| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:02.73 | Walfred Solorzano | and city council the meeting for uh june 3 2025 is being held at 420 litho street in council chamber it's also being shown on zoom on the city's website and live on cable tv channel 27. |
| 00:00:18.12 | Steven Woodside | Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the special meeting for the City of Sausalito for Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025. I'll call the meeting to order and ask the City Clerk to take roll. |
| 00:00:29.83 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Blaustein. |
| 00:00:31.23 | Steven Woodside | present. |
| 00:00:32.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:00:33.46 | Steven Woodside | will be joining us shortly. |
| 00:00:35.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Sobieski. |
| 00:00:37.36 | Steven Woodside | will be joining us shortly via virtually. |
| 00:00:42.51 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member, sorry, Vice Mayor Woodside? Here. And Mayor Cox. |
| 00:00:46.49 | Steven Woodside | Okay, we are going to adjourn to closed session where we will discuss items C1 through C6. C1 is conference with labor negotiator, employee organization, Sausalito Police Association. C2 is conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation. Significant exposure to litigation one case. C3 is conference with real property negotiators under negotiation price and terms of payment with 558 Bridgeway. C4 conference with real property negotiators under negotiation. Negotiating parties Verizon Wireless, property 750 Bridgeway, C5, Conference with Real Property Negotiators, Property 300 Spencer Avenue, Negotiating Parties, Verizon Wireless. And C6 is Conference with Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation, Yimby v. City of Sausalito. |
| 00:01:38.24 | Melissa Blaustein | Is there any? Oh, go ahead. Just I will be recusing myself from item C4 with negotiations with Verizon and C5 as I have engaged with them in client work at a firm that I've consulted with. So out of an abundance of caution, I'd like to recuse myself. |
| 00:01:52.22 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. And Council Member Sobieski will be recusing himself from item C2. Is there any public comment on closed session items? We have no one here in the chambers. City Clerk? |
| 00:02:04.31 | Walfred Solorzano | We have one person on Zoom, but no hand up, so no public comment. |
| 00:02:07.88 | Steven Woodside | All right, then we will adjourn to closed session. We will resume at 7 p.m. Thank you all. |
| 00:02:18.88 | Steven Woodside | All right, folks, good evening and welcome back. We are reconvening. then I'll ask the city clerk to take the role. |
| 00:02:32.51 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Blastig. |
| 00:02:34.27 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. |
| 00:02:35.28 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:02:36.77 | Jill Hoffman | President, and I'll note that I did appear five minutes late for closed session, and my apologies to the rest of my council members, but I was here at, I think, 6.05. 5.05. 5.05. 5.05. 5.05. So pardon me for missing our opening of the closed session, but I did shortly arrive thereafter. Thank you. |
| 00:02:47.55 | Steven Woodside | Five of them. |
| 00:02:48.06 | Alice Merrill | FINE. |
| 00:02:48.24 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm sorry. |
| 00:02:48.29 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:02:48.32 | Alice Merrill | Bye. |
| 00:02:48.44 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 00:02:48.48 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:02:55.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Sobieski? here. |
| 00:02:57.61 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 00:02:57.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Vice Mayor Woodside? Here. And Mayor Cox. Here. |
| 00:03:03.78 | Steven Woodside | And I will note for the record that Council Member Sobieski also joined us at 5.05 p.m. and that he is participating with us this evening remotely pursuant to the just cause exception to the Brown Act. Councilmember did you want to expand on that at all? |
| 00:03:25.64 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, thank you. I'm back east caring for a family member, so David Miller- Participating in closed session or just cause i'm actually going to sign off now and not participate in the rest of the open meeting, but just wanted to announce that I did recuse myself from one of the items. David Miller- litigation items, because the subject property as poses a potential financial consequence to a real property I own here in town, so I recuse myself in that matter and participate in the others so. With that, I don't know. |
| 00:03:52.13 | Steven Woodside | I did announce that in advance as well, council member. |
| 00:03:55.15 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, great. Well, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, my colleagues and community and I don't see anything next. |
| 00:03:58.39 | Steven Woodside | I don't see what you're doing. |
| 00:03:59.22 | Jill Hoffman | Hold on one second. Councilmember Hoffman has something to say. Is that the just cause section we have to vote on? We do not have to vote on it. Okay, sorry. |
| 00:04:08.90 | Steven Woodside | Okay, sorry. Thank you. |
| 00:04:10.05 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not going to be a little bit. |
| 00:04:10.24 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE it. |
| 00:04:10.69 | Jill Hoffman | We were. |
| 00:04:10.88 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:04:11.06 | Jill Hoffman | vote on that unanimously. |
| 00:04:12.97 | Steven Woodside | I'm sure, but. |
| 00:04:14.12 | Ian Sobieski | experience. Thank you for that. |
| 00:04:16.60 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you, Councilmember Sobieski, and best wishes. |
| 00:04:20.14 | Ian Sobieski | Thanks, Father. |
| 00:04:22.96 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 00:04:22.99 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:04:23.03 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 00:04:23.05 | Steven Woodside | to be able to get the |
| 00:04:23.08 | Babette McDougall | Um, And you already announced your recuse, right? Yes. |
| 00:04:28.55 | Steven Woodside | All right, we will have the Pledge of Allegiance. |
| 00:04:34.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:35.26 | Unknown | Thank you. of the United States of America and to the republic for which one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:04:48.90 | Steven Woodside | All right, there are no closed session announcements. I will ask for a motion approving the agenda. |
| 00:04:56.74 | Ian Sobieski | Some of them. |
| 00:04:59.21 | Steven Woodside | Second. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries 4-0 with 1 absent. We will now move on to special presentations and I will welcome our Community and Economic Development Director, Brandon Phipps, to introduce our guest who will be providing us a special presentation from Marin County on countywide housing land trust. |
| 00:05:29.62 | Steven Woodside | Oh, apologies. I had thought I saw him come in the chambers. Good evening. Good evening. |
| 00:05:33.94 | Jillian Zeiger | Thank you. |
| 00:05:34.29 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:05:34.36 | Jillian Zeiger | them. |
| 00:05:34.81 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:05:34.97 | Jillian Zeiger | Thank you for having me. This is, yeah, this is a sideshow. Yeah, no, it's fine. So my name is Jillian Zeiger. I am a principal planner in the housing and grants division at the county of Marin. One of my primary roles is managing and facilitating the housing working group, which Brandon is a part of. All of our cities and towns in Marin are. meet once a month to talk about housing issues. And then we also receive funds from A bag for technical assistance. So we received funds for. our housing elements and housing element implementation. So today I'm here to talk about a housing policy grant the county received through a bag and how Sausalito may participate in that grant. Oh, I have a little clicker. Let's see if it works. Great. Oh, okay, sure. It worked. Um, or you said, or you changed it already. Um, so first I'm going to give an overview of the MTC, a bag TOC policy. Um, then I'll talk a little bit more about the Marin County grant, um, that we received and then some next steps for your council to consider next. So the TOC program is a Bay Area-wide program that advances planned Bay Area. Compliance is voluntary. However, TOC jurisdictions that meet requirements will be prioritized for one Bay Area grants or OBAG funds. TOC compliance includes a few aspects such as parking, zoning, and housing policies. Sausalito is considered a transit oriented community or a TOC due to the ferry. You can go to the next slide. So here's a map of the station area. Um, it's considered a tier four transit area, which is the same level as smart and our other ferry terminals. So Sassolito Larkspur. Um, Tiburon, Belvedere, San Rafael and Novato are all TOC jurisdictions. Next slide. So there are four areas for TOC compliance. This grant would help fulfill the affordable housing commercial stabilization policy tier. So by participating in this grant, ABAC is not mandating that you comply with any other requirements or policy areas. So density parking management, transit station and access are not things that are required if you accept this grant. Next slide. So Marin County applied for this grant on behalf of the jurisdictions after consultation with each of the TOC jurisdictions to discuss what would be most beneficial or realistic for the participating jurisdictions and what aligns with work that they're already doing and issues they're already seeing in the community. So Marin County staff, which is myself and others in the housing and grants division, would manage the grant on behalf of Sausalito, Larkspur, San Rafael, and Novato through the housing working group. So that is the monthly meetings that we have, additionally meeting one-on-one with the jurisdictions as needed. The funds for this program would go towards a countywide land trust. So supporting land trust policies in TOC jurisdictions. I'm going to talk a little bit more about what a land trust is and how we would all participate, but the scope may include feasibility for land trusts to purchase and or develop naturally occurring affordable housing in the toc station area and funding options associated with that next slide So I realize that some of you may not know what a community land trust is. A community land trust are nonprofit organizations that acquire and steward land on behalf of community members. So they contribute to the affordable housing stock by maintaining land ownership to ensure that the housing built on the land they own remains affordable for future renters or buyers. So it's home ownership and rental properties. Community control of land through CLTs have high potential to prevent displacement in a variety of housing markets. So we have community land trust and unincorporated West Marin. There's also community land trust in Mill Valley. There's a community land trust in Marin City, and there's interest in the county for creating a county wide land trust. Next slide. So just some examples of community land trust work Community land trust purchase single family homes and either rent them or sell them as affordable homeownership. Um, and they deed restrict them as affordable and perpetuity. Also land trusts have the capacity to rehabilitate and develop affordable multiunit housing. We're seeing this in West Marin with the Coast Guard property. So a property that was owned by the Coast Guard. was purchased by the county and there will be a master lease with a land trust and an affordable housing developer to rehabilitate over 50 affordable townhomes. Next slide. So in order to comply with the ABAC grant, Sausalito would have to bring forward a land trust housing policy. As I said, these other parking density related policies are not needed. So the policy would include an ongoing funding source, affordability requirements, which are 80 percent area median income for rental and 120% area median income for homeowners. So 120% and below area median income or 80% and below area median income. And then a defined reporting and monitoring process. I will say about the ongoing funding source, um, we could designate a portion of our county housing trust for land trusts in our toc jurisdictions and that would suffice if there isn't an ongoing uh funding source that that you all are aware of so we could designate a portion of our affordable housing preservation funds to land trusts acquiring or rehabilitating affordable housing. Next slide. So in terms of next steps, you know, I'd love to answer your questions about the policy, about what work we're looking into. You would have to bring a resolution to your council saying that you would like to participate in the grant and you intend to have a land trust policy, And then, you know, you and Mr. Phipps, Mr. Zapata would receive updates and deliverables on the project. And then you would have support from the county and technical assistant, since assistant, sorry, on implementing the land trust policy. So, That's it for me. I'm happy to answer any questions. Absolutely. |
| 00:12:55.98 | Steven Woodside | So, |
| 00:12:56.33 | Jillian Zeiger | Thank you. |
| 00:12:56.55 | Steven Woodside | really important question given that the Um, subject of the transit oriented community would be our ferry landing. So What is the radius of area that is embodied within the transit oriented, TOC land trust that you would be seeking to have Sausalito dedicate for this purpose. |
| 00:13:22.25 | Jillian Zeiger | So the priority area would be a half mile around that station. However, I think that in terms of a land trust, we have to look at the whole, city. So the policy could actually apply to the entire city, but it would have to include the TOC area, which would be, I believe, half mile around the ferry terminal. |
| 00:13:47.53 | Steven Woodside | So are you aware of the current legislation proposed by Senator Weiner to – require the approval of affordable housing around transit areas such as this? Yes. Okay. So if we, it looked to me from your slides, and I apologize, they weren't in my packet, so I didn't see them ahead of time. Thank you. Um, It seems to me when we dedicate land into this land trust, we are giving over development decision-making to HCD |
| 00:14:27.64 | Jillian Zeiger | Thank you. |
| 00:14:27.91 | Steven Woodside | and not reserving it |
| 00:14:29.03 | Jillian Zeiger | Sausalito. So that's a really good question. And how a land trust kind of works like a nonprofit affordable housing developer. So HCD actually wouldn't be involved. So I'll give you an example. Let's say there's a piece of land in the half mile in the half mile terminal. And it's, you know, an eight unit naturally occurring affordable housing, meaning it's not owned by an affordable housing developer, but it's naturally occurring because it's an older property. Maybe, you you know the maintenance isn't as great as it used to be and it comes up on the market The affordable housing developer or land trust would would purchase the property on the fair market like any other developer, and then they would have to deed restricted in perpetuity whether it's a rental. or homeownership. So HCD actually, they're not involved in the transaction. It would be the local land trust. |
| 00:15:25.19 | Steven Woodside | But nevertheless, Sausalito does not maintain developmental approval slash jurisdiction over that area of land dedicated to the land trust. |
| 00:15:38.43 | Jillian Zeiger | They do maintain jurisdiction. So if they wanted to build additional units or they even wanted to do repairs, they would go through the city of Sausalito's building and planning department. |
| 00:15:55.75 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'm trying to pull up. uh, Sorry, again, I did not fully understand this item, and I'm trying to pull it up on my computer because I don't have it. |
| 00:16:09.79 | Ian Sobieski | Would you mind if I... Yeah, go ahead, please. |
| 00:16:10.24 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, go ahead, please. |
| 00:16:12.34 | Ian Sobieski | Earlier you mentioned the one-half mile radius from the ferry landing. I think you said that you're not limited, however, to projects within the half mile depending on how they relate to the whole. I would just offer to, when you look at Sausalito, lots of folks walk to the ferry. They walk more than a mile or they ride their bike even more. Where they live may not be within that one-half mile. The other thing I would want to make sure you took a look at is within that half mile is probably the entirety of our historic district. That may have implications for how we site. additional projects of any type within the historic area. So it's a little confusing compared to maybe the typical transit center in an urbanized area. Just a thought. |
| 00:17:07.85 | Steven Woodside | So I'm seeing, for example, the slide that caught my attention is there are required minimum and maximum densities for new housing and office development within the TOC. |
| 00:17:18.23 | Jillian Zeiger | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:17:18.94 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:17:18.96 | Jillian Zeiger | Right. So that is the density policy, which we do not have to fulfill that policy according to this grant. This grant, we would only need to fulfill the land trust policy, which is a policy... that really says, you know, we'll work with the county to dedicate funds for land trust to acquire property and deed restricted as affordable housing. So, yeah, the density, the parking. I know you've all just gone through that with the housing element and we, you know, all the jurisdictions have and there's a lot of sensitivity to it. You've crafted, you know, what you need to to get through HCD. Um, I am aware of that. That's why I'm not coming to you today with. a parking study or density requirements for the TOC, because I think, At this point, you know, looking at everyone's housing elements and looking at what the needs are in the county and in the jurisdictions, Um, there's a lot of naturally occurring affordable housing that could be acquired by a land trust and made permanently affordable to keep people in their homes. |
| 00:18:23.32 | Steven Woodside | So I see another thing is that we would have to comply with complete streets policy. So in being granted our Measure 1A funds, we were able to negotiate an accommodation because not all of our streets in the historic and downtown area are capable of supporting complete streets due to houses right up against the street and due to other Um, built constraints. And so So that's another concern. The other thing is, you know, I work with folks who are stewards of land within malt, and there is very little that they actually can, there's very little leeway in this, in the Marin Agricultural Land Trust as to what a steward can and cannot do. And so it just, What is the term? This is like the malt is permanent. So I assume this city would be permanently dedicating to this land trust certain land within its historic district, which is within a half a mile of the district. of the ferry landing. And I have to say, I'm not aware of any affordable housing projects within a half mile of the other than liveaboards within a half mile of the ferry landing. |
| 00:19:56.72 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. We would have, except we just changed our ordinance. Last week. So we did have some requirements, and we still do have some requirements. He'll do have some requirements. |
| 00:20:05.70 | Steven Woodside | He'll do have some But I'm saying existing. She says she was talking about existing affordable housing units, projects. |
| 00:20:12.10 | Jill Hoffman | Well, new units, yeah. We probably won't have any. So anyway, I have a follow-up question. Yes, please. So, and this is for, well, essentially an outside entity, which would be the trust, a trust that would come in and purchase a property in Sausalito. And so, and that trust would then own that property, correct? Yes. And they would have, obviously, control over that property going forward. |
| 00:20:16.28 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:20:39.10 | Jillian Zeiger | Just like any property owner. Right. Um, I do, I do want to answer your question. The complete streets policy is not required for this grant. So. um just understanding that and I think um I I will talk to a bag and look at the grant again but I think the half mile radius is this it's the start like if you were doing the parking the density etc it would be constrained to that half mile area but if you're interested in expanding the area for this policy I don't see an issue |
| 00:21:09.55 | Steven Woodside | I will just note that this slide is headed TOC compliance requirements. So each of the things that I read out to you that you said are not requirements, this slide says are requirements. So that's the reason for my misunderstanding. Okay. |
| 00:21:22.30 | Jillian Zeiger | Okay, I should have labeled it differently. I apologize, but those are, if you want to, comply with every TOC policy, those four policies. For the grants specifically, we only have to comply with the land trust policy, which is a subset of the affordable housing policy. But I appreciate the questions, and I'm happy to |
| 00:21:43.49 | Steven Woodside | We have, just for context, we have groups in our, amongst our residents who are very concerned about our abdicating to MTC, our authority over our land by way of decisions we have already made. And so I think our community is very sensitive to. you know, the retaining of local control over, you know, of local control. So those, you know, grant funding, local control, that's sort of the balancing act. So thank you very much for this very informative presentation. Sure. |
| 00:22:25.27 | Steven Woodside | Okay, with that, I'm going to move on to communications. This is the time for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council that are not on the agenda except in very limited situations state law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items that are not on the agenda and so i have two speaker cards first is david lay |
| 00:22:54.62 | David Lay | Can I ask you a question about what was just It was just. |
| 00:22:58.14 | Steven Woodside | Sorry, we don't take questions. You're welcome to chat with us after the meeting or by email, but this is the opportunity for you to... communicate about things not on the agenda. |
| 00:23:09.97 | David Lay | Yeah, okay. Thank you. I've already given you all of the facts I could dig up on the environment. And I'm writing a cover letter to that, which I'm going to send to... to a representative over the mountain. Um, Is there anything I should steer clear of in that letter or dealing with somebody that's not our representative? you and I'm not representing anybody except myself so that should be our end |
| 00:23:54.98 | Steven Woodside | First of all, we can't really discuss things in this section of our agenda because they're not on our agenda for discussion. Um, this is the time for us to hear communications about things not on our agenda. And so we can't really provide feedback on an item that's not on our agenda. If you'd like to reach out to the mayor and the vice mayor, we are the agenda setting committee and we can place an eye on the agenda if it deems public participation. |
| 00:24:28.02 | David Lay | Okay, thank you. |
| 00:24:29.08 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thank you. Alice Merrill. |
| 00:24:29.10 | David Lay | Thank you. |
| 00:24:38.74 | Alice Merrill | Well, good evening. Good evening. Welcome. Thank you. Okay. I guess this is a little nagly complaint. It seems like every time we have the agenda, there's something on the consent calendar that gets pulled off. Which means, and it's pretty clearly something that is going to be pulled off. It's kind of like Well, yeah, of course we want to talk. So why is it on the consent calendar? Because that means it's not on the agenda. which means that it's not accounted for in time, which means that everything goes longer. And how can you guys figure it out? So what's on the consent, like for instance, tonight, there's the thing about parking. a study performed by, has this been I mean, you know, you have to be pretty darn tuned in to know what this study is, if it's anywhere on a website that anybody could find. And so here it is on the consent calendar. So do we get? do we get to talk about it ever, or is it just going to happen, it just goes right by? That's problematic for me. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:25:55.94 | Steven Woodside | . |
| 00:25:56.08 | Carolyn Revell | Hey. |
| 00:25:57.61 | Steven Woodside | We do our best is all I can say. So, but your points are well taken. Thank you. All right. Anybody else on communications? Yeah. |
| 00:26:05.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah, we have Babette McDougal. |
| 00:26:10.77 | Walfred Solorzano | You can unmute. |
| 00:26:13.54 | Babette McDougall | Good evening. So I just want to thank you very much for allowing me to address you. I want to thank you for being on the council. It's not easy, and it's not easy for me. time after time to have to call out what seems to be going sideways. This is the first time I've ever had to do anything like this, to stand in an opposing posture. I've never had to do this before in my whole life, particularly in my career life. So I just want you to know that it does not go, it does not escape my own personal appreciation or that of your community. here in Sausalito that you have volunteered yourselves to be on that dais to lead our community. with the expectation that this representative government does in fact reflect the will of your constituents. and the broader community as a whole. So I want to thank you again. However, please know that it's nothing personal. If I have something to say about what is going differently than what has been the norm for our community all these decades and years. to get to the end of the day. Sure, times are changing and with change comes new ideas and new ways of doing things, but... Thank you for taking that time. to explain to Mr. Lay. about the protocols of how the evening is supposed to play out, because this is really the bottom line. We are trying to work together. And hopefully, if we can unite in that fashion, we can go forward with something that the whole town can feel pretty good about. We're in a very difficult time. and everybody's nervous. So, you know, the ability to sail smoothly makes a big difference for all of us. So thank you for the hard work that you're doing. I don't want you to think that it doesn't go unappreciated or unnoticed. Thank you. |
| 00:28:00.56 | Walfred Solorzano | No. |
| 00:28:00.97 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:28:01.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Oh, for the public speakers. |
| 00:28:04.16 | Steven Woodside | All right, we will move on to the next item on our agenda, which is our consent calendar. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous counsel support. and may be enacted by the Council in one motion Um, so. We have four items on our consent calendar. The first is to adopt the meeting minutes of May 20, 2025. The second is to adopt a resolution of the City Council proclaiming June 2025 as LGBTQ plus Pride Month in the city of Sausalito, The third is to approve the updated position allocations and job description updates. And the fourth is to receive and file A parking study performed by fair and peers funded by MTC related to general parking in downtown Sausalito. So are there any questions or would anyone like to pull anything off of consent? Seeing none, I'll open it up to public comment on the consent calendar. |
| 00:29:04.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 00:29:06.42 | Steven Woodside | I moved to. Thank you. I don't have a speaker card from you, but please come forward, Alice. |
| 00:29:17.12 | Alice Merrill | I didn't. All right. I would love to know what this parking thing is about. Thank you. |
| 00:29:24.52 | Steven Woodside | So, Alice, would you like a copy of it? Because I have it in my binder. I'll hand it to you. Okay. |
| 00:29:32.65 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, I can, the chief and I can work on sitting down with Mrs. Merrill and explaining what this is. |
| 00:29:38.83 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I appreciate that, but I'm happy to give this to you in the meantime. It's both the copy of the... of the report as well as a presentation that staff prepared regarding it. |
| 00:29:52.80 | Steven Woodside | There you go. And it is online, by the way. Okay. Any other comment on our consent calendar? Seeing none. All right. With that, I will seek a motion approving. So moved. Second. |
| 00:30:01.47 | Walfred Solorzano | See you then. |
| 00:30:06.45 | Melissa Blaustein | Second. |
| 00:30:08.39 | Steven Woodside | All in favor? Aye. That motion carries. Four zero, one absent. Okay, with that, we will move on to our business items. We are only five minutes behind. Oh, yes. during |
| 00:30:26.09 | Steven Woodside | Okay. We've already adopted the calendar, so I'm going to move on. Apologies. If you have a public comment, please feel free to send us an email and we'll attach it to the agenda. All right. Next is item 5A, launch a local employee parking program for Caledonia businesses, Caledonia parking review, Park Revenue Report to City Council, and Parking Policy for Economic hardship, Alice, I'm so happy you're in the audience for this, because you are largely responsible for us moving this forward. And I'll welcome our police chief, Stacey Gregory. |
| 00:31:07.91 | Chris Zapata | Hi, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. I'm here to introduce Wayne Kwan, who's our parking manager. He's been working hard with the Caledonia community to develop this program and other things related to Caledonia Street in the area. We do want to, you know, make one quick statement that, you know, we're aware there's a lot of parking items and things in Sausalito that need attention, and tonight we're solely focusing on the Caledonia area. The other items will come, you know, at a later date with specific agenda items. So I'll introduce Wayne. Thank you. Welcome, Wayne Kwame. |
| 00:31:45.78 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:31:47.21 | Wayne Kwan | Thank you for having me. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, Council Member, and City Manager. My name is Wayne Kwan. I'm the parking manager with the Sausville Police Department. We have a slice show, I believe. |
| 00:32:03.33 | Wayne Kwan | Thank you. Okay, start off, Caledonia Street is a key commercial district in Saus Leop. Okay, one block west of Bridgeway, it spans six blocks from Johnson to Napa, includes a mix of storefronts, restaurant, residential units and service businesses. Currently, there are 100 mark parking spaces along Caledonia Street. 77 are regular parking spaces with a two-hour time limit enforced between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. 20 are green zone, 20 minute time limit. Two spaces are designated for a five minute curbside pickup. and there is one disabled parking space. Nearby, we also have several municipal parking lots that help support the Caledonia District. Lot five, which is the closest, is located at Locuston Bridgeway and includes 80 parking spaces, 22 which are paved. Lot four is slightly further to the southeast and has 102 parking spaces. Lot three is even further down with 164 spaces. So as you can see on the map here, all of these off-street laws play an important role in how we manage employee and visitor parking in the Caledonia district, in which I will explain a little further. Next slide, please. |
| 00:33:27.35 | Wayne Kwan | Employee Parking Program Enhancements. Over the last several weeks, staff have heard from both businesses and employees along the Caledonia Street district district that finding affordable and reliable parking is a challenge for them. Staff have met with merchants and businesses on two separate occasions to listen to their challenges and hear their suggestions. And as a result, Staff is proposing a few new options designed to help employees park off-street which in turn helps open up more on-street for customers of the businesses. First, we are introducing a new $5 daily parking rate in last four and five. One note is lot five will require payment via contactless ParkMobile app payment, since we currently have no pay station at that lot and have no intention and do not have a replacement to put one in. However, Lot 4 will still allow the use of a prepaid daily parking card. And just to be clear, currently lot four is at a $6 rate for our commuters and employees. So we are suggesting to drop it to five as part of helping out the California Street employees to make it more affordable and incentivize them to take advantage of this great employee parking permit program. Lot three, which is to the south and closer to the downtown area of Sausli Ho, will remain unchanged at $6 daily rate for employees and commuters. Additionally, another option that we are proposing is that folks who work regularly on Caledonia Street on a regular basis, we're offering a new $60 monthly employee permit that would be valid in Lot 5. And also to help make spaces available, we plan on reserving the upper portion, which is a paid portion, the 22 spaces in law five, converting that to permit requirement only. So in order to park up there, currently right now anybody can park up there. It's a three hour time limit, but we plan on changing that to restrict only permits with an L permit or employee permit. And this idea also is in response to our conversation with the merchants and the feedback that the merchants and businesses would like to be able to purchase these permits for the employees as a benefit for the employees. So that's something that we can work with the businesses just like we currently sell the D premise to our businesses in downtown Tosli. Next slide please. |
| 00:36:09.03 | Wayne Kwan | This slide focused on a proposed two hour time limit adjustment. So right now we're asking council feedback on a possible change to the two hour time limit along Caledonia Street and the adjacent one block side streets between Caledonia and Bridgeway. Currently, right now, the time limit enforcement ends at 6 p.m., but many businesses and restaurant business are busiest in the evening So we are proposing extending that enforcement until 9 p.m. And in order to do so, this help ensure better parking turnover later in the day, and it will also help move the employees off of the street and park in our lots. As of right now, with a 6 p.m. enforcement, they can technically park at 4.01 and beat her all night. And to be clear, we're not asking for approval tonight. just your direction. If counselors are supportive, staff would return with a formal ordinance change for adoption. Next slide, please. |
| 00:37:13.42 | Wayne Kwan | Economic hardship parking program. I want to highlight an important program from the Saucer Hill Police Department. We understand that some residents may face financial hardship when it comes to parking citations. And for those in need, we offer flexible payment options community service alternatives and also a potential reduction in waivers of late fees for individuals who are low income or on house. Each case is reviewed on an individual case by case basis and the goal is to make sure we are being fair, responsive while at the same time maintaining enforcement. Next slide, please. |
| 00:37:58.98 | Wayne Kwan | New temporary guest permit fees. We understand there may have been some confusion from the last previous meeting, regarding this new master fee schedule under the parking category. I wanted to take this opportunity to help clarify any confusion. Although the fee may be new, The guest permit is not. Residents have always been able to come to us to request a short-term guest permit. Short term is definition of one week or less. The current The current situation is that we're offering them for free. So all this is is the fee to recover the costs for the staff's time, effort to review, process, and issue these permits. So we are proposing that the new feed for a one day fee be $3. You know, or a one week fee for $10. It is also worth to note that these are separate from the permanent gas permit that residents are already able to purchase annually for $50 for the entire year. So these are in addition on top of that. Next slide, please. Thank you. Here's a quick slide. Parking Revenue Overview. So this is a snapshot comparison of parking revenue from Q1 of 2024. in Q1 of 2025. You'll notice a slight drop in revenue from the off-street municipal laws from 334,000 in Q1 of 2024 to about 327,000 in Q1 of 2025. That tip is most likely due to the temporary loss of parking spaces in lot one as a result of the failure landing project. However, we do expect those figures to rebound going forward, now that the new public spaces in the Saus Lill Yacht Harbor are active and generating revenue. And just as a reminder, when we look at the entire year of the entire Parking Enterprise Fund, it typically generates anywhere between $2.5 million to $2.9 million annually. I also want to point out that these figures does not include citation review, which we will look at next. May I please? |
| 00:40:24.70 | Wayne Kwan | So here's a snapshot of 2024 parking citation overview. 2024 the city issued over 14 600 parking citations That total in 797,000 in total fines, with about 722,000 collected. And just once again to clarify, this citation revenue you consider punitive and is trapped completely separate from the parking revenue. Next slide. |
| 00:40:56.98 | Wayne Kwan | Thank you, and that concludes my presentation. That wraps it up. Thank you for your time and attention. I'm happy to answer any questions or hear your thoughts on any of the items we cover. |
| 00:41:05.76 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. And we do have some questions. Council Member Blaustein. |
| 00:41:10.36 | Melissa Blaustein | That was great. Thank you for your engagement with the merchants and for taking so much time and looking at our fee schedule and coming forward with a plan it's really crucial for the Caledonia Street employees and also the people that frequent the street. I was wondering last meeting when we ended up deferring this item forward to the following We heard from Paul Geffen, who is one of the owners of Driver's Market, about an interest in potentially procuring specific spots that that market would be able to prepay for in Lot 5, and there was some interest potentially in looking at that. Did you guys have a discussion about what that kind of program might look like? We did. |
| 00:41:45.77 | Wayne Kwan | We did. We did take a quick look at that. So what that proposal from driver was he wanted to purchase a reserve stall and his proposal was $100 per month. |
| 00:41:46.53 | Melissa Blaustein | We did. |
| 00:41:58.42 | Wayne Kwan | Well, that equates to $1,200 for an entire year. But the problem with a reserve stall is that no one else can use it except the person that purchased that reserve stall. So if that person's not using it or that business, then it sits empty. And when we consider how much our parking spaces generate on an annual basis, that figure is far below the median. You know, I think, When we previously look at our parking spaces, each parking space generate anywhere from $4,500 to $5,500 per year. So if we were to offer that to the businesses, we'd be way undercutting ourselves, the city. And we didn't feel like proposing a much higher fee would be feasible for the businesses. So I think the $100 proposal compared to what the state generates per space on an annual basis, we were too far off on the map. |
| 00:42:55.97 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, I understand that. Did you have a conversation with Paul or someone from drivers about that? We did. Okay. Okay. |
| 00:43:01.16 | Wayne Kwan | We did. So, yeah, we had a second meeting with them. So the so we decided to meet halfway and the halfway proposal or was the $60 monthly permit that they can purchase. And it's sort of like a semi reserve section. And the other part I mentioned was to reserve the upper 22 spaces in lot five for permits only, which means the general public would no longer be able to use those. So it's kind of like a meeting the merchants halfway. |
| 00:43:02.50 | Melissa Blaustein | So, Thank you. Yeah. |
| 00:43:31.72 | Melissa Blaustein | Great, I really appreciate that. Thank you. |
| 00:43:35.77 | Ian Sobieski | Just a quick question. Did you consider having the employee permit cost be closer to the amount paid by residents? My understanding is the resident might pay $60 for an annual permit, and the employee permit, as I understand it, is $60 per month. |
| 00:43:56.53 | Wayne Kwan | That is correct. The formula that we use for looking at the employee permit program and these new enhancements was what's currently in place right now. So we currently have L permits that other employees outside of Caledonia can purchase for $160 per quarter. So I think if we were to offer the employees on Caledonia at the same price that we offer the residents, it would create a huge gap between what the employees currently pay right now, $6 a day, $160 for three months. And then I think it would create a new problem with the current employees that's already paying that rate And so we would probably have to address that issue and potentially you know, accommodate, it would be set a precedent, it would set a brand new precedent for employee parking And I think financially it would be a hit to the city. |
| 00:44:54.61 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 00:44:57.55 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thanks, Wayne, for your tremendous work on this. Understanding that you oversee almost a $3 million operation, and you're one guy in the police department. So thanks for your tremendous work. that you've done, not just this, but parking across the city and trying to show us ways to increase our profitability, not just our profitability, but bring systems online to you know, update our systems, which has been a Herculean task, I know. So thank you for all of that. And I know you'll be coming back to us with what we need to do to upgrade the systems across the line. So I know that's going to be a big effort. And I support the proposition that you have, and I look forward to the ongoing updates of how this is working, knowing that we're going to continue to, I think, iterate how these are working and amend as we go forward. So I think I'm excited to see how this works and hear from the merchants of how this is helping them, I hope, and their employees. So thank you for all your hard work. |
| 00:46:03.01 | Wayne Kwan | I appreciate that feedback. Thank you, Member Hoffman. And yes, you're correct. I'll be coming back with more different agenda items. And the end goal is to upgrade the parking system and equipment in Sauselio. |
| 00:46:15.97 | Jill Hoffman | I think that's part of our CIP improvement list. City manager, I think that's part of our investment this round is to invest in our parking systems Yeah. All right. Yeah. |
| 00:46:33.08 | Chris Zapata | in our parking lots or our parking system? Both. Both, yes. |
| 00:46:35.83 | Jill Hoffman | Both. So yeah, both. Okay, thank you. Sorry to throw that out of the blue, but I just wanted to reinforce that we're supporting Wayne and his efforts, so thanks. |
| 00:46:41.35 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:46:41.36 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:46:41.62 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:46:41.67 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:46:41.77 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:46:46.38 | Steven Woodside | No worries. There are no more questions. I'm going to open it for public comment and then bring it back up here for direction. So first person Yoshitome, welcome. And after Yoshi, we'll hear from Adam. Great to see you here as well. |
| 00:47:03.86 | Yoshitome | Hi there, good evening all. |
| 00:47:04.86 | Steven Woodside | Good evening. |
| 00:47:05.33 | Yoshitome | Thank you. Thank you for Wayne and the police department. We had a couple of different meetings face-to-face. We talked about how we can mitigate a better place to work for the employee and the customer. A couple of suggestions, please move forward very quickly. I think it's one big step forward, right directions. We are losing 20 spaces, Caradoni Street, we have to do something ASAP. That's where they're coming from, 9 p.m. parking. parking limit, two hours limit. And also, same time, we have to have employee parking. What else employee parking? Neighborhood area become many, many places of residence only parking after 6 p.m. So we have to find someone else employee can park. We have altogether 16 spaces behind the building. I do lease with after-hours parking, eight spaces available across the street. But most of the business do not have that kind of option unless you prepare for, provide for employees to work in. Sassarero is a harder place to work. And then also we talk about, first, I read all the detail about parking study. Please, please, quickly get a new system to implement Sarsarero. Parking issue is such a huge issue for businesses. Wayfair is assigned to how you charge for the customer, how you can easier for the guest parking. Success parking program can be business success and great for the business residents as well. So please more pay attention to parking issue. And real estate is, parking issue is very tight to real estate what we have and how you're going to share with the residents and the city can make money, huge business, and at the same time better for the business too. So in the future downtown area, I'd like to include, please include the business community. Thank you. |
| 00:49:06.74 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. Adam Driver, we'll get to you, David. Hold on. Wait, not yet. David, not yet. |
| 00:49:19.69 | Adam Driver | Thank you very much. I just wanted to echo everything that Yoshi said. I definitely agree. I think it's an urgent issue. especially with losing the spaces coming up because of, I don't remember the name of it, but the issue with visibility on the corners. |
| 00:49:33.07 | Steven Woodside | The daylighting. |
| 00:49:33.91 | Adam Driver | Daylighting? |
| 00:49:34.08 | Steven Woodside | So if you're working to minimize the number of spaces you will lose, |
| 00:49:37.54 | Adam Driver | That's great, that's great. So some of those spaces, and I'm not sure if Paul brought this up at the last meeting, some of those spaces are 20 minute zones that are in front of our market. |
| 00:49:38.42 | Steven Woodside | That's great. |
| 00:49:47.31 | Adam Driver | We rely on those for basically, I mean, you know, for survival, because if people were parked there all the time, it would be really hard for people to shop, come in and bring their bag of groceries outside. So I just wanted to say that's one of the most important things for me. I also echo that I really appreciate Wayne working with us on coming up with a solution that I think will work. the upper portion of lot five being dedicated to people with permits, I think makes a lot of sense. And I think it will be utilized. I think it would. be a work in progress. I think it would take a lot of feedback loops and making sure that we don't have empty spaces. On that note, I think that it's important also for the city to PB, David Ensign, Hewlett- Take a look at where there are empty spaces after 6pm and see if we need to take a look again at residential parking areas if there are any other spaces that could be available. for customers, it could make a more vibrant business community. So not saying I'm pushing for anything to be changed, but just that we keep an open mind and make sure that we have an efficient parking system in Sausalito. So that's all. |
| 00:50:50.20 | Steven Woodside | Can I ask you a question since you're here? And again, thank you for being here. |
| 00:50:51.82 | Adam Driver | since you're here. Yeah. Yeah. |
| 00:50:53.90 | Steven Woodside | Are you aware of any of your customers using the public lots, which are really not far from you? |
| 00:51:02.18 | Adam Driver | I think that I'm sure that some of them do. I think that it's a hard sell if anyone's going to buy more than a few items. Because if you imagine doing your grocery shopping and then having to walk a couple blocks, true, it's not far. But when you have heavy bags of groceries and maybe... |
| 00:51:10.30 | Chris Zapata | big |
| 00:51:20.43 | Adam Driver | you have a problem with your hip or whatever it might be, those spots out front are really, really important for us. But the more options, the better, obviously, for us. |
| 00:51:32.22 | Unknown | Yes. Okay. Yeah. |
| 00:51:34.11 | Adam Driver | Yeah, and the last thing I'll say real quick, because I know I'm out of time. I've paid a lot of money in parking. I pay all my employees parking tickets. and So you're part of that, right? |
| 00:51:44.81 | Steven Woodside | So you're part of that revenue we're getting. |
| 00:51:46.67 | Adam Driver | It will cost me less if we can come up with a solution where I can pay for them ahead of time instead of after they get tickets. So that's all. |
| 00:51:54.36 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you, and thank you for everything you contribute to our community. |
| 00:51:55.21 | Adam Driver | Thank you. |
| 00:51:58.21 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, of course. Thank you. All right, next, Alice Merrill, speaking of contributing to our community. |
| 00:52:08.10 | Alice Merrill | Thank you, Joan. |
| 00:52:08.93 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:52:08.98 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 00:52:09.01 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:52:09.03 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. And yes. Okay. So a couple of things. There's, is there any parking behind the old theater? There used to be parking lot back there. Who uses it? I don't know. I haven't been by there, but. maybe the owner would allow parking there if it's not being used for something specific. These guys are here, but I know I'm always talking for Ming. She's got a whole bunch of people now doing... between fingernails and toes. And, um, I don't know where they park on, I know on tourney, but, um, And I don't think they make much money. You know, I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it is for somebody who's making $150 a day to have to pay every single time they have to park. And I just would love it if somehow we could help our working people. I think that's, I think there was a lot of males, but I can't remember. So anyway, that's it. And I guess it's, Oh, I know. If they're getting permits, is it for a specific license plate, or can they be shared? So somebody comes and works, and then they leave, and the other guy comes, and they can use that same one for a day pass. So that's a question. Thank you. |
| 00:53:41.23 | Steven Woodside | That's a great question. Alice, do you know Wayne Kwan? Have you met him? |
| 00:53:45.45 | Alice Merrill | Well, I have... Seen him around. Yeah. |
| 00:53:48.44 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. So I wonder if you'd be willing, since this is, you know, we're giving direction this evening, he's coming back. He's been very generous with his time meeting with other community members. I wonder if you would mind sitting down and sharing some of your thoughts with him. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Adrian Britton. |
| 00:54:02.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:54:02.98 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 00:54:12.69 | Adrian Brinton | Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my comment. And thanks, especially to Wayne for putting together a great presentation on the parking and coming up with recommendations, you know, to try to improve what's ultimately somewhat a hopeless situation. We're never going to have enough parking and the cheaper we make it, the more people will drive and the more people will park and then we'll not have enough parking again. So it's not an easy thing to fix. You know, the employee parking, I definitely want to echo Alice's sentiment. You know, $5 a day even is a lot of money for people working in our restaurants and people working in our businesses in the hotels. And I, you know, what I understand is that at that rate, a lot of them. decide that it's better to move their car every two hours and actually pay the rate. And so as we lower, you know, if we look at lowering it, maybe more people will park and that'll actually make up for a little bit of that revenue. But I think it's also a bit of a false economy to look for, um, To look at employees as a revenue source for the city. They come and they work in our businesses. They support our businesses. Without them, our businesses don't run. Our businesses pay a lot of the tax in our city. And so supporting our employees this way actually helps us by supporting our businesses. Thank you. Additionally, I looked at other communities, you know, if we look at mill valley it's $12 a month for an employee parking permit and most other communities in Marin don't charge for employee parking so when our. businesses are looking to recruit people they're looking to get people into work. They've got choices. They can go work in Tiburon where they don't have to pay anything. And so it makes it much harder to recruit and retain employees. Employee turnover is a huge cost for businesses that I know from my career. So the better we can make it for our employees to come and be able to park and easily work here. the stronger businesses we have, the better it is for us. So really, I feel like I'm up here a lot supporting our businesses. The reason for that is because I don't want to pay all those taxes. I'd rather have them pay it. So let's support them so they can do that for us. Thank you. |
| 00:56:09.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. David Lay |
| 00:56:17.36 | David Lay | So I think it's a great idea. People can come from the canal or any other place directly to Sausalito, get on a bus and get off from their house right here. And it's only going to cost them four bucks a day. |
| 00:56:17.71 | Adrian Brinton | Thank you. |
| 00:56:17.85 | Steven Woodside | life. |
| 00:56:18.09 | Chris Zapata | He is great. |
| 00:56:33.64 | David Lay | And that's what they're doing. And some of those buses are like 8.30. going south in the morning is full. That's good. I made three trips to Alaska, ending in 92, And I came here looking for a place where I didn't need a car. And I sold the car in a truck when I came here because I was in the oil spill up there. And I was disgusted with all of the cars. Um, it looks to me like the prices are made for people that own the business and people like a canvas maker or something like that, they're going to go in and out to the docks or to the yards, whoever there is that are making shade and, um, they're going to just need a place for their truck at the business, which is probably not downtown anyway. So I think – The more we rely on buses, the more buses we get. And that's good for everybody, especially the world. Thanks. Thanks. |
| 00:57:35.44 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City Clerk. |
| 00:57:38.70 | Walfred Solorzano | Amy Svenberg. |
| 00:57:42.75 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:57:42.76 | Amy Svenberg | Hi, Amy, welcome. Hello. Thank you so much. My first one I just think, of course, the City Council Mayor Cox, but really police chief Gregory and Wayne Kwan have been above and beyond working with the community. to find solutions and we know it's not easy. So just thank you very much. You know, I'm in Bridgeway, so my employees have a different circumstance, but it's really serious what's going on on Caledonia Street. And I also wanna touch on briefly the employees do move their cars every couple of hours and by providing this other space for the employees, it is going to give more parking to the residents that have a C lot during the daytime and also more space just for the businesses. So there's really a lot to gain from this. You know, I also agree with David about the buses, you know, if there is better buses, people would take the bus, but there's only one an hour and it just doesn't it doesn't work, sadly. So I would definitely advocate for that. And lastly, I just want to say again, thank you to Wayne for moving some of the bike racks along the very landslide. It's great to be proactive, and it's noticed and appreciated. So thank you. |
| 00:58:59.02 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Amy, and thank you to the police department for managing the bike racks. All right. |
| 00:59:05.40 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment. |
| 00:59:05.92 | Steven Woodside | All right. With that, I'll close public comment, bring it back up here. for discussion, this is our opportunity to give feedback on this initial approach that has been put together, I know there's been a lot of interaction with businesses and residents and that this, The presentation we saw tonight has gone through various iterations before it got to where it is. So who would like to lead off? |
| 00:59:32.03 | Melissa Blaustein | with thoughts. |
| 00:59:32.96 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:59:33.14 | Melissa Blaustein | I can. Thank you. |
| 00:59:33.95 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:59:34.64 | Melissa Blaustein | Councilmember Blaustein. Yeah. This is an issue that a lot of the merchants on Caledonia have been asking me, and I know others on this dais and at our city hall for at least as long as I've been on council, if not before. And I'm really thrilled to see it being addressed and to have heard that there was such a collaborative process between the PD and the merchants and that it wasn't just something that the city decided without getting engagement because it's really important important to have a partnership with our business community. Half of our general fund comes from our sales tax revenue, and so if it wasn't for all of you, some of you who showed up tonight, thanks for being here and for making your comment and for choosing to have your small businesses in our community in Sausalito. And while it might seem like a small amount to pay for parking, you know, it's significant, especially for folks who are working in a restaurant or working in a grocery store. And so we need to think about the best possible approach to make it more feasible for our city employees and also beneficial for the merchants. And I really feel like this is a great example of that, a great example of partnership between our business community and our city and working together and so just hats off and and i'm really pleased with it so i think we should move forward as quickly as we can to make this effective and also if we could give further direction |
| 00:59:34.71 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Blaus. Yeah. |
| 00:59:35.79 | Chris Zapata | Bye. |
| 01:00:51.01 | Melissa Blaustein | to continue the conversation, especially around things like how we move forward with the daylighting of crosswalks, just to make sure that merchants are in the loop about what's going to be happening when, especially if there's going to be re-striping or specific immediate impacts, because it's really important to have that ongoing communication. So thank you very much to everyone involved. And I look forward to seeing an official ordinance up here soon. Thank you. Thank you. you. |
| 01:01:17.50 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. I'm in favor of going forward. I think it's good that everyone is talking and paying attention to this closely. I would simply say that in other jurisdictions where the employee rates are much lower, I don't think it breaks the bank of those cities. And I think as we look forward and see how this works, I would pay attention to that going forward because I do think that bringing employees here, allowing them to park for a full shift, for example, it helps everybody. And I would encourage us to take a close look at that as we go forward. But in the meantime, this is a good first step, a very good first step. Secondly, the daylighting concerns everybody, including the person like me who might want to go down Caledonia Street and make a quick stop if I'm driving. I don't always drive, but when I do, it's a quick stop because there's no other place to park, and I'll go into drivers or whatever, say hi to Alice. But if you think about it, when you remove the corner ones, which is where most of the greens are, is it possible to provide a green in the next one? Is that good or is that bad? I don't have an answer. I just think we ought to keep our mind open to making sure that we do still have those short-term, quick parking spaces, because I think the businesses and the public really values them. Thank you. |
| 01:02:42.90 | Jill Hoffman | Councilman. Thank you. Yeah, I just, again, want to reiterate thanks to Wayne Kwan and the South Dakota Police Department for really working with the community, with the merchants to amend the program to do two things. Actually, three things. One is to help them take care of their own employees and the employees and the ecosystem down there to support the merchants. And part of this is, too, is to encourage the turnover of customers along that corridor, right, so that people like us who live here and other people coming in can find a place to park, to get into the stores, to get into the restaurants, and encourage the turnover of parking down there so that people can get in and out. And also, as the vice mayor said, encourage people to find a place to park so they don't have the stress of during the middle of a shift to go out and then have even more stress of perhaps getting a citation on their car, which is such a bummer, I know, because I used to be in that position. And sometimes I do get a citation on my R. So thanks to everybody for working this out. I look forward to seeing how we can further utilize parking lot five and bring that online for further as a parking asset going forward. These parking lots on this end of town are part of the $3 million revenue generators that we have that are on the other side of town, but they're equally important to our our residents and the people that live here and work here. The other side of it too is I'm wondering if we can't be more proactive, as Mr. Lay said, in getting more um community transit um and reinvigorating that those assets into sausalito so that people can take the bus here and commute here we used to have such great um trans be a real transit corridor where people could actually transit in and out of sausalito um on on public transit to work here instead of having to drive here and so and maybe work with maybe work with the merchants to time the shifts to better react to the public transit that's available into sausalito in and out of sausalito i know since covet that's that's been undermined somewhat but maybe we can get back to getting better public transit in and out of sausalito and have that be an actual asset to the people that work here so those are just some thoughts you |
| 01:05:14.37 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I agree with my fellow council members. I really appreciate the community engagement undertaken by the police department. with you know, residents and businesses. I really appreciate the concept of employee parking and I think that We're going to have to... sort of treat this like a pilot project where we embark upon it, see how it works, see how much it's used, see, you know, whether we need to adjust the fees up or down. I will say that, you know, I do, I used to visit Mill Valley a good bit more than I do now. It's got a much, it's got much more space, much more real estate for parking downtown. There's a huge parking lot behind the row of stores right downtown that really provides a relief valve. And Sausalito does not enjoy that. you know, we are challenged with the real estate that we have available for parking. I am concerned about Yoshi's comments about the 9 p.m. parking cut off so I would invite Wayne to further confer with Yoshi and then advise us how you have addressed these concerns or whether they're not capable of being addressed. I think one way to address some of the concerns is with the daylighting. And when the daylighting requirements were brought to us, we gave direction to the Public Works Department to come back to us with their plan, we identified the fact that there is an ability to avoid some of the daylighting requirements, um, when you can demonstrate other traffic calming measures and street design that have been undertaken. And so... So, you know, we already have a 20 mile an hour speed limit on Caledonia. Can we reduce that to 15 in order to preserve some of our green spots and to avoid the loss of so many parking spots on Caledonia Street? heard back yet from Public Works, but I do know that that direction was given to them by the city council when this was brought to us previously. So I'm hoping to hear back from them before any of the re-striping takes place. I'm not sure. I really appreciate the distinction in the staff report made between annual guest passes available to residents and daily slash weekly passes available to visitors. I think that's a really important resident serving distinction so that residents are able to accommodate their visitors with an annual pass. be. All right, I guess my time is up, so thank you very much. Would you please return to us with a program to implement that we can approve? And if you want to frame it as a pilot project, you know, initially and then circle back with us, perhaps that's a way to allow the market sort of to provide guidance moving forward. Okay? That's it. All right, with that, we'll move on to 5B, City Council Budget Presentation on the draft fiscal year 2025-26 budget, including user fees, pension analysis, and provide direction. And I will welcome our |
| 01:09:04.94 | Chris Zapata | City manager. |
| 01:09:06.00 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I'll welcome our city manager first. |
| 01:09:09.04 | Chris Zapata | All right, thank you, Mayor. Can you go to the next slide, please, Noelle? So before we jump into the proposed budget for 25-26, I want to just give you a little update on the current budget, which ends in 27 days. The current budget, which we started last year at this time, that had some headwinds with costs related to pensions, insurance, and the slowing economy, we've navigated. A lot of people have worked really hard on trying to make sure that this current year budget is one that doesn't create harm to our existing funds. And so what we're anticipating at the end of this year, we're anticipating being in the black, not being in the red. And so that's a good start to a year, but that will be finalized and confirmed once the audit is done for these funds after we close out the books, and that's approximately December when you see the finality of that. Regarding any budget process, it's fluid. It's continuous. The interim finance director and I were working on the budget last night at 10 o'clock. We were working on the budget five minutes ago because it is a fluid process. And I believe that the public understands that we do our best to take estimates and projections and turn them into parameters for delivering services that the council asks us to put forward to the public and our businesses and residents. I want to say that, next slide, please. that this budget is balanced. It's balanced without using unassigned funds from the general fund. It meets many priorities that the council has proposed, and one of the things you will see is in the balancing of the budget and the aggressive approach to capital improvement projects. What I had told you a year ago was about $10 million in unassigned reserves. We are asking to use half of that in this coming year. So we're taking unassigned reserves, but not to run services or it's all for our capital improvement projects. So service levels stay the same. Again, going back to the capital improvement program, $16.6 million this year to finish the projects in place now and the projects that are budgeted for next year. The council this past year worked really hard to set a formal policy of 25% for emergencies, budget fluctuations and economic emergencies. And so that amount is $5.5 million set aside in this budget. So the current budget has 9.9 million in unassigned fund balance. And we're talking about taking $4.5 or so million to supplement the capital improvement program. So what you will see is with the $5.5 million and the roughly $5 million that will be left in the unassigned fund balance, that's about $10 million that's not committed. You have the 25% set aside, and then you have the remainder from the $10 million or $9.9 million that you are going to take a portion of that for the capital improvement program. Next slide, please. |
| 01:12:29.58 | Chris Zapata | One of the things that I think is really important is pensions. And so we have with us tonight a presentation on pensions. This program or this presentation tonight is bifurcated into talking about the budget and talking about our pensions. So one of the things that I want to really stress is that SOSLILO has been a leader in trying to address pension challenges. And the pension challenges didn't start last year or the year before. They started 2001-2002. They've escalated from about $400,000 a year in annual pension payments to cover our cost to about $3.5 million a year. So in looking at that, you started working toward that in 2015-16 when you set up the 115 trust, in 2018-19 when you set aside goals for the city council to achieve so when the pension spikes occurred that you might have the wherewithal to do it. So although the goal was, I believe, Mayor, you can correct me if I'm wrong, approximately $6 million for pensions, we are at $3.9 million set aside in protected funds to address pension challenges. And I apologize for the OPEB reference. It's other post-employment benefits. There's an additional $2 million set aside there that's in our 115 trust. You gave us direction to take the funds out of the administrator, which is PARS, and go to CalPERS. We had a change in finance director, so we will get to that. We haven't gotten to it yet, but the basis for that was we would save administrative costs on a go-forward basis, and so we will do that in the coming six months. Next slide, please. Thank you. We're very fortunate to have at this critical time somebody with significant experience. Our interim finance director is Jesus Nava. Jesus, I've known for 20, 30 years. He worked for the city of San Antonio, which is not a small city, the city of San Jose, which is not a small city, the city of Laredo, Las Cruces, Oxnard, and most recently his finance experience was in Burlingame, which is across the bay from us, where he worked 12 or 13 years as a finance director. So with that, I want to introduce Jesus. He will run through the slides that he has to show some of the information that is important because at the end of all this, we want you to feel confident that when we come back on June the 17th, that a budget can be adopted along with all the other supporting requirements that are part of the budget process. Thank you, Jesus. |
| 01:15:06.40 | Jesus Nava | Good evening. I'm glad to be here. So Chris called me out of the blue and said, hey, I'm in need of having a finance director. I know you've been retired for eight years and have been out of the business for some time, but would you take time out of your life to come help me as a city manager and help the city council? And I said yes. I mean, how could I say no? It's an important job. It's a job that needs to be done correctly. And more importantly, the council needs to be satisfied that when this budget is done, that it's a good product for its citizens and that nothing was missed because there was a change in personnel at a very crucial time. So I'm here to tell you that we've been working extremely hard on this budget, complicated by the fact that we simply had only two months to do it as opposed to five months. So we had to compress, work a lot of hours, as Chris mentioned last night. We were reviewing numbers again. I'll tell you that the difference between being a budget director or being a budget officer, which I have that, is that we do budget 12 months out of the year, 24 hours a day. That's what we concentrate on, not just finances, but on policy. As a finance director, I have the same duties, but half of it is also devoted to running the finance department, making sure bills get paid, that the staff is getting paid, that revenue is collected, so forth and so forth. So it compounds the budget functions to a certain extent. But the good news, as Chris mentioned, is that you have a 12-month spending plan, and that budget is balanced with the revenues that you have used historically to finance your programs. So it is a policy document as well as a financial plan, and it finances your operations, your capital improvements, your debt. It improves your services. It preserves your city assets, and it maintains, more importantly, surpluses in your funds so that you don't feel like you're spending everything but have resources available for future uses as well. As I like to say, no matter how revenues grow, expenditures always grow to meet those growing revenues. So in our business, there's just never enough money to do all the things that need to be done, and that's just simply the nature of government and the nature of local government in particular. Always more work to do than the money that's available. The good news is that you guys do have good surpluses and have had a history of good financial management. So to be able to come in and work with the council, with the departments, to understand the issues that the city is facing with the help of the city manager and with the departments was the only way that this job could get done. So next slide, please. So again, the participants were the city council, the departments. I know we've been meeting to discuss portions of the budget with members of the council. As Chris mentioned, it is a fluid process. You can do budget all year round if you want. You can always refine your numbers. It's good to set a plan for the year, but as an exercise to be continually improving your finances it's just something that's done and the other thing is that you know it's a return to your pre-COVID practice of hearing from your city departments and hearing from your employees as to what's going on in City Hall and in their departments next slide so what were the guiding principles what were that we used to, how are we going to prepare the budget? Well, the first thing was to have a balanced general fund budget and even maybe a surplus. So at this point, we're projecting a small surplus. to maintain city reserves. So we have the council-approved reserve of 25%. We made sure that that was funded up front. We recognized realistic revenue estimates and projections. I personally went through every single line item, not once, but twice, and then reviewed it with staff and then reviewed them with our consultants that are responsible for sales tax, property tax, and the other tax. So the amounts that you have right now have been vetted by not just myself but other people as well more importantly the council has enhanced and prioritized capital improvements if there's any way to describe this particular budget this year it's as a heavy intensive capital improvement budget it is designed to do the work that the council believes needs to be done at this point in time. That is the focus of this financial plan. Let's get these things built and let's get these improvements done. It includes the repair of city facilities. You had your assessment plan done. So we're using those assessment plans to try to incorporate some of the funding into repair and maintenance. And as you'll be discussing later on, your pension funding strategies and also your property and liability insurances, which I think, you know, again, we funded at the levels with a slight increase, but we're still analyzing the numbers to make sure that we have a firm handle as to what those costs are and that we have them fully covered. Next slide. So there are some areas that we focused on. So we focused on adopting a new comprehensive fee schedule. So the council reviewed that fee schedule. They gave us direction, which was no increases in any fees over 5%. So we took that serious and implemented that limit. We adopted a funded capital improvements program. So fund balances have been ascertained. We're still tweaking the general fund a little bit, and Measure L is being committed 100 percent as per the Council's promise to its citizens to capital improvements. And as you'll see, in the budget, it uses up pretty much the entire amount. And then the reuse of the former fire station too, the council has directed to repair it and to enter into negotiations to try to put it back into use as a fire station. |
| 01:20:08.21 | Chris Zapata | you know, |
| 01:21:10.95 | Jesus Nava | We're still working on those insurance costs. We're pretty close, but I think the council has been fully aware of the insurance issues here in the city. Of course, the transfer of the sewer system is also being finalized. We're in the final stages of negotiations. We're performing our financial due diligence. We're looking at the defeasance of the system debt. And then, of course, the approval of the memorandum of understanding. And with your city leases, you entered into a professional agreement with the Kimber Companies, which have performed superbly and have been a real assistant to the staff in terms of working with the tenants and, more importantly, in helping us to identify some of the repairs and needs that are needed in some of the rental properties that we have. And then we're also looking at hopefully establishing some sort of model master lease agreement so that we have similar agreements among all our tenants and more importantly that we have built-in cost of living adjustments and other types of increases in those leases as well just to keep up with business. Next item. In terms of the city debt, we got the final payment of the 2006 general obligations bonds, which you use to finance the construction of the fire department and the police department. Your capital appreciation bond payments will commence, and then we're in the process of paying off your state water resource loan and paying off the sewer revenue bonds, as well as part of the transfer of the system. And then with the parking fund, we were asked to look at those parking revenues closely to try to make sure that we had a full understanding as to how they were moving and how they were being redistributed against the various forms of payment in the parking lots. And then we were also asked to focus on the business improvement district, making sure that we had our billing approaches in hand, that we had firm handle on the receipt of payments. And more importantly, that we were following through on our back office operations with billings and collections. And for that, we're proposing that we hire a firm to help us with that back office. from the specializes in that type of activity and In reality handles in excess of a billion dollars in business improvement district collections and administration So it's a well-known firm MBS and we're hoping to enter into an agreement with them soon Next slide. So refining the budget. What does that mean? Well, as I talked about earlier, if you had a budget director, you would be doing budget all the time because that's what budget directors do. You have a finance director, but the council still has the ability to refine the budget all year long. numbers change, we have a plan, things occur. So the good news is that the council, through its authority, can amend that budget at any point in time. And the council has some very specific times when they do that. The council strategy setting session, the post audit, and the publication of the financial statements in December, and then your mid-year budget review and your adjustments as you did this past year. Next slide. So what is this budget process? I threw this quote, most of you will recognize who it's from. So there are no knowns, there's things that we know. There are things that we know we know, you know. But we also know that there are known unknowns. There's a lot of things that we don't know. And that is to say, we know there are some things we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. The ones that we don't know, we don't know about. And of course, everyone knows who said that, our former defense secretary under a different administration. But what it tells you is that, The things that we do know about, we try to take care of. The things that we don't know about, we'll continue to try to find out more, educate ourselves, and try to define those issues in terms of finances and in terms of policy as part of the budget. So budget is really never done. Issues come up all the time, and part of the work of the budget officer is to make sure that they're appropriately converting those issues into both financial matters and into policy statements as well. Next slide. So we talked about the fact that we're not eating up all the monies in the slide. This is an all funds summary. There will be a couple more adjustments in the next couple of days based on the refining of the numbers, but these numbers are pretty darn good. You'll see that in the general fund, you'll still have an estimated ending balance of about $14 million after your expenditures and your transfers. The only item that will bring that number down is the final CIP transfer from the general fund to fully fund the $16.66 million in projects. But I won't go through all the funds, but you can see that in reality there's only two funds that kind of sometimes... go into the negative. And there's nothing wrong with having a fund in the negative. That doesn't mean that the financial plan is wrong. It just means that at this point in time, your investment is gearing up as an asset to hopefully generate additional revenue in the future so that those items can be fully financed. So you have to look at it in terms of, does an asset immediately produce money? Some do, some don't. Some are an investment and you require additional passage of time and you need to grow that business in order to then get into the black as any other business. Next slide. So here's your general fund. And again, we're working and refining. We looked at some other numbers in these, but the numbers in terms of the revenues are the way they will appear in the budget. As you can see, we start with the ending, the beginning balance of each year. So if you look at 24, that number, that first number in the column, 15.4, comes right out of your CAFR or your financial statements. Then we bring in the revenues, and then we bring the expenditures. We bring in the transfers, and then we come up with the an ending fund balance, and then we give you the description of those fund balances based on the council's policies, which means that we break it out for Measure L, we break it out for the PARS pension trust, and then we break it out to show the economic stability so that the council can look at the schedule and see that we've covered each of those items. Now, the challenging part is that the city has developed individual funds for both PARs and for the Measure L. But for purposes of financial reporting, you've got to bring those financial activities back into the general fund. So for purposes of financial reporting, these numbers are included in the general fund. For purposes of budgeting, they're removed from the general fund and set up as their own sub fund. So part of the complexity is then remembering that, hey, when we do financial statements, I got to put the monies back in and account for them as a general fund. But when the council wants to see what are we producing, I got to take those monies back out and account for them separately so that I can show the council and the citizens what those numbers are at any point in time. It could be done a little bit differently. You really don't have to have a fund. It could still be a line item because when you look at your financial report, it's still reported as sales tax. You have a big number in there, 5.2 million, not the 2.5 that you see in the general fund because it includes that measure L number. When you look at your financial statements, you look here and you say, hey, why is NAVA only saying 2.5 million in sales tax when the financial statements say it's more like 5.2, 5.3 because the financial statements include and combine measure L into the general fund. Putting it in, taking it back out, putting it back in becomes sort of this complex. And you have to make sure that it's done so that we're not double counting or excluding any revenues from any of the other funds. And that's kind of the complexity and the running of the numbers over and over and over to make sure that they are accurate and correct. Next slide, please. Revenues. simple formula in terms of revenues. So we took the adopted budget, The next column is your year end estimates. We went through all the revenue items again, line by line. calculated 10 months worth of collections till the end of April. We still don't have the collections for May. May just ended this past week. We're finalizing that month, and we don't have our collections for June, so I used last year's collections for May and June as the approximate estimates for the remaining two months for the year. Once I had then the annual figure for this estimate, we augmented those revenues by 3% for the next year, your recommended budget. And then we took a look at the consultant reports for sales tax, for business licenses, for TOT, for anything that the city had a consultant that produces a revenue estimate, we looked at their estimates and we used them and compared them and came up with the best revenue estimate that we thought for the budget. So not only have the revenues been reviewed line item by line item, but we've also have had our revenue consultants take a look at them as well. Next slide. So in terms of expenditures, here are your recommended general fund operating expenditures for administration, 4.2 million, city planning and budget, 2.2, non-departmental, 2.8, Police or public safety, $7 million by far the largest. Public works, $3.6 million. Leisure and culture, $2.1 million for a grand total of $22.1 million in general fund expenditures, operating expenditures. And then next slide, please. You have a distribution chart showing the percentages of the budget as a breakdown by service. So you can see public safety is 32% followed by the others. Next slide. So reserves, so the council has a committed reserve of 25% of budgeted general fund expenditures. So we looked at our $21 million number, what is 25% of that? you know, 5.5 million. So that's set aside in your budget by council direction. Move it over there, don't spend it, and make it available in case the economy goes bad. So we've done that. We've also have come back and said, hey, we've got an unassigned reserve of about almost $10 million that the council can use to fund the remainder of the CIP program or other needs that the council might have. But more importantly, if the council were to look at what cash is really available in the full emergency for the city, you've got about $15.1 million in cash. |
| 01:32:25.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:26.34 | Jesus Nava | Okay. Next flight. Capital improvements, so as I mentioned, New budget for operating, same budget for operating. Capital budget, extremely new, very intensive, fulfills the City Council's commitment to its citizens that we will place these large sums of money into capital improvements, starting with the full use of Measure L. All $8.4 million will be transferred into the CIP fund to fund capital improvements, leaving a zero balance at the end of FY26 in Measure L. And as the city manager described, we will also be proposing a transfer from the general fund on appropriated balance to supplement the capital improvements program and make up the rest of the funding for it. So you have the money available and we'll bring it back to you as part of the final budget as well so that you're fully funded for the entire $16.66 million. Next slide, please. Remaining budget issues. Pensions and other post-employment benefits or health insurance payments for retirees is another way of putting it. So we continue to refine those numbers and work with our consultant teams to make sure that we have a good handle, not only on the current costs, but on the future costs moving forward, particularly in the years where those pension obligations are going to spike and where the city council is going to be looking for some financial relief in order not to cut their budgets at that point in time. But I think this city has done a fairly good job in terms of setting aside monies in that trust to try to cover at least those years where you're going to have some pressures. Climate Emergency Fund. So we're, again, looking at what is the appropriate amount. I heard a number of a million dollars, possibly, at some point for a climate fund. So we continue to do additional work as to what would be an appropriate climate fund and how that would be funded. And we continue to work with liability and property insurances. And, in fact, tomorrow we'll be dealing with liability and property insurance to make sure that we have a good handle on when those costs will be. We do have a variety of unfunded department needs and requests you know since we had a short time period to prepare this budget 45 days to 60 we didn't have the normal process where you would ask your departments what are your needs what are your capital needs we simply had to get the budget done but we did the departments did still submit their lists of needs so we have it it's Thank you. departments, what are your needs, what are your capital needs. We simply had to get the budget done, but we did, the departments did still submit their lists of needs, so we have it. It's been delivered to the city manager so he can take a look at it, and then together with the council, you know, consider what can possibly be done to fulfill any of those needs, if any. And then, of course, you know, we're still looking at additional capital improvements funding, since the council's priority right now is the improvement of the physical assets of the city, we're putting a lot of work into how do we come up with additional funding sources to fund even more projects for you. And one of the items that has been discussed here, I know, in the past has been the private placement of debt or borrowings of money in order to get some other projects done and possibly the creation of additional financing districts. But what this simply means is that the council is on the hunt for additional money to do additional improvements in the community. And I think that's a great exercise. Next slide. So in terms of acknowledgments, I'd like to acknowledge the city council. I didn't get a chance to meet with the finance committee, but I know the finance committee has been busy in the past and has done lots of work. So for the work that it's done in the past, thank you. The department directors, the same thing. You know, I worked with Kevin closely. He helped me to understand how capital projects are funded here. And even though I still couldn't get it right, he had the patience to work with me and to finally, you know, help me figure it out. So, thank you very much. And to my finance staff, you know, I'm working them hard. And More importantly, they're enjoying it. they don't feel put upon and more importantly they feel like they're learning They're learning and we're teaching them how to do budget, how to look at revenues, how to collect rents, how to run the financial operations of the city. And that's a whole other task on to itself, but one that I have also embraced in order to make sure that that department functions properly. And then our city employees. So I have to admit, I have been welcomed with open arms here at City Hall. Everybody has been helpful. Everybody has been kind. Everybody has just been friendly. So for that, I thank the staff and I thank the city. And most importantly, the residents of Sausalito. You know, I'm a wanderer. I walk streets. I go inside shops. I talk to merchants. I ask how business is going. I ask how they feel about things. And I get a lot of information from them. So I want to thank them. Some of them are sitting here in the audience. So without that background, without that additional information, it's hard to come in in a couple of months, try to create a financial plan for a community that has existed for over 100 years. But everybody has pitched in, everybody has helped, and this plan really represents all these people helping and pitching in to try to get you this budget in front of you at this point in time. So with that, I'll give it back to the city manager. He can discuss pensions and cost management strategies because I know that's a hot topic for the City Council and then we can take questions afterwards. Thank you. |
| 01:38:31.44 | Chris Zapata | I'm going to ask Craig Hill to come up and load up his presentation. I think that the one thing that I want to say is that Sausalito, as an early adopter of 115, a trust of understanding how pensions could impact you in the future, has done a few things in the last couple of years that I think inform these conversations. Besides the help from NHA advisors, the city council authorized and got a report from Bartels and Associates in 2022 that show, you know, where we were because many things changed post-COVID. We all know that CalPERS is obviously the largest investment retirement fund in the world, but it has a lot of swings that impact cities. And so for you to try to navigate an approach, you've been doing that vigilantly and continuously for the last 10 years and now we're going to provide what we believe is the latest and greatest from our advisors NHA advisors and that's Craig so Craig please |
| 01:39:28.50 | Craig Hill | Thank you. Good evening. Good to see you again. Craig Hill, NHA Advisors. As Chris mentioned, what we're really trying to do is a quick update on where things are going for the city. So next slide. We'll start with just some of our observations. This was work that we did a couple of months ago before the budget process really got started. The good news you just heard from Jesus is that what the budget that's being proposed to you today. does not anticipate needing any Quick. action on your pension. We have a number of other cities we're working with right now that are in this process, and they're looking for immediate relief or solutions that do include something like your 115. In your case, we are not suggesting that anything we talk about over the next five or 10 minutes is something that needs to be incorporated into the proposed budget, as Jesus just mentioned. Next slide. |
| 01:40:07.78 | Chris Zapata | and that's it. |
| 01:40:28.32 | Craig Hill | Next slide. Thank you. So as you know, the city has historically been very proactive in at least looking and acknowledging. the pension liability. like to suggest for those that don't live in this space full time is, you know, the pension really has two things. It's one, it's a big dollar amount, you know, it's your biggest liability that you have. that seems for some magical reason to change every year, depending on what Sacramento and what CalPERS decides their calculations are going to generate. The more important thing from a budget perspective is how much is that payment, right? Unlike a mortgage that you pay on your house, which you unless it's a variable rate, You know? month after month what you're going to pay, In the case of your CalPERS liability, it's moving every year based on what CalPERS is telling you your liability needs to be paid or the amortization needs to be made. So when we think about this from a budget perspective. We're not so much focusing on what that big total UAL, unfunded actuarial liability that you hear about. It's more about what is this payment structure that people are, or that Sacramento is telling you, you need to be paying attention to. And as soon as alluded to that, they've programmed and the city staff has programmed in for the proposed 2000 26, 27, 25, 26 budget, sorry, an amount that we know is going to be due. It's really those future years that we wanna talk about. So we'll get into a little bit about, you know, where do we think that's going? And then we'll talk about the assets that you have and how you might wanna think about this kind of a long term from a policy perspective. So next slide, please. One more. So as you probably all are aware, the way that the UAL works or your pension program works is you have assets that you've been contributing that are sitting with CalPERS being invested. And as the value of those assets goes up, it's matched against what your projected liabilities are going to be or the amount of payments you're going to be making to retirees. You can see down below in this graph, the blue numbers are the returns that CalPERS was doing. And obviously, when they do really well, your unfunded liability goes down, right, that the gray bars go down. When they don't meet their bogey, that rate proceeds to climb. So it's kind of a reverse of what you might think about. Next slide will show you what this really means over the long term. So here is some history. to climb. So it's kind of a reverse of what you might think about. The next slide will show you what this really means over the long term. So here is some historical data and projected data for what the city has been paid. And this is the pressure point that we've talked to council about in the past. And and this has certainly been something that finance has been critically aware of. You know, the payments as early as 2018 were down in a million and a half dollars. And yet today we're talking about programming three and a half million dollars a year budget, right? It's a $2 million increase since 2018. So, and we know. all things being equal, and if even if CalPERS can meet its targeted investment returns, that you're going to see that number continue to climb as you see those blue bars up into the $4 million a year range. So when we think about your budget process, while maybe not anything we want to deal with today for this a proposed budget. know that this is a climbing liability that isn't going to go away unless, miraculously, CalPERS starts knocking it out of the park, the stock market does great, and they actually exceed their expectations. For every year that they exceed the 6.8 right now, those bars actually go down. As an example, If you see from the orange line right there, In the event they were to change one of their assumptions, which is we think that We're not going to continue to make 6.8% a year. We're going to go down to 6.5. We just did some sensitivity analysis for you. And what you can see is just that one assumption change is would impact your payments to where they would effectively go up $500,000 a year, right? They would be you would be talking about peaking out in the next couple years at four and a half million. And for a budget your size, that's a substantial increase. So We want to just be sensitive to what can happen with either performance, missing performance, or with changes in the assumptions. Next slide. We also wanted to quantify for everybody's education, really, you know, what does it mean? So if they were, for instance, to change their assumption, this is the blue box from 6.8 to 6.5, it would actually increase your UAL from 37 million that we think it is right now up to about 42. 42. And again, We don't think you need to focus on that big dollar amount. It's, okay, what does that mean for my max payments? They would increase from $4.2 million to about $4.6 million. So it's a $400,000 a year increase just by one assumption change. Likewise, if CalPERS doesn't meet their targeted investment returns, this is the green box, you can see that In a worst case scenario, they actually go to zero. They could go negative. They've had years with negative. But let's just say they had one year at negative. or at 0%, that would increase from 37 million to 43 million. So you can see how quickly, you know, one bad return, would do. It would increase your effective payments about $700,000 a year. So we always like to do this sensitivity analysis just in context of what your budget is, you know, to somebody like San Francisco, These numbers don't move the needle to the city of Sausalito. They do. Right. So it's, it's an important, important fact to figure. Next slide, please. So as we talk about Again, long-term, what are your management strategies? Well, the number one thing that the city did early on was set up its section 115 trust. And that allowed you then to to park money into a pension reserve, if you will. And While it is locked up legally and only available for pension payments, whether it's your normal cost payments or your UAL payments, it is effectively, you know, promote or basically guaranteed to go towards one of those two things. Next slide. So there are a number of strategies that cities and public agencies throughout California look at. The city currently is doing two of these right now, which is great. The first one is you have historically paid, prepaid at the beginning of each fiscal year, the amount due. And from a cash flow perspective, yes, that draws your fund balance down a little bit early in August or in July. CalPERS appreciates taking that money early and actually gives you a discount or gives you credit. Um, for making that payment early. So it's a prudent and most of the cities that we work with do it if they've got fund balance that affords that. And you certainly have that with your other reserve policies that allow you to maintain a good cash balance. The other options that people will often look at is, you know, negotiating cost sharing with employee groups and or Um, going to CalPERS and asking for a fresh start. And, you know, real quickly, what does that mean? You saw the hump, you saw those blue lines and how that is kind of an odd amortization schedule. you can go to CalPERS and ask them, to do a fresh start, which means can you just roll all of these little individual UAL liabilities together and create kind of a level mortgage payment for us. The bad news is it's a compressed period of time. So the payment actually goes up from what you're paying now. So unless you can budget for it, we don't see too many cities actually implementing the Fresh Start. You do get benefits from it because obviously you're going to pay it off sooner, so there's less interest that you're effectively accruing on that. But it is really a cash flow tool that we really want to stress test your budget and your projected budgets over the next five to ten years to see whether it is something that makes any sense. The other thing that you use is your this 115 or your pension cash reserves to make additional payments or to |
| 01:48:51.47 | Chris Zapata | But it is. |
| 01:49:11.68 | Craig Hill | contribute one-time dollars to CalPERS to buy down the debt. Right. Think about it like a car. You can always go in the bank and say, well, you know, here's an extra five grand. Can you pay down my. my loan balance that I have on my car. And we'll talk about this a little bit more because this is something we want to leave you with tonight just in terms of a tool and something to ponder really over the next year in terms of how do we want to use this 115 trust? You know, you've got about $4 million in it. And it is earning interest. And you're at a point in time where you can start to think about, well, It's not really set it and forget it, right? Because it's not doing anything for you other than accruing interest right now. But do you want to program it to supplement or to partially pay some of your future year's payments? Or do you maybe want to just use it to, you know, give it to CalPERS to buy down your debt and then have it, you know, affect your future payment stream? So next slide, please. So when we talk about the options, I'm going to just real quickly go through four scenarios for you just to kind of give you a magnitude. But the idea really is, what do we do with this cash? You've got it right now invested. It is going to move over to, as an administrator, over into CalPERS. You've had it with PARS. You've actually had it and invested in a very conservative investment strategy. And that's been earning some money. It's not as high as some of the more aggressive options that they had. But again, if you're not doing anything, you're not contributing to it, it's just earning interest. Next slide. So the main, Thing we want to start in, and again, there'll be four scenarios here, but the main issue is the benefit of you having this 115 is huge. because simple math, allows you to kind of make the payment to Sacramento or to CalPERS every year from two sources going forward, you could say, We're only going to budget. that orange line. Right. That's every year we want to just only schedule in our side of our budget that amount. We know that CalPERS is going to be asking for effectively the top, the light blue bar that's above. but we're going to draw from our pension reserve to make that Delta or make that difference. And so you're effectively managing your budget process and your budget payments to PERSs All right. Bye. using up all of the trust over the next Call it 10 years. And so what does that mean? You're going to draw down 4.9 with interest earnings over that time. but you're managing your cash flow, you're managing your budget and you're making this pension portion of your budget. stable year over year, right? So this is a good analysis to see And to the credit of the council and of the city, you have enough right now. to effectively freeze your payments at 3.5 million a year, all things being equal and CalPERS doing what they're supposed to do for the next eight years. Next slide. If you were to, let's say, get a little bit more of an investment return on that trust while you're sitting around. it would effectively drop that payment to 3.4 million. Again, sensitivity analysis here. That's all we're talking about is same trust amount, $4 million. But what if it earned a little bit higher of a return than you historically earned? You can see that that effectively is worth about $100,000 a year to you. So something to Think about in terms of an investment strategy with the 4 million. Next slide. A hot. Under these next two scenarios, this is where you actually, instead of using it to help make the payment, you're actually going to give all of it to CalPERS at once. and just buy down the debt? And then how does that affect your payments going forward? And you can see that's the difference between the solid line and the bars, right? So you would give them the money, the 4 million, it would adjust a number of the basis, and you would start getting a schedule from CalPERS going forward that would be something less than what was projected. And you can see it's still going to be going up, but it is starting at a much lower point. Finally, the last scenario is you're actually getting, you're giving them the money and you're telling them which basis or which portion of the debt you want to be paid off. This is a little bit more strategic. I'm sorry, next slide. where you can see you're taking all of the savings in the next 10 years, not at all in those following years. So with that, I have one table that we don't need to go through, which is the actual numbers behind all these graphs. If you go to the next slide, and I will give it back to the city manager. |
| 01:54:33.44 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Thank you, Craig. So these are the conversations that all cities must have, certainly with the budget and this city with respect to its 115 trust and trying to get some direction from the council and how to approach this. And so this is not a tonight request. It's more of an information share so that as we go into the coming years where that hump is characterized, it starts to occur, that we, in fact, have a strategy that the city council is behind. The one thing I will also tell you is that in Jesus' presentation, one of the things that he mentioned was some debt coming off the books. In 2030, the certificate of participation debt comes off the books for the city. That's about $600,000 a year. So that's future revenue. And the one thing I really want to stress is we've been working and trying to get to a model of a 10-year financial plan or tool. And, you know, I think, you know, we've kind of had fits and starts, but we need to follow through on that. And, you know, it would be somebody that would be able to do that internally, which has been kind of difficult. So more than likely, what I'm hearing is we might want to consult for that service and develop a 10-year modeling tool that way. That concludes the information that we have, Mayor and Council. |
| 01:55:54.66 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I'm going to start with questions. If you can stay there. Can you go back to slide 30, Noelle? |
| 01:56:10.72 | Steven Woodside | One more back. Okay, that's it. Yeah, that's it. So first I want to address, as part of my question, I want to address a comment by I'm not. Interim Director Nava regarding the budgeting process. So you mentioned that the budget does not include any monies specifically allocated towards CalPERS other than our payment that is due at the beginning of the year. And I will tell you that has been the practice. When in 2018, we adopted as a council a smoothing strategy whereby we don't budget anything more than the payment each year But at the end of the year, we take our reserves and invest them into the 115 Trust. And the reason I asked you to pull up this slide is that even back in 2018, our predictions in terms of the zenith of pension obligations were for years 29 through 34, those six years. And so our goal in 2018 was to, and at that time our surpluses were running about a million dollars a year. And so our goal was to build the 115 trust up to six million so that we would then have a million dollars to smooth that four million. obligation in years 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 40, down to 3 million, which is more manageable, especially since we knew some of our debt would be paid off in 2030, which is, you know, then we have that additional money that we're right now using towards debt to again reduce the general fund obligation. And so your scenarios, um, propose not not increasing the 115 trust anymore other than through interest earned. and With that approach, your scenario 1A, which I think is at slide 35, shows net payments of $3.5 million rather than the $3 million that I think we were hoping for back in 2018. Now, obviously a lot has happened since then. So I'm amazed that any of this remains even remotely relevant. Thank you, Burles and Wells, for doing a great job of prognosticating. So why? would we Not. provide more certainty, why would we not keep that commitment to build the 115 Trust to $6 million, rather than just stopping that safeguard at $6 million. particularly given the volatility of the CalPERS THE FAMILY IS rate of return that you discussed this evening. So why would we not be more conservative in our approach? Why would we stop? Because none of your scenarios contemplate carrying out the the policy adopted by the council in 2018. |
| 01:59:31.23 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, I can answer that question because I think Craig wasn't here in 2018 when this was made, nor was I. But I think if you want to up the ante in the CalPERS Trust, I heard two ways to do it. One is go to a more aggressive investment strategy. And maybe you do, maybe you don't. But the other way is you look at your budget this year. You have... $4 million in unassigned cash. |
| 01:59:57.37 | Steven Woodside | But our expenses exceed our revenues by $3 million this year alone. |
| 02:00:02.03 | Chris Zapata | And we've budgeted for that. And that's been part of how we've observed those costs. But if you wanted to add more to that $4 million, that $3.9 million, you could take $2 million out of your unassigned reserve and get there. |
| 02:00:14.04 | Steven Woodside | the policy was to take surplus. So this year we're looking at a surplus of 700. And there are lots of possible uses of that surplus. But my question to... the Consultant. |
| 02:00:27.05 | Chris Zapata | Let me add a little wrinkle to your comment about only surplus. That is surplus. That's an accumulation of surplus. That's what that $4 million represents. |
| 02:00:36.27 | Steven Woodside | We have for decades maintained a consistent unassigned fund balance beyond reserves in our general fund. So that would be a change in policy. |
| 02:00:47.10 | Chris Zapata | Well, I disagree with you respectfully. The policy you set was 25 percent. And every year you can look at the unassigned fund balance as you did this year with the capital improvement program. And you can suggest we want to take more out of it and put it into those infrastructure needs. If you wanted to make pensions a priority and get to six million dollars, I'm saying you could do that tomorrow. |
| 02:01:07.84 | Steven Woodside | So I understand we can get there. We could put 700 into it this year. The goal was to have it at $6 million by 2829, since that's when the zenith reaches $4 million. And that's when the smoothing would occur. My question is, given the volatility of the CalPERS investment portfolio and the the huge variance in terms of what the UAL turns out to be and And therefore, our annual obligation turns out to be why not increase the 115 trust to hedge against that volatility? |
| 02:01:46.40 | Craig Hill | Yeah, no, it's a great question. And, you know, from a policy recommendation side, we always are advocating that. for Uh, putting as much as possible into that 115, right? Because it really does, go a long way. towards addressing the unforeseen One of the things that we briefly touched on in the slide was CalPERS is going through and going to be doing a study in 2025. that could very easily come back with some assumption changes with, like I said earlier, a switch, you could have a $5 million increase in your UAL and your payments could go up $400,000 or $500,000 a year. So it's, We are concerned and we do believe that the. the you've got competing. needs, right? Is it your capital program? or is it your pension liabilities? regardless of what those pension policies may have been, you know, we have a lot of cities that set some pretty aggressive objectives and whether they're able to get money into those, into those trusts as quickly or to the levels they want, is, you know, that's the unknown. If you were to ask a recommendation, we certainly, without knowing any other prioritizations, say, you know, if you can make that 6 million, that's, you can see already through our sensitivity analysis, the benefit of even just having the 4 million, Add 50% to that and it's going to only, you know, increase the benefit proportionally. So, you know, it's simple math, right? This isn't magic. So it's... Uh, By going from four to six, that's huge. from having that pension trust earn a higher return than it has, that's also going to be a big positive for you. So there are a number of factors that we know unfortunately are going to be offset. by future liability that's just going to almost be mandated on you through any kind of assumption change that CalPERS makes. Okay. So, |
| 02:03:57.25 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so that brings me to my next question, which is going to sound snarky. And could you go to slide 37, Noelle? It's called Scenario 2A, 20-Year Amortization. Next. There we go. So this additional discretionary payment where we take our money and give it over to CalPERS now. Why in the world would we do that given their really dismal track record of managing their investments? Because now we don't have a hedge. Now we don't have a hedge against our future investors. annual liability. We're taking that hedge and giving it away. So now, if things go haywire, we have no hedge against CalPERS mismanagement, and they have a track record of mismanagement. I'm looking at a five-year average of retirement funds, CalPERS for the period 2019 to 2024. CalPERS is at 6.6%. Marin is at 8.3%. Sonoma is at 9.5%. So why would we give Thank you. CalPERS is at 6.6%. Marin is at 8.3%. Sonoma is at 9.5%. So why would we give, why would we choose, you know, I think that Joe Schmo instead of Warren Buffett to manage our investment, our really precious and so carefully compiled |
| 02:05:27.02 | Craig Hill | 20s. |
| 02:05:27.68 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 02:05:28.10 | Craig Hill | It's a great question. And we have clients that are on both sides of that. We have clients who refuse to give any more than they have to to Sacramento because they say, you know, we can do To your point, we can We can invest it higher. If you're thinking about it from a pure finance perspective, if you think your trust is going to actually earn something less than what their dismal rate is, then it's an arbitrage play, right? It's like, well, even if they're doing bad, but they're getting six and a half and we're in the trust earning four, okay, that's two and a half 250 basis points. That's an advantage. |
| 02:06:10.61 | Steven Woodside | And I agree, and we are. We gave direction months ago to move our 115 from PARS to CalPERS because CalPERS, historically does better than PARS. And so absolutely I agree with you. If it's underperforming, then you seek a different alternative. All right, well... our vice mayor is new to this whole thing. So thank you so much for the, really to our city manager, interim finance director, and you. for a really thorough, presentation, it's hard to sit through some of it when I'm squirming at not really following the sort of conservative... in my view, fiscally responsible approach that we struggled to adopt years ago. But it's very informative, difficult as it is to see the real fluctuations and the real unpredictability of the CalPERS model. |
| 02:07:15.07 | Ian Sobieski | If I can, a couple questions and maybe comments on this part of it that I'm hopeful will really get into the meat of this year's budget because that presentation from Jesus was just magnificent, and thanks to the city manager for bringing him in. It was in plain English, understandable. It wasn't just numbers, so thank you very much. And thank you for your presentation. I think I agree that managing the trust and making sure we have adequate funds in the trust to smooth out that peaking, which is the term I'm used to hearing, is the goal. Whether we need to put another $700,000 into it now or not, I'm hesitant to suggest that, and I'm curious because it is true that trust like that then is locked in for that purpose alone. So we have no other flexibility to spend it on, perhaps another need that at the moment we think may be more important at the moment. So that's kind of my question and comment. And as to volatility, I think it was just a couple years ago CalPERS lost money. It was in the negative. So it does fluctuate quite a bit. And we want to avoid that. So I agree with the mayor that this scenario 2A is probably not something we would ever choose. But managing this for the future So I guess the question is, as you understand our budget and given the expenditures that you think we're going to be making, will we be able to make our expenditure for retirement this year and the next year without adding, if you will, from the general fund into the |
| 02:09:03.70 | Craig Hill | Certainly under the current budget, proposed budget for 2526, that should not be a problem. Just to give context to where this analysis is, I'll call it volatile, when we started having conversations with staff |
| 02:09:10.23 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:09:22.26 | Craig Hill | I'm going to call it two or three months ago. I'm not sure. CalPERS was in the negative for the current fiscal year in terms of their investment poor. The stock market had crashed and we were just my shop was going crazy going, we don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but everybody is going to get destroyed in their, you know, next year's contributions or in 26, 27. So, and very quickly, right? Like everybody else's retirement accounts, it's stock markets kind of adjusted and corrected itself and CalPERS right now, we're literally 30 days away from knowing how they did for the current fiscal year But we're back into breathing room. So, If we were having this conversation, two months ago, I would, have a different tone. I'm not suggesting I know what the returns going to be, but it is something that does make it tough to think about. what 2627. impact is gonna be on your budget. The main takeaway, I think for everybody in the room on you know, out there listening is that because you do have funds set aside, whether it's 4 million or $4.7 or $6 million or whatever you get that trust fund built to, at a minimum, you're going to be able to throw money at whatever problem you have in these next couple years. We would love to shave the peak like we showed under those earlier scenarios through the entire thing before it starts to fall off. But in a worst case scenario, you do have that emergency fund that if for some and CalPERS spiked a million dollars in one year, you could absolutely as, CalPERS spiked a million dollars in one year, you could absolutely, as a council say, I want a million out of that trust being applied next year. It might mess up smoothing all the way out, but it'll get you through that calamity that you would see from that one year or couple of years of bad returns. |
| 02:11:20.05 | Ian Sobieski | A quick question. As the numbers go down, can you explain in plain English why we're seeing a decline as we go forward? |
| 02:11:27.95 | Craig Hill | Yeah, it's actually a great question. So if we actually gave you the real graph, those blue bars would be made up of multiple liabilities. So every year that CalPERS does great, you actually get a negative you know, almost literally below zero where it's you, you made more than you were supposed to. So we're buying down your debt every year that they have a bad return. It's a new loan. Right. Or it's a new amount. So they get layered on top of each other. And what's happened is all of your projected liabilities that were older, are stacked and that's the peak. Now that everybody's PEPRA going forward, you're not really creating new. UAL from your existing And so those later years, it's just, there might only be 10, what we call basis in those, whereas you'll have 20 or 25. in those earlier years. So it's really like stacking multiple equity lines on your house, right? And some of them get paid off sooner rather than later. |
| 02:12:36.22 | Ian Sobieski | So those peaks are due to, for example, prior employees when benefits were enhanced and made retroactive? Yeah. |
| 02:12:44.66 | Craig Hill | Yeah. Every year your portfolio gets reevaluated by CalPERS and it's like, oh, this year? |
| 02:12:45.13 | Ian Sobieski | No. |
| 02:12:51.98 | Craig Hill | sorry, you know, you now have $2 million more liability They stack that on and it had its own amortization period. |
| 02:12:58.82 | Ian Sobieski | Okay, and then there's a second tier for current employees who are newly hired that don't have that same benefits level. |
| 02:12:59.10 | Craig Hill | Amen. And then there's a- |
| 02:13:07.96 | Craig Hill | So PEPRA, I don't think you have any PEPRA liability, right? UAL related to your PEPRA employees? |
| 02:13:15.62 | Chris Zapata | It's a mix of classic and pepper. |
| 02:13:17.77 | Craig Hill | Yeah. But generally speaking, the normal payment, we're just talking about the UAL payments, right? The city also makes a normal payment, which does look more like a mortgage. And it's tied to basically your current employees. And with all of those that are PEPRA, you're pretty much making 100% of what is due. You're not short. So you're not. You're not creating new UALs. |
| 02:13:40.06 | Ian Sobieski | and reading. We're not adding liability. Right. We're covering it as we go forward. Exactly. Okay. |
| 02:13:42.74 | Craig Hill | Bye. Thank you. you |
| 02:13:44.97 | Steven Woodside | Exactly. |
| 02:13:46.46 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:13:47.44 | Steven Woodside | Councilmember Blaustein had a follow-on. |
| 02:13:49.76 | Melissa Blaustein | That's where we're hopping at your hand raised too. So I don't care. You can go first and I'll go after you. |
| 02:13:53.97 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 02:13:54.00 | Melissa Blaustein | Go ahead. |
| 02:13:54.39 | Jill Hoffman | Sometimes at the end you don't see. So thank you for the presentation. But I'd like to go back to slide 29. And just as a luminary. There you go. There you go. So it's just a preliminary question. The discount rate, or what we call really the return rate, return on investment rate, is just set once a year, and it's set, I think it's June 30th. It's just like a snapshot. It's what's the return rate on this date, and that's what you get for the full year. So for this year, I don't know, you know, have you done a projection on what you think it's going to be for this year? |
| 02:14:39.97 | Craig Hill | Well, as I mentioned, Thank you. |
| 02:14:41.55 | Jill Hoffman | is. |
| 02:14:41.62 | Craig Hill | as of a couple of months ago, we thought they might be zero. |
| 02:14:44.73 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, it was going to be a bloodbath because the stock market was so low, right? |
| 02:14:45.89 | Craig Hill | I think it's a But we do not have a current estimate of where things are going to end up at the end of the month. |
| 02:14:52.72 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, so that's part of the volatility of the stock market that we're at the mercy of this idiotic system that CalPERS set up. So if the discount rate was set in January when the stock market was rocking and rolling, we would be in Clover. But since it's June 30th, we're not. So this is an interesting chart. So, and the issue is, if you look at 2021, all of a sudden, our liability went down from $34 million in one year, went down $10 million, because the discount rate was, the stock market was a great year. So, we went down to $25 million. We went down from $34 million to $24 million. So, our city manager and i had a very uh very strong conversation that year about can we re refinance all of our or most of our unfunded liability because we would have saved $10 million if we had been able to react fast enough to go to refinance that. And we tried to scramble and do that, and it was just too late in the game and we couldn't do it. So a strategy that we might want to talk about is if we have another slingshot year, and it happens to be on June 30th, and our liability goes down $10 million or more, do we have a strategy in place to substantially refinance our unfunded pension liability to get us out of this game so that's something a strategy we might want to have in a capsule ready to go if we hit that mark again and that might be something we want to use our 115 trust to help us fund and how else we can pull from whatever other strategies might be out there. We just couldn't get off the mark fast enough in 2021 and pull it together. And policy-wise, whether or not we wanted to go through that process. But we would have saved our $10 million had we been able to get that um going forward i um i think it might be a good exercise for us to discuss you know i wouldn't want to go too much below what we have currently that we discussed um with a 24 we have the 25 percent um uh policy um i think that's that's you know that's the hard deck that we're never going to go below. But then we also have the other 4.6 million. Some of that to plus up our unfunded pension liability. I'm sorry, our 115 trust is not a bad strategy. And keep in mind, this, sorry, chart 30, that's just an estimate. So if we could go, sorry, Paige. Yeah, that next page. This is just an estimate. You don't know what wild swings are coming in the future. So we could have another. I wish we had another further, like all the way back. Like in 2018, right, we had another chart that showed these other incredibly wild swings of the stock market that went way below zero, right? |
| 02:17:48.33 | Chris Zapata | to be able to get the |
| 02:17:55.82 | Jill Hoffman | and way above so you have these incredibly wild swings which is how the unfunded pension liability started so every time you have a wild swing you add millions of dollars to your unfunded pension liability so these wild swings and the slingshots that you see going back and forth are how you get these millions of dollars added so um you know we have, obviously, risks that we have to plan for, but this is probably one of our biggest financial risks, is our unfunded pension liability and how this has been set up by the CalPERS system that nobody actually foresaw, but this is what has landed in our lap that we're trying to plan for, that we've been planning for, that I've been since I've been on the council for 10 years and trying to smooth out that risk. |
| 02:18:46.58 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:18:46.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:46.83 | Melissa Blaustein | you Yes, go ahead. And before we go back to the wonderful general budget presentation, which we also have a lot of conversation to have about that. |
| 02:18:47.05 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, go ahead. |
| 02:18:55.40 | Melissa Blaustein | I really appreciate that we're having a proactive management discussion about the 115 trust and our liabilities. I really want to get a better understanding of... And you've presented a couple of scenarios here, which is great, but like the trade-offs between investing for smoothing versus making that additional discretionary payment given the risk associated with CalPERS management of these funds and also the swings that Councilmember Hoffman brings up because you know you projected up to seven million in savings under the 20-year ADP but up to five to eight if we do smoothing is there any possibility for some sort of hybrid option where we direct a portion like 2 million to the 115 trust ADP with CalPERS to shorter amortization, 11 to 12 years, while leaving like 2 million in the OPEB. Is that something, I didn't see a hybrid scenario in your projected possible scenarios, but I, would wonder if that was feasible or something like that. |
| 02:19:51.55 | Craig Hill | Yeah, that's actually a great. Great comment. And... While this was intended to be educational and informative, we do a lot of work with cities where we're really tunneling down into those hybrid strategies, where one, you're building out some pretty sophisticated modeling on how much more can we contribute into the 115. Two, what do we think that 115 is going to earn so that we can know what that fund balance is going to do in it? Three, how much of it do we actually need to draw down to give one-time dollars to CalPERS to get our bogey or get our projected new payment to a certain target? So we kind of reverse engineer the actual hybrid solution. |
| 02:20:33.57 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:20:33.60 | Ian Sobieski | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:20:39.37 | Craig Hill | kind of based on where we want that payment to look like, right? It's not an all or none solution. It is. hey, we know structurally that the city's budget is going to be doing this over the next 10 years for, you know, either increasing police or CIP or whatever it is, right? But you have a really good five to 10-year financial plan. And then you say, okay, now what tools can we use to just offset the pension piece to help fit us inside of that goal? And it could be, oh, you take 3 million of the four million. and you give it as an ADP, or it could be the opposite. You only need to do a million. Let's keep the other three. Let it earn. some assumed return and we're actually going to be better off. |
| 02:21:27.48 | Melissa Blaustein | Is that something you could work with us to help model going forward? Okay, and City Manager, I know that we have asked you from the dais for a longer-term 10-year projection of our budget. So would it be possible in the preparing of the 10-year projections to work closely with your firm to figure out what a strategy would be? or when would we have to determine that? When would we do we have enough time to come up with a potential hybrid strategy for this budgeting cycle going forward that would be really beneficial because it sounds like that's an approach that makes a lot of sense. |
| 02:21:57.01 | Chris Zapata | uh, Craig and I have exchanged an email about this service in terms of the 10-year tool and factoring that in. I think if you want to try to work on your pension for 25-26, I wouldn't recommend doing it in the next two weeks. I'd recommend doing it maybe in the next six months. And then I think that will give us the time to do the work right. |
| 02:22:26.53 | Melissa Blaustein | And Craig, we could make those changes at any time, right? So if we decide now as a result of the budgeting decision to put $4 million into the OPEB, then we could do that 10-year analysis together and six months down the road, we could take that 100%. |
| 02:22:36.94 | Craig Hill | Mid-year budget adjustment for the contribution. Absolutely. We do that all the time. |
| 02:22:40.45 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. |
| 02:22:40.80 | Craig Hill | you |
| 02:22:40.87 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, great. Thank you for that. |
| 02:22:44.18 | Steven Woodside | So I know that we're going to have an audit and then a mid-year budget adjustment once we know what the surplus in our 24-25 budget was, expenditures. We're projecting that to be around 700. I think the time to have the conversation is, about how we invest in our how we use our 115 trust and how we invest where our investment strategy is moving forward, that's probably the appropriate time to do that. I don't know that we have alignment on this council to include any ADP policy. So I think we would need to see scenarios in order to especially given the volatility and the inability of CalPERS to manage monies. So if we invest in ADP, we lose any hedge other than our unassigned fund balance against zero years by CalPERS. |
| 02:23:50.90 | Melissa Blaustein | But just to clarify, I would like us to see a full assessment and see what we know. Scenarios. We would see scenarios. I just want to be. |
| 02:23:54.60 | Steven Woodside | We said scenarios. We said scenarios. I just want to be clear that there's no consensus yet to – adopt an ADP strategy. But we should definitely look at scenarios and understand the risks and benefits of all approaches. All right, so let's turn back to the budget. I had just a couple of questions on that. |
| 02:24:24.21 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you very much, by the way. |
| 02:24:30.34 | Steven Woodside | So one of the slides in your presentation It is, Noelle, if you could go to slide. |
| 02:24:47.23 | Steven Woodside | Okay. 21. |
| 02:24:56.66 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, so the slide that we had in our packet had the unassigned reserve at $4.5 million, and had the And you have it here at 9.9 million. Our packet had total available in emergency at 10 million, and this is 15.1 million. So I wanted to understand the reason for the big delta. |
| 02:25:17.54 | Jesus Nava | Mm-hmm. a recalculation of our, uh, general fund expenditures and, and revenues and the contributions to the CIP. So that's what did, what we did. So in a sense, um, there's going to be additional more money left at the end of the year. So it brings up that unassigned fund balance higher. And therefore with the council reserve set aside a 5.5 and the additional on assigned reserve of a 9.9, you get that 15.1. Now what we don't have built in here yet is the overall contribution to the CIP, which will have to come out from this amount as well. |
| 02:25:46.60 | Chris Zapata | that we're going to have |
| 02:26:03.45 | Steven Woodside | And then I wanted to talk about- |
| 02:26:06.22 | Jesus Nava | And I'm looking at about 5.3 million, which is the difference between the 16.6 CIP and the 11.3, which we know we have funded. |
| 02:26:16.80 | Steven Woodside | Understood. And so in order to carry out this very ambitious CIP program in the upcoming fiscal year we're going to need additional help. Hiring. maybe two more project managers to help. facilitate all of these projects that we're asking staff to undertake and manage. Is that included in your budget? |
| 02:26:39.09 | Jesus Nava | Yes, we've included $450,000 as part of the Measure 8 money in the CIP for contractual assistance for the CIP program. you Thank you. |
| 02:26:49.00 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:26:49.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:49.19 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:26:49.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:49.27 | Jesus Nava | you So it's not salary, it's contracted hours. |
| 02:26:52.83 | Steven Woodside | And then speaking of salaries, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but right now various of our departments have – um, are seeking to hire to fulfill their current slate of employees, authorized positions. So is your budget based on all authorized positions, whether they are currently filled or not? |
| 02:27:20.51 | Jesus Nava | I believe with the exception of the police department positions which you have set aside. |
| 02:27:24.45 | Steven Woodside | Well, there are two frozen positions, but there are four vacancies in the police department right now, so as I understand it. So is your budget based on is just not budgeting for the two frozen. |
| 02:27:42.17 | Jesus Nava | Yeah, the actual budget is based on the $2.8 million that's budgeted this year. So in going back and looking at the payroll history, and in fact, we sat down with the police department and the chief, and we analyzed those salary numbers, did the projections for the end of the year, and calculated that there'll be about half a million in salary savings just alone in that budget, which then again we would bring back into the fund balance. |
| 02:28:05.85 | Steven Woodside | but at the same time, you know, we're every other year we're negotiating new contracts. And so How do you factor that? Are you including any cost of living or any of that type of calculation in the budget? Or will that be a mid-year adjustment after we've adopted? |
| 02:28:24.14 | Jesus Nava | after we've adopted. 3% is built in. |
| 02:28:26.64 | Steven Woodside | 3% is built. |
| 02:28:27.55 | Jesus Nava | Thank you. |
| 02:28:27.67 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, yeah, and that's amid your adjustment, and it doesn't include the city council. I wanted to make sure you knew that. |
| 02:28:34.84 | Jesus Nava | All salaries are adjusted by 3% with the exception of the city council, which has a set salary. Well, you have $300 for that. |
| 02:28:38.27 | Steven Woodside | Okay. for our volunteer work? Okay. |
| 02:28:46.69 | Jesus Nava | We've adjusted all the salary and benefit line items by that 3%. |
| 02:28:51.43 | Steven Woodside | Okay, and then speaking of 3%, so that was the CPI last year. We're at 2.3% this year. I understand from prior conversations you used a 3%. um, escalation essentially on expenses. |
| 02:29:06.04 | Unknown | Correct. |
| 02:29:06.41 | Steven Woodside | anticipated expenses. So you took our expenses from this year and you escalated that by 3%. |
| 02:29:12.39 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:29:12.76 | Steven Woodside | Okay. And then I noticed that in one of your charts, our sales tax revenues went way down. we are down from 67 to 62. um, |
| 02:29:27.64 | Jesus Nava | So there's two sales tax numbers. There's the Measure L sales tax number, and then there's the general fund sales tax number. |
| 02:29:32.54 | Steven Woodside | It's the general fund sales tax number. Yes, general fund sales tax. |
| 02:29:35.67 | Jesus Nava | And yes, overall sales tax is predicted to settle down, level out, and possibly even reduce itself in the upcoming year. So we've taken a very conservative number. We double-checked it with our consultant, who is recommending the 2.67. That's the most conservative number. |
| 02:29:53.76 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, so it went down between 24-25, but then you predicted an increase in 26. |
| 02:30:01.39 | Jesus Nava | Based on current collections, yeah. Because we know what 10 months have produced and we're projecting two more months of revenue as per the prior year. So even though there may be a slowing down, we're projecting that it'll be pretty close to what we receive next year. And again, the difficulty with that sales tax payment is that it gets received almost 90 days after. So you're gonna be waiting, we're right now looking at payments that were made in the first quarter of this year and analyzing those. Projecting that final payment, which will come in late August or September, you know, is a difficult thing to do, especially in an economy that seems to be slowing down. So the most conservative thing to do was to lower the estimate in order to not have a shortage in the budget. |
| 02:30:53.67 | Steven Woodside | I also noticed a decrease in our population permit revenues. for this year, and that you are predicting an increase next year, but still not back up to what they were in last year. |
| 02:31:11.41 | Jesus Nava | Yeah, so those permits, we looked at actual collections, and then based on the fee increases that were adopted with a maximum of no more than 5% in any fiscal year, we made the adjustments. |
| 02:31:22.97 | Steven Woodside | I see. OK. And then our franchise fees went down. |
| 02:31:28.67 | Jesus Nava | Yeah, that's the expectation at this point. My understanding is that solid waste franchise fees are frozen at a certain amount, so they're not the increase. So we kept those flat. And my understanding is that the others are going to be just as flat as well. So again, a very conservative. We don't want to be caught with a shortage in revenue. So those numbers are extremely conservative and double-checked by our consultants as well. |
| 02:31:56.28 | Steven Woodside | Okay, and then I... one last question, which is on fines. So our fines were 290, they're estimated to go up to 460 and so you're budgeting for 474 that seems like a big delta |
| 02:32:10.28 | Jesus Nava | Well, you'll see that in your first 10 months of collections, you actually collected in fines almost $326,000. So that's why we made the adjustments. |
| 02:32:21.12 | Steven Woodside | Okay. And then finally, I do want to address ERAF. So last year, we did not budget for ERAF, and then it was a pleasant surprise when we were able to collect on ERAF, This year, I understand we are budgeting for ERAF, but it's based on Um, conversations with a county consultant and others who tells us it is, |
| 02:32:44.20 | Jesus Nava | With our sales tax consultant and our property tax consultant. |
| 02:32:46.60 | Steven Woodside | Yes. And so you've really vetted that decision with the consultant who's in the know who can tell you, there's very little likelihood that it will not come through this year even though i think the |
| 02:33:00.22 | Jesus Nava | I think the exact quote from the consultant was, well, you've received it in the past. I wouldn't know why you wouldn't budget for it again. And I would just budget it at the same amount that would be the actual comment. |
| 02:33:10.48 | Chris Zapata | And if I can, Mayor, to augment that, the conversation that I believe you were copied on along with Councilmember Hoffman was from the county of Marin, who gets $66 million in ERAF to distribute to the cities. And, you know, their watching of that amount is critical to their services. And so what we see is communication from them is that they were looking for the mayor revise to see if this was in fact going to be adjusted. It's June yesterday or today or was it yesterday. I got a note back saying all good so far. So we are having it in our budget at this time. |
| 02:33:48.01 | Steven Woodside | Great, thank you. Any other questions, Vice Mayor? |
| 02:33:51.82 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, let's pick up on the excess ERAF. That is, to your knowledge, that's something that has been paid to the city and budgeted in prior years, like for No. The last 10 or 15. |
| 02:34:04.14 | Chris Zapata | last week. you |
| 02:34:05.08 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:34:05.12 | Chris Zapata | Last year, which I can speak to, is we did not budget it. And when it came in, it was over half a million dollars. And so that was a real factor in our revenue projections to the good. So this year we were saying, is this real? It's been real, as Jesus mentioned, for many years. It'll be real again this year, whether it's again real the year after. That remains to be seen. |
| 02:34:27.97 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. And then you do have a slide with a lot of numbers that are, I guess it's called the all funds slide. I don't know if you can pick that one up. It's, I think, 16. |
| 02:34:37.96 | Jesus Nava | Thank you. |
| 02:34:41.21 | Jesus Nava | Yeah. That's a representation of the estimates at year end at this year and then the year end and next year after your budgets have filtered through them. That's what it does, it gives you a snapshot of what this year will end like and then after the budget is done for FY26, what the expectation for those fund balances will be on July 30th, 2026. |
| 02:35:05.78 | Ian Sobieski | OK, and the slide is now up. Those funds are listed by name. Some of those are restricted funds, such as the Thailand funds have to be spent in that area. The other funds, are there any of these that are true enterprise funds where the money has to be spent only on that particular subject or enterprise? |
| 02:35:31.89 | Jesus Nava | Well, I mean, that's an interesting question in the sense that cities set up enterprise funds to finance operations, mostly improvements. And in this case, you have a fund that is separated from the general fund. And I'm assuming that the purpose is so that you can record revenues and expenditures and isolate them so that you know what the enterprise is producing. But whether those revenues are restricted to that use, it's questionable. So in some cities, parking is part of the general fund. In other cities, they've separated it out. I'll give you a good example. When I went to go work in Burlingame, parking was part of the general fund and one of the biggest revenue sources for the general fund. The decision to break it out came about when the city council decided that we really want to improve our parking lots and the Burlingame Avenue all kind of at the same time. So give us a budget that covers your operations and your maintenance, that has some reserve, but more importantly, that can show the capital markets that there is sufficient revenue to borrow and repay that borrowing. So then that's when you set up your enterprise fund. So it's separate, it's intact, and it produces the performance that is necessary so that your private investors who may be buying bonds know that your finances are well secured and that you can repay back that debt. But in terms of simply operating it as an enterprise for purposes of the enterprise, you can do that. But then, you know, what is the return back to the general fund from having made that investment in that land and in those improvements? I mean, ultimately, that land belongs to the citizens of Sausalito, and they're the ones who should benefit from it. So you're not... |
| 02:37:25.61 | Chris Zapata | So you're not... Thank you. I can add to this, if I may, Vice Mayor and Counsel. The question of what an enterprise fund is in Sausalito, the sewer fund is a legal enterprise fund. The money that comes from the sewer fund can only be used for sewer-related expenses. Sausalito has a practice of calling these parking fund, MLK fund. They called them enterprise when I got here, and my response was they're not enterprise funds in the legal sense. They're what we now term as hybrid funds. It can be used obviously in the general fund, which we do, and in those facilities or locations that they come from. The Tide Lens Fund is a little bit different as well. That has restrictions that are legal. We have what I call a |
| 02:37:28.33 | Jesus Nava | Sure. |
| 02:38:15.63 | Chris Zapata | a robust portfolio of properties that are along the tight lines that generate money. And you can see from this all funds account, you know, there's over, what does it say? Two million, I can't see it, this is. Two million. So when you talk about MLK as an enterprise fund, you know, it's not. When you talk about the parking fund as an enterprise fund, it's not in the legal sense. |
| 02:38:43.10 | Ian Sobieski | So some of the funds would be used, for example, parking fund. We have a proposed budget that would put $1.2 million or so into parking lot one, but a balance of parking revenues are put into the general fund or a portion of them. Is that how I'm reading your budget? That's true. |
| 02:39:01.21 | Chris Zapata | That's cool. |
| 02:39:01.49 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:39:01.51 | Chris Zapata | I'm sorry. |
| 02:39:01.65 | Ian Sobieski | And has that been the case in this city over the last several years? |
| 02:39:07.08 | Chris Zapata | The city has a practice of taking its property, sales tax, TOT, franchise fees, other revenues collected, and then augmenting them with transfers from the, quote, unquote, from the parking fund, from the MLK fund, from the old city hall fund. And that's how you see the balancing of the budget occur from, I don't know, 2010 to present. when I got here in 2021, there was a $3.6 million or so transfer with COVID. In prior years, we've always had a transfer from these funds into the general fund, which is perfectly fine. It's legal. If you did that with the sewer fund for police expenses, that would be illegal. If you do that with the sewer fund for administrative costs, like maybe Kevin McGowan's, then there's a nexus to that service, and therefore it's not a problem. So I know that, you know, Sausalito has been entrepreneurial in developing these revenue streams, and kudos to the councils and administrations before us, because you do have money from the parking fund, from the MLK fund and from the old city hall fund that you can spin off to supplement the budget as a revenue transfer in, which is what we do. |
| 02:40:17.48 | Ian Sobieski | it. |
| 02:40:20.75 | Ian Sobieski | and that's what you're proposing this year. |
| 02:40:22.81 | Chris Zapata | That's what we proposed for the last 15 years. |
| 02:40:25.77 | Jesus Nava | I did at the end include two slides showing the 13 year past history of all the transfers if you care to see them. But again, just if you're interested in seeing them. But the practice is to bring in reserves or transfers into the general fund and you have the city has been doing it and at least for the 13 years that I went back and looked at. And like I said, we have a table showing all 13 years and the amounts of the transfers. Thank you. |
| 02:40:48.25 | Chris Zapata | you |
| 02:40:48.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:40:48.28 | Unknown | And like, |
| 02:40:48.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:40:52.61 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:40:54.25 | Steven Woodside | I had a follow on to that and then I'll go to you. We also in the city hall, and the MLK, we have obligations for those facilities. the MLK we owe debt. |
| 02:41:11.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:11.95 | Steven Woodside | And so, And the old city hall, we just had to undertake a number of repairs, which were quite expensive. And there was a reduction in revenues to offset the loss of business related to the inability to use the building. And then obviously our parking lots are in a shambles. We're fortunately investing some monies into our repairs this year, although not all needed repairs, are the transfers made after ensuring that all of the obligations for those facilities are |
| 02:41:53.94 | Jesus Nava | Well, again, cities do things differently. So here, when I went back and looked at the timing of the transfers, they're spread out throughout your fiscal year. I think the majority of them took place in February of this year. My practice has always been to do them at the end of the year. That's the last thing that you do. And I practice that for a couple of reasons. Number one, because it allows the host funds to build up their capital for the year. So that's one thing. And second, they're easier to track because that's the last thing you do on the budget. Or to close out the years, you transfer the amounts into the new funds, and you don't have this confusion. So one of the things that I had to do is as I looked at the revenues, I had to, well, why is it that in February, which is a short month, you had this big influx of revenue? So as I'm going through all the revenue postings in that month, I realize all the transfers were made. So then I got to back those transfers out in order to get a clear picture as to what the revenues really were in the month. So by doing it at the end of the year, it's one transaction. The funds have built up their capital for the year. And it's easier to track because they're not embedded within the revenue or the revenue collection numbers for the prior 12 months. Thank you. |
| 02:43:12.41 | Steven Woodside | But if you wait until the end of the year, and you are depending on those transfers to balance the budget, you are running the majority of your year. in a deficit spending I'm not sure. approach if you're only relying on the general fund absent the parking MLK. which really are part of the general fund, but if you treat those as separate and you're only looking at the general fund, When you have a $3 million delta between revenues and expenses. If you wait until the end of the year, you're operating at a deficit, which we can, since we have unassigned fund balance in the general fund. But when you make those transfers mid-year, as part of the mid-year adjustment after the audit results are in, Now you're... you're on paper balanced in your general fund, having made the transfers from the... |
| 02:44:10.02 | Jesus Nava | Yeah, I mean, it's one or the other. I'm just suggesting that there's less accounting when you do it. I agree with you. I fully agree. |
| 02:44:10.05 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Other fun. |
| 02:44:15.81 | Steven Woodside | I agree with you. I fully agree with you. I, yeah. |
| 02:44:18.56 | Jesus Nava | The other thing, too, about the transfers is that, you know, they're recorded as part of your financial audit as well. So they go in into the document and they're easier to then place into the document because that's one of the last things that you've done as well. But, you know, for all for cash purposes, we pool all funds together for purposes of cash. We don't distinguish where the money comes from. It all goes into the bank. It's all invested together. It's just then when we're making interest payments that we divvy it up based on the percentages of the funds, you know. But that's just a simple exercise where you take then your ending interest at the year and divvy it up based on the percentage of the funds across all funds. |
| 02:44:34.88 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:44:39.42 | Adam Driver | Thank you. |
| 02:44:39.43 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 02:44:39.65 | Adam Driver | Thank you. |
| 02:44:39.67 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:45:04.41 | Steven Woodside | But as the city manager mentioned, you don't have that luxury with expenses. You have to carefully manage where you're spending money's from because like the sewer fund, the Tidelands Fund, and other funds, we don't have the choice to spend those funds as any way we like. We must confine the expenditure of those funds to the purpose for which they were established. |
| 02:45:26.93 | Jesus Nava | But remember, we'll measure expenditures at the end of the year, right? So expenditures will get measured as of June 30th. So it doesn't matter what happened between July 1st to June 30th. |
| 02:45:40.40 | Steven Woodside | So long as you're not overdrawing your bank account. |
| 02:45:43.20 | Jesus Nava | Yeah, well, and we don't because we keep records of the fund balances and the payments. |
| 02:45:44.38 | Steven Woodside | could we have keep right Thank you. |
| 02:45:46.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:45:48.01 | Jesus Nava | Thank you. |
| 02:45:48.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:45:48.06 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 02:45:48.60 | Jesus Nava | Councilman. Thank you. |
| 02:45:51.18 | Jill Hoffman | So if you could go back to that fund balance page. |
| 02:45:54.41 | Jesus Nava | 16. |
| 02:46:11.08 | Jill Hoffman | So I think it would be helpful for us. We sometimes digress into this and to the vice mayor's point. I think it'd be better if we, it'd be clearer for us and for the public if maybe when we come back, this is a suggestion. For these segregated funds, for the funds that we truly are enterprise funds, we might want to put those on a separate slide, maybe even a different color, so that we can track. If this is a Thailand fund, if this is a gas fund, if this is a sewer fund, and it truly is a segregated fund, that might be clearer. For ones that we're segregating for purposes of tracking and accounting, and because it needs capital, it's a capital asset that we need to track, I would suggest maybe a different table. And I would ask that we add those capital investment needs with columns, right? So now that we've got the Veritas report, we know that, for instance, MLK has, you know, I think it's $5 million, maybe even higher. I'm looking at the Veritas report right now on the chart. I think there's five lines alone of MLK investment that needs to be done over the next 20 years. And so, hold on, there's more than five lines. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven lines on the Veritas of multiple millions of dollars that are capital improvements that need to be made so that this continues to be a revenue-generating asset for the city of Sausalito. And we depend upon that for just our general fund, period, and also to service the debt on that building. And so we can't continue to draw on this to plug up our general fund, right, without investing back into that as a capital asset. And now that we have the Veritas report, we know pretty well what the capital investments need to be. So that needs to be aligned on this. When we see how we're managing this asset, we need to understand and know what the capital improvements need to be on this MLK total. And a rolling reconciliation of that on a P&L statement annually would be good for us to know as a city council how we're managing that. Because we are, I think, this year, we're, as our capital improvement project, we're investing, reinvesting in our MLK. Same thing for some of these other capital improvements, certainly our parking funds. i'm looking you know parking lots one through five that's also on our veritas report right same thing this is um these are revenue generating as we talked about earlier tonight three million dollar uh enterprise here in sausalito we need to continue to reinvest in our parking lots one through five that That's also a line item on the Veritas report. And I think that over 20 years we need to invest. It looks like 5 million. Am I looking at that? It's hard. Let's see, I think it's 4 million. Well, sorry, it may not be. Maybe. Sorry. three million, three million over five years in our parking lots. Maybe I may be looking the wrong line. It's either two or three million over the next, in addition to what we've done in the past year for, you know, the million, whatever it was where you, did on parking lot one, right? So we need to understand and know that when we're looking at this, when we're drawing against that for something that's completely unrelated to that capital asset, and we're transferring that money for a balanced budget that has nothing to do with this capital asset, we need to understand that in the context of our budgets. So that's a request. I think that might be, and then we don't have to digress into this conversation, right? It's just a snapshot. It's not something that's, I don't think we argue about that. That's just a fact that's here in the Veritas Report. It's something that we all understand and know that this capital asset has to be maintained. And that goes for, I mean, that's the stairways, right? I mean, I'm looking on the Veritas report. There's a line in here for what we need to do to maintain our stairways that are emergency egress for people who live here in town. So that's part of our emergency access in addition to just capital improvement for our stairways. So, and you can get Gene Hiller, right? Like there's a line item for Gene Hiller. There's a line item for the Saucyus Center for the Arts, right? A building that we own. There's other buildings that we own that we need to, we have capital improvement needs for them. So that are listed. So that's a request for that slide. And this conversation that we have about transfers from these different funds. So. |
| 02:50:29.49 | Chris Zapata | . |
| 02:51:10.81 | Jesus Nava | What I'm hearing is we could make better financial decisions if we knew what the real overall needs were for each of these facilities within these funds. |
| 02:51:19.93 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, we have to do that. |
| 02:51:20.80 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:51:22.34 | Jesus Nava | Thank you. |
| 02:51:24.62 | Steven Woodside | All right, great. If there are no more questions, oh, I'm sorry. |
| 02:51:27.03 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:51:27.07 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:51:27.18 | Melissa Blaustein | a chance to. Sorry. It's okay. Ahem. No, I didn't kick you. I wouldn't do that. I'm not sure. Okay, I have a couple just generally about our approach and what we're doing and long term stability. So I appreciate what was brought up about like the Veritas report, which is obviously demonstrating significant amounts of maintenance required on city owned properties. infrastructure requirements, which is why 11 million of this is going towards infrastructure. But as you've mentioned, the budget sets aside almost $11 million in reserves, so 46%. which is, you know, I guess prudent, but rather high. Is there a way to elaborate on updated reserve targets, or could we establish a target or policy related to capital improvements and what the possible – I don't know, overall benefit or increase in the investment would be for our general fund or targets associated with, as we're thinking about the reserve and we're making these improvements, do we need to lower the reserve? Just kind of would like to get your thoughts on that, given how high it is and how we can maybe more effectively use it. |
| 02:52:30.45 | Jesus Nava | Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, some city councils have a plan. They say we need this kind of cash by such and such year in order to meet these needs. And then they develop a spending or savings plan that is built up in reserve. So it's, you know, they say here's what we need to fund this, and we're going to save money over the years to such and such time, and we're going to do it by building up the reserve, and when the reserve is at the level, we'll use it. Other cities don't have that luxury and simply work with whatever they have left at the end of the year. the better approach is a well-thought-out approach, which is let's do the 10-year forecast that you guys are after. Based on those forecast numbers and years where surpluses are identified, then let's look at those surpluses and begin identifying needs for those monies. And then you can start strategically deciding every year based on that 10-year plan where to place your savings. You know, so. |
| 02:53:20.21 | Chris Zapata | Right. |
| 02:53:43.30 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 02:53:43.45 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:53:44.34 | Melissa Blaustein | So what I think you're saying is we could use the information we get, as suggested from Council Member Hoffman, in partnership with the 10-year forecasting to make some of these decisions about it. |
| 02:53:53.29 | Jesus Nava | You have to make decisions because then you'll have needs on a 10-year basis, capital and operational needs, equipment needs, every other type of need that can be identified by the staff, and then you can go about the business of trying to figure out how to fund that. |
| 02:54:08.54 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, which is great, but then also if you look at, and I appreciate that you have budgets, the conservative assumptions in here, but since our TOT is a little bit underperforming and we don't know what's going to happen in the next five years or so, can you just kind of maybe put forward what sort of scenarios you might have if revenues underperform and how we would adopt, or do you think that given the reserve balance that we have, we don't necessarily need to do those kinds of projections in the budgeting process? |
| 02:54:34.24 | Jesus Nava | So a couple of things. Number one, I think the revenue estimates are fairly conservative. So I think they're good estimates. Again, the big ones have been double-checked with their consultants to make sure that they pretty much give me a conservative, a moderate, and an aggressive number within their realm of possibilities. So we have chosen the conservative number at this point in the hopes that revenue is not diminished further than that amount. Now, if it grows beyond the conservative estimate, well, then good for the city. You'll have the additional revenue collected, and they'll be available to you at the end of the year to place wherever you want as part of your strategic use of those reserves. |
| 02:54:38.78 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. |
| 02:55:04.72 | Chris Zapata | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:55:19.77 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, and then this is kind of a two-part question, but if you look at the... budget picture, it looks like about 13% of the general fund spending is non departmental. So it's kind of unclear what that is right it's like debt or insurance or administrative can you kind of explain what non departmental items are in the budget to kind of break them out and also. Are any of them one time items like we just one time had to use this consultant, so that we can when we're thinking about our 10 year picture. plan more effectively. And. Do we think that like, for example, Are any of the operational one-time funds something that we need to plan for going forward, even though it might be showing up as a one-time fund right now? |
| 02:55:59.93 | Jesus Nava | Thank you. So let's go first to |
| 02:56:07.78 | Jesus Nava | the non-departmental. So if you're looking at line items, the non-departmental budget is right in there, and it gives you the actual line atom expenditures. |
| 02:56:25.48 | Jesus Nava | Okay, so here we go. Non-departmental. So non-departmental, you have all your insurance payments for health, 206, your dental, your PERS, UAAL, your payments that we're going to be making to the CalPERS. And the biggest payments are, of course, your liability and your property insurances. Those are all in the non-departmental. That's why that number is so big. |
| 02:56:46.69 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay, and that's what we're planning for with the 10 year projections. But there's not really much we can change at all. |
| 02:56:49.07 | Jesus Nava | connections. No, it's pretty much all the payments that are due that are citywide and don't pertain to one particular department. |
| 02:56:52.72 | Melissa Blaustein | you know. |
| 02:56:59.49 | Melissa Blaustein | And then the last piece is just around project prioritization. So I know we've had these conversations with Director McGowan around how we're going to spend our funding for capital improvements. But I just wanted to pull out a couple of things and just make sure I'm not wrong because there's a lot of projects on there and they're going to require more project management. So just to reiterate, this is approving the two project managers for these CIPs as suggested at our previous meeting, correct? |
| 02:57:25.51 | Jesus Nava | Yeah. So up there on that all fund schedule, you see a $450,000 number. Right. So that's it. |
| 02:57:31.43 | Melissa Blaustein | TODAY. That's the two. Okay, great. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. And thank you for your hard work, you and your department and the city manager and our consultants on the budget. I really |
| 02:57:39.38 | Jesus Nava | Thank you. It's been a pleasure. |
| 02:57:41.57 | Melissa Blaustein | All right. |
| 02:57:41.98 | Steven Woodside | So now open it up to public comment. I saw Adrian bring up a speaker card. So we'll start off with you, sir. |
| 02:57:53.65 | Adrian Brinton | Thanks very much, and thanks again for taking another comment. Just want to say thank you to the interim finance director for taking a usually quite difficult to understand subject and making it much more easy to understand this year. I think it was a huge improvement just in the way it was presented and kind of understanding where the numbers are. The ideas about the enterprise funds, I think definitely separating out the legal enterprise funds and and putting them as a separate block would be incredibly helpful. In addition to that, I think just one or two lines identifying what the funds are for would also be very, very helpful. You know, when we talk about the kind of what what Mr. Zapata called the hybrid funds. You know, it's very important to understand how much money we're bringing in and how much we're paying to maintain these assets. At the end of the day, really what we're doing is we're putting the money in different pockets and we're kind of saying, okay, this money came in this pocket and we spent this much money out of this pocket. But really, if we empty all our pockets on the table, when we look out into the future with the infrastructure, we have to maintain. You know, we need to increase our revenues to be able to support that. So that's something I think, you know, we've had a huge focus on. I think it's something we really, really need to continue to focus on. We can keep doing these steps now, which we need to do with the money that we have. But going in the future, increasing our revenue base is super, super critical. The only other comment I wanted to make was on the parking technology, I did look through all the CIP documents from the last meeting and I didn't see the line item for the actual parking and technology improvements we have line items for lot one. We have line items to fix the trees around lot three, but I think it might be good to just double check and make sure we've got that in there, thank you. |
| 02:59:36.98 | Steven Woodside | Sharna, rock it. |
| 02:59:43.95 | Sharna Brockett | Thank you so much. This is really great news. And it's great to know that our city's finances and be reminded that our city finances have been and are being responsibly managed. From what I understand, we're ending our fiscal year 2425 with a forecasted 700,000 surplus, from what I understand. And so that's a really clear sign that we're taking in more money than we're spending. So that's great news. And I just want to also thank the hard work of the city manager and our finance director and the finance staff. And kind of to Adrian's point, you know, I think at the same time, I encourage all of us and our city leaders to find new ways and explore new ways to grow our revenue. Thank you. and invest in capital improvements, or partially invest in capital improvements that help us grow our revenue, like parking technology, so that we can really bring in more money, more funds, increase our tax base so that we can further improve our town. Thanks so much. |
| 03:00:42.44 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City Clerk. Thank you. |
| 03:00:44.29 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Carolyn Revelle. |
| 03:00:46.35 | Steven Woodside | Welcome, Carolyn. |
| 03:00:51.50 | Carolyn Revell | I just want to, can you hear me? |
| 03:00:54.59 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:00:54.60 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:00:54.89 | Carolyn Revell | I simply want very much to thank the city manager and Mr. Nava for stepping up and, doing an excellent presentation on such short notice of budget for the next year. And that's really all I'd like to say is thank you very much for an excellent, clear presentation. Thank you. |
| 03:01:14.57 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. |
| 03:01:14.67 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you so much. you No further approval. |
| 03:01:16.86 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:01:16.96 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 03:01:17.07 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:01:17.18 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 03:01:17.23 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:01:17.25 | Carolyn Revell | Amen. |
| 03:01:17.49 | Steven Woodside | All right, I'm going to close public comment and bring it up here. Several of you have already given some direction. Um, the Our action tonight is to accept the report in preparation for final approval next Thank you. in two weeks. So but any other direction or comments, this is your opportunity. |
| 03:01:38.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:01:38.72 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 03:01:38.77 | Unknown | Vice mayor. |
| 03:01:38.99 | Steven Woodside | Vice mayor. |
| 03:01:39.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:01:39.91 | Ian Sobieski | It may not be direction in terms of new direction. I think what I've seen in this report makes sense to me. And to the extent I'm giving direction or suggesting direction, it's that we come back with a budget that mirrors and provides all the detail consistent with what we've heard tonight. Because I think it's an excellent job of balancing our needs. We do have a 25% reserve. We have a balanced budget going into the year, which is a big deal. And we have unassigned revenues and in light of all the concerns we have going forward on a longer term basis, it's wise to keep that, I think, for the time being until we have a clearer picture of some additional needs that might surface. It's not an emergency reserve per se, but it could be used in the event of an emergency. It's unassigned. And as to the long-term needs that we have for maintenance, I believe that this budget meets the current projected needs under the Veritas report and for this coming year. In other words, we have a 20-year horizon of needs, and there's a lot of them, and we're not budgeting today for those 20 years. We're budgeting for this coming year and I think it does meet the Veritas report as I read it. So I'm very pleased with what I've heard and thank you again. And thanks to the city manager for, again, for bringing in your friend. He's now our friend. Thank you. |
| 03:03:15.49 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:03:15.51 | Melissa Blaustein | next. I think a few left to you. I don't, yeah, I don't mind. Well, I'm really just very pleased to see this balanced budget with a surplus and with the 25% reserves. I think that that is a testament to how much we've been putting an emphasis on smart financial management and bringing in Mr. Rivas is really smart and I'm going to miss you. I'm sorry that you're only an interim budget director, but we've certainly appreciated your expertise. And I really appreciate the city manager's leadership on all of this through the transition and really I'm feeling encouraged because it seems like we're really thinking about our bigger picture problems. I gave some direction, but I think what's really clear in the context of this conversation, because there's always room for improvement, even though we're balanced budget and we have reserves is, and we've all asked for this consistently is just, we really. would be beneficial for us if we were thinking about our 10 year planning and if we had that data to make these decisions in the context of. Well, what are our challenges going to look like in the years ahead and how do we prioritize each of these funds and how do we prioritize which items from capital improvement. And that will allow us to have more transparency on how we're spending each of the fund balances and also help us do things like. if we wanted to set goals around our reserves. So if we look at the Veritas report and we know that we have $5 million for MLK and we know that there's 25% reserves right now, what would it look like? What number would we have to feel comfortable with in our reserve bank in order to make those improvements? And why would that help us in the longer term. So I think the more we grow through this process and understand how we're using our funds and how we're making these improvements, the more we'll be able to set some of these goals and think bigger picture about the next 10 and next 20 years for our community to really set us up for success. And to that end, I would really like us to work closely with DHA to consider a hybrid approach to pensions if possible, because it seems like if we do the work and we get the information required to get our balance down or our annual payment down, and then we'll have more funds to use on things like capital improvements, we'd be in a good position. That being said, I absolutely don't want that to be rushed. So that's a conversation that we need to have with a lot of data. a lot of information, a lot of assessment around the markets because I share concerns around CalPERS given some of their returns over time. In general, I'm just really pleased with the work of our team, our finance staff and our consultants and really appreciate all of the time and thought that was put into our budget and looking forward to adopting it soon and moving forward with a great fiscal picture. |
| 03:05:51.05 | Jill Hoffman | So I also appreciate the arrival of Mr. Navi in helping us get our budget together and the presentation together due to the departure of our former finance director. And I know that was a challenge for you. And I appreciate all of the hard work it was to get our budget together. I do have some follow-up questions. It was a bit of a moving target, getting the numbers and the changing, or not changing, but the updating of numbers even throughout the day and the response to, you know, the numbers that we were getting. So I appreciate the hard work, and I will have follow-up questions. So you're going to get an email from me probably tomorrow requesting a meeting, follow-up meeting with you in the interim. So I appreciate that and absorbing the numbers and follow-up questions from me. So thank you so much for that. As always, the pension debt and strategies attacking that has been something I've worked on ever since I was elected to council 10 years ago or 11 years ago now. So we've done some good work on that. I wish we had been more aggressive as we moved forward earlier. We would have saved more money, but it's always a balance, right, of how much money you want to devote to that and how much risk you want to take on in the balance of everything else. So there are brief windows of opportunity that I'd like to be more agile, and maybe we can come up with some strategies for that. If we can, great. I think that would be really great if we could take some advantage of some of these swings in the stock market. That would be helpful for us going forward. So anyway, I look forward to finding maybe some opportunities for further success on that front. And thank you for all your hard work. I appreciate it. |
| 03:07:48.18 | Steven Woodside | Thank you all. I will echo the sentiments of my fellow council members about how much we appreciate the background of experience that our interim finance director and our city manager bring to this. I mean, I think between you, you have at least 60 years of experience. So and it really shows this is really one of them. I've been attending these budget presentations since 2010. And this is one of the most clear budget presentations we've ever seen. So, and, you know. I've been attending these budget presentations since 2010. This is one of the most clear budget presentations we've ever seen. And in law school, they teach us that you have to really know and understand your subject in order to explain it to a layperson. And so that is what you have done as financial experts. You have really drilled down to be able to explain it to laypeople so that they can understand |
| 03:08:03.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:08:36.05 | Steven Woodside | what we're doing. Um, And I appreciated the fact that this, as you said, is both a financial plan and a policy document. I'm happy to hear that your revenue estimates are conservative pleased that your budget addresses a lot of the city council priorities identified at the beginning of the year streets sidewalks storm drain sewer stairways parking lots, among others. I do want to follow up on the comments by a couple of council members about our reserve. You know, the reserve was increased to 25% after our insurance deductibles deductible rose from $50,000 to $500,000. per incident. Um, The reserve remains at 25%, I think, because we have three years of challenges. We had. three years of challenges for which we are still navigating. a huge landslide in 2019. We had the COVID pandemic in 2020. We had a homeless encampment in 2021. all of which were huge drains on our budget and had we not had At that time, our 20% rainy day fund we would have been challenged to navigate those issues while we were awaiting federal assistance for the landslide, you know, state assistance and county assistance for the pandemic and for the homeless encampment. And so I think it's important to remain conservative for several reasons. One, our costs for pensions and insurance, just those two alone, went up $700,000 this year. um, Our insurance costs include a $300,000 premium per year for three years for the new customer rate. After three years, that cost may be eliminated if we have a positive loss ratio, but that's an expense we can anticipate not only this upcoming year but the following year as well. Our deductible remains at $500,000 per occurrence. Pension costs remain volatile with projected annual payments scheduled to reach $4 million a year in less than five years. And we have not yet implemented some of the risk management strategies that we have on the books to reduce some of these risks such as the recommendations of our hillside management task force that Council member Hoffman served on such as addressing some of the ADA challenges throughout town. For these reasons, I think it's important to Continue to maintain a conservative approach to our reserves. I think there's consensus on the part of the council to undertake this 10 year plan. And I think hiring an outside consultant, given the drain on staff resources, given that we won't enjoy having Mr. Nava with us for a whole lot longer, I think that's a really smart approach. And then I appreciated that your presentation kept alive the prospect for a possible private placement, as well as the creation of infrastructure finance districts moving forward. So with that, I think this was a very successful item, more so than in prior years. So many thanks to everyone for that. |
| 03:12:12.90 | Steven Woodside | And I didn't hear a buzzer, so you must not have been timing me. Because I think I went over my three minutes. Okay. All right, with that, we will move on. Um, to city manager reports council member reports city council appointments and other council business we'll start off with the city manager report thank you and good evening |
| 03:12:31.95 | Chris Zapata | Given the intention you've expanded, I will be brief on the city manager report. In your packet, there's a full-on legislative update that includes federal, state, and county information. It's gotten from a number of sources, the California League of Cities, the National League of Cities, our Congressman Huffman's office, Senator McGuire's office, Assemblymember Connolly's office, Marine County. in the information. If you watch the news, you know that there's a lot going on in this country. Some of the executive orders that are currently winding their way through policy and judicial, like tariffs, immigration, the things that happen in California in terms of clean energy and emergency response, those are all in flux right now, so that's important for us to know. Obviously, there's a federal budget process going on that has passed the House and is headed to the Senate, so we will see what goes on there. There's some serious state legislation related to insurance, also sea level rise, and obviously housing. So all that's in this report. Please feel free to peruse it. I wanna thank our intern, Timur, who did a lot of this work because the mayor and council committed this communication to happen and so it's happened. Not in the report is a, you received an after action report from the last council meeting. which I sent to you. This will be something we'll do after regular council meetings, kind of just summarizes what you directed and what we're doing about it. I think it's important to have that, even though it's additional work for city staff. But we think it's important to show process and carry through and follow through. In addition, this is my fourth year here. I'm four years into Sausalito on the 7th of June. So in June, the city council evaluates the city manager per contract. So on June the 17th, you will be doing a personnel evaluation of the city manager, which I anticipate is going to be an interesting one. So I am going to provide for you some background information that you can take a look at in preparation for that discussion, which is done in closed session. So please be on the lookout for it. That concludes my report, Mayor. |
| 03:15:04.34 | Steven Woodside | Great. Thank you. |
| 03:15:10.08 | Steven Woodside | Next is city attorney information for counsel. Anything from you, Sergio? |
| 03:15:16.58 | Craig Hill | No, nothing from me. |
| 03:15:18.39 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thank you. Next is council member committee reports. |
| 03:15:24.38 | Melissa Blaustein | I have an important one that's relevant for the community. So I, as you all know, I serve on the transportation authority of Marin and one of the newest transportation developments in Marin County is that you will begin seeing metering lights at the freeways, um, to, uh, to address traffic flow. So we in Sausalito will be seeing as of June 24th metering lights at the freeway entrance at Bridgeway when you are going by Gate 6 Road at the turn. So just don't be shocked. And we will be assessing that and reviewing the data, but that's going to be a big change Also at TAM we heard about the new pilot bike share program that's been launched at smart stations across Marin County, which is very promising and I made a strong push for it to eventually make it to Sausalito, so we'll see, but that's been starting. It potentially will move countywide and also up to Sonoma County. So those are two exciting pieces of information. Great, thank you. |
| 03:16:23.84 | Steven Woodside | Other council member reports. We have a sister city presentation coming up on July 1st. I just wanted to remind you of that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So next is appointments. We don't have any appointments tonight. So next is future agenda items. |
| 03:16:44.99 | Melissa Blaustein | have a few for that. |
| 03:16:45.80 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:16:45.82 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 03:16:45.83 | Unknown | Yes, go ahead. |
| 03:16:46.83 | Melissa Blaustein | I just want. |
| 03:16:47.08 | Unknown | I just want to... I think, Clark, you'll grab these. |
| 03:16:49.63 | Melissa Blaustein | I just want to bring up again the idea of the master plan for the city. Now that our housing element has been reviewed, I'd like us to think more holistically about our approach to what all the development in our community is going to look like and I think it would be beneficial to have some sort of master plan that's something we had heard previously specifically for the marineship and I know that Councilmember Sobieski was something he had expressed interest in so I just wanted to bring that up again. I also wanted to bring something up that we haven't discussed but it's definitely been in the news and I just feel like we would be remiss as policymakers in general to not at least consider and agendize a discussion about what we might do about AI in our city. It is moving at a very, very rapid pace. And some predictions anticipate that we could see up to 20% unemployment in the next 10 years as a result of AI. And no one is really doing anything about it yet. And I think that it will actually matter at the local level quite a bit what people decide to do and how they decide to use it. So at some point, I'd like us to agendize a conversation around that as well. Thank you. |
| 03:17:51.48 | Steven Woodside | Anyone else? |
| 03:17:51.58 | Jillian Zeiger | when I'm |
| 03:17:53.30 | Steven Woodside | Okay. There were no minutes. I had something I was going to report, and now I can't remember what it was. Um, |
| 03:18:10.09 | Steven Woodside | Boy. City Manager, do you remember I had said I was going to report on something and I can't remember now what it was. Another report of significance. Wow. Okay, I guess it'll have to wait for the next meeting. All right, so I will now take public comment on all of these items. |
| 03:18:31.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 03:18:34.02 | Steven Woodside | OK. Thank you. I am flat footed tonight. |
| 03:18:44.04 | Steven Woodside | I, |
| 03:18:50.57 | Steven Woodside | I am adjourning this evening's meeting in honor of Edward Schultz. Many of you know that Edward, served on our County Commission on Aging. And he just in... February asked to step down so that Tricia Smith And so Tricia Smith kindly took over his role. He passed away March 5. So he literally served us up to within weeks of his passing. And that was really emblematic of his service to the city. He previously served on our mosquito vector control board. He is a longtime resident of Sausalito. He kept in touch with everyone and never stopped giving his time and heart to the people and causes he believed in. His rich legacy of community service was reflected in the countless committees he supported. He earned the distinguished honor of being named the 2017 Novato Citizen of the Year, you He was a volunteer from the beginning to bring the Buck Institute to Novato. He served on several committees for the Novato Fire Protection District, including one to pass a tax measure. Thank you. He also served as a volunteer fireman for the Kent Field Fire Department, worked at the... Mayor Island Naval Shipyard for almost 35 years. In short, this was a, oh, and he was a member of the Marin County Sheriff's Citizen Academy and served on the Marin County parole board, the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force Oversight Committee, and as a Marin County grand juror. So, Um, needless to say, uh, Ed's was a life well lived and we are privileged to have known him and benefited from his, uh, spirit of community service. And so we will adjourn our meeting this evening in his honor. Thank you. |
Alice Merrill — Against: Complained about items being placed on the consent calendar that are likely to be pulled for discussion, causing scheduling issues and lack of public awareness, using a parking study as an example. ▶ 📄
Babette McDougall — Neutral: Thanked the council for their volunteer service and acknowledged the difficulty of their roles, emphasizing the need for unity and smooth governance while noting her occasional opposition is not personal. ▶ 📄