| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:08.16 | Walfred Solorzano | Mike, are you getting the feed? Okay. I wasn't sure. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Tonight's meeting of October 21, 2025 is being held here at 420 Litho Street, City Hall Council Chamber. It's also being broadcast live on cable TV channel 27, on Zoom, and on our city's website. |
| 00:00:35.48 | Fred Moore | I think it's a lot. |
| 00:00:40.40 | Fred Moore | I've got a staff stand, but I've not seen it in the city of Hilton. |
| 00:00:45.27 | Steven Woodside | Okay, all right. Okay, we're going to take a five minute break. All of them? |
| 00:00:50.62 | Walfred Solorzano | So. |
| 00:01:17.22 | Walfred Solorzano | We're ready, Mayor. |
| 00:01:18.33 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you, we'll resume. Welcome to the regular meeting for the city of Sausalito for Tuesday, October 21st, 2025. The time is 5.06 PM. City clerk will you call the roll? |
| 00:01:33.23 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Blaustein. She is still not here yet? Thank you. |
| 00:01:37.18 | Steven Woodside | She will not be attending this evening. She was married this past weekend, and so she is on a mini moon and will not be attending our meeting this evening. And congratulations to her and Dave Sachs. |
| 00:01:37.20 | Walfred Solorzano | She will. |
| 00:01:49.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Huffman. |
| 00:01:50.77 | Steven Woodside | Cheers. |
| 00:01:51.07 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Councilmember Sobieski? Vice Mayor Woodside? Here. |
| 00:01:56.18 | Steven Woodside | here. We did have interviews on our agenda originally, but we had several cancel, and so we will be conducting those interviews next week. I do have several announcements that I'd like to make. I'm going to break my own rule, which is praise in public and reprove in private. That's something I learned in the military, but I did speak with the city manager offline. I'm gonna repeat my requests of him publicly. It is becoming the standard and not the exception that we have technical difficulties with these meetings. And so I am making a public request to the city manager it is rude to our public it is rude to those who tune in we pay people extra to be here early to set up and to ensure that our IT issues are all straightforward. City Clerk, I would like you to be here at least 15 minutes before the meeting starts. Thank you. with the closed session ready to go, with the public meeting already started so that, okay, I see you rolling your eyes. You're unhappy with my request. |
| 00:03:04.56 | Walfred Solorzano | I have no issues. |
| 00:03:05.67 | Steven Woodside | Okay, so, I'm making these specific requests because time after time we're having these technical issues that affect our ability to conduct our business publicly for the public. We serve the public And so I'm asking that we put in safeguards to ensure that we can timely, efficiently, and effectively serve the public. We've made requests offline. They have not been addressed adequately and tonight, You know, we started the meeting, and then we had to reboot. That should not be happening. All reboots, all startups, all testing, all of that should be done, and you should be ready to go. We should be online 15 minutes before we actually convene the meeting. So that's my request moving forward. |
| 00:03:48.49 | Mikey Stefani | Thank you. |
| 00:03:48.53 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:03:48.57 | Steven Woodside | . |
| 00:03:48.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:03:48.75 | Mikey Stefani | Thank you. |
| 00:03:51.07 | Steven Woodside | If things improve, perhaps staff can adopt different procedures, but that's my request moving forward. |
| 00:03:56.42 | Walfred Solorzano | For the record, we do start at 3 p.m. during the setup and we continue and doing another sound checkup for 4 p.m. |
| 00:03:56.53 | Steven Woodside | of the record. |
| 00:04:00.48 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, Mayor, let me respond, please. The city manager is responsible for the staff. The council is responsible for the city manager. I feel like the coach of the 49ers when something goes wrong at a game. The fans are upset. The owner is upset. People are upset. And that should not be happening. I apologize to the residents. I apologize to you, Mayor and Council, for this happening. We will do better. Everything that you said we've noted. So, again, accept our apologies, and we'll see what improvements we can make as we are trying to make sure that our time is valued, the resident's time is valued. And certainly the council's time is valued. So I apologize, but we'll do better. |
| 00:04:43.51 | Steven Woodside | Thank you city manager, I greatly appreciate that. Thank you. All right, I also want folks to be aware that on Halloween night, October 31st, Of course, Sausalito will have its standard Halloween parade. We will have tables out on the basketball court. to welcome our trick-or-treaters. We'll have our dog, costume contests and our other festivities, but in addition to what we're doing here in Sausalito, there will be a Performing Stars big celebration on Halloween night in Mill Valley. Um, The city of Sausalito, through our partnership with the city of Marin City and our ongoing collaboration, we are sponsoring a table at the celebration in Mill Valley. So we invite you to attend as many celebrations as you can on Halloween evening. All right, and with that, we will turn to a special presentation from Southern Marin Fire regarding emergency preparedness, including the Spencer Fire Station and defensible space home hardening. And I see some of our tried and true members of Southern Rind Fire here this evening to share a presentation with them. |
| 00:06:04.48 | Chris Zapata | THE FIRE DISTRICT WILL PROVIDE INFORMATION FROM MYSELF ON THE SPENCER STATION STATUS AT THIS TIME. |
| 00:06:19.16 | Unknown | Good evening Mayor Cox, City Council staff and the greater public of Sausalito. Thank you for having us here. We're excited to be here. We have some report out to you that regarding our defensible space and home learning program and vegetation management. Short presentation by Deputy Fire Marshal now who runs our vegetation portion of it and then I'll follow up with talking about our tri-annual code cycle which happens every three years in the adoption of the fire code, which I've been doing for the city of Sausalito since the annexation. So with that, I... Captain, now. |
| 00:07:07.14 | Marshall | All right, thank you. Well, council members, thank you. Members of the public again, my name is Marshall. Now I'm the deputy fire marshal for Southern environment district and I run our vegetation management and our defensible space and we programs. Go to the next slide. The first thing we want to cover real quick is just a really brief update. Anyone who's familiar with Firewise USA, these are individual sites throughout the country and that give special benefits to certain communities. We have a number of them in our district. We have a couple in Sausalito. This is another program. It's an overlay, so it's not taken away from what Firewise USA is, but this is the fire risk reduction community list. It's held by the state. It'll be approved once everything's done, but we have applied for this across our entire district, so naturally Sausalito falls within that. and we're expecting that if the list goes through appropriately, July of 2026, the list will be approved and this will be another layer. services like the the list or firewise community this allows for residents to take any advantages to those programs typically lining up with insurance discounts and other things a lot around those so we'll keep you informed as we move forward obviously there's a good eight or nine months before we know but we'll keep you up to date on that next slide |
| 00:08:29.59 | Marshall | So mainly today I'm talking about our defensible space program that we run seasonally, as well as our vegetation management programs that we also run throughout the season. And we're going to talk about that. So, We can skip a couple slides actually right to There we go. So first thing we're going to touch on is just a three-year snapshot. We call it 2023 to 2025 as a three-year snapshot for a couple reasons, primarily because 2023 is when the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, or MWPA, worked with Southern Marin Fire for the first time with utilizing our digital reports. Any resident at this point who hasn't opened their digital report should know that they do have a report available for them online, they can reach out to our offices for them but this snapshot also highlights the fact that we pledged for in a three-year window to complete an entirety of our required district this included obviously the city of Sausalito this is a snapshot of our achievements specifically in Sausalito so over that three-year window we've completed over 300 sorry 3,283 properties and then it breaks it out to acres along with some re-inspections on those properties If we move forward to the next slide, this is gonna look at more of a year to date figure. One, the 4,000 that's year to date in our districts, the Natural Air District, covers much more than just the city of Sausalito. So we have over 4,000 inspections conducted this year. And then I don't know why we made so small, but at the bottom you see 825 inspections completed year to date in the city of Sausalito. And that's an important number for us because that's what we calculated that was required to finish our first objective for the year, which was 100% compliance. So if we go to the next slide, that's where we talk about some of our goals and metrics of what we're aiming for for that three year window and what we were trying to wrap up this year. So As of this year, we have blanketed our entire district for the first time to be in that digital platform. That digital platform helps with a number of things, not just providing information back to our residents, but it also gives us the ability to use the data that we collected to inform our residents as well as inform ourselves for future projects and precise allocation of funds in order to succeed at the goals of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, MWPA. With that, as of September 2025, we're happy to report that the district had completed 100% of those wildland urban interface inspections on properties. Some level of digital report is available, like I said, for all those residents as of right now. In addition, this year has been unique. We also had an update to our local response areas from the state. This enhanced and changed the layout of our fire severity zones. primarily in the city of Sausalito, but also in the city of Mill Valley and other areas. With that, we added a little over 150 properties that had never been inside of either a wildland urban interface footprint or a severity zone footprint. So these homes have never received any level of information around defensible space outside of just typical mailers that might come through and across their radar. We decided to get on top of it. And as of actually this month, we went through and we inspected all of those as well as we're concluding the ones in Mill Valley. So at the end of this month, we'll have been able to say that 100% of those new properties, we had about 500 new ones throughout our whole district, have had their digital inspection reports completed and are available waiting for the residents to open them. The 65.3% that we're covering right here, this is one of the first metrics that we're working on moving into the next year. We're already working on it. We actually started a campaign in Sausalito about three months ago to try and boost this number. These are how many people have actually physically opened those reports. They may have walked with us. They may have gotten the hanger on their door, but they may not have actually physically opened the digital report. Some we mail out directly to people, but right now we're driving that number up. The nice part is that number should not go down, and we're going to keep pushing that until we get it higher and higher. So, again, we started a mailing campaign. About 20 letters a week go out to residents, very specific and targeted on people who have not opened their reports, gently asking them to open the report, look at it, because we can see on our end as soon as they open it, and we'll just keep driving those numbers up as we enhance that data quality that we get. In addition to that, we talked about a three-year cycle for doing those inspections. We realize that now that we've finished, we get to start over and do inspections again, but we don't want the residents that just got their inspection now to wait three more years to get another inspection. So we're trying to bring it down. THAT WE HAVE FINISHED, WE GET TO START OVER AND DO INSPECTIONS AGAIN. BUT WE DON'T WANT THE RESIDENTS THAT JUST GOT THEIR INSPECTION NOW TO WAIT THREE MORE YEARS TO GET ANOTHER INSPECTION. SO WE'RE TRYING TO BRING IT DOWN TO TWO YEAR. WE BELIEVE THAT WE KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO DO THAT. moving forward with the exact same progress that we've made that 4 000 number that we saw that we did this year that is significantly higher than past year so if we continue that momentum we should be able to complete our entire district which means in theory half of sausalito a year moving forward every two years so you'll have kind of an odd and even rotation on those homes being done and then additionally all of this develops a better target hazard inspection list and that's something that the county collectively is using a lot of this data towards in the the cwpp Thank you. All of this develops a better target hazard inspection list. And that's something that the county collectively is using a lot of this data towards in the, the CWPP for the community wildfire prevention, uh, CWPP, the community wildfire prevention plan that will give us a much more, uh, accurate data on where we can provide community impact, community feedback, a lot of our direct assistance programs, it'll guide us on a lot of those things. So next slide. That was the bulk of everything. So I'm going to breeze through the next few really quickly and open up to any questions. These are just some of the events and numbers that we have. We provide an on-demand chipper program. In 2025, we calculated that over 26 people did take advantage of that on-demand chipper program. We offer it all year long. It's on demand, so all you have to do is put in the request form online, and we work within a week to send crews out to your house to take away your pile. We do work in groups, so that 26 may be more like, you know, 30 or 40 homes because typically there's two to three in each group. We also started a pilot program which did utilize Marina Vista, which is our newest Firewise community in our district. in June of 2025. We serviced somewhere between 18 and 20 homes, primarily focusing on juniper removal, as well as measuring and outfitting homes with additional vents and other home hardening elements it was a pilot program we felt was very successful we learned a lot from it and we have now rotated that same program on a quarterly rotation where we we handle somewhere between 15 and 25 homes a quarter in that same fashion and we just move around our district in clumps primarily in firewise groups and and yeah so multiple multiple residents removed HOMES A QUARTER IN THAT SAME FASHION AND WE JUST MOVE AROUND OUR DISTRICT IN CLUMPS PRIMARILY IN FIREWISE GROUPS AND YEAH SO MULTIPLE MULTIPLE RESIDENTS REMOVE THEIR JUNIPER THAT MARINA VISA HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION WE LOOK AT COMING BACK PROBABLY TO SOSALETO IN THE NEXT QUARTER I think we have two more slides left. So, again, direct assistance, we covered that, about 10 properties a month. I think that's been adjusted to reflect what we're doing in Sausalito primarily. We're looking at 20 across our whole district. Public outreach with large landovers, that's part of our community fuels management program. There's a lot of larger parcels that are falling unkempt, and we have an opportunity to step in and help them. And then the photos here show quite a bit that was done very recently along the GGRA land where we finally got some approval. We actually got three days of bonus approval to work on their land just before the shutdown occurred so that we were able to keep this project going before we lost the oversight that was required for us to maintain it. And we're still continuing to work. So that's a very delicate relationship, and we're working with the community we work around with SLPs. And I think the last slide. is again just a couple big highlights i think i've talked about most all of these we have hazardous tree removal where we've worked in the past with different communities marina vista had a really big program that they were pushing forward with with their hoa last or earlier this year and we were able to work in in conjunction with what they were doing to continue to move a lot of material away from those trees that they removed we continue our sausalito forest health fuel break along the perimeter of the city jumping between city-owned land private on land Caltrans land and obviously the G genera land we have started 3d modeling all of our fuel breaks this does two things for us one it gets us into some of those areas that we can't get to until we've done work so now we can see the density of the fuel and we can also see the fruits of our labor, what's been removed after we've done it. But on top of that, we can refly over it on six to eight month intervals and we can track the regrowth and we can give data metrics on exactly how much volume vegetation we removed initially and how aggressively it's growing back. And that should help to drive us to be able to be more precise and accurate with our funds so we can spread it appropriately across the entire district more accurately. So we've got our first 3D modeling coming back from some of our field breaks, and we're gonna continue to just build upon that as we go, but really, really interesting stuff there. And then, again, our relationship with GGNRA and the NPS that will continue to grow and will continue to foster that. Naturally, we have a lot of their land with us. It's not just here in South Salido. We run all the way up to Panorama Highway. So we have a number of spots. I think we are actually working on two locations, obviously outside of the city, but we're continuing to work with them even through the shutdown, luckily. So I believe that should conclude my portion of the report, and I'm happy to answer any questions. |
| 00:17:44.40 | Unknown | Since the next to last slide showed property right outside my house, I want to say to everyone, this really works. The GGRA and your group have cooperated to do a lot of clearing in the undergrowth underneath the forest that surrounds us. And when I say us, it's the whole town. And I just want to compliment you for that cooperation and give a shout out to then Mayor Sobieski, who I think wrote the telling letter that got everybody together and cooperating in a very nice way. So thank you, number one. And number two is really to underscore and to ask you what more can we do to get the word out to people that these services are available because they are they don't cost anything the chipper programs etc the inspections they are extremely helpful they will save lives and property if people take advantage of them can you think of what more we can do to get the word out |
| 00:18:43.97 | Marshall | Just any opportunity you have to direct them, we offer an on-demand home assessment service where they can book out online. We offer it all year long. We have full-time inspectors dedicated to that service. That's really your entry point to everything that we have to offer as free services as well as the MWPA. |
| 00:19:03.89 | Unknown | And then I'd like to add to the with the newly revised disaster preparedness committee that we're also involved in with the city this is an avenue for us to also get this word out and we're working with them to look for ways to communicate for disaster preparedness but also wildfire preparedness. So a lot of this will also be in conjunction with that committee. Thank you. |
| 00:19:34.36 | Jill Hoffman | So what's our trajectory from now, you know, for the rest of the year, for the rest of the calendar year, rest of the year, whatever? I mean, I think we're sort of entering the wet season now. So what should people be doing? through, you know, as we're going forward through the year. And I did have a follow-up question, too, on the ordinances that we have later in the on the agenda. Are you guys, because some of those have to do with Southern Marine Fire. Are you guys staying for that presentation? Are you leaving? Correct. Yeah, they're, |
| 00:20:00.89 | Marshall | Correct, yeah, there will be second round of questions and Chief Hilliard will be happy to answer those, the ones that are related to the co-adoption. |
| 00:20:04.69 | Jill Hoffman | one of the things that we're going to do. So then for my first question. |
| 00:20:06.59 | Marshall | So, definitely. Yeah, naturally this time of year. Normally we're not getting rain. We're waiting a bated breath for the winds to pick up and then die down. Could very well still come. Obviously all the defensible space that you'd want to do would normally be done before now, but our seasons never end. You know, before we know it, we'll be right back into it all. So take a look at your landscape. |
| 00:20:08.26 | Jill Hoffman | Actually, this is... |
| 00:20:29.48 | Marshall | to try and decide how you're going to prepare for next spring. Take action on anything remaining now that's safe to do so as we work through the very last months of the season, hopefully the last weeks or days. But, yeah, preparing for next season. We're already going into winter mode. A lot of that stuff is planning on how we're going to move forward. We continue our inspections all year long. Our seasonal program will die out probably by the end of the month. But we'll remain on with all of our full-time staff continuously doing inspections and continuously offering our services because there are certain things within the landscape that will only be done during the winter anyhow. So, yeah, take a look around your house. Don't be afraid to walk in every corner of your yard and think what can change. And call us out. |
| 00:21:14.31 | Unknown | Hi, thanks for your service. I have a question about the home inspection report. I've promoted that to homeowners in Sausalito, and I've gotten a fair bit of pushback from people who are concerned about Two things, one is that if there are things that are found, that their fire insurance rates might go up or get dropped altogether. And the second is that if they choose not to remediate something that you find, that that becomes a disclosure item if they sell their property. Both of those stem from the fact that I believe your reports are public and accessible by anyone. And I'm wondering if those concerns have merit and if there's any way to address them. |
| 00:21:58.59 | Marshall | Well, the reports aren't readily available to the public. Naturally, everything could be available to the public, but they're not readily available to the public. The code that accesses that report is only provided with either the tenant or the homeowner upon the inspection being conducted. If they're requesting it, we verify that they're the same person as well. Otherwise, there's natural processes that would follow. As far as the insurance element, the insurance companies don't have access to that data. They don't request it from us. They have their own models and measurements. So individual findings in a report are only going to help to develop a known risk score to the resident that they can hopefully work to bring down. In the report, there's three different kind of risk scores that are put there only one is based on findings the other ones are based on like topography and and placement of the structure which no one can eliminate and those are the two biggest factors of why we are so focused on defensible space and those are the two factors that the insurance companies really look a lot at naturally how you keep your property is another big factor but those are things that you can actually take immediate action on whereas the the the location of your home and the placement of it and the the more permanent building materials. Those are what the insurance company is really looking at and it doesn't really have anything to do with our report. Thank you. Then lastly, the AB 38 inspections for resale pertained for Sausalito just a very high fire severity zones. And yes, those are required to be disclosed during a real estate transaction. NO DIFFERENT THAN ANYTHING ELSE RELATED TO THE SALE OF A HOME. SO IT'S NO DIFFERENT THAN IF YOU HAD MOLD OR SOMETHING ELSE ON YOUR PROPERTY. YOU'RE JUST REQUIRED TO BE, TO EITHER DISCLOSE THAT YOU'RE NOT IN COMPLIANCE OR THAT YOU HAVE GOTTEN IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. BUT THAT WAS A STATE BILL THAT WAS PASSED A COUPLE YEARS AGO. We provide the service so that we can get everyone to that in an easier fashion. |
| 00:23:48.89 | Unknown | Okay, that's news to me. I didn't know the report was not public and password protected. So you might consider adding the word confidential to the report or something, at least to attend to some people's concern. I know people have been saying that to me when I've been encouraging it. |
| 00:24:02.51 | Marshall | There's a disclosure agreement put on there by MWPA that talks about how, um, |
| 00:24:02.52 | Unknown | I did it. |
| 00:24:09.42 | Marshall | that they're signing into a document that's part of their property. The document exists either way. It's just whether or not they want to access it and review it. Again, they can request us to print and send it to them as well if they don't want to access through a digital program. It doesn't change the findings. They're still there. They still exist. The benefit is that we can educate around it and then work towards some level of understanding the need for it. Also, not everything on there is a compliance requirement. Nothing that we do around the building structure itself right now I'm going to go. and then work towards some level of understanding the need for it. Also, not everything on there is a compliance requirement. Nothing that we do around the building structure itself right now is a compliance measure. That's more recommendations to harden your home. |
| 00:24:48.71 | Unknown | Okay with that we'll go into the next part of this presentation which is the 2025 California Fire Code and the Wildland Urban Interface Adoption. Next slide please. So, Um, So every three years, I come to you, and since 2010, I think, was the first time I came to you. Actually, it may have been before that annexation because I was your fire marshal before the annexation. But we come to you as part of the state of California's triennial code cycle adoption. It includes the fire code, the building code, the green code, the residential code, and several other codes. And what it does is the state goes out and they have, through the International Code Council, they have, a model code that they look at and then through the code program through the state, they look at areas within the state that they modify these codes. Basically what we're doing this year is we're adopting generally the same type of fire code and ordinance that we did last year with the caveat that the state has now removed several chapters out of the building code and the fire code which are related to wildland, urban, wildfire prevention, okay? So what they did is they took chapter 49 out of the fire code. They took chapter 7A out of the building code and they took chapter Um, 337 out of the residential code they put it all into one code and they called it the 2025 California wildland airman interface code it's actually really good that they did this in my opinion because now it's condensed all that information into one source it's very common for us in these in in fire code and building codes that we cross-reference so for instance chapter 10 in the building code is the same chapter 10 in the fire code which is means egress Thank you. in fire code and building codes that we cross reference. So for instance, chapter 10 in the building code is the same chapter 10 in the fire codes, which is means egress. That way we share the same responsibilities between fire and between building. Next slide, please. So again, it's every three years. The previous cycle, we had a single adoption. We just had one code, one fire code that the fire district was adopting. And then this year, for the first time, we have two, because we also have the Wildland Urban Interface Code. We're adopting those simultaneously into one code. |
| 00:26:56.62 | Unknown | So, |
| 00:27:16.60 | Unknown | Next slide, please. One of the things that has come up in this code cycle, which came very abruptly, was this AB 130, which was a trailer bill to the state budget. And essentially it took certain sections out of a previous bill, and it put it in to a single bill, and it requires us, it would require us to make adjustments before October if of 2025 to make any significant changes to our residential construction or residential requirements moving forward AB 130 would put a moratorium on us for residential requirements and that's a moratorium of six years. So for the next six years whatever we have now currently or have adopted before October 31st when it's just related to residential construction would apply with a caveat that the state fire marshal could also say that there's certain items within those within the code that he deems as immediate and necessary for wildfire prevention. So for right now, we did not make any code adjustments before October 1st because the previous code has the same ordinance requirements as the code that we're adopting. So there's not gonna be any significant changes to us as the Southern Fire District and the city of Sausalito. So there's, and with that, there's no reduction in safety standards anywhere between what we currently have and what we're moving forward with. Next slide, please. So, Just to support that, the California Wild and Urban Interface Code has, they put in some code requirements in there that we already had. So we honestly, I think it's worth saying that We're kind of the tip of the spear when it comes to wildland urban interface and wildfire preparedness in the county as a whole. outside of the county DISTRICTS AND CITY DEPARTMENTS HAVE NOT TAKEN THE STEPS THAT WE'VE TAKEN LOCALLY WITH OUR CURRENT WILDLAND URBAN INTERFACE ORDINANCE THAT WE'VE HAD FOR I THINK ABOUT SIX YEARS NOW. SO THEY'RE CATCHING UP. Right now, moving forward, we're not going to see a lot of change in the way that we govern the codes, with the exception of possibly the zone zero, which is coming pretty soon. Next slide, please. So with the adoption process and the schedule, this is what it looks like. So September 24th, the Southern Rim Fire District heard the first reading by title, only announcing that we were going to open up our codes. We've since then had worked and we were working with the city's building department on code and code adoption. We had it first published and noticed on the 26th with the Independent Journal and with other social media resources October 8th. We also published it. And then coming up here on October, sorry, tomorrow actually, we're holding the public hearing during the board meeting for the final ratification, or sorry, the final adoption of the code. So after tomorrow, we'll actually have this code, as long as it gets passed, as long as the board adopts it, it'll be the final draft. It actually does not go into full enforcement and full effect until January 1st of 2026. But between tomorrow and hopefully either in November or December, the city council, like in years past, would review it and would ratify the ordinance so that it would become effective in the city of Sausalito prior to January 1st. And then of course we file it, we have to file it before January 1st with the Building Standards Commission and the Housing Community Development Agency before it goes into effect January 1st. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions. |
| 00:31:59.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:32:02.01 | Steven Woodside | I'm gonna just reach out to our city attorney. Sergio, can you just confirm that we're able to Meet this timeline to ratify the code that will be adopted by Southern Rind fire tomorrow. Oh, yeah. |
| 00:32:19.41 | Sergio Rudin | Bye. |
| 00:32:19.85 | Steven Woodside | We should be able to. |
| 00:32:19.91 | Sergio Rudin | You should be able to. January 1st. So there are different requirements and a different process for the city to adopt its building codes and a requirement to file with the Building Standards Commission. My understanding is with the ratification of the Southern Marin Fire Protection District's ordinance, it goes into effect immediately upon ratification by the city. So as long as the council hears that in December, or sooner, I think we should be in good shape. And then they normally file it with HCD rather than the Building Standards Commission after passage. |
| 00:32:48.60 | Steven Woodside | And Chief Hilliard said that it's his understanding we can just place this on consent to ratify we don't have to any. |
| 00:32:55.37 | Sergio Rudin | You only have to ratify it by resolution. You don't have to pass an ordinance. |
| 00:32:59.97 | Steven Woodside | Okay. So we can just put this on consent at our next meeting. It could be at our next meeting, Sergio, since they're adopting it at Southern Marin Fire tomorrow evening. or tomorrow. |
| 00:33:11.10 | Sergio Rudin | I'm not sure. Thank you. |
| 00:33:11.35 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:33:12.51 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I see no reason it can't as long as they transmit it to us following passage and then we just put it on our agenda. |
| 00:33:18.69 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:33:18.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:33:18.76 | Steven Woodside | Wonderful. Thank you so much. |
| 00:33:20.16 | Unknown | And I did supply the city already with a staff report for that. So as soon as it gets adopted, I could send over the final copy of that. Wonderful. |
| 00:33:29.84 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Thank you. All right, city manager? Yeah. |
| 00:33:35.24 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, city manager's up. Can you put the slideshow up, please? Well, thank you very much, Chief. We're here because this is really important, talking about new codes and services that are provided to prevent disasters because fire threat is real in Sausalito. Earthquake threat is real in Sausalito. Sea level rise is real in Sausalito. And the devastation and tragedies in Los Angeles and other fires in this part of the state remind us that, you know, we need to put our shoulder to the harness and do some work. And, you know, again, as we understand, there are new fire maps that went into effect this past year that also point to the need to be prepared. So this is really important that we spend the time telling the community. THERE ARE NEW FIRE MAPS THAT WENT INTO EFFECT THIS PAST YEAR THAT ALSO POINT TO THE NEED TO BE PREPARED. SO THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE SPEND THE TIME TELLING THE COMMUNITY AND THE COUNCIL, GETTING DIRECTION FROM THE COUNCIL, WORKING WITH THE DISTRICT AND OTHER PARTNERS TO ACTUALLY MOVE THE NEEDLE IN A WAY THAT READES SAW SALADO FOR AN EVENT. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. |
| 00:34:57.66 | Chris Zapata | I CAN AD-LIB. OKAY, HERE WE GO. ALL RIGHT. SO AGAIN, THE IDEA OF WORKING WITH PARTNERS TO COLLABORATE TO IMPROVE COMMUNITY RADNESS TO THREATS, THAT'S SOMETHING THE COUNCIL AND THE COMMUNITY AND OURSELVES DEMAND OF OURSELVES. I SPOKE BRIEFLY ABOUT THE FIRE MAPS THAT CREATE AREAS OF VERY HIGH SEVERITY IN SAUSALITO, SO THAT CREATES MORE URGENCY. NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE. So one of the ways that we can work on being better at preparing for an emergency is to use resources that the city and the district have. When the transfer of the fire department to the fire district occurred, one of the things that happened was the fire station at 300 Spencer was inactivated. So it has been fallow as a fire facility for almost 15 years. so that in and of itself presents an opportunity. WAS INACTIVATED. SO IT HAS BEEN FALLOW AS A FIRE FACILITY FOR ALMOST 15 YEARS. SO THAT IN AND OF ITSELF PRESENTS AN OPPORTUNITY. BUT LET'S JUST BE CLEAR THAT IT HASN'T BEEN UNUSED. THE CITY COUNCIL KNOWS THAT WE KEEP A LOT OF OUR RECORDS THERE. THE CELL AND COMMUNICATION FACILITIES THAT ARE ESSENTIAL TO COMMUNICATION IN THAT PART OF THE CITY ARE THERE. AND SO ALL OF THAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR US TO UNDERSTAND THAT IN ADDITION TO HAVING IT NOT BEING USED FOR OVER A DECADE, THERE ARE SOME THINGS WE HAVE TO CONSIDER BESIDES FIXING THE BUILDING. So the city council has given us direction and positive direction and resources. Number one, you asked us to assess all city facilities, and certainly the Spencer Fire Station, former Spencer Fire Station, was one that's been assessed in terms of what's needed to bring it up to a usable status. And at the time that that was done, we weren't contemplating a reuse as a fire facility. It was we just need to keep that building in shape because it is a city asset. The second thing is that we're going to do that. AT THE TIME THAT THAT WAS DONE, WE WEREN'T CONTEMPLATING A REUSE AS A FIRE FACILITY. IT WAS, WE JUST NEED TO KEEP THAT BUILDING IN SHAPE BECAUSE IT IS A CITY ASSET. THE SECOND THING THAT YOU'VE DONE IS YOU APPROVED A $300,000 CONTRACT with MCCI, I believe is the name of the company for records management. THE CITY IS LEGALLY REQUIRED TO KEEP SOME RECORDS AND A GOOD PRACTICE TO KEEP IMPORTANT RECORDS AND SO THAT IS GOING ON AS WE SPEAK SO THAT WE CAN IN FACT HAVE OPTIONS TO PRESENT TO THE COUNCIL AND THE COMMUNITY AND THE DISTRICT FOR POTENTIAL USE OF THAT FACILITY. I WANT TO NOTE THAT OUR CITY CLERK HAS BEEN WORKING DILIGENTLY WITH OUR HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR AND AN not an army, but I don't know, there were seven, eight, nine interns out there trying to gather all of the dusty paper that's been there to make sure we keep what we need to keep and digitize what we don't and work with the company that's doing that. So that's important. We anticipate we'll be done with that, Walford, by the end of December is my understanding. So that's important. Next slide, please. IN THE MEANTIME, IN MARCH OF THIS PAST YEAR, WE STARTED DISCUSSIONS WITH THE SOUTHERN MARIN FIRE DISTRICT ABOUT PARTNERSHIPS AND POTENTIAL ACTIVATION OF THAT FACILITY FOR EMERGENCY SERVICES, NOT JUST FIRE SERVICES, BUT OTHER SERVICES. SO THE APPROACH THAT THE DISTRICT PRESENTED TO THE CITY STAFF WAS ONE THAT INVOLVED, YOU KNOW, PHASING. AND THE FIRST PHASE INVOLVED RESOURCES FROM THE FIRE D from the fire district that would set up what they call a hand crew, which would be staged at this station. And Chief Hillary can speak to it more definitively than I can, but as I understand it, there would be 10 persons staged there from time to time. They would go out there and look at vegetation, fuel reduction and actually be on site and then whenever there's a situation where information is brought to this community into the district that there is a threat red flag event then at that time the district could also utilize the facility so let me be clear it's not a 24 7-7, 365-day-a-year operation. This would be the first phase that would involve the district and its current resources and the city using its resources to ready that facility for that partnership. Next slide, please. So what we believe is we'll be done with all the records by the end of December. We have parallel community or facility improvements that need to be done, some that are part of the Veritas report, others that are important for a rehousing of firefighter personnel and equipment, and so that needs to be done as well. We anticipate being done by that in the early quarter of 2026. IN THE MEANTIME I FEEL we are working at the council's direction to enter into a new negotiation, negotiate at least for the property that would involve the use of the district. So I'm very grateful for the support that Chief Tubbs and his team have given us as we've had these conversations. We've engaged the property managers we've hired to help us in that lease negotiations. They're currently ongoing with the city council, so the public needs to know that we are not sitting on our hands, that we are actually getting ready to try to activate this facility for the emergency preparedness good of this community. But very clearly, it's not going to be a fire station as it was before it was shut down. That is a longer term conversation, a more financially involved conversation. and requires that the district work within its resources to determine what's viable for them, because I think as I've spoken to personal at the fire district, they can fund a hand crew, they can roll up equipment and people for a red flag event within the current budgetary resources they have, but to actually staff that 24 seven, 365 days a year is a different financial conversation that needs to be had. But as a start, we want to let the community know that we are actually making significant progress in trying to get ready to have that facility operational by the end of the first quarter in September of 20, or year of 2026. Next slide. If anyone has any questions, mayor and council, I'm happy to try to answer them. |
| 00:41:21.41 | Steven Woodside | and the other side. |
| 00:41:21.47 | Steven Woodside | Any questions of the city? |
| 00:41:22.49 | Steven Woodside | manager? |
| 00:41:24.66 | Steven Woodside | Thank you very much for that very comprehensive report. I think we're making great progress. in moving towards a goal endorsed by a large chunk of our community. And thank you to Southern Marin Fire for your collaboration with us in this really important undertaking to ensure all of our residents throughout town are protected, especially in light of the updated high fire hazard zone maps that came out earlier this year. |
| 00:41:53.70 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:41:58.41 | Steven Woodside | All right. Um... In my haste to start the meeting, it's been pointed out to me that I neglected to host the Pledge of Allegiance as well as to approve the agenda. So let's go ahead and undertake the Pledge of Allegiance. |
| 00:42:12.92 | Unknown | you |
| 00:42:18.45 | Unknown | I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:42:19.41 | Fred Moore | To the flag. the United States of America. to the republic. |
| 00:42:23.40 | Mikey Stefani | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:42:35.04 | Steven Woodside | May I have a motion approving our agenda. |
| 00:42:38.20 | Unknown | So moved. |
| 00:42:40.54 | Steven Woodside | Second. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries four zero. Okay, we will now turn 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 taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items that are not on the agenda. I have no speaker cards. City Clerk, do we have anyone? Oh, |
| 00:43:14.41 | Steven Woodside | All right. Fred Moore. |
| 00:43:21.68 | Walfred Solorzano | Welcome. |
| 00:43:22.78 | Fred Moore | Welcome. Good evening. Thank you for all your efforts in getting the measure J and K on the ballot. Obviously, measure J must pass to preserve all the hard work you've done with the state mandated housing elements and housing residents numbers that we need to meet. As for measure K, unfortunately, much false information about the density and height limits for potential development have been circulated. As you know, the density is 50 and the maximum height is 32 feet. I hope the residents will not fall victims of relying on false information, but rather conduct their discussions on the facts, about the measure and have debates on their legitimate concerns and not on the false information and flyers being circulated as you move into the new year with new challenges for the city i hope that you are able to tackle the benefits of repealing ordinance 1022. with the repeal of 1022 the council will have the opportunity to revitalize the northern portion of our city and allow a blend of maritime, residential, commercial, retail, and industrial uses to replace the dilapidated and crumbling infrastructure improvements and vacant parcels that currently exist. It is time that we embrace and improve the Marin ship as a city gem for all our residents to enjoy. Appreciate your time. Thank you very much. |
| 00:44:46.24 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Next, Mikey Stefani. |
| 00:44:49.18 | Walfred Solorzano | Turn on your video, I guess. |
| 00:44:50.29 | Mikey Stefani | Thank you. |
| 00:44:51.12 | Steven Woodside | And city clerk is our clock. |
| 00:44:53.03 | Mikey Stefani | talking. |
| 00:44:53.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:44:53.53 | Mikey Stefani | Yeah. Good evening. My name is Mrs. Stefani at 27 Central Avenue. I'd like to draw your attention to a claim against you that are submitted on October 2nd. You're referring to my dining room addition as an illegal construction. However, you fully permitted my proposed addition and the project was completed accordingly eight years ago. |
| 00:44:55.19 | Steven Woodside | to the public. |
| 00:45:16.69 | Mikey Stefani | Your demand for partial demolition is based on an illegal six month late appeal with a misleading view impact claim by your former colleague. You extorted at least $15,000 from me in form of fees for retroactive design review while my addition is exempt from design review. Besides, no neighbor's primary view is impacted by my addition. You are violated numerous municipal and state laws, including several aspects of the Brown Act to keep this highly controversial case from public attention. The planner is guilty of libel and slander by corrupting public records and deceptive photography. You illegally revoked my permits and are unconstitutionally seizing my property by demanding partial demolition of our dining room. You are destroying our one and only room facing San Francisco while evidently it did not negatively affect the neighbor's property value. In good faith, I already improved the neighbor's view last month by trimming my trees and removing bulky guardboards from my roof. I respectfully ask you to reconsider and reinstate my vetted property rights and permits by November 16th, 2025. Thank you. |
| 00:46:51.17 | Steven Woodside | So I commented on this at our last meeting. This is a matter under litigation and so we will not be making any public comment regarding this. We will address this as appropriate through the appropriate channels. All right, our next speaker is Linda Roberts. |
| 00:47:11.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Good evening, council members. I'm here to give a positive shout out to the farmers market and thank those in the city who brought this market to Sausalito. I know the market's been in town for a while, so I'm a little bit late to the party because I've only started going in the last month. But it is a lot of fun. It's just a fantastic way to spend a Sunday morning. There's music and the vendors and the produce stands. It's all really fantastic. And plus I'm excited to be able to support area farmers and producers and this market just gives the whole north end of town a nice feeling of community. So I just encourage everybody in the vicinity, even if they don't live in Sausalito, to support the market so that it'll continue to thrive. So whoever is responsible in the city for bringing this to us, thank you very much. It's a lot of fun. |
| 00:48:12.83 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, it's so nice to hear some pleasant news sometimes during our communications. Just a quick. |
| 00:48:19.95 | Walfred Solorzano | Just a quick comment. As a city clerk, I'd like to thank Linda Roberts for her years as a registrar for the county. |
| 00:48:28.57 | Steven Woodside | Yes, thank you, Linda. |
| 00:48:34.11 | Steven Woodside | City Clerk, anyone online? |
| 00:48:36.15 | Walfred Solorzano | Abed McDougall. |
| 00:48:39.09 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:48:42.70 | Babette McDougall | Well, good evening, and I'm so glad to see the technology up and running. Thank you. They say, somebody famous said, there is a time for every season and of purpose under heaven. And I think the fact that Melissa Blaustein has had this wonderful wedding. That from what I'm told was a wonderful example of bringing community together. And so in that spirit, I think we do deserve to take a moment to put aside whatever the differences are, the hammers and the tongs, there's always a lot to argue about. That's what the town does. Okay, but I also want to say shout out to Sausalito. I had such a great time on Saturday. I thought we really looked great. And the thing that everybody said, it got the biggest bounce. I don't know what you heard, but I heard. that our public safety stood out big time. Big time. And you know, like the no penalty breathalyzer thing. That just knocked people's socks off. And everything was just such a wonderful spirit of community. And I have to really say a shout out to Parks and Rec, Brian and his team. They really made Sausalito look great. I just, I'm calling it the Caledonia Festival because it's like, The original thing only really great now. Thank you so much. And the Southern Marin Fire, I'm just so sorry I'm not in the room. These are some of my all time favorite people. And they're working so hard and so well, and they're getting everyone to be realistic about where we're where we are, how finite we are. Imagine they're making PG&E come to terms with, you know, PG&E refuses to acknowledge Sausalito as a fire risk. It's just not on their list. But I believe they're being brought around little by little. That matters. And that's what you do when you just dig in and deal with what you've got. And these are the utility people, so we must work with them. onward and upward. Thank you. See you next time. |
| 00:50:41.02 | Steven Woodside | CLERICAL. |
| 00:50:44.87 | Walfred Solorzano | Lorna Newland. |
| 00:50:46.53 | Steven Woodside | Welcome Lorna. |
| 00:50:56.36 | Steven Woodside | Lorna, we're not hearing you. Hello, my name is Ellen. |
| 00:51:00.41 | Lorna Newland | Hello, you are. OUT. Yes. |
| 00:51:05.49 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 00:51:07.18 | Lorna Newland | can hear me. Hello, my name is Lorna Newland. I'm a 33-year resident and homeowner in Sausalito. I love it here. I'm a senior. I believe in affordable housing for seniors and affordable housing, which is very hard in California. I'm fortunate I worked very hard and I purchased my home after working 20 years in the corporate world. But for 23 years, I've had a small business in Sausalito. three years on Bridgeway and then when that rent would have tripled, I moved to the MLK bus barn and it's been almost 20 years that I've been a tenant of the city of Sausalito. So I was dismayed when It was noted on a yes and K. only the dilapidated commercial building will be replaced. That is where my studio has been for almost 20 years. I've taught children, adults, for 23 years in Sausalito. I've donated to just about every nonprofit in town. And there are people in that building, artisans, the antique restoration has been there 33 years. There are photographers who have been there 25 years in that building and a total of 45 years in the MLK property. So we're the working MLK. And I understand there's a big coalition because the Working Waterfront I don't. There's 78 acres there. I really feel that there should be an area and it's been proposed before the Carlo Berg, he wanted to do a memory care there. So it's just about working all together and not taking something that really has been a treasure. And if it's dilapidated, It's because the city has not maintained it. It is deplorable, but I love it there. And I have a two minute walking commute and I would hesitate to, I'd be devastated to lose my studio. |
| 00:53:09.52 | Steven Woodside | Thanks, Lorna. Your time is up. Thank you so much for your public comments. |
| 00:53:14.97 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public speakers? |
| 00:53:16.58 | Steven Woodside | All right, with that we'll move on to the consent calendar. Yeah. |
| 00:53:27.09 | Steven Woodside | City Clerk I have an old agenda can you tell me what items are on the how many items for a through a Thank you. |
| 00:53:35.73 | Walfred Solorzano | FOR A |
| 00:53:36.44 | Steven Woodside | Through what before each for H. Okay um And we're going to remove item 4C, which is approval letter in support of mascots, So I'm gonna ask that we remove that. I'll make a brief public comment about that. So we're going to consider items 4A through 4H. 4A is adopt the draft meeting minutes from October 7, 2025. 4 B is receive and file proclamation honoring contributions of Caledonia cleaners and 40th year anniversary. |
| 00:54:12.57 | Mikey Stefani | THE FAMILY IS |
| 00:54:14.68 | Steven Woodside | For D is adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute transportation authority of Marin agreement A, fiscal year 2612, funding agreement between the transportation authority of Marin and the city of Sausalito and the amount of 181744 to be received from measure AA funds for street improvements. For E, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute professional services contract with CONSOR for construction management and inspection services for the Dunphy Park Improvement Phase II project in an amount not to exceed 142618 and authorize additional 42618 from general fund to support the project. For F, South Dakota Police Department crime and traffic report calendar year 2025, third quarter year to date report. |
| 00:54:27.35 | Mikey Stefani | the men. |
| 00:55:00.98 | Steven Woodside | 4G, adopt a resolution ratifying the surrendered and abandoned vessel exchange, save, grant agreement, For 2025 to 2027 with the California Department of Boating and Waterways, and appropriate save grant funds in the amount of 13,500 and 4H receive and file a report on short-term rental metrics and code enforcement. I'm going to remove items 4C and I'm gonna, ask a couple of questions regarding 4-H, although I'm not asking that we don't approve it. So any other requests or questions regarding the consent calendar? Thank you. Seeing none, I'll open it up to public comment on the consent calendar |
| 00:55:41.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Seen none. |
| 00:55:42.92 | Steven Woodside | All right. So briefly regarding 4C, Councilmember Sobieski and I and the city manager met with Tam. Is that Justin? I'm going to ask him questions in just a moment. Brandon, I've already been Okay. Brandon knows. And it was a very productive meeting. We learned, however, that they've already made up their mind about what routes they're going to remove and what routes they're going to modify. There will be an article in The Currents giving a heads up to... members of the public regarding what those are. We voiced our objections and we are to a couple of their proposed moves that could have an adverse impact on residents of Sausalito, but, because the action is already a fait accompli, what we're going to do is schedule more customized meeting just with Marin Transit and the working group for the city of Sausalito and staff to discuss how best to address some of those needs moving forward All right, the other item that I wanted to discuss is item 4. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. From the staff report, it appears that we have not yet started imposing fines. Although we have an ordinance in place that allows us to impose fines of $1,000 for the first violation, $3,000. for the Second violation. Um, We recently adopted updated ordinances because it's more difficult to impose fines when people are listing but we can't prove that the homes are being rented and so the council will recall that we recently adopted, revised, code enforcement ordinances that now make it an infraction just to list a Sausalito home. on a home sharing networks such as Vrbo or Airbnb And that would subject them to the fines. My understanding is that the second reading of that ordinance occurred at our last meeting on October 7th and so Justin I just want to confirm thank you for being here that we will start a program for a communicating and finding residents who list their homes as short term rentals for a period of less than 30 days. |
| 00:58:34.42 | Justin | Yes, that is correct, your understanding. And it actually, really highlights how important this change is to the code. A number of residents that have been advertising short-term rentals that have actually received citations is not reflected on the current report because We've issued these and it's interesting how many different ways people have to refute our claims. And so right now I'm working through probably six or seven different properties where we have sent out citations, and we have received several different manner of communication stating we are no longer doing a short-term rental or our rental term is more than 30 days and These take time. and a lot of energy and effort to confirm which is why our new ordinance is really going to help in these situations. Some folks have gone even so far as to send screenshots cancellations, so we'll get a report back host compliance saying they've completed two rentals this month. We'll send out a citation. The property owner will then send us a screenshot which says, Here it says my account's been suspended and I canceled two reservations. It's very easy to fake something like that. It's very easy to actually do that and have it be true. We really can't verify either way. And host compliance will continue to say it's a short-term rental. They completed a rental. but to give them due process. We have to only work off of facts and things that are completely provable the new ordinance is really gonna help with this. It's gonna allow us to say, You advertised it. We see that it says there's been a rental completed, even if you've canceled that rental, we now have the means going forward be able to take some of our time back in investigating these claims and say it's the advertising. that you're being fined for now. I'm personally, I'm really excited about that because this has been one of those holes in our enforcement of just, We spin our wheels, putting a lot of energy into it. And then, We get pushback. and we don't really have any way to move forward or to actually prove some of these rentals have been completed. I'm excited to see how these numbers change moving forward. Thank you. |
| 01:01:04.01 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. |
| 01:01:04.74 | Justin | Thank you. |
| 01:01:04.82 | Steven Woodside | Thank you for those efforts. I did want to just seek that clarification because your report was clear that there's a high number of violations. So moving forward, even if someone says it was canceled, the mere fact that they listed it is cause for an infraction and for an appropriate fine, depending on how frequently the infraction occurs. |
| 01:01:04.86 | Justin | Thank you. |
| 01:01:28.06 | Justin | Absolutely, and that's gonna be one of the major defining changes there. One other thing I'd just like to mention is host compliance is only one of the tools that we use. We also receive sometimes a phone call from a resident, and those are also claims which may take a little bit longer to investigate, and so we will still see a little bit of squishiness on the numbers going forward when, We have reports that are not documented with advertising, but I do believe that our new fine schedule will also help with that. Thank you. |
| 01:02:03.62 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:02:04.01 | Justin | Right. |
| 01:02:04.22 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:02:04.31 | Justin | Thank you. |
| 01:02:04.33 | Steven Woodside | HERE. |
| 01:02:04.75 | Unknown | Yes, just quickly, you say there's a little squishiness to the numbers, and I appreciate that. One in particular I just wanted to clarify. You have a number, it's either 65 or 79 short-term rentals identify, depending on how they're discovered, if you will. And then you also have another number considerably larger, 164, short and long-term. Is it possible that some of those will rent for short term and also long term or how should I interpret that |
| 01:02:35.28 | Justin | Again, that's where having a prohibition on the advertising really comes into play, because with a lot of the rental platforms, you are allowed to set a minimum amount of night's day. And some folks will set it at a number that's really, really close to 30 days. So they may say something like, 28 day stay. So they're looking at four weeks. Host compliance will look at that as a short term rental in violation of the the city code. And it's the type of thing where, again, we'll contact those folks that are doing that short-term rental, and they'll say, well, I have it up there because four weeks is just what we happen to select. And getting those things adjusted so that they're doing a 30-day rental or more is really part of the conversation that we have with those residents. Host compliance, their record is... fully historical. So if last week somebody was renting something and it said 28 day rental, and we've communicated with them and they've said, oh, I'm so sorry, we want to be in compliance. They'll change it to 30 days, but host compliance only goes through and scrapes the site every so often. So they're not looking at it every day, hour by hour. They essentially will send a robot out to the site and the numbers get updated, but they're not immediate. So sometimes it'll be a week or two before we see the changes in their interface. And that accounts for some of that little squishiness between their rentals short term, but a lot of them at this point are meeting our requirements and We will also see a little squishiness because people frequently take down their listing and repost with a new title or new photos. And those will be identified as a second listing, but often we'll be able to look at that with human eyes and say, these two are the same listing, same host, but it'll show up as multiple short-term rentals. But really what we're looking at is one property owner with one unit that they're renting under different rules. advertisements. |
| 01:04:43.46 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:04:44.13 | Justin | Sure. Thanks very much. |
| 01:04:46.97 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:04:47.14 | Justin | He said, |
| 01:04:47.42 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. |
| 01:04:47.80 | Justin | Thank you. |
| 01:04:47.81 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. All right, with that, I will entertain a motion to approve items 4a through 4b and 4d through 4h of the consent calendar |
| 01:04:58.16 | Jill Hoffman | Mayor, I have a follow-up question. Certainly. Not on the short-term rules, but on the routes. And you were talking about routes for the bus routes? Yes. And are we going to have a follow-up meeting on some kind of information put out on changes to bus routes? |
| 01:04:59.52 | Steven Woodside | Certainly. |
| 01:05:07.25 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 01:05:13.04 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I said it's going to be in the currents. We got information last night and the city manager has shared it with our editor and it's gonna be in the current. |
| 01:05:23.03 | Jill Hoffman | You're welcome. |
| 01:05:23.47 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, thanks. |
| 01:05:24.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:05:24.16 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. |
| 01:05:24.23 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you so much. Thank you. |
| 01:05:26.71 | Unknown | So are you asking for a motion? I am. Okay, I so move 4A and B and then 4D through H. |
| 01:05:34.78 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:05:37.49 | Steven Woodside | All right, all in favor? Aye. That motion carries four zero. We'll now move on to business items. The first is six A, introduction and waiver of first reading of ordinance number 09-2025, an ordinance of the city council of the city of Sausalito repealing 2022 California building standards code and penalty provisions. |
| 01:05:39.40 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:06:00.09 | Steven Woodside | Saucyuta Municipal Code chapters 8.02, 8.04, 8.08, 8.08, 1.08, I think it's actually 8.10, 8.12, 8.16, 8.18, 8.22, 8.28, and enacting 2025 California Building Standards Code and local amendments thereto into Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 8.02. And I have our assistant city manager listed here. Yeah. |
| 01:06:31.90 | Chris Zapata | Brandon, are you listening to this? I need you to come back in. Sergio, I saw some communication back and forth as to who's going to take the lead on this. Is it going to be you or Brandon? |
| 01:06:43.54 | Sergio Rudin | I mean, I'm happy to go through the basics here. So until Brandon can show up. So the city is required by state law to update its building standards codes every three years, following the adoption by the California Building Standards Commission of the new model codes. These new model codes by operation of state law will go into effect January 1st, 2026. Accordingly, the city must update and readopt any local amendments that it has. to be effective with those new state codes. this ordinance would primarily Um, carry forward all of your prior local amendments adjusted to what the new model codes are. So there are certain provisions where our local amendments are no longer as restrictive as the state law requirements are. And so those are no longer necessary. Additionally, We have a number of our codes. in various chapters. This proposed ordinance would combine all of those into one single chapter for ease of use and review. Um, Importantly, as was mentioned by the Southernman Fire Protection District, the governor's budget trailer bill, AB 130, did effectively adopt a building code freeze. And so local governments are allowed to carry forward their prior amendments to the building codes as long as they're substantially equivalent to changes or modifications that were previously filed with the Building Standards Commission prior to September 30th, 2025. Alternatively, you can also adopt additional modifications that are deemed by the Commission to be emergency standards necessary to protect public health and safety. You can adopt new local amendments. |
| 01:08:43.64 | Mikey Stefani | I don't know. |
| 01:08:45.34 | Sergio Rudin | that are related to home hardening. So this is additional fire safety requirements. You can also, Um, adopt modifications to building code standards that are adopted to align with General plan approved prior to June 10th, 2025. as in that are intended to incentivize all electric construction, as part of an adopted greenhouse gas emission reduction strategy. Um, as long as those modifications permit mixed fuel residential construction consistent with federal law. So the ordinance that's before you tonight primarily just carries for the city's existing local amendments, as mentioned by the Southern Marin Fire Protection District. They are working on specific requirements related to home hardening and fire protection measures that they will be adopting and the city will be ratifying. So you'll be getting a second ordinance in addition to this one. And then additionally, we are working on a third ordinance under that provision of AB 130, allowing you to adopt um, I'm not sure. strategies that incentivize all electric construction as part of an adopted greenhouse gas emissions production strategy. So typically, this would be your reach code kind of requirements. So those will be coming forward for you at the next council meeting. where you will be having this ordinance before you for public hearing and adoption. Importantly, the state law process for adopting codes by reference is a little different than your typical process for adopting codes. ordinances in that you do a first reading and then you schedule a secondary public hearing for the second reading under state law. So. With that, I will turn this over to our building official, who I believe is also here, and Brandon Fiths with additional comments. |
| 01:10:42.03 | Gary West | Good evening Mayor Cox and City Council. This is Gary West, I'm the Acting Billion official for the City of Sausalito. of, |
| 01:10:48.78 | Steven Woodside | Should we say welcome city manager? |
| 01:10:50.54 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:10:53.14 | Chris Zapata | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:10:53.32 | Gary West | I mean, I'm not. |
| 01:10:53.38 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:10:53.41 | Gary West | Thank you. |
| 01:10:53.51 | Chris Zapata | Should we say welcome? Is this our new? No, no, no, no, no. He's our contract billing official. |
| 01:10:55.37 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:10:57.41 | Gary West | Interim building official. |
| 01:10:59.18 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:10:59.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:10:59.45 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:10:59.50 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF |
| 01:10:59.64 | Chris Zapata | Okay. |
| 01:11:00.02 | Steven Woodside | Got it. |
| 01:11:00.19 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:11:00.43 | Gary West | you All right. Nice thing about fall. |
| 01:11:02.00 | Chris Zapata | You can say welcome. You can say welcome. |
| 01:11:03.79 | Steven Woodside | Well, welcome to you as well, sir. |
| 01:11:04.38 | Gary West | You're welcome. nice thing about following the fire the fire service is they've touched on a lot of the stuff that we we're not going to go over and just in a way to save time for the City Council but we do have all the codes that for the 2025 that are going to be adopted this is the first hearing as Sergio said the second hearing will be following up in a November date and some of the some of the modifications that we had the codes changed, so we've actually deleted some of our local ordinances that are now written into the codes, so it saved us a little bit of sections on our municipal codes. |
| 01:11:43.61 | Gary West | When we get into the different codes and the adoptions, they, as the fire department said, they've kind of parlayed some of the different code sections and now they have the WUI code, which is an entire new chapter that they're gonna be adopting. But we tried to work with the fire district to compare their ordinances compared to ours so they were similar and they were matching there. So there wasn't any differences in there and Sergio worked really well with reviewing that information. If you have any questions or any further comments, but these building codes address all the building facets from building electrical mechanical plumbing, it covers all the new trades, including low voltage and the energy efficiency, the energy efficiencies that we're always trying to strive for. |
| 01:12:32.48 | Steven Woodside | Questions? Yes, Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:12:35.33 | Jill Hoffman | I noticed, do we have a copy or a document in our in the agenda or attached to the agenda that has a red line version or something that we can reference about what our old ordinance said and what the new ordinance said? I didn't see that and I'm wondering if I'm missing that somewhere. |
| 01:12:55.58 | Sergio Rudin | Well, we do not have a red line in part because this ordinance combines, I think, Let's take a look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 chapters of the existing municipal code. Additionally, this ordinance repeals the international property maintenance code. This is not a code that is typically used by the city for code enforcement purposes. It's also not part of the California building standards code. It's a international model code, which is mostly duplicative of |
| 01:13:25.81 | Mikey Stefani | I'm not sure. |
| 01:13:28.32 | Sergio Rudin | state housing law. So in consultation with our code enforcement staff, and our interim building official. we thought that it may make more sense simply just to repeal it, since it's not typically used by the city, and additionally, the enforcement provisions of that international model code conflict with California state law, which requires that all building code enforcement be subject to appeal to a building board of appeals. which if the city doesn't have it, it is the city council by default. So that is also another question for the council to consider is, do you folks wanna delegate that authority to either the planning commission, create a building board of appeals, or would you like to, have staff continue to bring all building code interpretation issues and appeals of stop work orders and things like that to the council for your attention. |
| 01:14:22.32 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Sorry, so what we're essentially doing is our old building code is out and we just wholesale brought a new building code in. |
| 01:14:30.29 | Sergio Rudin | So this is not a wholesale new building code because state law actually says that you cannot adopt new provisions that are not substantially equivalent to what you have. with some limited exceptions for home hardening and for additional greenhouse gas reduction strategies. This ordinance just carries forward your existing building code standards into the next building code cycle. Um, and just to overview what those are. We are carrying forward Requirements that masonry and stone fences in excess of three feet require a building permit. additional requirements for building permits related to sidewalks above adjacent grade. requirements that substantial remodels of existing construction be subject to the 2025 building code standards, the new ones. Let's see what else. requirements for sprinklers and residential construction and other occupancies are being carried over. smoke alarm requirements are being carried over. prohibition on use of wooden retaining walls, where they're supporting a building surcharge or or roadway. requirements for additional hydrostatic pressure testing of swimming pools. Additional notice requirements regarding demolition, additional requirements regarding erosion control during the wet season, Um, let's see. And for the most part, sprinkler requirements for townhomes and single family residences. additional roof hardening requirements for Class A roofs, Um, And beyond that, the further home hardening and fire protection requirements are going to be in the Southern Marin Fire Protection District ordinance this time. |
| 01:16:23.90 | Jill Hoffman | So people that, sorry, oops. My concern is, and my concern for me and for other people that might operate in this space, you know, they're going to want to know and have a quick reference for what the old ordinance said and what the changes are. And so there's really no way to do that because we don't have a redline version. So, and there's no way to compare the old ordinance to the new ordinance. So I don't know, I mean, I see what your point is, right? Because there's been, there's a new version and it's substantially different. But I, I mean, I can talk to you offline, I guess, about how to highlight that, but usually you have a new, you know, if you're doing amendments to a code, you know, you have a document where it's visible and you can see where the changes are. um I will say. |
| 01:17:22.90 | Steven Woodside | I will say that our staff report does say most of the revisions are to add. It says, you know, this is, you know, section 104.4. section 104.11 is added to read as follows. Section 104.11 is added to read as follows. you know, um, another section is amended to read in entirety as follows. So it's pretty clear from reviewing the, um, detailed, um, revisions that are attached to the draft ordinance that's attached to our staff report, what the revisions are, it doesn't say. Yeah. |
| 01:18:02.93 | Jill Hoffman | I'll talk to the attorney offline, but it's a five page staff report and a 23 page new ordinance. So we're gonna disagree. |
| 01:18:09.88 | Sergio Rudin | There is for reference by the building standards commission in particular, because we do have to prove to them. that this new ordinance is substantially, the standards are substantially equivalent to what we had before in the ordinance. There is a table two which is reference to our ordinance 1291, which was our modifications to the 2022 building standards code. So, I think to address your concern council member, I think we should have added, Ordinance 1291, which is the prior ordinance. to allow people to do a compare and contrast. I mean, it certainly would be nice to have a red line. I agree with you. Um, But given how we previously structured our code, I think it would be very hard to prepare a red line for this particular ordinance, but we at least have a cross reference table for where you can find the prior language. |
| 01:18:55.24 | Jill Hoffman | hard. |
| 01:19:03.22 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, well, let's talk before the next meeting and see if we can figure out a better reference than just someone going and having to pull out two different, you know, and trying to compare them. It's incredibly difficult to do, I know, because I've had to do it. So, okay. |
| 01:19:20.98 | Steven Woodside | thanks to both of you appreciate that okay if there are no other questions of staff I'll open it up for public comment city clerk |
| 01:19:30.69 | Walfred Solorzano | We have a few people online. The first one is Matt S. |
| 01:19:39.71 | Matt S | Good evening, council. I want to briefly comment on the proposed amendment to section 503. One of the building code under the health and safety code and the new restrictions in AB one 30. any local modification to the California building standards code must cite the specific state provision being amended and include express finding showing how that changes necessary local climatic, geologic, or topographic conditions. the proposed language in section 503 one. doesn't appear connected to any such findings or evidence in record. Nor are there any actual linkages between the proposed amendment and any permissible basis in AB 130. Adopting it without that linkage renders the amendment unforceable and exposes the city to challenge. I'd respectfully urge the council to remove or defer section 503.1 until those findings are properly made. Thank you very much. I yield the rest of my time. |
| 01:20:40.96 | Steven Woodside | Um, City Attorney, I'm Okay. So... 503.1 as amended is on page 6 of our ordinance. City Attorney, can you comment on that concern? |
| 01:20:57.45 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I mean, the language reads the provisions of this code do not authorize construction otherwise prohibited by the city of Sausalito general plan any specific plan or zoning ordinance which will take precedence with respect to any building height, building storing limit or building area requirements in this code if in conflict therewith. The Building Standards Commission has basically stated that when you have provisions that are administrative in nature, rather than substantively modify what the building code requirements are, they are not required to you are not required to make those findings. Now the city has had this language in its building standards previously, And it's, It's intended. to basically state that the building code does not authorize any construction that's prohibited by the zoning ordinances or the general plan. I actually don't think that this language is strictly necessary to have in there. because your zoning ordinances and general plan will normally trump and you can still enforce those regardless of what the building code says. So... I'm happy if the council wants to simply remove this language. I do think it's not strictly necessary, but it's helpful. as guidance to people who are filing for building permits that they also need to consider zoning code requirements. So. |
| 01:22:10.30 | Steven Woodside | And do you believe that retaining this language requires us to add additional language as suggested by our speaker? |
| 01:22:18.20 | Sergio Rudin | No, and I think I believe when the city previously adopted this in prior building code cycles, it did not do so and the Building Standards Commission did not raise an issue with it. |
| 01:22:27.39 | Steven Woodside | Okay. All right, next speaker, city clerk. |
| 01:22:30.94 | Walfred Solorzano | Babette McDougall. |
| 01:22:36.79 | Babette McDougall | Well, thank you very much for allowing me to speak. Let me just say, in response to the city attorney's input, I say the best way to remain, and he's good at this, you just knock that straight down the middle of the lane, and that's how you assure a strike. I mean, if you like to bowl, and I do. All right, on other fronts, I just want to say I'm so glad that we have lawyers that know how to drill down on this. And thankfully, we have two standing members of the bar on our dais. So I know the citizens are looking to you. for how to make sure getting down in these weeds make it work for the people. And thank you for acknowledging earlier, Madam Mayor, your commitment to the residents who live in Sausalito. That matters a lot. I'm going forward, I'd like to invite you since we're talking about codes. I propose every new build going forward. The ground floor is made available to the city and a team. However, we're going to define it to decide what our special needs, whether it's senior housing ground floor. Every new build going forward, ground floor, senior housing, First responders and other, I mean, absolutely essential personnel, we are flanked by bridges. We are so cut off. The fact that we have this chance to focus on how to survive really matters. Let's make it count. First floor going forward, all special needs. Hey, I might need to be on the ground floor. I'm 43 steps to the front door, thank God. All right, let's little outside of the box thinking, this is our moment to really look creatively instead of just being petrified by the amount of density heading our way. I yield back my time. Thank you. |
| 01:24:19.39 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:24:23.65 | Walfred Solorzano | Mark Palmer. |
| 01:24:26.18 | Steven Woodside | Hi Mark, I'll just tell you off the bat, we're gonna undertake in reach code consideration at a subsequent meeting. |
| 01:24:35.09 | Mark Palmer | Oh, very good. Can you hear me? |
| 01:24:36.74 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:24:36.77 | Mark Palmer | Yes, we hear you. Good evening, Mayor Cox, council members, staff, and members of the public. Mark Palmer, Sustainability Commission, Tonight's action to adopt a baseline 2025 California Building Standards Code including Cal green, is an important first step, and I want to thank staff for their careful work. I also want to express strong support for the future hearing mentioned by the city attorney and in the staff report to consider adopting CalGreen Tier 1 measures. Why does this next step matter? California's climate goals for local governments involve aligning with statewide targets reduce emissions another 80% by 2045. In Sausalito, nearly a third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. Many climate scientists agree that modern building codes are the most impactful tools local governments could use to reduce climate pollution. Tier 1 measures like low carbon concrete drought tolerant landscaping and improved indoor air quality provide resource savings. healthier homes, and real climate leadership. Tier 1 applies only to new construction not existing homes. Seven other Marin communities have already taken this step. Our general plan calls for a green building ordinance that exceeds state standards And our climate emergency declaration directs us to make sustainability part of every decision. When the Tier 1 amendment comes forward, the Sustainability Commission will strongly support it and encourage council to do the same. because this is about clean air, safer homes, and keeping Sausalito ready for the future. Thank you. |
| 01:26:18.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:26:20.39 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comments. |
| 01:26:20.57 | Steven Woodside | for the rest of the day. |
| 01:26:21.90 | Steven Woodside | All right, with that, I will move that we introduce and read by title only and waive reading of ordinance number 09-2025. an ordinance of the city council of the city of Sausalito repealing 2022 California building standards code and penalty provisions and enacting 2025 California building standards code and local amendments there too, into Sausalito, municipal code chapter 8.02 that we direct staff to notice a public hearing for November 4, 2025, and that we authorize a summary of the ordinance to be published five days in advance of the second reading and 15 days after its adoption. Second. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries 4-0. We'll now move on to item 6B, Introduction and Waiver of First Reading of Ordinance Number 10-2025, Inordinance of the City Council of Sausalito Repealing Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 18.12, entitled Sewers. Welcome, Andrew Davidson. Thank you. |
| 01:27:31.19 | Andrew Davidson | Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, City Manager. I'm Andrew Davidson, senior engineer in your department of Public Works. Kevin McGowan, your director of Public Works, is not able to attend tonight's meeting. So I'll be giving a short presentation on your agenda item 6B, which is the first reading of Ordinance 10-2025, an ordinance repealing Sausalito Municipal Code, chapters 18.12, Sewers. There is a presentation, but |
| 01:28:01.20 | Andrew Davidson | Just continue. Sausalito has approximately 21 miles of sanitary sewer collection system pipes, along with manholes and other structures. These are used to collect sewer effluent from the city and deliver to the Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District's pump stations and wastewater treatment plant, which is located just south of your city. Until recently, the city owned and maintained the collection system. Over the last several years, the city has been working with the district to transfer the collection system to the district. Through a collective effort by the council, district board members, and staff of both agencies, this transfer was completed on August 22nd of this year, when the mayor signed the bill of sale transferring the collection system to the district. We'll be on slide three. |
| 01:28:52.95 | Andrew Davidson | The Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District is governed by a five-member board of directors, provides wastewater collection, conveyance, and treatment for Marin City, provides wastewater conveyance and treatment for Tamil Pais Valley Community Services District, provides wastewater treatment for other areas in Southern Marin, and now provides wastewater collection conveyance and treatment for Sausalito. As you know, the district operates many very technical facilities, their wastewater treatment plant and their pump stations within Sausalito and within their district boundaries. The district also provides service to approximately 18,000 folks. Next slide, please. |
| 01:29:35.31 | Andrew Davidson | Since August 22nd of this year, the responsibility to manage and maintain the collection system has been transferred to the district. With this, it is necessary to repeal Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 18.12, Sewers, as the duties outlined in this chapter are no longer the cities to perform. Next slide, please. Moving forward, city staff will be coordinating efforts with the district regarding permit review and capital projects. City staff continues to review the sewer collection system documentation to determine if there exists easements that were dedicated to the city of Sausalito for the sewer collection system. While only about a third of the way through that research, we have not found any easements specifically dedicated to the city for the collection system. It's taken 10 years or more to get to this point with a lot of collaborative effort by many people. All who have worked on this deserve recognition and thanks. Next slide, please. Now that the district owns and maintains the sanitary sewer collection system within the city limits, staff is recommending that the Saucy-Demissible Code, Chapter 18.12, sewers, be repealed. And that is it. Thank you. |
| 01:30:57.61 | Steven Woodside | Thank you any questions of mr. Davidson |
| 01:31:01.81 | Steven Woodside | I see none. I'll open it up for public comment. I see no one in the chambers city clerk |
| 01:31:08.41 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Bette McDougall. |
| 01:31:09.81 | Steven Woodside | All right. |
| 01:31:10.21 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 01:31:15.41 | Babette McDougall | Well, I just wanted to add that I'm very much in favor of moving forward on this venture. The only thing I would like to keep reminding us of Thank you. is that over the years, you know, we have nine or 965 area. of influenced neighbors like the GGNRA. and all those wonderful organizations out there. I know that they're responsible for themselves, but I know there's been a great deal of cooperation throughout these I don't even know how many years. If Ann or not were available, she would know. Thank you. The truth is, I just want to make sure we're not accidentally leaving anybody behind. Thank you. I yield back my time. |
| 01:31:54.21 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City Clerk. |
| 01:31:56.44 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment? |
| 01:31:57.72 | Steven Woodside | All right, I'll entertain a... Actually, I will make a motion. |
| 01:32:01.35 | Unknown | Mm-mm. |
| 01:32:11.67 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I move we introduce by title only and waive first reading of ordinance number 10-2025. an ordinance of the city council of sausalito repealing sausalito municipal code chapter 18.12 sewers |
| 01:32:27.38 | Unknown | Second. |
| 01:32:28.75 | Steven Woodside | All in favor? Thank you. |
| 01:32:30.29 | Unknown | I. |
| 01:32:30.56 | Steven Woodside | Aye. That motion carries 4-0. All right. With that, we'll move on to city manager reports, council member reports, city council appointments, and other council business. City manager any information for the council this evening |
| 01:32:48.17 | Chris Zapata | Yes, I do have some information. I wanted to take a moment to really thank the Public Works Department, the Police Department, the Chamber of Commerce, and certainly our Community Services Department for the event this past weekend. We'll get a recap of what happened, how we fared with numbers and finances and so forth, but I think someone called it the Caledonia Affair. Well, it actually does benefit the entire community, but it certainly benefits Caledonia, so I reallyENT BECAUSE WE HAVE THE HALLOWEEN EVENT COMING UP IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS, SO THAT'S IMPORTANT. THE OTHER THING IS I'D REALLY LIKE TO THANK AND LET THE PUBLIC KNOW THAT BRANDON PHIPS AND KATHY NAKITIS HAVE BEEN WORKING REALLY HARD TO BUILD OUR STAFF AND build our staff and the community development department. And one of the items that has been lingering is our building official. And so when Gary came up today and said, I am the interim building official, I had a conversation with the mayor and a couple of you about us actually landing a building official who will be reporting to the city in the next couple of weeks. But that has been a long, long process. We've advertised not once, not twice, but three times and struck out. This is the fourth time, Brandon, I believe? Fifth time. and you assisted that process by allowing us to modify the salary schedule and so forth so that we could attract a person that was qualified in this position the building official has specific legal requirements for certain certifications and so important that we get those done and not anybody can be a building official it takes a person that's trained and learned so happy to REPORT THAT TO YOU. THEN I WANTED TO SAY THAT official it takes a person that's trained and learned so happy to report that to you and then I wanted to say that yesterday's meeting with the transit folks want to thank supervisor Moulton Peters and Doreen Gennard for pulling together four major entities TAM the Marin transit Golden Gate Bridge District and missing one mayor but there were four of them there and they truly provided a bunch of information I thought that it's important for the community to know that councilmember sobieski attended and mayor Cox were there along with the chief and I and the mayor and the council member spoke specifically about some of the approaches that could harm our residents in terms of some of the modifications that are being made so to follow that up I was reminded that we need to get something in the currents our new editor is already working on that we'll see how soon that Mrs. Sullivan Kathleen Sullivan from Marin Transit can provide that information and then we certainly will get that into currents That concludes my report mayor |
| 01:36:00.43 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:36:00.48 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:36:00.97 | Steven Woodside | manager. City Attorney, any information for the council this evening? Uh, None. |
| 01:36:06.98 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 01:36:07.53 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:36:07.57 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 01:36:08.46 | Steven Woodside | All right? Um, Councilmember Reports is next. Tomorrow evening is the meeting of mayors and council members of Marin County in San Rafael. Um, And the city manager and I already reported on the meeting yesterday evening. So I'll turn it over to others for any reports. Okay. |
| 01:36:34.94 | Jill Hoffman | please we had a really great trip to Japan with the sister city council and with the US Japan conference for sister cities and it was a group of about 20 15 to 20 other cities so it was a broader group than we normally do with the with the Japan US sister city Association so it was something new I think they've done. I don't know if they've done this before, but it was highly successful. And it was a three-city tour. It was to Osaka, Japan, and we were able to go to the World Expo while we were there. And Yamanashi Prefecture, which is where Mount Fuji is, and then on up to Tokyo at the UN University is where we ended up. And I have to say, it was an amazing trip and great time, a great ability to network with not only our own sister city, because I went there first for a day, well, actually 12 hours, and then was able to talk to other cities around California, but also many other cities in Japan who came to all those events. So I'm sorry, I wasn't able to get. We have a gift to us from the city of Sikai Day, who sent that back, and then other pictures and things that I'll bring at the next city council meeting. I just couldn't get it it together for today and I have to say the biggest gift that was the biggest hit overall of any gift and believe me there was lots of competition throughout the three days but the biggest hit was the baseball hat from Saucel to Public Works So I have a picture of the governor of Tokyo who has it on her head. So anyway, I'll bring that at the next meeting. And a very beautiful wind chime from the city of Sakai to the city of Sausalito, so that we can put that with our collection and a picture of, I think I have a picture giving of the gift that you sent, and he was very appreciative of that too, so I think. |
| 01:38:43.00 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much, and thank you for, you do such a great job of representing us with all of our sister cities. You just, I have watched you in action, and I am in great admiration. So thank you so much for so capably representing us. |
| 01:38:47.58 | Jill Hoffman | SYSTEM. |
| 01:38:48.05 | Mikey Stefani | Thank you. |
| 01:38:58.02 | Steven Woodside | All right, next on our agenda is appointments. |
| 01:38:59.27 | Chris Zapata | is |
| 01:39:02.11 | Steven Woodside | You're there. |
| 01:39:03.57 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:39:03.69 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:39:03.85 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. You're right on to it. I missed my time. So you're going to talk about appointments. |
| 01:39:11.14 | Steven Woodside | Yes, okay. So the previous members of the Finance Committee were myself and Council Member Sobieski, with great reluctance but with great confidence in the leadership ability, I am passing the baton to my vice mayor, Stephen Woodside, who will now, so the finance committee will now be comprised of Vice Mayor Woodside and Council Member Sobieski, who bring unique talents and abilities to address some of the agenda items that I believe will be addressed in the upcoming finance committee meetings. And so the finance committee meeting will, the finance committee will meet. There will then be a council meeting regarding some of the items discussed. So, Thank you both so much for volunteering your time for these important tasks. All right. future agenda items are attached to the matrix city clerk I forwarded an updated list in the agenda matrix if you can make sure that goes on our next meeting that would be great it actually is more accurately reflects those items that we will be addressing in the remainder of this year so it's attached under future agenda items to our agenda matrix and I guess we don't have any minutes from boards commissions and committees no other reports of significance so at this point I'll take public comment on items 7a through 7c and 7e through 7g seeing none here in the chambers city clerk |
| 01:40:45.70 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Lorna Newland. |
| 01:40:47.78 | Steven Woodside | All right. Welcome back, Lorna. |
| 01:40:54.02 | Lorna Newland | Thank you. I wanted to tag onto the City Manager Chris Sopata's comments about the toast to Sausalito This was my second year participating there. And kudos to Brian Vitale and his entire parking rec and all the people that Chris noted. It was just an excellent event. I personally, I wish it could have been longer. Like I said, I can't remember if I said it, if it was the second year that I have shown there, it was the third year overall, it brought everybody out in just, happiness. There were no political booths. And I had people coming into my booth where I was selling my pottery from Chicago. They'd gotten off the ferry and they heard about it. People from San Francisco. And my only problem with it is I was so busy, I did not even get a chance to walk the street and see what was there and greet other artisans who were selling. And there's something else that's about. And thanks to the lady earlier who talked about, well, it's not that. Anyway, about the farmer's market. It's bringing people out in Sausalito. And then upcoming on this coming Saturday is the Sausalito Art and Harbor Days. And it's put on by the gentleman who does the farmer's market. It's going to be on Tracy Way between 10 and 2. Unfortunately, I can't show this one. Hopefully, I will in November. I'm going to be swimming the Golden Gate Bridge with the Dolphin Club that day. But I'll come see it towards the end. And the more we have things going on in town, especially with what goes on at the SCA, it's all great. And happy Halloween. I'll be seeing people in Sausalito that night. It's one of my favorite events here. Thank you. |
| 01:42:55.34 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much, and thank you. Thank you to you and to all of the artisans and other businesses that contributed. Both the vice mayor and I were able to visit the celebration this weekend, and it was just marvelously attended. Everybody seemed to be having a great time, and we were blessed with brilliant weather. So thank you. |
| 01:43:21.49 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker, Babette McDougall. |
| 01:43:28.63 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. I actually interesting that Lorna made the comment about no obvious political stuff going on. Because as you know, parallel on Bridgeway was the no Kings thing. And it was really well populated. And what I found, because actually I was counting, one in four people on Caledonia, and I'm not talking people who could be paid participants as was suggested But actually, they're neighbors because we walked down the hills together. So I know I saw more. These are the people wearing very discreet but clear. this is not the government we have in mind for ourselves kind of messages. So, you know, It's been said that what goes on nationally is not the business of the local council. but how could it never be more true than now? So we don't need any miniature models of the way they're trying to reinvent the world. in Washington, D.C., that's for sure. So I would just implore each of us to think carefully. If we don't stand together, as the 94965 area of influence. then God only knows what kind of attack we'll face. I'm very much in favor of obey no illegal orders. And any time somebody figures out a go around, to send in the National Guard. and they go. That's an illegal order being obeyed. And I think we have to be realistic that this is not a drill. Thank you, I yield back my time. |
| 01:44:59.06 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public speakers. |
| 01:45:02.47 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, mayor and council, I neglected one item that I haven't spoken to all of you about, and certainly not Council Member Blaustein, but that's the Performing Stars are having their 35th annual gala in Mill Valley on Halloween. The city has been a partner with Performing Stars. They've given us six seats at that table, and so I understand that the vice mayor is probable, and Council Member Sobieski is maybe, and the mayor maybe, maybe, and Councilmember AT THAT TABLE. AND SO I UNDERSTAND THAT THE VICE MAYOR IS PROBABLE AND COUNCILMEMBER SOBIUSKI IS MAYBE AND THE MAYOR MAYBE MAYBE AND COUNCILMEMBER HOFFMAN I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR SCHEDULE IS THAT NIGHT. BUT FELICIA GASTON AND HER TEAM ARE VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT AND WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT SACETO GETS THE LOVE IT DESERVES FOR BEING SUPPORTIVE. |
| 01:45:03.22 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:45:03.25 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 01:45:03.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:45:45.74 | Steven Woodside | Wonderful, thank you. All right, with that, we will move on to closed session. We have seven items on our closed session agenda. The first is C1, public employee employment, discussion of the transition of the city manager. C2 is conference with real property negotiator, property old city hall, Negotiating parties, Jean Heller and the city manager and city attorney, C3 conference with real property negotiators property 300 Spencer agency negotiator city manager and city attorney and southern marin fire protection district C4 conference with real property negotiators, THE END OF property 558 Bridgeway. Negotiating Party, City Manager, City Attorney, and Bridgeway 558 Royal Property, LLC, C5 Conference with Legal Counsel Existing Litigation, Kahn v. City of Sausalito et al. C6, Conference of Legal Counsel Anticipated Litigation, Initiation of Litigation, One Case, and C7, Conference of Legal Counsel Anticipated Litigation, significant exposure to litigation one case. The agenda says that we will reconvene to open session. We actually will not do that. We will be adjourning to our next meeting. which is scheduled for November 4. at 5 p.m. and we will not return to open session tonight so that we can excuse our city clerk and our other staff who are here. staffing our meeting. |
| 01:47:16.22 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. Mayor, a quick question for you that has arisen is so public comments on items that are listed on the closed session agenda, when will those be heard? |
| 01:47:17.22 | Steven Woodside | Mary. Yeah. |
| 01:47:26.47 | Steven Woodside | we can do that at the beginning of our next meeting. So we are adjourning. |
| 01:47:30.41 | Sergio Rudin | public comments should occur now on the items on tonight's agenda. |
| 01:47:33.49 | Steven Woodside | Well, I first announce the items, and then I take public comment on the items. But we also allow public comment when we return. |
| 01:47:41.89 | Sergio Rudin | Oh yes, yeah, that's fine too. |
| 01:47:41.98 | Steven Woodside | Oh, yeah. |
| 01:47:42.21 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:47:43.49 | Steven Woodside | Okay. Um, So is there any public comment on closed session items? |
| 01:47:47.66 | Walfred Solorzano | See you then. |
| 01:47:48.74 | Steven Woodside | All right, with that, we will adjourn to closed session. Thank you. |
| 01:48:03.09 | Unknown | Is it, are you... Did you already turn off? Wow. You can just announce it at the beginning of the next one. |
Mikey Stefani — Against: Alleged city misconduct regarding a permitted dining room addition, claiming illegal appeal, extortion of fees, violation of laws including the Brown Act, libel/slander by a planner, and unconstitutional property seizure via demanded demolition. Requested reinstatement of permits by November 2025. Mayor Woodside stated this is a litigation matter and no public comment would be made. (00:44:49) ▶ 📄
Linda Roberts — Neutral: Praised the Sausalito farmers market as a fantastic community event with music and vendors, encouraging support for area farmers and producers. Thanked city staff responsible for bringing the market to town. (00:47:11) ▶ 📄
Babette McDougall — Neutral: Complimented the community spirit at a recent wedding and Caledonia Festival, highlighting public safety efforts, no-penalty breathalyzer program, and work by Parks & Rec and Southern Marin Fire. Noted progress with PG&E on fire risk recognition. (00:48:42) ▶ 📄
Lorna Newland — Against: Expressed concern as a long-term tenant in the MLK bus barn, noting that Measure K describes the building as 'dilapidated' and may lead to displacement. Highlighted her 20-year tenure, contributions to nonprofits, and presence of other long-term artisans. Argued the city has not maintained the building and urged collaborative planning to preserve the working community. (00:51:07) ▶ 📄