope of our priorities for this year. But it's kind of a subset of how to make that a secondary sort of exploration and incorporate that into, you know, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out, I'm thinking that through right now, and I think Joan, THE FAMILY. |
| 03:33:05.46 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE Well, how about just identify a process for negotiating potential in uh, community finance district in the marineship and negotiating development agreements. Identify a process though is the priority. |
| 03:33:21.68 | Amy Overworth | identify. So I'm adding this under other ideas and not so that we don't lose it. because i think people are saying oh this is interesting so Here's what I had written and then I'd written exploring community development positioning in terms of meeting the housing element and then identify a process for potential community financial |
| 03:33:48.03 | Jill Hoffman | I would say EIFD, an Enhanced Infrastructure Finance District, utilizes county funding as well as city funding as well as owner funding. |
| 03:33:57.49 | Amy Overworth | Bye. I'm not. I will put this under other ideas and when I submit a draft will make sure that wording is correct unless so I hear actually I hear three people say that's good for other idea. Is there anyone who says absolutely don't put that on as an other idea. |
| 03:34:14.76 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, other idea but not priority, right? you |
| 03:34:16.87 | Amy Overworth | Okay, Councilman, I'll be there. |
| 03:34:17.26 | Jill Hoffman | That's technical. That's highly technical, complicated. |
| 03:34:18.65 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 03:34:18.66 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:34:18.68 | Steven Woodside | That's technical. That's highly technical. I'm in agreement with members so be asked that we can achieve more this year, but that means I'm more optimistic than perhaps the majority. I can live with the language now. I'm just hopeful. that we can do more this year. And, uh, Maybe that's just me and Ian, but I'd really like us to be more aggressive if we can. But we're now setting priorities, and there's three votes to do it this way. That's fine. |
| 03:34:40.09 | Amy Overworth | Okay. |
| 03:34:46.94 | Amy Overworth | Okay. So are there other priorities or ideas for priorities that are before I go on to some staff notes or staff topics? I added the explore work with Southern Marin County fire on emergency preparedness, perhaps a drill, stair maps, whatever the implementation may be. So if you're not creating your own emergency preparedness, you it's working with Southern Marines. I include that as a priority. |
| 03:35:19.28 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:35:20.10 | Amy Overworth | Great. Hey, look at that. And I just want for the public and those watching on zoom to understand these council members have done a lot of work in preparing their ideas, their priorities, their goals. And it's pretty remarkable. And I want to commend them and say, that's why we're able, it may feel frustrating at times, but I think that we're actually getting real work done here. Um, This is by no means a final document. It's fluid. But why don't we move on to some staff priorities, Madam Mayor. |
| 03:35:57.94 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, great. Walford, can you take this PowerPoint down? Great. |
| 03:36:01.82 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. And I, and I have, um, So yeah, I have my own, but Let's see what you have. |
| 03:36:07.73 | Jill Hoffman | Well, how did you want to address this, Amy? Did you want to identify some potential staff priorities for council consideration, because some of the staff priorities, we've already addressed in terms of employee retention and risk reduction. |
| 03:36:29.14 | Amy Overworth | And I thought we would go down the list. And. Uh, |
| 03:36:34.07 | Jill Hoffman | Well, that's like a 15 page document and we have one hour. |
| 03:36:39.23 | Amy Overworth | Right, here's what, and Vice Mayor Woodside said, |
| 03:36:42.66 | Steven Woodside | Just as I listen to the various department heads, they are telling us, I think, that they want to work on these things, each and every one of them. So in terms of prioritizing things that would have an impact on staff, unless I'm misreading them, they are planning to work on these things and bring them, bring the issues to us at the appropriate time, whether it requires a budget, a contract, a purchase agreement, or whatever. So... I'm very happy with what I heard and I'm, |
| 03:37:16.27 | Jill Hoffman | Lucky. is what I Right, but Steven, we don't have the time for staff. to do everything staff would like to do and still carry out the priorities we've just identified. So |
| 03:37:31.29 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I hear what you're saying. |
| 03:37:33.25 | Jill Hoffman | And so there's a time and money constraint. Some of the asks from staff were to spend some money. We have to identify where to get that money. So putting a new roof on the corporation yard That's something that's part of a budget conversation. Yeah. |
| 03:37:49.67 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. into one of your goals or kind of expectations to see the facilities assessment report and deferred maintenance report that's going to be on there right and that's how you can plan for it I, Let me reframe what I envisioned for a little bit of time here. is to I can we can look at the slides and say, yes, they've already identified that as a goal. For instance, the police department recruitment strategies, that's recruitment, hiring and retention. That's about something that you've already talked about, right? So I think it's not about you prioritizing what staff said. It's not about say, no staff, you're not gonna do this now. That's certainly not it, but I think there's value in highlighting and again i'll take notes and then prepare provide it to you highlighting all the areas that Council feels is a priority so that staff understands what they've identified is also a similar priority. |
| 03:38:50.91 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so with the caveat, again, I don't know that we're going to get through 45 bullet points in the next 45 minutes. So, but let's, we can take a stab at identifying some big picture priorities from each staff. |
| 03:39:06.18 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:39:06.74 | Jill Hoffman | again. |
| 03:39:07.56 | Amy Overworth | All I want to do is look at the priorities that you identified. Infrastructure retaining employees in you know looking for ways to increase to T and see how it aligns with each thing and just highlighting it I don't think it needs a lot of discussion I don't think you say oh yeah that's not right. So. |
| 03:39:27.19 | Jill Hoffman | All right, so Walford, will you bring up the staff slides? |
| 03:39:29.69 | Amy Overworth | and I think I can do it in 15 minutes. |
| 03:39:32.49 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:39:33.68 | Amy Overworth | If... got ambitious suddenly. |
| 03:39:36.89 | Jill Hoffman | Well, again, this has to be a council member, not |
| 03:39:41.47 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, you're right. |
| 03:39:41.70 | Jill Hoffman | You're right. Just go up to the beginning. |
| 03:39:45.46 | Amy Overworth | Okay. Not the threats, it's gonna go- |
| 03:39:48.62 | Jill Hoffman | Just go to the police department of Alfred if you would. Because that was the first department had |
| 03:39:52.48 | Amy Overworth | the first time. it was. |
| 03:39:55.49 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:39:55.52 | Amy Overworth | Yes, it was. |
| 03:39:56.53 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. We started off with Chief Stacey Gregory. |
| 03:40:01.36 | Amy Overworth | So it looks like retention strategies was something you identified. You know not specifically police department, but you did talk about employee retention councilmember sobieski |
| 03:40:14.62 | Unknown | I mean, you see where the overlap is, but is it helpful to point out where there When I see this, I see omissions in a sense, which is there isn't anything here on parking. It's a major. |
| 03:40:25.07 | Amy Overworth | Would parking come under police or would that come under finance? |
| 03:40:27.50 | Unknown | As it's currently organized, it's under police, but that of course is a question that one way to respond would be to at least have partner parking respond. |
| 03:40:35.84 | Jill Hoffman | that. The council has already given direction to carry out the Dixon |
| 03:40:36.09 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:40:39.48 | Jill Hoffman | parking study implementation measures, some of them. But if we want to re-enunciate that as a priority, that's fine by me. So address Sausalito.com. parking. uh, needs. Ian, how do you want |
| 03:40:56.03 | Unknown | but you not see it. that sounds, implement the Dixon. Recommendations. Sounds fine. |
| 03:41:03.51 | Amy Overworth | Have you guys agreed on all of that, that you should implement? |
| 03:41:08.57 | Unknown | We did over a year ago. |
| 03:41:08.61 | Amy Overworth | We did. |
| 03:41:10.83 | Unknown | And I guess there would be a potential to do item there. not to decide now, but, You know, form often follows function, function often follows form right now. Wayne Kwan in the police department reports to Chief Gregory, that's naturally a, it puts an emphasis on enforcement. since parking is intrinsic to our economic development and a big revenue source for the city it's part of our business model there would be an argument that it either report directly to the city manager at least partly or to our economic development officer mr phipps so |
| 03:41:42.07 | Jill Hoffman | So a big part of parking is the parking, I can speak from personal experience, are the tickets that the police department writes. And so, I think parking is where it belongs and then we can have the interface with Public Works and the city manager as appropriate to carry out. |
| 03:42:01.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:42:01.97 | Jill Hoffman | and implement the Dixon |
| 03:42:03.03 | Unknown | report. Thank you. it, So I don't know, I can bring it up in future agenda items or whatnot. because it's across through. |
| 03:42:10.45 | Jill Hoffman | We've identified it as a priority. We'll figure out how to implement it. |
| 03:42:13.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:42:13.64 | Jill Hoffman | Later. |
| 03:42:14.57 | Amy Overworth | added it to my list. |
| 03:42:16.28 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:42:16.72 | Amy Overworth | Oh. So again, I'm showing there's a lot. assignment and now we've added address oscilito parking needs and the dixon report |
| 03:42:24.73 | Jill Hoffman | I'm going to say the waterfront management purchase of a patrol boat is something we have to address in a budget. discussion. |
| 03:42:31.51 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:42:31.99 | Jill Hoffman | not Not a priority. |
| 03:42:34.11 | Amy Overworth | party. Thank you. I wasn't going to address each item because you had mentioned that, I mean, we shouldn't address everything. This is a budget, there's alignment, and is there anything new? So we're not going to go over every item. |
| 03:42:46.43 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:42:46.72 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. Fine. Okay, next department. So that's fire. So again, Uh, |
| 03:42:55.92 | Jill Hoffman | We don't manage Southernman fire, but it's important for us to understand what they're focusing on. And I agree with Councilmember Blaustein and others, you know, the risk reduction and preparedness is really key to us. |
| 03:43:10.66 | Amy Overworth | Great. Okay. Next. Next. Um, So I would suggest, and again, that the maintenance and all goes under your assessment infrastructure. And there's so there is alignment there. |
| 03:43:34.61 | Jill Hoffman | Yep. Councilmember Hoffman, are you saying anything? Oh, I thought I saw you speaking. |
| 03:43:39.11 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:43:41.51 | Amy Overworth | But then the other things become budget items. Okay, so the next slide, and then you can tell me if there's anything missing. Bye. You addressed gate five flooding and flooding and infrastructure. Correct. |
| 03:43:58.81 | Jill Hoffman | It was not one of the things that we listed under the, you know, we talked about storm drains, but we did not specifically include flooding on the 10 infrastructure issues. So I would add flooding. to the 10 infrastructure issues. |
| 03:44:14.45 | Amy Overworth | Is there agreement on that in the room? I see. Yes to flooding. Yes. |
| 03:44:21.45 | Jill Hoffman | Councilmember Hoffman has a comment. |
| 03:44:23.28 | Amy Overworth | you |
| 03:44:23.33 | Jill Hoffman | When we talk about gate five, we really have to delineate what we own and what we don't own. So we have to be very careful about |
| 03:44:29.15 | Jill Hoffman | to be able to get the |
| 03:44:31.19 | Jill Hoffman | Gate 5. So, |
| 03:44:32.69 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, Let's say collaborate with the county. to address, and the state. Because we're getting some private |
| 03:44:39.46 | Jill Hoffman | Because we're getting to private ownership. |
| 03:44:42.51 | Amy Overworth | Okay. I've captured that. So this is see this is why this is good because now we're seeing, okay, this is what they missed, right? Yeah. Bye. |
| 03:44:52.96 | Unknown | What about trees? Thank you. |
| 03:44:55.10 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know. |
| 03:44:55.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:44:58.93 | Jill Hoffman | I don't think we addressed trees as part of infrastructure. Thank you. |
| 03:45:02.75 | Amy Overworth | Is there a question? |
| 03:45:02.78 | Jill Hoffman | Is there |
| 03:45:03.96 | Amy Overworth | talked about sidewalks and perhaps some program to help those repair. You did not address trees. |
| 03:45:13.80 | Jill Hoffman | Councilmember Hoffman again. of the |
| 03:45:15.42 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:45:15.57 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:45:15.81 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, sorry. |
| 03:45:16.57 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, anybody have a comment about trees or how or whether to include that? |
| 03:45:16.58 | Jill Hoffman | I'm going to go. |
| 03:45:21.82 | Jill Hoffman | as a priority as we consider infrastructure. |
| 03:45:26.36 | Kathy Nikitas | Thank you. |
| 03:45:26.37 | Unknown | Go ahead. |
| 03:45:27.13 | Kathy Nikitas | Thank you. |
| 03:45:27.27 | Unknown | Director McGowan is pretty explicitly mentioned it twice. I'm a little deferential to his expertise that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. It's of a theme. which might be a way of broadening it, which is the entire life cycle cost of a thing ought to be standard policy. We've talked about, a road diet where we consider greenscapes on the few streets in town that are wider than need be and ways of treating stormwater. We've talked about the vice mayor said about thinking ahead about any underground work that needs to be done before we repave a street. So it'd be a prioritization of a comprehensive look of total life cycle ownership costs for infrastructure projects that are coming up. Including trees. |
| 03:46:11.26 | Jill Hoffman | Council member Hoffman. Same. I guess we need to do it street. I guess we need to do a tree index and maintenance. |
| 03:46:18.08 | Jill Hoffman | Well, this talks about shifting responsibility to the fronting property owner. That's actually a legal process. That's not something that's in place right now. I see that as a little separate from addressing deferred maintenance is, UNDERTAKING AN EFFORT TO SHIFT responsibility. So I would say for the city, you know, tree removal and replacement with appropriate trees on city owned property. |
| 03:46:46.17 | Amy Overworth | which is a treat which could be handled under a treat index. |
| 03:46:47.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:46:49.92 | Amy Overworth | I mean, there's two separate things and you could add. And then when you, do your CIP meeting, then you can really get into the nitty gritty and then you're going to decide what you do and don't do. |
| 03:47:00.33 | Unknown | Yep. |
| 03:47:02.38 | Amy Overworth | OK, can we move on? |
| 03:47:04.38 | Unknown | Yep. |
| 03:47:04.64 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:47:05.26 | Amy Overworth | I see. All right. So let me get to my list. |
| 03:47:10.05 | Jill Hoffman | These things are, so the top, the, The top three are already in process and will happen in the first quarter. The number four was addressed by the city attorney as well. |
| 03:47:26.42 | Amy Overworth | And the other things are sort of their internal operations, which It don't have to be part of your priority. It could be part of customer |
| 03:47:35.96 | Jill Hoffman | But, I would like to enunciate customer service. and transparency. by our resident serving departments as a priority? What would people think about that? customer service and transparency. by our resident servicing departments, resident serving departments. Okay, I see a thumbs up from Jill. |
| 03:48:01.84 | Steven Woodside | All right. |
| 03:48:02.74 | Amy Overworth | Sorry, Vice Mayor and then Council members. |
| 03:48:05.39 | Steven Woodside | I like that language because it's not unique to this one department. Yep. |
| 03:48:09.86 | Amy Overworth | Yep. |
| 03:48:10.70 | Steven Woodside | goes beyond. And I just say that as I read the number five, I'd say that When you talk about improvements in the internal process, I think the goal that most council members would share and members of the public would be things that will streamline the process and make it more easy for homeowners to modify their properties, et cetera. |
| 03:48:37.87 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I agree with Council Member Sobieski that we should not be taking 30 days just to acknowledge receipt of an application. for a permit. So we really need to And so I'm happy, so happy to see this on the Community and Economic Development Directors list of priorities. All right, so is there any disagreement with um, We have... |
| 03:49:03.49 | Amy Overworth | that Sorry, Mayor. And again, it's because. |
| 03:49:06.22 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sorry, I cannot see the diets. |
| 03:49:08.30 | Amy Overworth | I know. And I'm sorry. So, |
| 03:49:08.31 | Jill Hoffman | I know. |
| 03:49:10.64 | Amy Overworth | for those, we're not just interrupting each other, we just can't see the same thing. So council member Sobieski, Sobieski. |
| 03:49:16.13 | Unknown | violent agreement. I was just taking a page from our former colleague, Janelle Kelman. You can't manage what you don't measure. this particular item is amenable to being measured. We could set a goal of decreasing response time to between and actually report on it. So right now, 30 days is the measure. I'm sure Brandon could report on what the average is, and we could measure the improvement of response time Over time, you know, Mike, I think, Who knows how fast it could become. It'd be great if it was- |
| 03:49:48.02 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Yes, so that's an implementation measure. Councilmember, what I'd like to suggest, because I hear so many of us with lots of ideas for implementation of these goals, so I think we should have another workshop to identify implementation measures for the priorities that we've established. |
| 03:50:07.17 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, I think that's wise. What I hear, and just give me a nod of the head, that we're going to put this customer service, the language that you used, on your priorities. It does reach across, I think it's, OK, great. So moving on to the next department. Okay, we're in resiliency and sustainability. Let's see, I've lost it on my list. So |
| 03:50:36.69 | Jill Hoffman | So she has shoreline adaptation plan On our infrastructure list, we included sea level rise, So rather than sea level rise, I would say I would replace sea level rise with shoreline adaptation plan. So is everybody amenable to that? |
| 03:50:56.45 | Amy Overworth | Yes. Yes? |
| 03:50:56.70 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:50:56.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:50:56.84 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:50:56.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:50:58.44 | Amy Overworth | Yes, I, for your record, I, uh, vice mayor has said yes. Council member Blasdain. |
| 03:51:06.27 | Jill Hoffman | I see Councilmember Hoffman nodding. |
| 03:51:06.91 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:51:07.03 | Melissa Blaustein | I see. |
| 03:51:07.28 | Amy Overworth | Councilman. |
| 03:51:07.70 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 03:51:07.74 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:51:07.82 | Melissa Blaustein | happening with that. I just I feel like it's a both and I don't want to remove the language of sea level rise specifically given the the framing and how important it is. I mean, I understand that the shoreline adaptation plan is addressing sea level rise, but I feel like we need to include explicitly sea level. So let's. |
| 03:51:23.60 | Jill Hoffman | All right. So let's say sea level rise slash shoreline adaptation plan. |
| 03:51:24.76 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:51:28.24 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:51:28.43 | Amy Overworth | That's great. Easy to do. Okay. Um... All right. |
| 03:51:34.58 | Jill Hoffman | So community resilience hub planning |
| 03:51:34.62 | Amy Overworth | Yeah. |
| 03:51:39.04 | Jill Hoffman | Um, |
| 03:51:39.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:51:45.49 | Amy Overworth | I don't know what that is, so I'll let you guys opine. |
| 03:51:48.96 | Melissa Blaustein | I had worked for a while on a microgrid working group with the county, and we had some conversations and applied for some grants to build a community resilience hub at City Hall. It's so that if there is an emergency, there's a place where there's access to chargers, there's a cooling center, there's an immediate emergency response. So I think that that was part of the plan, and I know there were some grants applications already in process around developing a community resilience hub at City Hall or at a different location if that wasn't appropriate. |
| 03:52:13.82 | Unknown | All right. |
| 03:52:18.80 | Amy Overworth | question, Madam Mayor, could you add that to your emergency preparedness goals? |
| 03:52:25.48 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 03:52:26.85 | Amy Overworth | One thing, if I just may comment on something that's happening in Manhattan Beach, we got requests to open up our community center to the seniors who are having a problem with the air quality. We could not do it. because there's a lot of requirements, at least from our county, maybe it's different here. but we didn't have the right air filtration, we didn't have the right yada, yada, yada. So we've now added that to our immediate goals to kind of make that happen so that we can be that. But so that's a great goal to incorporate. Thanks. OK, so I'll add that in the language. OK. |
| 03:52:58.42 | Unknown | that's the first time. |
| 03:52:58.47 | Unknown | And... |
| 03:52:58.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:52:58.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:52:58.71 | Unknown | Thank you. Okay. |
| 03:53:06.13 | Amy Overworth | Human Resources I WANT TO TELL YOU THAT. So it feels like there's like the retaining your excellent staff and employees. There's some of that with, you know, training. Some of it's a budget item, some of it's a to-do, so I think you can just move on from this one because you're not discussing those items today. Great. See? All right, next slide. Library. I think once again, |
| 03:53:44.56 | Jill Hoffman | up. |
| 03:53:45.60 | Amy Overworth | Same thing. |
| 03:53:46.51 | Jill Hoffman | customer service. |
| 03:53:46.53 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:53:48.03 | Jill Hoffman | covers some of this. |
| 03:53:51.39 | Amy Overworth | I would agree. |
| 03:53:53.72 | Jill Hoffman | And staff retention covers some of this. And, facilities improvement covers some of this. So I think we've covered most of these through the priorities we've already established. |
| 03:54:05.85 | Amy Overworth | Right, and I can create a document that's going to show like the different goals and how it all fits together. Okay, next slide, city attorney. Um, I mean, These are things he's doing all the time. |
| 03:54:21.97 | Jill Hoffman | times. |
| 03:54:22.41 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. you |
| 03:54:22.66 | Jill Hoffman | all the time in an excellent job. So I just say Thank you. |
| 03:54:27.60 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:54:27.98 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:54:28.03 | Amy Overworth | you know, |
| 03:54:28.09 | Jill Hoffman | know, forge ahead. |
| 03:54:30.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:30.78 | Amy Overworth | Yep. |
| 03:54:31.03 | Jill Hoffman | continue. Thank you. |
| 03:54:32.30 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:54:32.53 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:54:32.84 | Amy Overworth | Okay. Okay, so you know the finance is also about customer service like number one is definitely something that relates to both human resources to planning right this is about customers. Risk reduction. which that was something you discussed and didn't make the priorities. |
| 03:54:55.97 | Jill Hoffman | I would say, please, let's make that a priority. So reduce cities risk overall risk profile. |
| 03:55:07.23 | Amy Overworth | Sorry, I'm writing it down and then I want to Is there anybody, raise your hand if you don't agree with adding that to priorities. Okay. I mean, it's just, it does, you're right. It covers, right. |
| 03:55:22.67 | Unknown | or |
| 03:55:24.86 | Amy Overworth | Okay, I'm sorry, I lost my place. Oh, it's right on here. Okay, so, and again, some of this will also fits in with Council Member Hoffman's the enhanced budget tracking 10 year toll. you know, tool. Councilmember Sobieski cost and revenue efficiency to enhance city financial position. So I think this really aligns well. Okay, next slide. Okay. Thank you. Again, here you have stuff that would kind of dovetail with Councilmember Sobieski, your parking system Wi-Fi that's going to, you know, that's also infrastructure. cybersecurity. |
| 03:56:09.09 | Jill Hoffman | I would like to include the city cybersecurity as a subset of reduce the risk management profile. |
| 03:56:15.30 | Amy Overworth | I'm just going to say that. Let me add it. Cybersecurity risk, okay? You really don't want to have to deal with that. We have to take training all the time. Um, We actually get our IT department tries to send us on phishing. They actually try to catch us. |
| 03:56:38.57 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:56:38.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:56:39.36 | Amy Overworth | Okay. Yeah, the next one, I think, right? Take notes, Peter. |
| 03:56:44.88 | Jill Hoffman | So we have to leave time for public comment within our... |
| 03:56:47.40 | Amy Overworth | I know. I'm getting there. I'm doing, I'm scaring. |
| 03:56:48.26 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:56:50.94 | Amy Overworth | you know, stream, okay. Facilities, again, this is about risk. It's about facilities. Great, next slide, right? Yep. include diversity grants. This is grants. And that fits in. Okay. I mean, some of this is about other things, but that doesn't mean it's not a priority or shouldn't be done or shouldn't be done. Okay, next slide. You know, he mentions develop. |
| 03:57:20.98 | Jill Hoffman | art in public places and that was part of what councilman Member Blaustein included on hers that's something we're already undertaking in terms of our stairs I don't know if that's something the Council wants to endorse as a priority. Um, you know, Um, there are |
| 03:57:41.11 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:57:41.99 | Jill Hoffman | Say again, Jill? Jill. |
| 03:57:45.72 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I don't think that's a priority, but I think it's a great one of those secondary things. I agree. |
| 03:57:50.51 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I agree. Yeah, let's include that as a secondary goal with some of the others, like uh, um, |
| 03:57:55.93 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:57:56.06 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:57:57.17 | Jill Hoffman | MarinShip EIFD. |
| 03:57:59.03 | Unknown | Amy, is that right? |
| 03:57:59.60 | Jill Hoffman | clear. |
| 03:57:59.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Well, if I, I mean, if you want to just check with her, when I think the art in public places is a high, really high ROI, return on investment and involvement. It could be very low cost. There are a lot of partners in town. We're in art. It's kind of core to our community identity and brand. I think it pays dividends economically. You can imagine the visitors that can be generated by interesting public art. We currently don't have a program. It can be done in partnership with the ICB and with the SCA. So I think it's just so on brand. It's a lot like Janelle's comments around trying to harbor our brand as an outdoor hub for mountain biking and everything else. |
| 03:58:01.53 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:58:41.69 | Unknown | I guess really have a different perspective and feel like of all the things that's one of the most interesting to me. |
| 03:58:44.41 | Jill Hoffman | So, Yeah, but hear me out. Just let me respond to that. Give me one minute. Go ahead. It's not really- I'm still not seeing a clock from- |
| 03:58:50.25 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 03:58:53.59 | Jill Hoffman | and I don't know why. |
| 03:58:54.36 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. Looks okay. I don't think it should be a council priority because once you get a council priority, then it slows everything down and mucks everything up. Think of the boat show. It's not a council priority. Run with it. On your own. And, make it happen, right? Like make it happen. And don't gum it up with a bunch of red tape. That's all I'm saying. |
| 03:59:14.95 | Jill Hoffman | I will say I met with Cass Green, and I know this is something that's already high on the Pbids radar, so I would say, you know, let's let them run with it. Let's list it as a secondary goal for this year. |
| 03:59:27.05 | Amy Overworth | I hear you, Councilmember or Vice Mayor Woodside has his hand raised. I'm sorry, again, |
| 03:59:31.96 | Jill Hoffman | cannot see the |
| 03:59:32.91 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:59:32.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:59:32.96 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:59:32.98 | Jill Hoffman | So apologies for interrupting. |
| 03:59:35.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:59:35.41 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 03:59:36.20 | Steven Woodside | Don't worry, I'll speak briefly that I think some of these things that we're talking about that are secondary, we just have to say as a council, we want to be opportunistic. If during the year something comes up that meets one of these general goals or one of our priorities or is good for our community, we've got to maintain at least that flexibility to be open to it. So when we say run with it, we'll take it up later, we mean it. |
| 03:59:38.51 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:00:05.66 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:00:05.76 | Amy Overworth | to be able to get the |
| 04:00:05.93 | Steven Woodside | We'll consider it when it comes back. |
| 04:00:08.33 | Amy Overworth | What I'm hearing, Madam Mayor, is first of all, you know, parks or recreation, they're saying this is important. I think it's really in your vision statement for your city. I think it's part of your values. And I also see all of you saying this is good for so many reasons, economic development, brand identity, reducing isolation, all of it. We can put it on other ideas. which is totally fine, but I think it's happening organically, and I don't think any of you are going to say, we're going to turn our back on it because we don't like it. So... |
| 04:00:35.97 | Jill Hoffman | But if we have other ideas, it keeps us in front of it. If we don't write it down, It, you know, it's like our six year old strategic plan. We don't, we aren't mindful of everything in that plan all the time. |
| 04:00:47.24 | Amy Overworth | I've got it. I'm going to have it written down. |
| 04:00:49.27 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thank you. |
| 04:00:50.16 | Amy Overworth | Next slide. |
| 04:00:50.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. That's it? Well, the city manager did manage, it did mention something raised by the city clerk, which is the archive obtaining and archiving the records at the fire department. creating access to our Um, records, our archives, our is something that's Managing our records is something that's really important. And I don't, you know, I think Walford said we need to hire someone to help with that. I don't know if that's true, It really is a priority to me. You know, we're looking at a solution on Bridgeway for our Bridgeway median. And our parametrics just proposed something that Jonathan Goldman proposed 10 years ago. But we don't. Remember that Jonathan Goldman proposed it 10 years ago because we don't have ready access to our institutional records. So I would like to frame a priority of you know, identifying a way to better manage our institutional records. |
| 04:02:04.99 | Amy Overworth | And that also fits in your goal, a little bit of customer service and transparency. a little bit. I know it's for a different purpose, but better management of your records. We could maybe put it Well, it depends on what you all want. And kudos to everyone for staying focused and alive. energetic, but if you want to add better management of records to other ideas or to a priority, I will put it where you want it. |
| 04:02:36.03 | Amy Overworth | Anybody? Anyone? Bueller? Sorry, we were talking about |
| 04:02:39.83 | Unknown | Sorry, we're talking about the- I proposed it as a- |
| 04:02:40.78 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. it as a priority. Does anybody disagree? I see people looking down texting. Does anybody disagree? |
| 04:02:48.32 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 04:02:48.34 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 04:02:48.35 | Jill Hoffman | Are we talking about the firehouse records? |
| 04:02:50.34 | Jill Hoffman | No, we're talking about records in general. I, I, |
| 04:02:54.99 | Unknown | I always thought that was being done. I thought CDD had digitized all the housing records. And so I thought this was an ongoing program. So. |
| 04:02:59.51 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. We have archival records that are not digitized and we have no access to. |
| 04:03:03.05 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:03:07.76 | Jill Hoffman | Seems like a no-brainer. |
| 04:03:08.94 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, agreed. Thank you. |
| 04:03:10.00 | Jill Hoffman | I think. |
| 04:03:10.22 | Amy Overworth | Thank you. |
| 04:03:10.26 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:03:10.43 | Amy Overworth | Okay great priority then. Councilmember Hoffman though, did you disagree or have another? No, I agree completely. All right. Let me Do a little bit of resetting. |
| 04:03:22.96 | Jill Hoffman | I'm going to hear public comment because I don't want to ignore it. I don't know how many people are there. But I promised to comment. |
| 04:03:28.62 | Amy Overworth | Thomas. There's people here and I want to hear from them. Of course. |
| 04:03:29.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:03:31.91 | Jill Hoffman | We've done a year. |
| 04:03:33.93 | Amy Overworth | But I want to, that's what I was gonna say, we're gonna hear from public comment, we're gonna hear from council members. I'm going to follow up with a report to all of you and also next steps, I mean, I think, You guys have made, you guys have a lot of, like you say, unity around all of these things. And I think it's good for staff to hear all this. And once I put it all together, I think you'll be very happy with what you've done here. But let's hear from the public and then council members. And it's 145. So here we go. All right. All right. Can we have? |
| 04:04:11.50 | Walfred Solorzano | Can we have a Carolyn Rivel piece? |
| 04:04:18.75 | Unknown | Thank you so much for this opportunity to be part of the really quite fascinating discussion. As you might imagine, I'm here to talk about trees. I certainly heard A lot of emphasis on infrastructure, and I absolutely agree that's essential. But there's also green infrastructure, as Morgan mentioned at the beginning. I didn't hear the word green infrastructure mentioned by any of the council members, per se. The parks director, very interesting, but the word trees never crossed his lips, the word trees. The DPW director, of course, is rightly concerned about the danger from routes raising our sidewalks, the hazard. I don't dispute that. But as trees are removed, I do hope trees can be replaced. And as we know, there has not been an arborist on the city payroll in as long as I've lived here 16 years. And at least if we could have a focus within one of the city departments on trees, appreciate that. I think there's no question that trees are important. All of us would agree to mitigate climate change for air quality, for erosion control. wildlife, and there's always beauty. So thank you very much for your work, and don't forget the trees. Thank you. |
| 04:05:31.65 | Unknown | Thank you. THE END OF |
| 04:05:34.08 | Walfred Solorzano | Alice Merrill. |
| 04:05:38.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:05:38.89 | Alice Merrill | Thank you very much. This has been very interesting. I'm Alice Merrill. I live in Sausalito. Okay. My one comment. I said no comment. housing in Marinship. I mean, no housing in the part of Marinship that has been designated as industrial. There is plenty of area in the Marin ship that has been designated as housing in the plan. And so. I'm not being exclusive. Neither are they. And so please remember that those people can get started. Why aren't they getting started? Thank you. |
| 04:06:16.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Bonnie McGregor. |
| 04:06:24.74 | Unknown | Good afternoon already. I'm Bonnie McGregor. I live on Princess Street. And I thought I was coming to a different meeting this morning, my fault. So you see what I'm using for my notes. It's to get up and comment. I've made a lot of notes, none of which I want to go into at this moment because we'd be here till after dinner. But I have comments, which I will submit. I'll write up and submit, however they can be entered into it, because I've got some thoughts and ideas. I was dying to jump in during the thing, and I kept my mouth shut. For example, an idea on the stairways. You want to talk about involving the private citizens and things. We've had a lot of adoptive programs around here. And I'm thinking about let's look into, not do it, but let's look into the possibility of a private residence adopting a stairway. And that means maintenance costs, et cetera. That would be one thought. And another one on all these houses that they want us to add. I've got a lot of comments on that area. But has thought been given into the number of automobiles that will be added to our crowded streets when they add 700 and some odd houses. And usually every place has got two cars. Think what that does to Princess Street. Anyway, I mean, Bridgeway. And a lot of other comments like that that I just want to make sure that we get our two cents in and take into consideration. Thank you for this. It's been a great, great experience this morning. |
| 04:07:53.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Babette McDougall. |
| 04:08:03.24 | Babette McDougall | Thank you, Mr. City Clerk by Bent McDougall, Sausalito resident. So I'd like to comment broadly about what we've covered today, if you don't mind. fundamentally agree with how you have outlined the principles going forward. I would like to really emphasize the issue of risk management. I have felt consistently disappointed by the city's performance. this year, I mean the last year. Because... When we talk about it, like for I'm just going to use the model of the PBID. It's a brand new concept when you think about it, a public-private partnership. P bids haven't been put together that way. We had people come all the way from San Francisco and say, yuck, government, money, no way. I mean, we heard everything. So my point is don't just give me an opportunity cost. Like we might clear this if everything goes well. I think fair risk assessment says, what happens when something doesn't go well? Like, for example, we don't appropriately plan or budget for the portfolio of the city's real estate and its ongoing maintenance and upkeep. What if suddenly something, you know, a hot water thing blows up and every customer in a restaurant is injured? I mean, you see what I mean? We have risk assessment that we don't even think about. We should be thinking about it. And it disappoints myself. I shall speak on my own behalf. that we don't look at both sides of the coin. Okay. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose. Is that the game we're playing here? Heads, I win. Tails, you lose. That's what it sounds like. That's how it comes across. And I'd really like to see an improvement on that. Because, you know, we all have our big kid britches on here. That means we look at the opportunity here. as it could be in its best case, but we also look at what happens if it's not the best case, and we have things that we hadn't considered. So these are the kinds of ancillary things that I really want to emphasize going forward. They've been given short shrift these last two years that I've been paying attention. of putting money forward for surprises that have nothing to do with fixing our infrastructure being dropped from the very insurance pool that we helped establish. because we now have more than $10 million in lawsuit payouts. And we were dropped. as a high risk. Now these things should not have been unnoticed by this council that's been in operation since 2020 for all intended purposes. So I look forward to the new blood. Hopefully that'll keep us more focused on plan. And I just want to say thanks for all your hard work. I know I'm always telling you, but we can do better. And I believe that we can do better, but I have a lot of faith in your ability to step up to that opportunity. Otherwise, I wouldn't be wasting my time here. Thank you. So thank you for all you do for our town. |
| 04:10:43.00 | Walfred Solorzano | Online we have a Senator Bushmaker. |
| 04:10:49.54 | Unknown | Good afternoon, Council. Thank you for holding this workshop, and it's been very interesting. I appreciate all your input. I have three points that I'd like to make. Number one is to improve the, that we discussed privacy, I believe we discussed this Tuesday night, to improve the public's access to the budget. on the website. In other words, to create a better plan for the public and make it easier for the public to see the budgetary process. Number two, this is a good time for the city to work with Southern Marin Fire District to send out a flyer while everybody's consciousness is raised. for how individual residents can prepare themselves for evacuation, for example, a go bag, and knowing their evacuation routes, et cetera. This is a simple reminder that can go on one postcard per resident here in Sausalito, that makes a lot of sense to me. And third, I would like to see a program to repair the stairways for emergency egress. Many of the stairways, while I know that Sausalito Beautiful and the stair group has been working on, keeping the foliage out of it, the stairs themselves don't have proper railings, don't have proper risers and treads to make evacuation egressive. easy, easier, shall we say. But those are the three things that occurred to me that I'd like to see made priorities for 2025. Thank you. |
| 04:12:24.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Morgan Pierce. |
| 04:12:30.02 | Morgan Pierce | Hello again. A huge thank you to City Council, City staff, and members of our community for sharing your time and insights into this important effort. As it pertains to trees, I would like to echo the sentiments of Carolyn Revell who spoke a moment ago and reiterate on behalf of Saucyta Beautiful our interest in working with Director McGowan and the Department of Public Works in their efforts to not just remove our city trees, but replace them, utilizing species and practices that will preserve our urban tree canopy while mitigating the risks associated with improper planting and planting. Together we can achieve a both and solution. And South Seattle is eager to continue our partnership with the city, which has been successful for so long. Thank you. |
| 04:13:10.65 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public speakers. |
| 04:13:13.72 | Amy Overworth | So, Madam Mayor, I know you'd like if council members would like to make a statement or a comment. Again, if I may, just very quickly. |
| 04:13:26.50 | Jill Hoffman | We have seven minutes left, so each council member can speak for one minute if they like. |
| 04:13:31.56 | Amy Overworth | Okay. Go. Okay. |
| 04:13:36.20 | Steven Woodside | going to start by thanking the mayor for keeping us on schedule and other things. You really helped us drill down to things that are going to be useful going forward. And a huge thank you to everyone who's stayed all morning and well into the afternoon. We talk about prioritizing things for the city. That really means hopefully helping various department heads understand what our priorities are so they can do their job better and i hope and i would just simply ask as a more or less rhetorical question i hope you can get back to the city manager as to whether you think this was productive from your point of view i'd like to hear the answer to that but not right now thank you |
| 04:14:19.11 | Amy Overworth | 19 seconds left. Okay. |
| 04:14:21.31 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 04:14:24.23 | Melissa Blaustein | Go ahead. |
| 04:14:24.30 | Amy Overworth | Go ahead. |
| 04:14:24.97 | Melissa Blaustein | you I just want to say thank you very much to the mayor for convening this strategic planning session and thank you to Amy for coming up here and to all of the department heads, including our city manager for putting together their strategic goals and also my fellow members of the council who I believe were very collaborative today and we had a. really positive discussion about what we want to take on, and I really appreciated that, and I look forward to us delivering on these goals and perhaps being even more ambitious and delivering on our secondary goals as well. |
| 04:14:55.58 | Amy Overworth | Councilmember Sobbi-Esc, before we turn it over to Zoom. |
| 04:14:59.85 | Unknown | Thank you, Mayor, for organizing this great session here today. We are focused on government here. We're on the city council and that's our responsibility. I just want to just put a pin in the thought that South Slito is made up of, obviously, all us residents and business owners and stakeholders who are building the community, whether it's South Slito Beautiful or the Women's Club, or just people living quietly in their own comfort in their homes, living their lives. That's the heart and soul of the community. And I mentioned that only because I think a path toward solving a lot of our fiscal problems or whatnot is public private partnerships and that really means trying to let 1000 flowers bloom and the whole idea of taxes is that we raise a small percentage of tax on economic activity to fund community goals so growing our economy is the way of solving most of our problems and we do that in partnership with our community so let's keep going and congratulations. |
| 04:15:58.56 | Amy Overworth | to two seconds left. Council member Hoffman. |
| 04:16:03.69 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry, my voice is almost gone. So just thanks to the Sasslio team for showing up today and everybody, the staff who came in and gave us their thoughtful presentations in the council. as well and all of us today who showed up, so thank you. Thank you. Hope everybody stays healthy. |
| 04:16:26.59 | Jill Hoffman | All right, I'll just close out by, again, I wanna pretty much echo everything, Council member Blaustein said, Thank you to Amy for flying up here to facilitate a second year in a row. We're a challenging group, so thank you for being up to the challenge. Thank you to staff, department heads, for investing the effort. You know, today's session was so much more meaningful because council members and department heads really put invested the effort ahead of time to cue us up. One of the most gratifying things coming in was how aligned we were on many of our priorities. One of the most gratifying things going out is how collaborative we were in identifying our priorities for this coming year. So thank you to all very much appreciated and I'm really excited to move forward to the next step of implementation. |
| 04:17:24.07 | Amy Overworth | Great. And if I could just say a final word and I can do it in a minute too. I want to thank you all for the opportunity. You have a very amazing engaged community. You're right, Madam Mayor, all of the council members put in a lot of pre-work as of course staff did. And also people should know, Madam Mayor, how much you worked to prepare to help frame this and to help drive a lot of this. So I really appreciate that. So it's been a real privilege. It's, you know, you're not that challenging. I know you're really not. Your I promise you, but I will really follow up with you and suggest next steps. So this isn't just this is the beginning and then you get to focus on how you make and you help, not you make, but you direct and help all of this get done. So it's been my pleasure. Thank you. The report will be within a few days. A draft report I'll send to the city manager. |
| 04:18:18.67 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 04:18:24.92 | Jill Hoffman | here. Let's just say within a week, if that's all right with you. |
| 04:18:27.40 | Amy Overworth | Yeah, it's fine, but I definitely want your input. Like I want to send it to you. First, so that you make sure that I get it down correctly. I think I will. |
| 04:18:36.39 | Jill Hoffman | I saw Councilmember Hoffman raise her hand. Oh, bye. Oh, okay. |
| 04:18:41.76 | Amy Overworth | Bye. |
| 04:18:41.77 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 04:18:41.83 | Amy Overworth | THE END OF |
| 04:18:41.98 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 04:18:41.99 | Amy Overworth | Yep. |
| 04:18:42.33 | Jill Hoffman | better. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Great meeting. Take care. |
| 04:18:49.92 | Unknown | you |
| 04:18:57.79 | Unknown | you |
Babette McDougall — Neutral: Requested procedural clarity for the Pledge of Allegiance. Expressed confusion about budget items on consent calendars. Urged the city to resist outside pressure on 'densification' and overdevelopment, and to protect open shoreline. ▶ 📄
Joe Novitski — Neutral: Represented Open Water Rowing Center and floating homes. Urged the council not to lose sight of sea level rise as the 'elephant in the room,' noting flooding occurs with tides above 6 feet and will impact shoreline infrastructure within 25-30 years. ▶ 📄
Fred Moore — Neutral: Thanked council and staff. Suggested the strategic plan should seek contributions from volunteers and non-profits. Offered his own volunteer time to assist the council with research or background work. ▶ 📄
Sharna Brockett — In Favor: Argued that many community issues (doctor shortages, traffic, teacher recruitment, etc.) are fundamentally housing issues. Advocated for building more housing so teachers, police, fire, and service workers can live in Sausalito. ▶ 📄
Morgan Pierce — Neutral: Joined remotely. Urged the council not to lose sight of green infrastructure as a component supporting community health and local flora and fauna. ▶ 📄
Alice Merrill — Against: Agreed on the need for housing but argued the Marinship area is the wrong place for large-scale development like hotels and condos. Suggested looking at other properties with large, empty gardens for housing instead. ▶ 📄
Charles Melton — In Favor: Advocated for workforce housing to address labor shortages, economic leakage, and liability risks from non-compliance. Emphasized the need for resilience planning against wildfires and sea level rise, and coordinated infrastructure projects. Stressed the need to grow the city's economic pie to fund projects without raising taxes. ▶ 📄
Jeffrey Chase — Neutral: Spoke briefly about the importance of the Sausalito anchorage as a protected refuge for sailors during high winds and storms. ▶ 📄