| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.12 | Steven Woodside | with legal counsel anticipated litigation significant exposure to litigation one case C3 is conference with real property negotiators. The property is 300 Spencer. and the negotiating parties are the city of Sausalito and Southern Marin Fire Protection District. And is there any public comment on closed session items? |
| 00:00:19.98 | Walfred Solorzano | There's nobody in here and nobody online. |
| 00:00:23.12 | Steven Woodside | Okay, with that we will adjourn to closed session. We will reconvene to open session at 5 p.m. Thank you. |
| 00:00:30.20 | Walfred Solorzano | Zoom and the city's website. |
| 00:00:33.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, city clerk. Good evening and welcome to the regular meeting of the city of Sausalito City Council for Tuesday, November 18, 2025. um, We are reconvening to open session after holding a closed session. First order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. |
| 00:00:55.77 | Steven Woodside | 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. |
| 00:01:03.16 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. God. |
| 00:01:10.60 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. We held a closed session. There are no closed session announcements. I'll seek a motion approving our agenda. So moved. |
| 00:01:22.03 | Angeline Loeffler | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:01:22.09 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:01:22.21 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. Second. |
| 00:01:23.51 | Steven Woodside | All in favor aye that motion carries 5 0. |
| 00:01:24.84 | Angeline Loeffler | Bye. |
| 00:01:27.34 | Steven Woodside | First on our agenda this evening is a special presentation from our community, well, it's not on here. to the public. Community Services Director. Welcome, Brian. This is a special presentation from Parks and Recreation recapping our fall events. |
| 00:01:52.50 | Adrian Brinton | Haven't even done anything yet. |
| 00:02:07.00 | Adrian Brinton | All right, well, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmembers, City staff, members of the public. I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and to share with you our fall events update FOR THE CITY OF SELF-SALITO'S COMMUNITY SERVICES. Parks and Recreation and Library. All right, so tonight, next slide please. Tonight let's begin with our Uh, highlighting everything from our library services team that they've accomplished this fall. The library continues to be one of our most visited and valued public spaces in our city, and this season is no exception. This fall, we successfully rolled out our new library cards, which gave us an opportunity to welcome many new patrons into the system. You'll see that we also expanded several of our collections, print e-books, and our built-in audio selections, giving residents more access in more formats than ever before. One of our big upgrades we're proud of is our new audio visual system, which has already improved the quality of our events and screenings and to help support hybrid participation and quiet workspaces. We've also launched the virtual meeting room pod. This pod is quickly becoming a community favorite for telehealth appointments, interviews, remote work, and private study time. All of these updates reflect a strategic focus on accessibility, modernization, and creating a library that meets the changing needs of our residents. Everything our library team achieved this fall moves us closer to a more connected, more inclusive community. Next slide, please. NEXT LET'S TALK ABOUT Youth services in the library, an area where our library really shines. This fall we hosted 23 story times, which continue to be a cornerstone of early literacy in our community. We complemented those with six music events, helping families engage in rhythm, movement, and learning. We've handed out 300 plus take and make craft kits, empowering kids to create at home, expand their imagination and connect with the library, even when they're not physically there. Our fall book creation activity at a Toast to Sausalito was a big hit. Activities like this are not only fun, but leave a little breadcrumb trail back to the library. And very importantly, we saw many new families registering for library cards this year. This tells us our programs are reaching newcomers, young households, and people who are rediscovering the library. Youth programming continues to be one of our best investments we make, and the turnout this fall proves it. Next slide, please. Along with youth programs, it was a big season for our adult programs at the library. We launched our virtual author series on October 1st, offering live virtual talks with award-winning authors several times a month. Plus, we have an archive of over 100 recorded author talks that's available on the library's website. November features Amanda Peters and Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhigg. On October 24th, we held our local artist panel with Linda Marie, Katia Wittenstein, and Heinz the Artist. with 25 attendees and a live pianist greeting our guests. This series continues to be a great way to spotlight local creatives. We also kicked off our inaugural author reading series on November 7th, featuring five authors and drawing 35 people with Books by the Bay selling books and supporting the event. Last Friday, November 14th, two Fridays ago, we screened, looking for my anchor with filmmaker Erica Jordan, which debuted our new state-of-the-art AV system funded by the Friends of the Library. And on November 21st, local author Wilfred Welch will close out our fall programming. Altogether, it's been a dynamic fall that strengthened partnerships, elevated local talent, and expanded the library's role as a cultural hub. Next slide, please. Let's move into Parks and Rec's fall events, starting with one of our most beloved traditions in Sausalito, the 46th annual chili cook-off. Next slide, please. This year's turnout was fantastic. We had an estimated 900 plus people in attendance and we sold 800 sample wristbands. See some favorites over here. from our cruising club. Next slide, please. The energy was incredible all day. We had 13 chef competitors, each bringing their own flavor combinations and creativity, and 10 brave chili pepper eaters who stepped up for the challenge. It's a really great awards that we purchased for all of our winners in the bottom left over there. Each was a judge's favorite. the People's Choice Award, and the best booth. Next slide, please. |
| 00:07:04.15 | Adrian Brinton | It should look better than it is over there. And I can go through a few of these, uh, I'll make sure to update this slide for you so you have all of the details. From an expense side, we spent a total of $8,623.83, covering the cost of 100% compostable chili cups and spoons, music, sound engineer, portable bathroom, chef reimbursements, and more. And on the revenue side, we brought in a total of $24,928.87 from wristbands, water and soda sales and day of purchases. That gave us a very strong net revenue of $16,305.04. This means the Chili Cook-Off continues to be one of our most financially successful and community-centric events of the year. Whether people came for the spice, the competition, or just the atmosphere, this year's Chili Cook-Off once again showed how much joy this event brings to the community. Next slide. Moving to our largest fall event, a toast to Sausalito held on October 18th. This image over here is Admiral Salty from local street artist who painted all morning out on the street, creating this wonderful seagull He may still be there, I'm not sure, I haven't visited down there, so. Thank you. This year we saw an extraordinary turnout with an estimated 3,500 people joining us along the five blocks of Caledonia Street. Next slide, please. We sold 767 wristbands, slightly lower than last year, brought in 120 artists and vendors, and partnered with 10 local sponsors and community partners. Next slide, please. We also delivered a full lineup of bands, DJs, activities, and activations throughout the day. It takes a true village to pull off an event like this, and it wouldn't be possible without support and help from our Chamber of Commerce, our city staff, volunteers, and community partners. Not only did city staff work hard and put in overtime to work this event, but as you can see, they had a little bit of fun as well. Those bottom two center and right photos over there. Next slide, please. YOU GOT HALF OF THAT SLIDE IN THERE. OKAY. I'LL ADD THAT ONE AS WELL. MY APOLOGIES. FINANCIALLY, THIS HIGH CAPACITY EVENT HAD A SIGNIFICANT BUDGET WITH TOTAL EXPENDITURE THAT LANDED AT $62,751.71 COMING IN UNDER BUDGET. which we budgeted at $69,000. Our total revenue was $62,994, which included wristband, booth sales, food vendor sales, shirt and sweatshirt sales, and sponsorship. That leaves us with a positive net revenue of $242.29, essentially a break-even event, which is exactly what we planned, given the scale of this event. But the value of this event is much larger than the financial bottom line. It drives tourism, elevates local artisans, supports small businesses and brands Sausalito as a creative and vibrant destination. This year's Tostas Hustlito was one of the best we've had, and the momentum continues to grow year after year. Next slide, please. Halloween in Sausalito. It remains one of the most joyful and community-oriented events of the season. Next slide. It creates lasting memories for families, brings out incredible creativity, and adds life to our downtown and Caledonia Street areas. It's a community classic. And this year's event truly captured the spirit of Sausalito. Next slide. This year we welcomed an estimated 1,500 attendees, handed out 350 reusable bags, and partnered with 21 local sponsors. Here are some photos of the creative and happy parade walkers we have here. Next slide. We also had our dog costume contest, which had 50 dogs entering, making the dog costume contest incredibly lively, creative and entertaining. It's become a community favorite and continues to draw large cheering crowds. Next slide, please. Two thirds on that one. getting better. From a budget standpoint, we spent just under $2,000 primarily on candy, reusable bags, marketing, and prizes. And with $3,000 in sponsorship revenue, our net revenue was just over $1,000, making another positive year for this charming neighborhood event. Next slide. |
| 00:11:45.59 | Adrian Brinton | All right, so in addition to our major city-sponsored events, fall is filled with small and large community-led and partner-driven events that enrich Sausalito's cultural and maritime identity. These include Galilee Harbor Maritime Day, the Sausalito Boat Show, SCBC Oyster Festival, Sea Track Regatta, the SCA Open, Sausalito Art and Harbor Day, DJs by the Bay, the Battle of the Bay, and our weekly farmers market. Each of these events plays a different role. Some are recreational, some are artistic, some celebrate our maritime heritage, but together they create a vibrant fall season. We're thankful for every organization, vendor, and volunteer that helps make this rich event calendar possible. And lastly, as we wrap up our fall recap, I want to highlight what's ahead for the winter. We have a full slate of holiday and community events that bring joy and togetherness to Sausalito. And the lineup includes our holiday tree lighting, breakfast with Santa, the gingerbread tour, the jingle bell 5K and brunch, Sausalito's Lighted Boat Parade and Fireworks, the Winter Market, the Spalding Maritime Winter Open House, ICB Artist, Open Studios, Sausalito Village Intergenerational Art Show at SCA, and I'm sure more that I do not have on this list. These events celebrate creativity, movement, tradition, and family. They bring people downtown, activate our waterfront, and strengthen our cultural identity of Sausalito during this holiday season. With our city sponsored event season coming to a close, we're already looking ahead. Parks, recreation and library are hard at working at hard at work, crafting the 2026 event calendar full of returning favorites, fresh ideas and even more ways to bring our community together. Thank you for your time, and please let me know if you have any questions. |
| 00:13:29.73 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Brian. Any questions of Brian? All right, thank you, and thank you for overseeing such a successful bevy of activities on behalf of the city throughout the year, but particularly in the fall. It's just amazing to see all of the participation by and service to our residents. |
| 00:13:48.83 | Adrian Brinton | Thank you so much. |
| 00:13:52.71 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:13:57.07 | Steven Woodside | All right, next on our agenda is communications. This is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council that are not on the agenda, except in very limited situations. State law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items that are not on the agenda. I don't know if I have any speaker cards for this or not. |
| 00:14:25.26 | Steven Woodside | Okay, 2-PC. |
| 00:14:30.78 | Steven Woodside | Carol Morales. Welcome. |
| 00:14:36.03 | Carol Morales | I'm not. |
| 00:14:36.10 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:14:36.77 | Carol Morales | Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor and council members. For the last two and a half years, I have been diligently collecting money, raising money for a statue of Sally Stanford in town. It is my new obsession. And, um, I'm not really particular of where we put her. I would like to put her over by the Ferry Landing Plaza along Tracy. It's a beautiful new addition to our town. It's like building a $10 million house and you walk in and there's no furniture. We need some art in this town, lots of it, but let's start with Sally. Most of the money came from small, from $100 or less, which means that people are interested. And I know Sally Stanford was a flawed human being, but sometimes flawed human beings do great things, and we do. We can always debate what she did for this town. So we are a town of unique human beings, very unique. So let's embrace that and put a statue of her in town. Diane Cannon, who starred in the movie Lady of the House. She's 92 years old. We need to have a party, so let's get this done before she dies. My contact information, if you want to reach out, I have all the information. Let's just make this happen, and thank you for your time. |
| 00:16:06.60 | Steven Woodside | I'll just say my understanding is that the city manager is working with Ms. Morales about a recommended site for a potential statue and will continue to do so. |
| 00:16:18.11 | Chris Zapata | for a while. |
| 00:16:18.22 | Steven Woodside | TODAY. |
| 00:16:23.95 | Steven Woodside | David Lay. |
| 00:16:31.50 | Steven Woodside | Welcome, David. |
| 00:16:34.07 | David Lay | Good evening. My name is David Lay. I've been here since 92, whatever that is. Uh, K. And it was one. But that was a full, fair debate, well run. Thank you very much. Exciting and I gave a round of applause. the problem still exists in the people or for the people that live there. that location is way back in the end of town, farther away than the dog park behind a red line. The red lines are no help. And that's what that is. Thank you. Um, Retired people need to really would be better off near the park in the center of town. near where all the activity is in the town, boats mostly. Way back there is not the place, and it's not really good at Olema. Young people need to be close to transportation, need a place where it's eye to eye with people that own boats that need work. Uh, Crew jobs where people can try out a first time at a beer con race. That's where you find a good crew. They need to be eye to eye of who's there and who's doing what. They're not there. |
| 00:18:06.58 | David Lay | We, the rest of us, don't deserve that. Those are people that are good for all of us. We had a problem with the schools. John is in Kozal when he wrote his book, the latest one. Um, It wasn't money that had to be even. to solve the problem. People had to work together in their education and get along. That's what desegregated schools and finally got us there. |
| 00:18:37.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much for your comment. Thank you very much. |
| 00:18:37.97 | David Lay | for your comment. Thank you very much. |
| 00:18:40.85 | Steven Woodside | Mike Monsef. Welcome back. |
| 00:18:47.84 | Mike Monsef | My name is Mike Monsef. Most of you know me. First of all, I have to say congratulations to our councilman. Even though I wasn't invited, but I saw it on the internet. On behalf of quite a few people, I'd like to pass the congratulations to you. Thank you very much. |
| 00:19:08.02 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 00:19:09.29 | Mike Monsef | Second, I'd like to thank our vice mayor for planting a seed about seawall. And as you know, in Sausalito, things doesn't get built fast. Plaza was put on the map on 1958. It was built. Thank you to this administration. in 2025. So I hope I hope you plant that seed and maybe generation after me or generation after that, they're going to see it. By the way, I was in Qashqais, which are our sister city, and I saw a lot of seawall. I have quite a few pictures. If you're interested, I can provide it for you. gave something to our, to Kevin, our park, I mean, whatever, I'm sorry, about the parklet at the foot of Princess Street. I hope you look at it. It's a good idea. We can raise the fund for it. We can help the people, the tenants in that street. It has a beautiful view of the city. And also it's a safety factor. I can talk to the police department. The cars, instead of pushing like that, they can make it a 90 degree into the Princess Street. That would be much safer. So that's all I have to say. You take it to heart. |
| 00:20:46.65 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Next up is Mauro Dosolini. Welcome, Mauro. |
| 00:20:57.57 | Mauro Dosolini | Madam Mayor, City Council, good evening. Mauro Zolini, 305 Harbor Drive. And I'm here to share that for the first 15 years I've been on the corner, Gate 5 and Harbor Drive. And I witnessed the water on Gate 5 raise every year, making the access to our business very hard. Couple of days a month, nobody can come on our parking lot. Last year on December 14, we suffered a severe flooding and many of the people operating on the area have lost valuable equipment and They were not capable of work for many days. I'm here to ask the city of Sausalito to be active and help us to prevent this from happening again this year. Winter is coming. Last year after the catastrophic event, We had the Maggiore Aguilotti worker on gate five for several days. They say they were working on a flap valve that was failing. After they replaced or fixed the flap valve, gate fiber was dry for the rest of the winter. Never happened before. And we have to ask who is maintaining the valve? How often get tested? And how can we see who tested last and the result of the testing? Now, A few months ago, I went to the city yard, talked with Pat Guasco, and he suggested that I contact the city engineer. I sent a couple of emails, and I never get an answer. So that's why I'm here. only a few weeks ago, on November 5th, Thank you. Thank you. It was the day before the top high tide, the first king tide of the years. And probably because we had heavy rain, Gate 5 was completely submerged. the day after and the day after and the second day after That's it. Thank you. |
| 00:23:01.69 | Steven Woodside | Um, Walford, will you please add to future agenda items a report regarding the gate five valve? And city manager, could you follow up with the city engineer about the call from Mr. D'Ossolini about gate five road? |
| 00:23:22.38 | Steven Woodside | All right, next is Michelle Mocalla. |
| 00:23:31.76 | Steven Woodside | And Mauro Dossalini, for those who don't know, he runs the Sausalito Seahorse restaurant. |
| 00:23:38.88 | Michelle Mocalla | Ciao Mauro. Tao, good evening everyone, city council members. |
| 00:23:42.31 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 00:23:42.34 | Steven Woodside | Good evening. |
| 00:23:42.85 | Babette McDougall | Yeah. |
| 00:23:44.63 | Michelle Mocalla | I also wanted to congratulate you, Melissa. Congratulations. It was beautiful. I saw the photos. OK, so hi, everyone. My name is Michelle McCalla and I actually joined the Sausalito Parks and Recreation Commission last year So yay, Brian, because I really do care about, All parks in Sausalito, all of them, all of our parks. And I believe in creating fun events that build community. I've lived in Sausalito since 2016, almost a decade on Tamales Street. which is next to MLK Park. And over the years, I've met so many wonderful neighbors around MLK Park. It's really a beautiful community with a delicate ecosystem because you have two soon-to-be-three schools nearby. And it's great to see new families enjoying the park and field as that really is the future of Sausalito. It's nice also to mingle with our senior community. Shout out to James Kavanaugh and the dance community at MLK Gym. However, I am deeply disappointed in our city council and how this election was conducted, specifically the campaign around Measure K. It was not fair, it was not balanced, and it was not honest. It also revealed a city council totally out of touch with Northside residents like myself and it made me feel like a second class citizen. The messaging we received seemed biased and has created great mistrust within our community, not to mention division between the south and the north side of town. Now I'm a NIMBY who doesn't care about senior housing. Shame on this city council for baiting voters with senior housing when in reality you cannot guarantee senior housing. You can only prioritize senior housing, which is why you came up with that baloney pledge. So anyway, I am here because I think it's a horrible idea to cram 50 units into MLK Park. And post-election, it's clear that many Sausalito voters agree with me, meaning that if you had not been so biased in the messaging, Measure K would not have passed. So now my community is laser-focused on making you accountable for every promise and every promise you do not deliver that you stated this community deserves full transparency and immediate corrections. |
| 00:25:42.89 | Steven Woodside | So, Immediate corrections. Thank you. |
| 00:25:45.24 | Michelle Mocalla | Thank you. |
| 00:25:46.03 | Steven Woodside | THANK YOU. |
| 00:25:46.51 | Michelle Mocalla | Bye. |
| 00:25:50.74 | Steven Woodside | Next is Bora Hanh. |
| 00:25:58.25 | Bora Hanh | Good evening, City Council. I live across the street from MLK Park and have lived there for almost five years. I feel that the City Council just does not care about the north part of the city. Take, for example, MLK Park and its surroundings. For a better part of the year, construction vehicles, and these are heavy-duty vehicles like bulldozers and excavators, are lined up on Coloma Street tearing it up, blocking traffic, and parking and creating dangerous situations by blocking views from people crossing the street during the use of the park. for the five years that I've lived on Kalama Street. It has never been paved or repaired, and the park has a decrepit chain link fence, head falling down, soggy grass, busted sprinklers, yet we love this park. Per visitor per user basis, it is probably much more utilized than any other park in the city, not to mention a huge revenue generators for the city. Without much city support, people have generally taken a very good care of it and cherished it. So now you've decided to shove in housing there and impact the utility of the parking, surrounding schools, traffic, safety, and aesthetics. How do you want us to not feel disenfranchised and disappointed? How does it not make us feel like we have a city council that is not being fair to all citizens of Sausalito. The city council's propaganda campaign for yes on K also illustrates your bias against northern Sausalito and dare I say possibly an illegal election interference. So with that said if anything is built on MLK I expect it to be senior housing no more than 50 units no higher than 30 feet 32 feet in height maintain safety for the park users and surrounding street during and after construction and not impact parking and implement appropriate infrastructure and traffic control the entire time of the build and afterwards. This is what you pledged and we will hold you accountable for that. Thank you. |
| 00:27:46.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:27:50.64 | Steven Woodside | Aaron Nathan. |
| 00:27:59.52 | Steven Woodside | Welcome. |
| 00:28:00.39 | Aaron Nathan | Thank you. Council members, I want to begin by saying that I am deeply also disappointed in how this election was conducted. The campaign around Measure K was not fair, balanced, nor honest. The city's own communications, as well as outside messaging that flooded our community, were overwhelmingly biased. And despite this enormous advantage, the outcome was razor thin. And that should tell you something. These residents, they were not convinced, they were misled. And frankly, it's my belief that you targeted our seniors by promising them what was only mere preference in the ballot language, and that this running of a full-blown campaign about affordable senior housing, quote unquote, this is something you should all be ashamed of. Now that the election is over, you will likely get your way in upending what is the largest park in Sausalito. And I'm asking this council to publicly audit every promise that was made to the voters. We were told not a single blade of grass will be touched. We were told there will be no loss of parking. We were told that we will get exactly 50 affordable senior housing units with strict 32-foot height limits. These aren't vague impressions. They were repeated absolute assurances by many of you sitting before us. If it even appears possible that any of these promises cannot be delivered exactly as promised, then this community deserves full transparency and immediate correction. I personally must also express my deep disappointment in Vice Mayor Woodside. You acknowledge in your email on being okay with K that you promised our community at the new village school that you use your extensive legal and civic experience to protect this park. And then after being elected, you treated our community like a box to check, not partners in a thoughtful planning process that made this good on this very promise. And I voted for you. That is unacceptable to me, and you have likely caused irreparable damage to this community as a result. Thank you. |
| 00:30:04.09 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Nathan Scripps. |
| 00:30:14.58 | Steven Woodside | Thank you for providing us with this update. |
| 00:30:17.87 | Nathan Scripps | Thank you City Council for having me. My name is Nathan Scripps. I have had the pleasure of being our middle school science teacher for now five years. I served seventh and eighth grade for the first three. This is my second year serving sixth seventh and eighth grade. I was asked to attend this meeting by several different parents to give an update on how the schools are doing especially now that I get to say thank you for the measure G parcel tax that will be giving an extra 1.3 million dollars on an annual basis for the this year and the following seven for a total of eight bringing our grand total very very steady predictable budget due to our basic aid structure to a round number of let's just call it ten million dollars as we use this ten million dollars to provide the best programming and in-class student facing educators we can I hope that I would encourage all of you to take an active part in in keeping an eye on what our district does with the funding I first got involved in 2016 as a volunteer tutor through the Bridge the Gap program. I ran for school board in 2018. I became a teacher in 2020, got my first classroom in 2021 at Mill Valley Middle School. What the consistent trend has been in our own district is that calls for restructuring have been kind of loud and clear. The idea that we are a very small district that should not have the same type of administrative structure as you see in larger districts elsewhere is something we've heard over and over again. Just last week in a school board meeting, I had the distinct service, distinct pleasure of delivering a survey that student-facing educators delivered. It was both the CSEA, which is our classified staff that is custodial success coach in the classroom, office worker and SDTA, that is our teachers union, so a grand total of 35 employees that work with students every single day provided their feedback and roughly 80% would like to see a change in the way our administration is run, and many of those are calling specifically for a change in the way our administration is structured. As we take the Measure G funds and apply them this year and following, I hope that we can have a lot of input on how we create programs and how we put in-class educators to work. Thank you so much. |
| 00:32:21.20 | Steven Woodside | Thank you so much. Please feel free also to write to us with any other suggestions that you have. We, of course, don't have jurisdiction over the school district, but we do interact with the superintendent and with various other leaders, and so we so appreciate you keeping us informed. |
| 00:32:38.34 | Nathan Scripps | Thank you very much. |
| 00:32:40.55 | Steven Woodside | Deborah McCutler. |
| 00:32:43.35 | Nathan Scripps | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:32:52.87 | Steven Woodside | Welcome. |
| 00:32:53.83 | Deborah McCutler | Thank you. Good evening. |
| 00:32:55.37 | Steven Woodside | You can pull that mic down a little bit. So we, there you go. Is that better? Yes, thank you. |
| 00:32:57.82 | Deborah McCutler | Is that better? Yes, thank you. Okay, thanks. I am a resident of Whiskey Springs and I've personally voted against Measure K. I just want to express again, as others have, my concern about taking uh space in the park away from the public. and creating private housing. I'm very, very concerned about that. The park is a wonderful resource for the public And I don't think private housing belongs in that site, especially no one's mentioned the um Thank you. artists community there, which is wonderful. It's funky. part of a Sausalito culture to my mind. And to have that taken away is just unacceptable. um, I'm also concerned about traffic, environmental, and just general safety issues, as well as parking. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much. |
| 00:34:02.14 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:34:04.27 | Deborah McCutler | Thank you. |
| 00:34:04.29 | Steven Woodside | Next is Cheryl Basio. |
| 00:34:12.89 | Steven Woodside | Welcome, nice to see you again. |
| 00:34:14.19 | Cheryl Basio | Nice to see you. Hi, I'm Cheryl Bossio. I've lived at the same house at 128 Buchanan Drive for 32 years, so I've been on the north end of town for a long time. I was, I think, five years on the planning commission here, and that's when we first started, believe it or not, that's how long ago it was, tackling this housing element. I'm mad, but I'm also understanding of how much work this council and the councils that have preceded it have invested in this enormously consequential edict from the state. And I call it an edict from the state because I've never met anyone that... found disagreement with that. is their numbers are not realistic for a community such as ours. And we don't even have to get into tiny little spots like Belvedere and that kind of thing. And my question to the council, and I'm not a fan of this one way street talking at your faces, but I'm happy to at least have that ability to communicate with you is, you know, have our assembly persons been involved because We've been tracking this, me a long time ago, you now, for decades at this point. And we've been doing our best, giving huge, enormous amounts of resources towards the ridiculousness of this. And now, you know, we're getting between a rock and a hard place, and we felt we were that way for a long time. But if it's something that's bigger than us, and it's starting to feel like it is, because no matter what we do, we keep getting jammed in the face with these edicts, is who is reaching out to our assembly persons? They are our liaisons between you, who are our authority and who we've put in trust to represent us while we're working, and I'm sure many of you do too, and trying to pay our mortgages. But please involve our assembly persons and reach out to me if anybody would like me to help with that. |
| 00:36:26.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Cheryl. |
| 00:36:27.03 | Cheryl Basio | Okay. |
| 00:36:29.06 | Steven Woodside | Alice Merrill. Welcome, Alice. |
| 00:36:41.97 | Unknown | Hello, everybody, good evening. |
| 00:36:42.44 | Steven Woodside | very goody |
| 00:36:42.98 | Unknown | Nina. |
| 00:36:45.49 | Unknown | I just wasn't going to say anything, but I want to reiterate how people feel about this Measure K. It really was. It really was. jammed. through and down people's throats with all kinds of misinformation. And I just really can't believe it. But I am here again saying, please stop this. This, you know, you're here for the town. Not for your legacies, not for your names, not for you're here for the town. And this was really something that... that PEOPLE VOTED FOR IT, BUT I WOULD SAY THAT THEY WERE MISINFORMED. AND I JUST AM SORRY THAT IT WENT THROUGH. |
| 00:37:35.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:37:35.58 | Steven Woodside | City Clerk, anyone online? |
| 00:37:37.21 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, we have Senator Bushmaker. |
| 00:37:40.54 | Steven Woodside | Welcome, |
| 00:37:40.98 | Sandra Bushmaker | hand draft Good evening Council. I've got a couple things I want to talk about. First, I was a no on K person. We didn't need the property at MLK to satisfy our housing element and for many of the other reasons. I was very shocked to see in the IJ the next day that Mayor Cox had stated that the city was going to pay for relocation of the tenants at MLK. I don't recall that ever being discussed on the dais. I have no idea what the scope of that is, but that could be a very expensive item. One of the tenants there was a big proponent of Measure K. I don't like the sound of that. The second thing is I want to talk about Plan Bay Area 2050. Two weeks ago, I sent you some materials on that. And I want to enlist the help of the Council in dealing with MTC, who is promoting this plan Bay Area 2050. It's a $1.5 trillion plan, which has a $162 billion shortfall. Guess where that money is going to come from? It deals with four areas, housing, transportation, environment, and economy. There are three main areas where this prop plan is defective. There are many others, but I'm going to hit three highlights. And that is... The growth forecasts are way out of base with what the Department of Finance had projected like four 24.1% projection versus the Department of Finance at 6%. You'll, I see my time is getting really short. There was a Building Industry Association Settlement Agreement and the EIRs impacts, 52% will not be medicated and they're very serious, significant and unavoidable. You will be receiving a packet Shortly from Catalyst California requesting your help for comments. by the deadline of November, excuse me, December 18th. Thank you. |
| 00:39:46.78 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:39:47.98 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:39:48.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you for keeping us informed. City Clerk. |
| 00:39:52.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Babette McDougall. |
| 00:39:55.98 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:39:55.99 | Babette McDougall | Welcome, Babette. Thank you, Madam Mayor. It's a pleasure to be with you this evening. I'm sorry I'm not in the room. It's great to see a good turnout. Now, I, too, have a couple of things to say about the way Measure K was handled. Actually, I'm ashamed of the way the city and I have one takeaway that I'd like. I don't need to repeat what you've heard. I totally agree with the comments about why it's such a bad idea to invade MLK with any kind of, you know, housing. But I just want to say if you all can come up with the resources and the wherewithal to it, contact every single resident, not once, not twice, not three times. I lost count. But if you can do that that many times, just to shove it down our throats to say yes to Measure K, then you can certainly keep the citizens informed of what's going on in Sausalito every two weeks, every month after month, year over year, why we are never appropriately noticed on what you're going to, surprise us with, I fail to understand. I've said many times to our city manager, this whole idea of noticing within, what is it, 200 feet or something like that of something, it's a town-wide, no matter what happens in this town, it is town-wide. And I think you amply proved that by inundating us on Measure K, you are capable of reaching out to the citizens. So I want to encourage more of that. And thank you for allowing me to speak also toward I just because there's no special comment on your presentation. But once again, I just really thought that the toast to Sausalito was a really great step in the right direction this year. What I'd like to see, this is based on the feedback that I got from people there. They want to see more for families, and I agree with that. They want to see more choices for non-alcoholic beverages, and I agree with that. So I'd like to suggest future, I'm sure it's already on the books, going forward, why not in front of Sweeney, everything family-oriented, including non-alcoholic choices. And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you so much. |
| 00:41:55.94 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, next speaker is Lorna Newland. |
| 00:41:56.51 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:41:59.94 | Steven Woodside | Welcome Lorna. |
| 00:42:07.06 | Lorna Newland | starts I have a question to Mayor Cox do we not get to do public comment on the proclamation for park and rec rec and park |
| 00:42:15.57 | Steven Woodside | there is no proclamation for park and rec there was a special |
| 00:42:19.21 | Lorna Newland | Oh, no, no, the very first item that Brian Vitale so well spoke to. |
| 00:42:23.94 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. We don't take public comment on special presentations. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:42:30.23 | Lorna Newland | Thank you. |
| 00:42:30.25 | Steven Woodside | THANK YOU. |
| 00:42:32.14 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, next speaker is Jack Burrows. |
| 00:42:36.86 | Steven Woodside | it's on the agenda so she can't speak about it Welcome, Jack. |
| 00:42:45.17 | Jack Burrows | Thank you so much for taking your time to work on the city council. I understand it's not a very easy job. Um, With that, It is not lost on me the poetic injustice of the city spending 1.2 million on the quiet reflection aspect of vacant land at Duffy Park. While the same city council that put measure K on the ballot is preparing to unleash the chaos, environmental pollution and societal discrimination that rezoning 2 acres of MLK Park is about to bring to the north end of Sausalito. Imagine the liability of that. While others are here to hold the City Council accountable for their promises and at times abject lies, I'm here to offer fair warning. Your victor on Measure K should offer you no comfort. While sitting in the new, quiet, contemplative area of Dunphy, I hope that you will consider the impact your malfeasance has wrought upon the area of Sausalito that few of you frequent or obviously care about. You have caught the tiger by the tail. I hope you are ready for the ride. The future generations of Sausalito should not be subject to the bad decisions of the previous three generations that said no at all costs to any housing in our beautiful city. The future generations of Sausalito should not wonder why or how a measure passed that destroyed a park while another flourished. This flaw in the diamond as Woodside opined as he desperately tried to sway the vote, I hope haunts you as you sit there in your contemplative moments in the area of town you protected at the expense of your constituents, not as fortunate as you. |
| 00:44:27.75 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public speakers? |
| 00:44:29.94 | Steven Woodside | I will call Sybil Boutellier. Welcome, Sybil. |
| 00:44:40.10 | Sybil Boutellier | Thank you, Mayor and City Council members. Now that the majority of the community has spoken in this democracy, a bastion of democracy in this divided country, I would hope that all the folks who both were in favor of Measure K and those who were very concerned about it could work together to see that the city can manifest exactly what it was hoping to accomplish with this measure and that we can all see it come to a really beautiful fruition with the help of everybody who is concerned about it and wants to see it happen in a good way. And I think that that's possible, that now it's a settled thing that we can come together and try to make it the best possible. So I just want to thank everybody that has been involved and expressed their thoughts about it as a member of the community. And I hope that we can manifest something really beautiful for our city that will not negatively impact the things that people are concerned about, but will turn out to be a really wonderful addition. And thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 00:46:11.01 | Steven Woodside | All right, I have no further speaker cards, so we will close communications and move on to our consent calendar. We have items. 3A through 3K on our consent calendar. um, Matters listed on the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous counsel support and may be enacted by the council in one motion. The items on our consent calendar are 3A, adopt the draft minutes of November 4, 2025. 3B, ratify the proclamation naming November 10, 2025, a stereophonic day. 3C authorized the city manager to enter into a services and support agreement with flow bird America Inc to replace 19 obsolete t2 multi space parking pay stations in municipal parking lots one to four and execute all related actions to implement the upgrade in an amount not to exceed $478,000 to include the one time purchase and installation costs and up to 10 years of ongoing operational and maintenance services. 3d adopter resolution authorizing the city manager to execute the professional services agreement with Marin IT to provide IT managed services for a one year period for amount of 387,281 dollars 76 cents 3 by minute order. waive remaining penalties pursuant to Saucy Municipal Code section 5.0 4.2 10 D in the amount of $8,755.81 imposed on bayside boat works for delinquent business license taxes three f receive and file a report regarding the liberty ship large capture device three g adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute tam agreement a fiscal year twenty five dash twenty nine funding agreement between tam and city of sausalito in the amount of five hundred fifty thousand dollars in measure a a funds for the coloma street and ebb tide avenue safe pathway project and the tamales street This is the first time I'm going to be able to do this. $250,000 in measure AA funds for the Coloma Street and Ebtide Avenue safe pathway project and the Tamales Street Safe pathway project. I'll just call that out to those of you this evening who spoke and about Coloma Street, the need for Coloma Street improvements. 3H, receive and file an update of the Fix-It issue reporting software for the Department of Public Works Maintenance Division. For those of you who discussed this evening issues with various parks and other areas in Sausalito, this Fix-It software is something you should be interested in and take advantage of. 3i, adopt a resolution authorizing the service of alcoholic beverages within the existing shared parklet located in the public right-of-way adjacent to the restaurant Venice Gourmet at 625 Bridgeway. 3J, adopt a resolution ratifying Southern Marine Fire District Ordinance 2025. to 2026-01, amending the 2025 California Fire Code and 2025 California Wildlife Urban Interface Code. and 3K ratification of matching grant payment of $10,000 from the general fund for the supplemental nutrition assistance program. Yes, Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:49:19.92 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you mayor. I have Two items that I just have quick comments about and then I have three items. I'm sorry. Pardon me two items that I would like to pull So the two items I'd like to have a quick comment about is 3b the ratify the proclamation naming November 10th 2025 a stereophonic day and the other quick comment is 3G, adopt a resolution, the Transportation Authority of Marin with regard to the transportation. Please go ahead. Why don't you do that? |
| 00:49:52.66 | Steven Woodside | IN THE GRAND. Oh, sure. |
| 00:49:55.21 | Jill Hoffman | OK, so the proclamation naming the stereophonic day Oops. Pardon me. I just wanted people to know about that. because I think that's really cool. And then. |
| 00:50:07.97 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:50:08.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:50:08.14 | Steven Woodside | in case I didn't know. |
| 00:50:09.03 | Unknown | We have Councilmember Blaustein to thank for that. And we're working with them to hopefully get a free performance. I'm hoping that Kevin is watching and we can get them here for a performance. And the stereo. |
| 00:50:12.10 | Jill Hoffman | And we're working with you. |
| 00:50:16.99 | Jill Hoffman | for a performance. Thank you. |
| 00:50:18.02 | Unknown | is a musical. A musical based on |
| 00:50:19.74 | Jill Hoffman | The musical. |
| 00:50:21.08 | Unknown | well, roughly inspired by, we can't say what band, but the band that famously recorded an album at the Plant Recording Studios in Sausalito that rhymes with Meat Mud Whack. Down, in. |
| 00:50:31.30 | Jill Hoffman | down in the Marin ship. which we're going to talk about later. But it's a historic recording studio down the Marin ship. And it's a musical right now that's playing in San Francisco, and you told me about it. And so it's very exciting that we're doing a proclamation for Stereophonic Day. So I think that's really cool. And we have a there might be some kind of ceremony down there or something at some point there was a ceremony |
| 00:50:52.97 | Steven Woodside | last week very cool and the the band and the play and all of the members of the play actually showed up and played at the plant. |
| 00:50:55.22 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 00:51:04.43 | Jill Hoffman | Did we film it? Anybody film it and post it? Somebody's going to film it and post it. |
| 00:51:07.82 | Unknown | I will get film footage from Chris Arrakis of Studio 2200 to see if there's footage. And there was a great article in the Chronicle about their visit as well to Sausalito. To Sausalito. OK. |
| 00:51:11.13 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 00:51:16.97 | Jill Hoffman | will be posted. Okay, so that was cool. So I thought I wanted to talk about that. Thank you for calling that out. You're welcome. And so the other thing is anything, right, about South Leo? That's awesome. And so the other thing is 3G. And so this is a TAM funding agreement. And so the reason I'm, one comment, the short comment on this is, and a request, that I did request a schematic on this. So this is. |
| 00:51:20.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:51:21.15 | Steven Woodside | Sure. |
| 00:51:41.76 | Jill Hoffman | We're requesting half a million dollars from Tam And it's for some you know, pathways and projects and a bike path and a walking path. And it is around it's actually around MLK and it's to provide access and I you know pathways around that area and so my request is that I did get one schematic from Public Works on part of that project but not the whole project there's two parts to that project and so My request is anytime that we get any kind of a project from TAM that we're requesting money for, Please provide even if it's a rough please provide a schematic or some sort of visual so that the people that live in that area understand and know what we're asking for and that the residents know where this pathway project is going to go. It is a pathway in between buildings, so I want people to understand that we're talking about a pathway, and we're asking for money for that. So if we could attach that, I would request that we attach that schematic to to the agenda so that people know that that's what we're asking for. |
| 00:52:52.82 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. I'll just note that attachment five to the staff report is a schematic with redlining showing where this will be. Thank you to our director of public works for including that. And if you can just assure that in the future we continue to include these types of materials so that the community is informed about what is being proposed where. |
| 00:53:16.02 | Jill Hoffman | That would be great. Thank you. And the two things I want to pull for further discussion are 3E and 3K. And 3E is the penalties for Bayside Boatworks. And I don't object to waiving the penalties, but I do think that merits further discussion with regard to the tax issue and the change of the code. I think that's going to apply to other businesses down there, and I think we need to have a short discussion on that. |
| 00:53:24.68 | Adriana Dinahinian | I don't know. |
| 00:53:24.74 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:53:44.22 | Jill Hoffman | and then the 3K, which is the I think we had a process issue on that and then the city manager has some additional information on that issue Okay. |
| 00:53:54.97 | Steven Woodside | will become items 5d and 5e respectively for this evening. |
| 00:53:59.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And I don't think those are going to take very long. |
| 00:54:02.28 | Steven Woodside | Great. Okay, with that, I will open it up to public comment on our consent calendar. I have no speaker cards. Anyone online, city clerk? |
| 00:54:10.51 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, we have Lorna Newland. |
| 00:54:12.70 | Steven Woodside | Lorna, welcome back. |
| 00:54:21.63 | Lorna Newland | Joan, sorry, respectfully, I asked at the start of general public comment that I didn't want to start my time because I had a question to you about the Brian Vitale presentation. And when you said we don't take public comment on that, I was cut off. I did not get to do my general public comment. And I've had, and this is how it's been. |
| 00:54:45.16 | Steven Woodside | I apologize, Lorna. I apologize. I did pause, and there was nothing further forthcoming, and I assumed that was the extent. So I so apologize. I never intend to cut you off. And of course... Thank you. |
| 00:54:59.74 | Lorna Newland | Thank you. |
| 00:54:59.75 | Steven Woodside | I think that's- |
| 00:54:59.77 | Lorna Newland | I think the city clerk cut me off. |
| 00:55:02.38 | Steven Woodside | No, it was me. It was my fault. I literally misunderstood. I thought that that was the extent that since you couldn't comment on the special presentation, that that was the extent. So my apologies. I always want to hear what you have to say, so please share. |
| 00:55:20.63 | Lorna Newland | Okay, from regular public comment, I will have a comment on this transportation thing. Okay. So I wanted to say, my name's Lorna Newland. I've been a resident in Sausalito for 32 years, and I live in Whiskey Springs, which is across from the MLK Park. And then 23 years ago, I opened my business, Sausalito Pottery. And for the last 20 years, I've been a tenant at the MLK bus barn owned by the city of Tosolito. Needless to say, I am disappointed that Measure K passed and that the bus barn housing 13 artisans and maritime tenants and with family, businesses and workers, represents almost 30 livelihoods that will be displaced. We are also mostly seniors. I do feel that the city did not look for additional sites. The working waterfront will not allow any artisans or marine activities to be displaced. And yet, the city is going to displace all these artisans and maritime businesses in there. You've talked about potentially relocating us. I don't know. I do feel that the city misled in the threatening major fines if we don't comply and I understand that happens or that's a possibility. But I agree with several speakers who said it so well. Michelle, Erin, Deborah, Cheryl and others that and one of the flyers called the bus barn a dilapidated building. Now that's embarrassing considering the city |
| 00:56:59.06 | Steven Woodside | up. Lorna, I'm so sorry. That was the end of your two minutes. Please feel free to write to us, and I promise we will respond. And also, always feel free to show up to our meetings and make further public comment. Thank you. All right, any further public comment, city clerk, on the consent calendar? |
| 00:57:17.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:57:17.37 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. |
| 00:57:21.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Bye. I bet, McDougall. |
| 00:57:23.80 | Steven Woodside | Welcome back, Bibbett. Thank you. |
| 00:57:25.87 | Babette McDougall | Thank you, ma'am. By the way, I want to thank you again for your efforts to ongoingly promote open and fair democracy and democratic engagement within the council chambers. It's been noticeably lacking for so long. So I'm glad to see you rolling it back. Now I want to specifically address number 3K on the consent. I guess nobody's going to offer to pull it, but I got to tell you something. First of all, I support the idea of giving to the needy. |
| 00:57:52.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Yeah, but 3K has been pulled. You'll have the opportunity to comment on that. |
| 00:57:56.26 | Babette McDougall | you can comment on that. Okay, then fine. I withhold that. Now, how about How about this other one that I was a little upset about, which had to do with number D. How about like these and David? Did that get pulled? |
| 00:58:10.93 | Steven Woodside | No. |
| 00:58:12.14 | Babette McDougall | OK, so here's the problem. The way I see this is, When we orchestrate purchases of hardware and software, we pay money for that. That money includes a handsome commission for the person recommending the hardware or the software. I don't understand why. I feel like it's some kind of a mafia kind of tie-in. Why are we using a consultant? We want to spend $400,000 just for the hourly consulting, when in fact that's covered by purchases of hardware and software recommended through that time. Those compensations via commission are made, they're generous, and they are made to make up for the time and investment to get you to the right yes, whether it's hardware or software. And to pay somebody twice, that's double dipping. They charge you up front by the hour, then they collect a happy commission. Now, this is really... whether it's hardware or software. And to pay somebody twice, that's double dipping. They charge you up front by the hour, then they collect a happy commission. Now, this is really something I've been trying to get you to focus on for a while. frankly, since I've come back and started getting in your ears and faces. So I apologize for that part of it. But I do think you need to be realistic about how much we really have to spend in our budget. We really should not be double dipping. We should not be double paying. And I don't know why you don't go out there and do RFPs and review best possible alternatives to what we've got. I don't know when you've done that, but I urge it. Thank you. |
| 00:59:32.89 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. City Clerk. No further public speakers. |
| 00:59:36.74 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:59:36.82 | Steven Woodside | All right. With that, I will entertain a motion approving items 3A through 3D and 3F through 3J. |
| 00:59:49.28 | Angeline Loeffler | Almost. |
| 00:59:50.54 | Christina Bejarano | Thank you. |
| 00:59:50.56 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:59:50.57 | Christina Bejarano | THE COUNTRY. |
| 00:59:50.93 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. All in favor? |
| 00:59:51.76 | Christina Bejarano | I'm not sure. |
| 00:59:52.74 | Steven Woodside | Aye. That motion carries unanimously. As I mentioned before, item 3E is now item 5D and item 3K is now item 5E. With that, we will move on. Oh, yes? |
| 01:00:10.22 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, we're going to do that. Thank you. No. I don't think this is going to take long. We're moving on to public hearing. We're after the time assigned so we can proceed with the public hearing of item for a introduction by title and waiver of first reading of amendments to the Sausalito municipal code, title 10 zoning sections, 10.4, 4.0, 8.0 accessory dwelling units. And I will welcome to the podium, Matthew Mandich, our principal planner. |
| 01:00:42.47 | Unknown | Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council. Just wait for this to get loaded up. Yes, so this evening we are considering an amendment to our ADU ordinance, which will get us current with new state law coming in January 1st, 2026. Next slide, please. So the request this evening is to introduce and read by title only the proposed ordinance amending Sassolino Municipal Code section 1044-080, which is focused on our ADUs and JADUs. We hear the staff report and all comments from the public, as well as council members. Request to approve the draft ordinance as proposed or with any modifications the council sees fit. Continue the proposed ordinance for a second reading to the next meeting at December 2nd. And authorize a summary of the ordinance to be published five days in advance of that second reading and for 15 days after its adoption. Next slide. So a little bit of background here. The city's last ADU ordinance regulations were updated earlier this year with Ordinance 01-2025. This occurred in February of this year. This brought the city code into conformity with state housing laws and HCD direction. The proposed amendments, which you will hear this evening, are designed to establish conformity with updated state ADU and JADU laws adopted under AB 1154, SB 9, SB 543, which all go into effect January 1st, 2026. Cities are required to bring their regulations into conformity with these new statutes or state law will govern and the ADU ordinance, the local ADU ordinance will be null and void. AHTD has provided direction on the format, requires the section to be standalone, so it cannot communicate with other sections or chapters in the SMC. AND ON NOVEMBER 12, 2025, THE PLANNING COMMISSION HEARD THIS ORDINANCE DRAFT, THE DRAFT ORDINANCE, AND APPROVED A RESOLUTION RECOMMENDING APPROVAL TO THE CITY COUNCIL. Next slide, please. So first I'm just gonna kinda break down what some of the new statutes are, the new laws, and then we'll talk about how they've been implemented and drafted into the code. So first one here is AB 1154. So this alters the JADU owner occupancy requirement so that it only applies if the JADU has shared sanitation with the existing primary dwelling unit. Basically that means if you have a JADU that has its own separate sanitation facilities, it doesn't have to have owner occupancy. That means the owner doesn't have to live in the ADU, the JADU or the primary residence, so they could rent both the residence and the JADU without having owner occupancy. This also requires that a JADU be rented for a term longer than 30 days, so no short term rentals for JADUs. SB 9, this imposes a penalty for not submitting a copy of the adopted ADU ordinance to HCD within 60 days of adoption or failing to respond to any determination that the ordinance does not comply with state law within 30 days. The penalty is, again, that the local ADU ordinance will be rendered null and void. Next slide, please. So this is kind of the biggest one and this is kind of where the heart of our amendments are coming from here. And this is SB 543. So this revises the statutory definition of JADU to read as follows, which a JADU unit or junior accessory dwelling unit means a unit that has no more than 500 square feet of interior livable space. So that's the big change there. And that the size is contained entirely within the single family residence. So interior livable space, that would be really like space for eating, sleeping, sanitation, a garage or an attic or a boiler room or something like that wouldn't count in that space. The next is that it requires ADU, JDU application completeness determinations within 15 business days or three weeks. This is a shorter timeline than we had before that was previously 30 days. And 30 calendar days rather than business days. And then it also requires that an exhaustive list be provided to the applicant of any incomplete items. And that if the deadline for this is missed, the application is automatically deemed complete. Next is that this is a big change here requires a jurisdiction to provide a written appeal option to the city council or planning commission or both to challenge any incompleteness determination or denial. Previously all determinations on this section of code were final from the director. So this is a new a new option here of a written appeal. Action on the appeal must be taken within 60 days after the applicant submits their written appeal. Next, again, the term livable space is being added next to the square footage limits in line with what the JEDU language states. Next there we also have that the units provided under government code section 66323, these are also known as 66323 units, can be combined. This is something that had already been legally able to do, but this is just clarifying that in the code. And then another amendment, it requires related JD fire sprinklers to match the ADUs only required when the primary residence requires fire sprinklers. And finally, similar to SB9, penalty for not sending the adopted ordinance to HCD for review. Next slide, please. So here's how we're integrating those new changes in law into our ordinance. So I'm just gonna kind of run through the ordinance top to bottom here starting at the beginning. So first of all, the definition of JADU has been refined to reflect that 500 square feet of interior livable space. As far as approval goes, we're requiring an ADU permit and a building permit required for all JADUs and ADUs. This is how we always did it up until last year. New state law required that we just have building permits for certain ADUs, particularly those 66323 units, the statutorily governed units however now we're going to do an adu permit and a building permit for all and I know that might be a topic of discussion I'm happy to answer some questions on that following the presentation Next we have the completeness determinations which we already discussed, integrating that 15 business days after the application is submitted. The city must provide an exhausted list of incomplete items in their first letter. So after that initial review and the letter goes out, if you were to see something on a secondary submission, you can't add that onto the incompleteness letter, so you have to be exhausted up front. And again, the application is determined complete if that deadline is missed. The written appeal option, which we just discussed, also being integrated into the code, So this is for either an incompleteness determination or denial. The appeal will go to city council. The law states that it can go to planning commission or council or both. We've elected to take it directly to council to limit the number of appeals that could happen. If you take it to planning commission, that decision could also then just be appealed up to council. So we're going to be kind of a one-stop shop with this. Action must be taken within 60 days. The way this is kind of going to work is that someone needs to submit the written appeal to the city clerk's office, and then the council will need to make a decision on that within 60 days. The way this is kind of going to work is that someone needs to submit the written appeal to the city clerk's office and then the council will need to make a decision on that within 60 days. That'll also be a written response. And these are only going to be based on objective standards. So nothing related to like size, look, feel, coloring, things like that. It's just whether or not it complies to height limits, setbacks, things like that. And this is also only the applicant can do this appeal. So neighbors and things like that are not, no one outside the applicant is able to appeal the incompleteness or the denial. Next slide, please. So this is something that I think is really helpful for both, you know, planners, architects, community members. We've kind of divided the new types of ADUs into class one and class two. So those 66323 units I discussed earlier, those are the statutorily regulated ADUs. Those are regulated strictly by state law, no local regulations. Whereas class two are locally regulated. We can add a couple of things. We can do some size limits, some height limits, setbacks, and things like that on those locally regulated ADUs. So I'm just going to break down kind of what those are, and this is also reflected in the code. So class one ADUs, those are the ones that can all be combined on one lot. Six is three, two, three. You heard me say a lot now. So for a single-family home, you can have a conversion ADU. So that's a conversion of interior space or a conversion of an accessory structure. You can have a new detached ADU up to 800 square feet and a JADU up to 500 square feet. So that allows for three ADUs on a single family lot. So you could have four units on a single family home with the primary residence included. For multifamily, you're allowed to do one interior conversion or up to 25% of the units. So let me just explain that a little bit. So an interior conversion would be, let's say you have a fourplex or something like that, and there's a storage space or a boiler room or some part of the building that's not being used for livable space. You could then convert that into an ADU. In a building like a fourplex, you only get one of those. But as you get a larger apartment building, you get up to 25% of the units. So let's say you have a 16-unit build. If you had four spaces that are non-livable, you could convert four of those into four new ADUs. You can also get more detached ADUs for multifamily. So, for example, if you have a fourplex again, you could get up to four ADUs. You could get minimum two, and then if you have a 16, you can get up to eight. So you can never go beyond eight, but you can get up to as many as eight ADUs. So, for example, like a building like Sausalito Towers, they could put eight detached ADUs in the parking lot if they wanted to. So next is the class two ADUs. So this is a different type of ADU here. This is the attached ADU, which is essentially an addition to the home. So these are the the parking lot if they wanted to so next is the class 2 ADUs so this is a different type of video here this is the attached ADU which is essentially an addition to the home so these can be more locally regulated and then the detached conversion ADUs that exceed the square footage limits set forth in the statutorily regulated class 1 units so basically these can be local regulated by objective standards such as having a front yard setback or a size limit. For example, our size limit on a detached would be for one bedroom, 850 and for a two bedroom, 1000. Next slide, please. All right, general requirements here. Again, this has been updated to reflect that distinction between class I and class II ADUs I just discussed. Subsection on height measurement has been amended to read as follows. Height is measured from existing legal grade or the level of the lowest floor, whichever is lower to the peak of the structure. So this reminds that this is not how we typically do height in Sausalito, which is average natural grade. This is from lowest floor level to the peak of the structure. So limits that height a little bit to be more confined within the ADU limits of you know 16 to 18 feet or 25 feet for an attached. Owner occupancy no longer required for any ADUs regardless of the construction dates. That's a new change. And then JDUs are providing an exception for the owner occupancy, which I discussed previously, if the JDU does have its own separate sanitation facilities. Deed restrictions are now limited to JDUs only. And what they restrict really is they don't allow for separate conveyance and they restrict the size of that JDU to what it was approved at. No certificate occupancy may be issued for an ADU prior to the issuance of the certificate occupancy for the primary dwelling. and there's some limited accession for state declared emergencies. Next slide, please. All right, so some specific requirements. All size limits have been amended to include the term livable space, as already discussed in line with state law. We've also added that in the historic district, any attached or detached ADU must be located behind the rearmost exterior wall of the primary dwelling and directly behind the primary dwelling, so not visible from the street. Fees here is just for anything that's less than 500 square feet, no school fees. Thank you. dwelling and directly behind the primary dwelling so not visible from the street fees here is just for anything that's less than 500 square feet no school fees and then these two sections have been deleted as they conflict with new sections of the codes this is the non-conforming ADU's discretionary and the fact that or the previous section of code that decisions by the community development director under the section are final and they are subject to a written appeal now Next slide. All right, brings us to our recommendation. Staff recommends the City Council move to approve the draft ordinance as proposed or with any modifications, continue the proposed ordinance for a second reading on December 2nd, and authorize a summary of the ordinance to be published five days in advance of the second reading and for 15 days after its adoption. Overall, staff believes that the ordinance before you today is much improved from the previous version, has better clarity, readability, and consistency with state law. And HCD has also reviewed the ordinance already and had no comments or corrections to provide to us. So with that, I'll conclude my presentation and happy to take any questions council has. |
| 01:12:31.42 | Steven Woodside | Any questions of Planner Mandich? Yes. |
| 01:12:34.15 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you for the excellent brief presentation on something that's rather complicated. I have a question about the appeal. Do we have discretion under the state law to say, for example, that the matter is appealable to the Planning Commission and it stops there? |
| 01:12:53.03 | Unknown | So I don't believe so because if we had it up to the Planning Commission, our code allows for an appeal of a Planning Commission decision up to City Council. So I don't, we could confirm with City Attorney Rudin on this, but I don't believe if we offered it to Planning Commission that we couldn't, we could forbid them from then appealing up the next level to Council. So that's why we chose Council to begin with. |
| 01:13:09.40 | Angeline Loeffler | So that's why we chose Canada. But could we do so, Mr. City Attorney? |
| 01:13:12.41 | Sergio Rudin | Mr. City Attorney. We can definitely leave it with the Planning Commission. I would not recommend that. And the reason for City Council hearing these appeals is from a risk management perspective. To the extent, one... |
| 01:13:14.65 | Angeline Loeffler | And I think that's a great thing. |
| 01:13:14.94 | Unknown | And- |
| 01:13:26.31 | Sergio Rudin | The state law, as always, is a little bit vague. HCD's interpretations of that state law are always subject to some scrutiny by public agencies, and there is a risk management component to either agreeing or disagreeing with an HCD interpretation. Additionally, of course, we have property owners who would potentially pursue claims with respect to denials of ADUs or, you know, some of these determinations and so As the city attorney, I feel the city council is the best place to have those decisions made. |
| 01:14:00.22 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. That answers my question. |
| 01:14:02.31 | Steven Woodside | Any other questions? All right, with seeing none, I'll open this up for public comment. I have no speaker cards. Oh, sorry, I'm gonna open the public hearing. And now open it up for public comment. I'm sorry. |
| 01:14:16.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Great. We have no speaker cards. We do have people online. Lorna Newland. |
| 01:14:20.89 | Steven Woodside | Lorna, welcome back. |
| 01:14:25.60 | Lorna Newland | Yes, sorry to say this, but once again, I got cut off because when I Mayor Cox, thank you for allowing me to do my communications public comment, but I did say when I was raising my hand, I wanted to speak to the consent calendar. This is regarding 3G, and it has to do specifically with the Coloma Street and Tamala Street mid-block crossing. And crosswalk, my answer is yes. I've only been waiting 20 years for a decent crosswalk across there. But rapid flash beacons, no. It's disrupting to residents on Coloma. It's directly in line with my view as long as my studio is still there. I spoke to this years ago with the Bicomped Commission that the flashing beacons should not ever be there at that crosswalk. We do need one. And just to answer, yes, I do know I can email, and I often do, but it did take three emails, two public comments, and a meeting with the city manager to get a recap four and a half months after a tenant meeting in Elma Cay from last June. So I will continue to email. I sent a few emails a couple weeks ago and I haven't had any responses. So I will once again, send those again, because there's a lot of things going on and we do appreciate public comment. I'm sorry I can't be there tonight, Um, maybe the next time I need to be there. So if I get cut off, I would know. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. And I'm sorry this wasn't about the current issue, but this was about the consent calendar. Just before we ever do it, please do not put in rapid flash beacons at that crosswalk. And we will get more people on Coloma Street to write letters about that as well before it ever happens. I do appreciate getting the dirt path paved. Thank you very much. |
| 01:16:19.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Lorna. Kevin McGowan, will you or one of your staff reach back out to Lorna Newland to the issue that she's raised and make sure that we're addressing it appropriately. Okay, I see a thumbs up. So Lorna, Kevin McGowan is our Director of Public Works. If you don't hear from him, please reach out directly to him so that he can make sure that he understands and addresses the concerns that you've raised. And thank you for everything that you offer and contribute to the city and your participation in many of our meetings all right any other public comment regarding item 4a city clerk |
| 01:17:00.93 | Walfred Solorzano | We have a bet, McDougal. |
| 01:17:02.55 | Steven Woodside | Welcome back, Babette. Thank you. |
| 01:17:04.15 | Babette McDougall | Yes, ma'am. Thank you again. I'm sorry I'm not in the room. Now, going back to the item that we're supposed to be commenting on, which has to do with ADUs and junior ADUs. So I went through this particular item many times and I tried digging deeper and I found it thoroughly confusing in so many ways. Like my household does have an ADU that was brought online I don't know, 20 years ago at least when they first said we need ADU. So we made one. Now, so the question is, it's not clear to me the extent to which we're talking about only new builds versus existing. So that's something that's very confusing. The other thing that I found confusing, and I was glad to hear it raised as part of the presentation, is this idea of separate. meaning household, main household versus the extra apartment. Sanitation is one example. When you say separate sanitation, are we talking about a separate dedicated bathroom with a toilet, sink and shower or whatever? Or are we talking about running an entirely separate you know, lateral to the sewer. I don't know. I mean, we live in, we haven't even started the sewer project yet. And we all know how old the sewer system is in this town. So, I mean, I just don't really quite get the language. And so there needs to be some clarity. Maybe I need to just spend more time down at Public Works. I don't know. But I just want to put this out here because Otherwise, I'm going to feel like I'm constantly, you know, am I on the right side or I'm on the wrong side of the law? I feel this all the time because the writing is maybe clear to you who are, you know, you eat it for breakfast. I don't eat it for breakfast. So it needs to be much clearer. I really don't get the idea between the two that I've mentioned. All right, and then finally, I just want to say I, too, write, but I rarely see my letters posted online. So I don't really get the idea of what is so good about writing when you don't post a public comment. Thank you. |
| 01:19:07.42 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Babette. And in the future, if there is a letter that you write that is not posted online, will you please reach out to me personally? And I will work with the city manager to assure that it gets posted online. Okay, any other public comment concerning this public hearing item? |
| 01:19:24.84 | Walfred Solorzano | Amen. |
| 01:19:25.75 | Steven Woodside | All right, then I will close public comment. I will close the public hearing. I will bring it back up here. for discussion I will move that we introduced by title and wave first reading of amendments to the Sausalito Municipal Code Title 10 zoning section 10.44.080 accessory dwelling units, Second. All right. And is there any, would any council members like to make comment about this? All right, seeing none, I'll call the vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. That motion carries 5-0. |
| 01:19:58.72 | Unknown | Aye. Thank you. |
| 01:20:01.80 | Steven Woodside | Next, we'll move on to business item 5A. This concerns 27 Central Avenue, an administrative hearing before the city council to consider an appeal of administrative citations issued for maintaining illegal construction. I want to let the public know that we received late mail correspondence from the appellant who offered her assent to continuing this item to allow the and we are going to make a motion that we have to continue this item to allow staff to do just that that being said I am going to take public comment on this item so I'm going to make a motion that we continue this item to a date uncertain staff will alert us when they have had time to review and analyze the documentation received from the appellant and are ready to bring this back to us but in the meantime I'm going to move that we Continue this to a date uncertain. |
| 01:21:11.52 | Unknown | I'll second that. Weren't you also going to say something about the fees during that time? |
| 01:21:11.86 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:21:15.96 | Steven Woodside | Oh, and in addition, we will... Um, hold in abatement the fees that are the subject of this appeal, pending the hearing on this matter by the City Council when it's brought back to us by staff. Second that amended. |
| 01:21:35.03 | Angeline Loeffler | I second that as well. |
| 01:21:36.52 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Councilmember. Sobieski. Okay, and with that, I'll open it up for public comment. |
| 01:21:44.97 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Jack. |
| 01:21:48.44 | Steven Woodside | I'm sorry? Jack. He's on. |
| 01:21:50.59 | Jack Carlson | Thank you. |
| 01:21:50.72 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:21:50.77 | Jack Carlson | Thank you. |
| 01:21:50.81 | Steven Woodside | I'm not sure. |
| 01:21:50.98 | Jack Carlson | Bye. |
| 01:21:51.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:21:51.06 | Jack Carlson | Thank you. |
| 01:21:51.23 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:21:51.25 | Jack Carlson | Thank you. |
| 01:21:51.26 | Steven Woodside | Right. I'm sorry, okay, Jack? |
| 01:21:54.76 | Jack Carlson | Can you hear me? |
| 01:21:55.50 | Steven Woodside | Yes. |
| 01:21:57.07 | Jack Carlson | It's Jack Carlson. I'm the resident at 31 Central. I'm one of the residents whose view is impacted by the addition to the property at 27 Central, which is, you know, the subject of this discussion. I, you know, I just want to point out that this has been going on for years and years and years. It seems to be the MO of the owner the landlords of 27 Central to just keep finding new ways to delay and delay and delay having to take any action. This has now gone through many different owners of 31 Central. You all are aware of it, Mayor Cox, you were on You know, the city council, the first time around, |
| 01:22:42.48 | Unknown | Oh, this is... |
| 01:22:45.85 | Jack Carlson | This was an agenda item on a city council meeting earlier this year as well. It was on a planning commission last year. And You know, I'm aware there's sort of ongoing potential threat of litigation, but I do just want to encourage the city to do whatever it can to move this forward. I mean, Heather Wiles, who owned the property before me, moved out of the city because she just got so fed up with this going on and on and on. I do also want to say that the owners at 27 Central seem to be using letting their uh trees become overgrown as almost like a point of leverage so my view is now not only blocked by this addition but also by trees which are overgrown and now virtually completely blocking my view of the city skyline um and i just like some resolution to this sooner rather than later |
| 01:23:50.98 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:23:53.59 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public comment? |
| 01:23:54.94 | Steven Woodside | All right. With that, I will, would any council members like to comment on this? All right, I'll call the question. All in favor, say aye. Aye. That motion carries 5-0. |
| 01:24:06.26 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:24:08.98 | Steven Woodside | We're going to take a five minute break for personal convenience and then we will resume with 5b which will not take long and we will move Promptly on to 5c and I know many of you are here for that. Thank you |
| 01:24:21.22 | Unknown | I would thank the council for their consideration. |
| 01:24:23.61 | Steven Woodside | Yes, thank you. |
| 01:25:02.57 | Steven Woodside | All right, so we're gonna continue with item 5B. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a construction contract with our W.R. Construction Inc. For the bridgeway slide repair project, Techo Mesh alternative located below Woodward Avenue. for the bid amount of $1,145,441.82. authorize a construction contingency of $144,558.18 for a construction amount not to exceed $1,260,000. Approve plans and specifications for the project. Reject all bids received for the Bridgeway Slide Repair Project MSE Wall Alternative. I'll welcome Kevin McGowan, our Public Works Director, as well as Andrew Davidson, our Senior Engineer of Public Works. |
| 01:25:49.27 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you, and I just wanted to introduce Andrew, since he is our senior engineer. He will walk us through a short presentation. We also have online Scott Stevens from Miller Pacific Engineering Group, who is our geotechnical engineer. And he should be able to help with some of the questions you may have on this specific project. Andy? Thank you and welcome. |
| 01:26:11.49 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you. Good evening. So good evening, mayor, city council members. I would like to thank you, the city manager and director of public works, for the opportunity to bring before you the award of the Bridgeway Slide Repair Project. As you know, my name is Andrew Davidson. I'm the senior engineer in your department of Public Works. This evening you will be asked to award a construction contract for the Bridgeway Slide Repair Project Teco Mesh Alternative. Next slide, please. So the mayor just sort of ran through this, so we'll skip it. These are the recommendations. We'll touch it at the end of the presentation. Next slide, please. So the location, everyone knows where this is, between Nevada and Olive on the westerly side of Bridgeway, located generally below 254 through 268 Woodward. Next slide, please. So the slide originally occurred in January of 2017. Material from the slide blocked the Westerly Bridgeway sidewalk and the southbound bike lane and traffic lanes. IN RESPONSE THE CITY HAD A CONTRACT TO REMOVE THE MUD AND DEBRIS, PLACE TARPS ON THE SLOP AND K RAILS AT THE BASE OF THE SLOP TO ACT AS A BUTTRESS AND CATCHMENT AND THEY'RE STILL THERE. IN 2023 THE CITY BID A SLOP REPAIR PROJECT CONSISTING OF MECHANICALLY STABILIZED EARTH WALL. WE RECEIVED A SINGLE BID WHICH EXCEEDED THE BUDGET AND SO IT WAS REJECTED BY THE CITY COUNCIL. In 2024, a secondary slide occurred south of the original location where that red arrow is on the upper right photo. In May of this year, staff requested city council authorization to solicit bids for the slope repair using a tech O mesh system consisting of soil nails and wire mesh. This is the same type of system that was used just up slope of the North street steps a couple of years ago. during this council meeting and in response to public comment The City Council directed staff to advertise the project for bids. seek two separate bids for two separate engineering solutions, the MSC wall and Teco mesh, to have staff consult with the neighbor's geotechnical engineer to reach, hopefully, a meeting of the minds and to get pricing for both the MSC wool and Teco mesh alternatives. Next slide, please. So we bid the project in late September, both projects in late September, and opened both projects towards the end of October. Once again, we received a single bid for the MSC wall alternative. That was in the amount of about 1.5 million. And five bids for the Teco Mesh alternative, the low in the amount of $1,145,442. Next slide, please. For the Teco Mesh Alternative, no additional funding is required. This evening we are asking you to authorize the subtotal for construction in the amount of $1,290,000, which includes the bid, PLUS THE CONSTRUCTION CONTINGENCY OF $144,558. |
| 01:29:22.57 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:29:24.51 | Andrew Davidson | BEFORE HOPPING TO THE NEXT SLIDE, I JUST BRIEFLY TALK ABOUT A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE IMPACTS DURING CONSTRUCTION. OBVIOUSLY FOR THE NEIGHBORS WHO ARE JUST UPHILL OF THE SITE, IT'S GOING TO BE NOISY. THE NORTH STREET STEPS PROJECT WAS A NOISY PROJECT AND THIS WILL BE SIMILAR. WE'RE ALSO GOING TO ALLOW THE CONTRACTOR TO CLOSE THAT WESTERLY SOUTHBOUND LANE, THE BIKE LANE, AND THE SIDEWALK FOR THE DURATION. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE FOR THE CONTRACTOR TO HAVE TO MOBILIZE IN AND OUT EVERY MORNING AND EVERY EVENING. SO IT WILL NARROW BRIDGEWAY DOWN FOR A BIT TO ONE LANE AT THIS LOCATION, BUT IT WILL BE CONSISTENT. SO HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE SAFER AND QUICKER TO CONSTRUCT. |
| 01:29:57.77 | Unknown | We'll move. |
| 01:30:08.99 | Andrew Davidson | Next slide, please. For the MSC wall alternative, additional funding is required. The construction cost consisting of the bid amount plus contingency is $1,685,000. We estimate a construction management cost and inspection of about $160,000, and this adds up to $1,844,000. Next slide, please. So here is a cost comparison between the two alternatives. The difference is the delta between the MSE wall and the Teco mesh wall, and just generally the cost differential is about $400,000. Next slide, please. So... During the May City Council meeting, staff was asked or directed by the City Council to set up a meeting with the neighboring property owners' geotechnical engineer. On October 8th, we had the first of what turned out to be two meetings. In attendance was one of the adjacent property owners, their geotechnical engineer, the mayor, the city's geotechnical engineer, and city staff. During this meeting, we discuss site history both before and after 2017, the date of the slide, the initial slide. including information presented by the adjacent property owner. slope stability of the two alternative engineering solutions, impacts to views, slope vegetation, and separation of the neighboring property from bridgeway. It was also decided that we would meet again after the bids were open. We had our second meeting on November 12th. At this meeting we had the same group of folks except Neighbor's Geotechnical Engineer could not make it. but a contractor familiar with the site was involved representing the neighbor. AT THAT MEETING WE DISCUSSED THE BID RESULTS, DIFFERENCES IN THE BID, SLOPES STABILITY, THE TYPE OF SLIDE THAT IS OCCURRING ON THE DIFFERENCES IN OUR TWO ALTERNATIVES, THE MSE AND THE TECH The design, the basis of the design, which is based on soil borings, actually on site. project inspection and that the city has to be fiscally responsible in selecting a project. Next slide, please. So this brings us to the last part, the recommendations. The mayor has read through them. I don't think there's a need to do that again. So basically this concludes the presentation with us this evening, as Kevin, our Director of Public Works, has mentioned, is Scott Stevens, who is with Miller Pacific Engineering Group, who designed both the Teco Mesh and MSE wall alternatives. I believe Scott is here by Zoom. And I do want to add that Miller Pacific has provided a proposal for construction management for the Teco Mesh Alternative with a value of approximately $50,000. So with that, we're here to answer questions, hopefully. |
| 01:33:09.08 | Steven Woodside | Yes. I have a question of Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens, you designed both the techo mesh and the Um, MSE wall alternatives. Can you comment on the safety of those two alternatives? Is there any difference in the safety that each alternative provides to the project itself and to the surrounding properties? |
| 01:33:52.74 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:33:52.77 | Scott Stevens | Good evening council members can you hear me? |
| 01:33:52.99 | Steven Woodside | Council members. Yes, thank you. Welcome. |
| 01:33:56.52 | Scott Stevens | Okay, welcome. So to answer your question, we both Options have been engineered and designed, including slope stability analysis and analysis for the walls themselves and the Tecco mesh. And they both been designed to the same factor of safety, which is a 1.5 static factor of safety. So the engineering factor of safety is the same for both options. They both included a seismic evaluation also. And so they are equal from an engineering point in terms of option you know, for the tech mesh and MSE. |
| 01:34:34.00 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thank you. And for a lay person, what does a safety factor of 1.5 mean? |
| 01:34:40.56 | Scott Stevens | So a factor of safety of 1.0 means you are marginally stable. You're on the cusp of sliding or not sliding or failing or not failing. So a 1.5 factor of safety means you're one and a half times |
| 01:34:49.89 | Unknown | or not. |
| 01:34:56.37 | Scott Stevens | that the margin. So you basically have a 50% margin of error on your design. before you would get down to a point where you would be unstable. |
| 01:35:08.69 | Steven Woodside | All right, thank you. Other questions? Vice Mayor. |
| 01:35:11.83 | Angeline Loeffler | You stole my question, thank you. |
| 01:35:14.12 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Great minds think alike. |
| 01:35:16.94 | Unknown | Yes. I guess it's an engineering question, which is the slide was caused by something. I presume it was water. How is water being managed and treated in this new design? |
| 01:35:29.85 | Unknown | you |
| 01:35:32.96 | Scott Stevens | So the slide is actually caused by a combination of factors. |
| 01:35:33.01 | Unknown | So, |
| 01:35:38.58 | Scott Stevens | Probably the primary factor is that this is a steep cut that was made to develop Bridgeway Avenue. 80 years ago. over time, The surface of the steep cuts weather due to tree roots and rainfall and just you know, EXPOSURE TO THE WEATHER, THE SURFACE LAYER WILL will weaken. And so when you're on a very steep slope like this, occasionally you will have sloughing of the of the hillside. And it did occur during strong winter rains of the 2017 storms, which was a triggering factor to cause the sloughing to occur. But the ultimate, the ultimate causation is the slow weathering of the slope. And then the triggering events are significant rainfalls that occur occasionally. |
| 01:36:29.54 | Unknown | In your design though, is there any maintenance of a water treatment pathway that needs to be maintained by the city or is it a passive design that will take care of itself? Are there, in other words, pipes, sluices, or other pathways that if blocked could imperil the design and need the attention of staff? Or is it a passive design that doesn't have such a feature? |
| 01:36:58.46 | Scott Stevens | It is... a mostly passive design. When this occurred, Some of the earlier emergency measures that were implemented included a and new storm drain pipe along the top of the hillside where the homeowners downspouts were all collected into So prior to the 2017 event, the downspouts were discharging water onto the slope. And that system works by gravity. And that, that's at the top of the slope that is collecting the water from the homeowners downspouts is going to remain in place. incorporated into both plans and it will be there it ties into a catch basin if you're looking uphill on the left side of the the project area So there will be a pipe up there that will probably need to be a check occasionally, but it's an HDPE pipe, which has a long design life and it's gonna be covered with the, the mesh or fill. and so it won't be exposed to sunlight. So it should have a very long design life, but there will be a pipe up. |
| 01:38:09.10 | Unknown | So is that entryway to that pipe on private land or public land? |
| 01:38:14.38 | Scott Stevens | public land. So the city actually owns, um, roughly 10 or 15 feet past the top of the slope. And all the work that is being planned is on city property. |
| 01:38:27.94 | Unknown | Okay, I'm gonna have a question for you about that, Director McGill on just after this, but just one more question about the design here. If this section of that cut slid, I know you didn't do an assessment of nearby sections, but is it something that a design solution that might have to potentially be incorporated with neighboring portions of the slope in the future? And would this design be compatible with that, or is that a separate? a separate thing altogether. |
| 01:38:59.42 | Scott Stevens | No, it's, it's, you know, there are a lot of steep slopes, uh, throughout Sausalito that are, are weathering and sloughing occasionally. This happens to be one of the taller slopes. around. You know, to the looking uphill to the left, the slope is much smaller. So that potential for sloughing and additional instability is lower. To the right, there's still another section of steep slope that is there that hasn't had a lot of instability lately. But if there was, this system can be expanded farther to the I'll call it the west or the north. The GeoBrug system is, or the Tecco Mesh system, it's easier to expand than the MSE block wall system. |
| 01:39:46.71 | Unknown | Okay, and then just back to the causation and the notion of prevention, is there anything that we should be educated on in terms of cheaper steps that can be done proactively to avoid the kind of sloughing that was the cause of this in the first place? |
| 01:40:05.34 | Scott Stevens | I mean, the only thing that could have done proactively would have been maybe connection of some of the better control of the homeowners drainage coming off their downspouts. But in the big picture of things, this is part of the natural process of hillside weathering and instability. So ultimately it might've delayed things a little bit, but when you have a slope this deep, it is eventually going to slough and erode from the natural weathering process. Thank you. |
| 01:40:31.39 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:40:31.60 | Scott Stevens | Thank you. |
| 01:40:31.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:40:31.75 | Scott Stevens | Thank you. |
| 01:40:31.76 | Unknown | Thank you. And my simple question was, I know whenever there's an incipient coming rainstorm, your crew is out there checking these entryways. But just for my edification, when a new drain is added like this, does your crew go through and check all these major drains? Is there a list of them that you know of and hit? Or how's the clogging of these things avoided? |
| 01:40:59.34 | Kevin McGowan | So this one's a little bit tricky in that the connections go past the fence line. We check at the fence line as much as we can. Anything that we can see, we'll clean it up. AT THIS POINT, I THINK THIS IS WHAT'S CALLED A TIGHT LINE. It's all sealed. So we don't really have any inlets at the top of the slope right now. They're generally on private property. But we would actually double check at the outfalls to make sure that the system is running all the time and double check that, especially before the rains and before the leaves fall. |
| 01:41:32.28 | Unknown | And you |
| 01:41:32.85 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:41:32.85 | Scott Stevens | I can add a little bit to that too, if you don't mind. There was an old |
| 01:41:33.00 | Unknown | I can add a little |
| 01:41:37.51 | Scott Stevens | surface drain up there is a half CMP pipe. that did require a lot more maintenance because it would tend to fill with leaves and debris and stuff. the new So we have basically are getting rid of the old CMP pipe that was there or the like the V ditch and replacing it with a closed drain system that doesn't have that same clogging potential. |
| 01:42:03.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:42:06.58 | Unknown | Yes, go ahead. So in the staff report, Director McGowan, this is probably going to be for you. Sorry. I just don't want you to sit down and have to get back up. In the staff report, you mentioned that the mesh is the same type that we used on the North Street steps. Could you just speak to, have we been through a winter season with that mesh there? And I know we've heard feedback from the neighbors specifically about it, but maybe just to speak to the efficacy and the thoughts there. |
| 01:42:30.56 | Kevin McGowan | I think it's working fairly well. It's a nice question, and I appreciate that. The Tyco mesh is working fairly well. It's got tiebacks that go back into the hillside, and it locks everything into place. The mesh itself on the outside can actually move ever so slightly, so it can accommodate more vegetation that will grow through the mesh itself, so that you might see it this year, but in another couple years, you probably won't even know that the mesh is there to begin with. So in my opinion is it's working, it's working well in this particular location. |
| 01:43:04.09 | Unknown | So you expect it to similarly have the vegetation growing impacts at this new location and be similarly effective? |
| 01:43:10.83 | Kevin McGowan | Absolutely. And in our discussions with the fronting property owner, we also talked about that Tycho mesh has the ability to accommodate some trees and vegetation that can grow through them as well. And that was of interest to the fronting property. |
| 01:43:26.72 | Unknown | And when should we expect to be able to move forward with construction given the weather impacts that are ahead of us is November? |
| 01:43:34.49 | Kevin McGowan | That's a decent question. I would have to double check with the contractor to see if they can do this type of work in the wintertime. Scott, do you have any opinion on that? |
| 01:43:44.02 | Scott Stevens | I think it would be better to wait till springtime to start the work. There is going to be some grading work, cleaning up the hillside, removing vegetation. If we do that now, it could result in a lot more erosion potential. So I would recommend we kind of wait till springtime to get construction started. Um, and just to add a little bit more to the discussion of the vegetation. you know, one of the reasons we did move towards the Tecco Mesh system is because of some of the upslope homeowners concerns about the trees, this system can work around large trees. We can actually run the mesh around the tree trunks of larger trees and save them. all the smaller brush and stuff will grow back through the mesh as time goes on. |
| 01:44:29.47 | Unknown | And then just one last question since it seems like we're going to have to wait to move forward with this and we are expecting Significant weather events as usual in Sausalito Do we have plans for protection of the hillside for this season beyond just re tarping or are we? Essentially, you know making sure that should there be an it would be really track very significant if we approve this project And then we don't build it and something happens this season. So I just wanted to check on that |
| 01:44:53.90 | Kevin McGowan | Yeah, I think the approach would be to re-tarp the area to make sure that we have the similar, not improvements, but safety measures in order to keep this surface slide from continuing to unravel. We would also rely on Scott's firm, Miller Pacific, to direct us in how to deal with that as well. |
| 01:45:13.58 | Unknown | could we just add that to staff direction somehow, just making sure that there's a retarping of it in accordance with this? And then, Okay, well, I might have a further question, but that's it for now. Thank you. |
| 01:45:26.52 | Steven Woodside | Um. Director McGowan, there are two attachments to the to 5b entitled bridgeway slope stability and bridgeway slope history are those attachments prepared by your department |
| 01:45:33.79 | Unknown | FINE. FINE. |
| 01:45:33.98 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:45:41.17 | Kevin McGowan | No, these were received from the fronting property owner, and we felt it was important that they were included in your packet because they show that we are opening open communication with the adjacent neighbor and They wanted to go ahead and make sure that the whole council saw that type of material. |
| 01:45:58.50 | Steven Woodside | And has Miller Pacific considered and provided any response to the concerns raised in attachments five and six by Mr. Ryan? SCOTT, CAN YOU |
| 01:46:13.23 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:46:13.36 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:46:14.01 | Kevin McGowan | Can you address that one? |
| 01:46:15.79 | Scott Stevens | Just since I don't have the attachments open right in front of you, are those the letter that Mr. Ryan produced at our last meeting and |
| 01:46:15.85 | Steven Woodside | I'm sorry. |
| 01:46:15.88 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:46:22.91 | Kevin McGowan | Yeah. |
| 01:46:23.14 | Scott Stevens | So, |
| 01:46:23.20 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 01:46:23.89 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I would recommend that these be characterized as late mail since they're not city-sponsored information so that it's clear to the public that this was not generated by the city staff. Mr. Stevens, I'm asking you a question I already know the answer to, but not everybody does. So have you considered these two reports and have you responded to them to city staff to your satisfaction? |
| 01:46:24.06 | Scott Stevens | I would recommend |
| 01:46:55.15 | Scott Stevens | Yes, we have considered them. They were the topic of our last meeting with the homeowner and her representatives. and we we feel that the mse wall is is still the best approach for this project I'm sorry, reverse that. The Teco mesh is the best approach for this project. |
| 01:47:12.01 | Steven Woodside | that. |
| 01:47:12.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:15.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:16.85 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:47:16.88 | Unknown | Okay. I had one follow up question. Sorry. I just, I just wanted to check in also. So the engineer engineer's estimate cost is obviously a couple hundred thousand dollars above the, the, um, construction bid. And we all know that cost and pricing changes, but I know that there's a chance that there will be a more significant price increases with additional impacts of tariffs in the new year. Do we just have a plan to ensure that we stay within the confines of our expected costs for this and will it, you know, delaying it change the cost outcome? |
| 01:47:17.14 | Steven Woodside | I had one follow-up question. All right, please. |
| 01:47:46.94 | Kevin McGowan | Those are good questions that we need to correspond with our contractor about. I don't have a great answer for that right now. If there are changes associated with material costs or tariffs and it does affect the budget, we'll come back and give you a heads up about it. |
| 01:48:01.13 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 01:48:01.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:48:01.53 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Any other questions? All right, I'll open it up to public comment. I have one speaker card from Adriana Dinahinian. |
| 01:48:20.15 | Adriana Dinahinian | Let me clarify. There was no landslide behind my house. There was a landslide behind my neighbor's house, but behind my house, the city of Sausalito sent a crew and two bulldozers in 2017 and tore away the hillside and the forest of trees that held that hillside together away, and they have never explained why, and I've been asking for eight years. Nobody here has even mentioned that, and it was a major, major reason. It is the reason why you're going to have to put something behind my house to hold the slope, because before that, it was just fine. |
| 01:49:02.47 | Adriana Dinahinian | Mr. Stevens has stated that the cracks in my floor, foundation walls, and the drifting downhill of my back fence and patio are nothing more than the result of ordinary seasonal swelling and shrinking of the soil under my house. It appears to be an opinion not backed by evidence because the city, in the eight years since the 2017 damage, never did the appropriate testing to ascertain whether the slope has surface or deep movement. Tech Omesh is not recommended for deep earth movement, so a decision made for the least expensive fish fix is not necessarily a decision made for the most appropriate fix. In 2019, Jeff Raines, a licensed geotechnical engineer, inspected the slope and decided it was deep movement. It was a deep movement situation. So without the correct testing, how do we know which geotech is right? In fact, in the second meeting, my contractor asked Mr. Stevens if the damage to my property could be attributable to a shallow slide, and he said yes. I am requesting, one, that the city do the proper testing to see if Teclo meshes the correct solution, and two, admit that the bulldozing of the slope and trees by the city has contributed to the instability of the area. Think about this. We would not even be here discussing the slope behind my house and the city would not be paying upwards of $1.5 million to fix it if the city had not caused the damage in the first place. Thank you. |
| 01:50:26.29 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Dinahinian. Any other... |
| 01:50:31.18 | Walfred Solorzano | other Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh. |
| 01:50:32.46 | Steven Woodside | public comment? |
| 01:50:33.71 | Walfred Solorzano | comment? We have Babette McDougall. |
| 01:50:36.60 | Steven Woodside | Welcome back, Bibbett. |
| 01:50:41.24 | Walfred Solorzano | It is, isn't it? |
| 01:50:45.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:50:45.44 | Steven Woodside | Is she here? |
| 01:50:46.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Oh, yes. Hold on, our Zoom is frozen. Hold on, I tease here. I don't know why I resume frozen. |
| 01:51:01.84 | Steven Woodside | Is IT here? |
| 01:51:10.95 | Unknown | Seems just a quick update. It seems though IT has shut down the zoom application and is restarting it so as to address the frozen issue. So at current it's connecting. |
| 01:51:21.84 | Steven Woodside | And how long will this take? |
| 01:51:24.94 | Unknown | should be relatively efficient. |
| 01:51:27.58 | Steven Woodside | And did it freeze because of internet or what? |
| 01:51:34.77 | Unknown | So the Zoom application is back. I don't have any understanding of what caused the freeze to occur, but it seems as though we're getting connected again. |
| 01:51:51.96 | Walfred Solorzano | And we have Babette. Oh, sorry. Hold on one moment. |
| 01:52:02.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Are you in as a panel? Oh, can I get it? |
| 01:52:19.64 | Steven Woodside | Can you let me know when we're back up online? |
| 01:52:27.84 | Steven Woodside | I'm asking staff because I know that others are. I'm asking staff. |
| 01:52:40.93 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:52:57.55 | Steven Woodside | I can't hear what you're saying, sir. |
| 01:53:01.08 | Unknown | I'll appreciate the check-in, Mayor. We'll inform you. We're trying to connect the Marin TV to the Zoom application now to ensure that everything's all connected. And, Mayor, we have received confirmation we should be good to go. |
| 01:53:14.95 | Steven Woodside | All right, and is Bebette McDougall still in the audience, ready to speak? |
| 01:53:19.85 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, she is. |
| 01:53:20.67 | Steven Woodside | Okay, welcome back, Bebitt. |
| 01:53:24.82 | Walfred Solorzano | You can unmute yourself. |
| 01:53:27.07 | Steven Woodside | We'll be right back. |
| 01:53:27.12 | Babette McDougall | Now can you hear me? |
| 01:53:28.76 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 01:53:28.89 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 01:53:28.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:53:29.03 | Steven Woodside | We hear you. |
| 01:53:29.75 | Babette McDougall | Okay, all right, thank you so much. So I'm sorry that I ended up, due to these technical glitches, missing what |
| 01:53:29.78 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 01:53:37.24 | Babette McDougall | the madam had the missus had to say about her property because it's important And this whole situation reminds me of two really important things. Number one, This situation alone speaks to the limits of growth. for Sausalito. And I keep pounding that and pounding that and pounding that, but it doesn't seem to land on our leaders. So I am imploring you to understand we are not just a postage-sized stamp community. We are indeed that, but we also have extremely fragile conditions upon which we try to live and guard as best we can. So to keep insisting that it's okay to play FTSE with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and these unrealistic housing numbers and what is immediately to follow because of all the transit worker hub building that they are intending to dump on us starting next year, which hasn't even been daylighted to any of the citizens of Sausalito yet. is just one good example of why you have to work harder to push back on behalf of saving this community from utter destruction because of over development. I'm sorry that the positive people think it's a great idea to hyper develop. It's not. We have limits to growth and nobody wants to take that seriously. And finally, with regard to spending $400,000 just on hourly consulting fees for a tech company that fails to keep a state of the art current with our own technology is shameful. And this kind of glitch is an example of that. Please reconsider how you're spending your money on technology. You're breaking us. Financially, you're breaking us, and for what good purpose? Just so you can play footsie and get some kind of free vacation or other perks. I don't get it. Thank you. |
| 01:55:32.20 | Walfred Solorzano | No further public speakers. |
| 01:55:36.90 | Steven Woodside | All right, I will close public comment and bring it back up here for discussion. I do want to... reiterate what the information that was shared by AND I THINK I'M GOING TO our senior engineer of public works, Andrew Davidson, Following the last hearing before this council regarding this item, I did engage in two meetings with Mrs. Denehanian and Public Works and the engineers. The goal of those two encounters was to ensure that her concerns were heard and carefully considered by city staff in putting together the recommendation that they brought to us. tonight. And with that, I'll take public comment. I'll take a comment from council members on this project. Vice Mayor. |
| 01:56:30.04 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. Well, are we at the point where we can move approval of the staff recommendation? Absolutely, yeah. And I would make that motion and just comment that I think Miller Pacific and our own engineer have taken a close look at this. It's a safe solution to stabilize the slope. It is the more cost-effective solution, and on that basis, as well as the fact that it appears to be equally stabilizing as the alternative I would move approval of the staff recommendation to award the contract to RWR |
| 01:56:35.34 | Steven Woodside | Absolutely. |
| 01:56:36.35 | Lorna Newland | Right. |
| 01:56:36.37 | Unknown | All right. |
| 01:57:05.47 | Angeline Loeffler | for the TecoMesh alternative. |
| 01:57:08.86 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. There's a motion pending. Is there a second? Second. |
| 01:57:13.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:13.14 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay, any comment? |
| 01:57:15.54 | Unknown | Thank you. I just, oh, sorry, do you want to start Ian? I just want to say I think it's incredibly important that we take necessary steps to shore up all of our vulnerable hillsides This is not the first place where we've had an incident in Sausalito and as I mentioned I'm happy to support the motion and to see us take this step forward But we should also as DPW does every season be shoring up our hillsides as much as possible and revisiting those that we think have significant risk. You know, this is something that the Disaster Preparedness Committee has been talking a bit about where we have places that are most vulnerable. So just really want to ensure that those steps are taken as we start to move forward with this because as we all know, this is not the last place that we're likely to have an incident. So I hope that we can get the work started on this sooner rather than later and also be prepared as we approach the winter months. |
| 01:58:10.81 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:58:12.24 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I support the motion, but I also want to reiterate that we need to implement the recommendations of the landslide task force that we recommended. How many years ago now, Vice Mayor? 2019. 2019, that I think I stood up that task force. And we can see, you know, that it's taken us so long to fix this landslide. But part of that task force and the recommendations were how to prevent Landslides and I take to heart the comments of Miss Denahinian and so I I don't know, you know I can't remember the facts or Any you know about what the destabilization of that slope or what led to the particular? Things that happen on slope. But I do know that when you destabilize a slope, you increase the chances of a slide. And if it was destabilized, then we should have taken steps to fix that. And we can take steps as a city across, and that's what the lens like task force that we stood up in the aftermath of the 2019 February the Valentine's Day slide and that's what the purpose of that task force was what could we do as a city to stabilize ahead of these catastrophic events and avoid them and so I would hope that we can get that back on our agenda at some time in the first quarter and our Public Works directors not he said that thing thank you Kevin |
| 01:58:26.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:26.19 | Steven Woodside | 20. |
| 01:59:45.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:59:45.85 | Steven Woodside | Well, and the reason he's nodding his head is that we are due for a report regarding his work on the GHAD as well as the landslide task force this year. And so we will be hearing back on that shortly. |
| 02:00:08.00 | Unknown | Well, it sounds like there were meetings with Ms. DeHanian on this very issue, and there are a bunch of questions that could come out of what was looked at. Since there is some time between now and the implementation of this, does that feel like that's been thoroughly assessed? I guess that's a question for staff. Have these comments been thoroughly assessed, and professionally the recommendation of this mesh is deemed to be sufficient to meet the engineering issue here? |
| 02:00:08.34 | Kevin McGowan | Wow. |
| 02:00:39.10 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, sir. That's correct. |
| 02:00:41.40 | Unknown | Okay, that's the professional assessment. |
| 02:00:43.79 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, that's why we have our geotechnical engineer who has met with Ms. Denahaney's geotechnical engineer as well. And so they've come to that conclusion that this system provides a good factor of safety and it's acceptable. Thank you. |
| 02:00:59.69 | Steven Woodside | I also want to point out that at staff's request, the engineer who will be the consultant for the project as it's undertaken, has also offered to stay in communication with Mrs. Dinahinian during the project and to align regarding which trees can be protected as the techo mesh is installed, as well as other, you know, continue to collaborate throughout the pendency of the project. Thank you. |
| 02:01:38.05 | Steven Woodside | All right, and I'll just say in closing that I did participate in two meetings. The various issues were very thoroughly debated and discussed and I am satisfied that the city staff and consultant have heard and considered all of the concerns raised by Mrs. Denhaney and as well as by, I'll say Ms. Denhaney, as well as by, her consultant, Mr. Ryan, and will continue to consider carefully any additional issues or challenges brought to their attention. And with that, I will call the question. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries 5-0. |
| 02:02:21.06 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:02:24.55 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. All right, and we'll move on to our last business item, which is item 5C, receive and file the shoreline adaptation plan and provide direction for next steps. And I will welcome... our director of sustainability. I'm sorry, I don't have your title in front of me. It's director of sustainability and |
| 02:02:47.42 | Katie Thao Garcia | Thank you. |
| 02:02:47.44 | Steven Woodside | Almost. Resiliency and Sustainability Manager. Resiliency and Sustainability, Katie Tho Garcia. |
| 02:02:53.36 | Katie Thao Garcia | All right. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members, and members of the public. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Katie Thao Garcia, the city's resiliency and sustainability manager. I'm here to introduce item 5C tonight, the shoreline adaptation plan. Before introducing the consultants, I'll just give a brief history on this project. The city of Sausalito has a long history of sea level rise awareness, formally starting with the sea level rise task force formed by then Mayor Hoffman in 2021. and a following $1 million grant shepherded in by then mayor Kelman in 2022. In early 2023, the city hired their first resiliency and sustainability manager and was brought on to lead sea level rise efforts among other council priorities. I should also note that the general plan update of 2021 contains very extensive sea level rise guidance. And in late 2023, the city council approved separate contracts with WRT and Rainwater Consulting, or sorry, Rainwater Associates for sea level rise, technical and design and community engagement. Since then, nearly two years later, the team has been working tirelessly to understand Sausalito's unique vulnerability to sea level rise, engaging our community members, and creating adaptation strategies that are recommended based on science and relevant to our community. So now I will turn it over to WRT to lead us through the technical portion of the presentation. And I will wrap it up towards the end of their presentation. Thank you. |
| 02:04:38.02 | David Lay | Thank you. |
| 02:04:38.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:38.05 | David Lay | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:04:41.66 | John Gibbs | Good evening, council. Pleasure to be here. John Gibbs, principal at WRT and joined by my colleague, Christina Bejarano, also from WRT. And Jack Hogan from Arup is in the audience and is able to help answer some questions. It has been truly a pleasure getting to know your community and your very complex shoreline during this process. I think that the plan puts forward both some things both pragmatically but also creatively about the future here. This plan presents real information about the threats of sea level rise and the threats to this community. And over the course of the project, we've had, I think, some difficult conversations. This isn't easy stuff. This is a little doom and gloom sometimes even when you read the threats to communities around the world, throughout California, throughout our bay, and certainly to the city of Sausalito. But I think we've been impressed with the responsiveness of your community to dig in, to roll up their sleeves, to think creatively with us, and to really embrace this challenge. We've heard from your arts community. We've heard from your working waterfront, both marinas as well as very industrial type users. And I think everybody agrees about keeping it salty here in Sausalito. The team was ourselves with Arup, ESA, and also One Architecture. Next slide. is a little bit about kind of what we're covering tonight. We're really proud of this work. We're proud ofING TO PRESENT JUST A LITTLE BIT OF THOSE HIGHLIGHTS. WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE COMMUNITY-INFORMED PLANNING PROCESS, A LOT OF ENGAGEMENT, A LOT OF WORK THAT WENT INTO THAT. SO WE'RE GOING TO COVER THAT. AND THEN WE'RE GOING TO TOUCH ON SOME OF THE NEAR-TERM AND LONG-TERM ALTERNATIVES AND OPTIONS. where we've ended with this plan is there's more certainty in the near term. That's both in sea level rise planning, but also in our collective understanding of how to deal with this challenge. So this document puts more emphasis on the near term. In the long term, when we're talking about six feet of sea level rise combinations of storms and such, there's a lot less certainty, both the data but also around how are we going to address that how would we come up with the cost the the dollars in order to respond to that so we've provided options and I'm going to touch on a little bit more about that process I also want to recognize it's 170 pages we know folks that have read every word in this document, both within this community as other folks out across the bay. Tonight, I'm not going to go into 170 pages. We're going to keep this pretty concise and at a little higher level, and we can get into a lot more questions as we move through the rest of the evening. So appreciate your time. I'm going to introduce Christina Bejarano and just to speak about the vulnerability assessment |
| 02:08:11.94 | Christina Bejarano | Great, thank you very much. And next slide, please. One more. So a major part of the study included a vulnerability assessment, as John mentioned, and I just wanted to share some of the images that illustrate why we were While we're talking about this, we're already seeing a lot of especially combined with high tides and king tides around the shoreline. And these king tides give us a sort of window into what we might expect in the future as it will continue to rise. So images here, ranging different portions of the shoreline. In the next slide, you'll see. If you go to the next slide, please. other examples ranging from again the sort of southern areas along the promenade and all the way through gate 5 road. Next slide. So the vulnerability assessment study, this portion of the study was detailed and really based on the statewide and regional guidance that all of the communities around the Bay will be evaluating. So this table on the slide showing the range of scenarios from 0.8 to 3 to 6.6 feet are, again, what is recommended from the state, from the Ocean Protection Council, and also BCDC through their regional shoreline adaptation planning guidance. So when we, on the next slide, when we start to apply that to Sausalito for the vulnerability assessment, we... Summarize that around these three scenarios where we're looking at point eight feet of sea level rise by mid-century 2050 In scenario two we we are looking at point eight feet of sea level rise in combination with a storm surge So that's closer to about four point three feet and in the third scenario it's a combination of Potential futures, but ultimately looking at about 6.6 feet of water. So that could be either the three feet projection for end of century for sealer rise or 6.6. So in the next slide, you can see how those values start to relate to the shoreline. So this example cross-section is taken, again, along the Bridgeway Promenade, and you can see how those three scenarios relate to some of the existing heights along the shoreline. So understanding that some of the impacts and what we're evaluating, we're really focusing the near-term solutions on the first and second scenarios and have the third scenario as a reference for long-term planning. those on the next slide you can see how those elevations are mapped across in plan so there's a lot of areas along the shoreline that that are impacted we through this assessment went into detail and understood both the land areas but also the different citywide infrastructure and assets that are impacted through each of the zones. So on the next slide. Just some high level takeaways, part of what we were documenting was really understanding what the risks were to evacuation routes, to habitat how that might change over time. city storm water infrastructure, and getting an understanding of the areas, the land areas that are at risk of changes and inundation over time. So a lot of that is in the city's public realm or land area that's owned by the city. and a lot of it also includes private property. So several buildings, commercial buildings, industrial buildings. On the next slide, This is obviously difficult to read in the presentation, but very detailed in the plan and the study. This is the summary where you can see for each of those three scenarios that we've set up how that relates to impacts for all the different city assets. Part of the exercise is also to sort of estimate what the cost of no action might be. So estimate based on all of these pieces of infrastructure that may be at risk over time, what those values are why the sort of opportunity to plan for adaptation strategies is important and have a unit for comparison of what might be at risk if no action is taken. So with that, I will pass it on to John. Back to John. |
| 02:13:34.07 | John Gibbs | And kudos to Arip for that good vulnerability work as part of our team. So next slide moves us from some of the solid guidance and vulnerability and into this community-informed planning process. A lot of really good work, a lot of good listening that went on to help shape this plan. People were really jazzed to be part of this process. Next, and that's evident by letters we still get up to this council meeting. That's a really good thing. People are paying attention. People are engaged. So in all this challenge of thinking ahead and the potential for pretty big change, we ask people, well, what do you love? What is it about Sausalito that really needs to be at the heart of this plan moving forward? And so we heard a lot about the love of the water. It's what Sausalitans look at, what they recreate in and along and out on. So that access is really important. The working waterfront is extremely important, both marinas and the builders and the ship repairs. And it was well stated that those industrial users actually keep the boats afloat, whether it's your floating homes or it's the other marinas. Those local businesses are extremely important. Floating homes are important and that sort of quality of life. So we heard that really loud and clear and tried to really incorporate that into both near-term but also long-term ideas. Next slide goes to a project timeline. This project was over a year in duration. There were three primary phases. There were major community workshops associated with each of those phases. And we had waterfront tours. There were some additional focus group meetings, some that W.R.T. attended and some that were led by by staff four times at city council, and including now tonight. |
| 02:15:34.17 | John Gibbs | Next slide. Goes to just a list of that engagement. Don't need to go into a ton of detail. I didn't mention the online survey before, and that was another really important meeting. or sorry, an important source of input for our plan. The next slide goes to just quick summaries and photos, kind of getting a flavor from so many people packed in the room with well over 25 different boards, just describing what is sea level rise, what is our vulnerability, and then engaging folks in conversation around a big table, around a big map, and recording really important information the next slide Talks a little bit about you know, what did what did we hear and there's quotes both from Things that were spoken to us, but also that were written on to these various notes Things related to the working waterfront related to marsh and eelgrass, really important here in town. Folks seeking nature-based solutions, expanding floating homes, people recognizing that that's integral part of Sausalito, the floating homes, and how could that actually be expanded? Thinking ahead to implementation, people really recognize these are some pretty serious costs ahead how can our small city ever try to fund major seawalls of in the millions of dollars There's limited funding available. So lots of comments that we were recorded in workshop two of |
| 02:16:30.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:07.13 | John Gibbs | we put together some some high level solutions. Next slide. In workshop two, we came back with, here's ideas. We've taken what we've heard. We've learned a lot from the first meeting. We came back with ideas. These were hand-drawn ideas that we both presented, and then folks engaged in tables and small groups talking about each of these, and they began to seek an understanding of trade-offs associated with each of these alternatives. Trade-offs related to economics, related to public access to the water, related to arts and culture as some of those topics. They were pretty fantastic community conversations around these ideas. |
| 02:17:56.66 | John Gibbs | Next slide. From that second workshop, we were then able to develop, and this is a diagram that speaks to understanding the community input, we were able to then develop project goals And then from those goals, begin to think about evaluation criteria for various future solutions in the near term and options for the long term. So a pretty deliberate process building on that public input, both from survey as well as from certainly both major workshops. So next slide. So then in, I think it was September, we presented the first public draft of the document, and that was another round of engagement. We're seeking more input. And we received 109 comments. There were three letters that were received. And we read everything, and we took that all to heart, and we made a lot of changes to the document. We made changes to all sections of the document, from the executive summary down to the written descriptions associated with some of the future recommendations and options. There was an important point where we really clarified some of the concepts. I think there was a We weren't clear in our document that some of the sketches that we had used in that second workshop were being understood as the future, the recommendation that the plan was making. And that was unfortunate, so we really tried to clarify in the document to make that more clear. There is a recommendations chapter, and it does describe things, but it doesn't use those same hand-drawn graphics that were used at that second public meeting. And I think that's pretty important. We definitely heard a lot about the marineship and about the working waterfront, and we definitely redoubled our efforts to try to address that, both by recognizing the marineship is really the most complex area of town, and that's a district that's going to just take a lot more work. And the plan recognizes the need for property owners and interested parties within the marineship in particular to really start working together. It's going to take more work. This is a plan that sets a vision, that understands the vulnerability, but it's not a policy plan. And so that's an area in particular that seems very clear is going to need a lot of additional work. There's a lot of very self-driven property owners in that area that are dealing with some pretty tough environments on the water between regulations and costs, et cetera. And they have a really good understanding of that. So we tried to make a number of edits that corrected some accuracy, but also really kind of clarified some intent and made more clear the agency of individual property owners to provide shoreline protections, to raise their properties as they may need. So this plan does not preclude that, and I think that that's pretty important. Moving forward into kind of this third section. So, you know, what are some of the recommendations that are in this plan? Again, there's a chapter at the end of the document that's related to these kinds of recommendations. And the next slide, I think, just goes to, you know, it starts with, look, there's a toolkit that's kind of well-known out there. there's lots of different ways that folks can adapt both their property as well as through collective actions to get together as Galilee Harbor does, to get together collectively, to raise pile caps, to repair docks, to restore wetlands, and also to imagine how they're going to need to move buildings in the future. Galilee Harbor was a really great test case within your community already for a group that's working together and taking some good actions. Next slide. then just walks through just kind of the process. So there are these adaptation concepts that we explored. We developed community feedback, and then we really focused in on these near-term adaptation strategies. So what are some potential projects, but also importantly, additional technical studies. This contract that we're serving and fulfilling right now is not technically rigorous in terms of a lot of site-specific solutions. You're going to still need to do that, and this plan identifies what are some of those additional studies that are going to be needed. Those are really some of the important things in the near term. Longer term, there's multiple options. We can't possibly imagine one solution in the 30 to 70-year timeline for six feet of sea level rise. We've put out options. We've put out ideas to get people thinking about it. And ultimately, over time, people can find something in there that may be useful as they're envisioning both their own property, but I think importantly, how neighbors and districts are working together to solve for the challenges of sea level rise. So the plan goes through in the next slide. The plan goes through some different reaches, four reaches, because downtown is different than Newtown, and the floating homes are different than Marinship. So we've created some higher level reaches, but also sub reaches, because Liberty and the beach is different than perhaps Clipper Yacht Harbor. or VARDA landing. So the next slide then just talks through, and this is where I'm being a little bit more concise and focusing more on some of the near-term recommendations tonight. So within Bridgeway Promenade in the downtown area, we have recommendations to think about a low wall, to think about changes to the sidewalk, to think about temporary barriers. Also to recognize that in the long term, There's a recommendation that bridgeway actually could be raised up and a seawall might need to be built. Those are big, expensive projects. But now is the time for property owners to start to think about that. How might buildings be raised along bridgeway? Now is the time for property owners to start to think about that. Also to think about some nature-based wave attenuation strategies. This is largely Swedes Beach and south because there are some homes and some properties that are also at threat of sea level rise in that area. There may be some opportunities for some nature-based strategies to help minimize some of the impacts of sea level rise. So again, this is a highlight of some of the near-term recommendations. Next slide talks about the new town area. And in the long-term options, of course, there's some ideas about raising bridgeway. There's ideas about floating homes, about raising properties through fill and shoreline protections, seawalls, et cetera. But in the near term, we've got a lot more work to do to think about, well, how might Bridgeway be raised in that area? And how might those adjacent buildings also adapt in order to be prepared for the long term? Really important stuff. Drainage systems that are going to need to be rethought in our coastal areas as if we start to raise, we're going to be collecting water behind them. Where does that water go? What are our pump systems? Really practical and pragmatic stuff that we really need to be starting to think in greater detail about. We might want to think about some design standards for buildings as well. How do we allow buildings to adapt? What restrictions? Maybe there's a height limit because that building actually needs to be a little bit higher to accommodate for a different finished floor elevation in the future. Again, some pretty practical stuff that we need to be thinking about. also habitat opportunities. Next slide is in the Marin ship. There's some immediate concerns, and I think we heard that loud and clear. Folks have been clamoring for some attention for a lot of years. There's been some studies, conversation earlier tonight about the flap gate. I'm really interested to hear what changed during last winter. I was out there wading around in the deep water. We were all checking that out. And I think it's, yeah, it is back this year, and we're aware of a flap gate. We've documented that. Fortunately, as Katie's going to describe, there's new opportunities to dig into that in a very technical way here in the near term. We also really recommend in the Marinship for folks out there to really start to work together, to understand some of the differences. There's very differing opinions of how to proceed within the marineship. Our study recognizes that, and we think that's a group that really needs to be thinking about how they're going to be adapting individually and how might they be able to pool resources so they are affording some broader protection. And over in the next slide is over in the floating homes area. This is a pretty tough area. There is not city property out on those peninsulas. We've heard loud and clear the importance of parking, the importance of parks for kids' birthday parties. Elderly and senior and more mobility impaired folks, residents that live here need that sort of access this is privately owned so what we can really recommend is that those properties really start to study how can they start to elevate that land what is that what would that look like how do we best do that in order to preserve some of the goals that that our plan is really importantly documents there's also definitely work related to pile caps and docks and things that can be elevated. There's habitat enhancements as well. And then we wanted to also note there's some really important coordination that needs to start immediately within this part of town in particular. It's related to the county because this is county ownership, not city, but the city I think has a role as a facilitator and certainly has interests associated with Bridgeway and Caltrans. How do we study the protection of transportation assets, 101, the freeway interchange, et cetera, but also the Bay Trail, how do we study the protection of that with the protection of this private property areas. There may be opportunities to elevate the Bay Trail, for example, or some of these parking areas in order to protect the freeway. And this is an opportunity. Caltrans is embarking on a study, and that would obviously be an important conversation. So, again, in our near term, we're really calling some attention to that. We're also made very aware of some scour issues out there, and the plan identifies that, talks about that. That was really important to floating home residents. It's also worth saying that behind the freeway is also Marin City, another really important stakeholder in this conversation, and the study also identifies that. So I think the next slide just takes us over to principles of adaptation. And so while we make some pretty impassioned near-term recommendations, we've also left in this plan some important principles. These are used to guide decision-making for the future development of shoreline projects. So there is some important guidance. We think that this is really based on, the public input the project goals the evaluation criteria it's really a continuation of that process and it really reflects community priorities such as working waterfronts such as active public waterfront as well as some of the nature-based nature-based solutions and strategies so just wanted to all end there that those principles i I think, are an important framework for the future. As we start to the next slide, think about next steps, and Katie's going to come back up and kind of round that out. Thank you. |
| 02:30:22.77 | Katie Thao Garcia | Thank you, John. Thank you, Christina, for the quick overview of a 170 page document. A lot of the times when I'm talking about this with community members, I get questions with, okay, well, great, this is great, well, what's next? So I'm gonna go over that, if we can go to the next slide. We anticipate in the near term, the shoreline adaptation plan will inform many planning studies that are currently underway or starting soon. In addition, we've been working with Galilee Harbor to include sea level rise projections in their wave attenuator feasibility study. So I'm going to go into those three different projects next very quickly. So the gate, one example of the sea level rise adaptations that are being taken and furthered by city projects is the Gate 5 area drainage management study, which only very recently kicked off, but will collect information on storm drains, sea level rise, subsidence mapping, and contain a feasibility study for conceptual designs for drainage while also conducting direct engagement with the Gate 5 Road, Harbor Drive, community members, residents, owners, tenants, everybody in there. That is a full separate scope, which City Council has already approved, so I encourage you to look back at that if you are interested in that. Next slide, please. Another example of this is the parking lot one reconstruction study of which council recently approved an expanded scope to cover some climate resiliency aspects. Among maintaining a current number of parking spaces and including stormwater filtration, the project also seeks to increase the quality of place for climate resiliency and understand long-term impacts to sea level rise and create some of the visions for the future for this area. Next slide, please. And lastly, the facility vulnerability assessment. We'll seek to understand the vulnerability of city facilities, which we're going so far to expand to include things like rip-raps, seawalls, over-the-water buildings, and other structures of significance that the city owns to sea level rise to help us prepare for the future. It's basically the supplementary approach to the facility assessment, which was presented to council in early 2025, I'm going to say. Thank you. So that brings me to the next and last slide, which is the recommended motion. Tonight is to receive and file the shoreline adaptation plan and provide direction to next steps. Future direction to staff will be needed to initiate the SB 272 compliance process. That's the, the plan that Christina was talking about very briefly. and to receive information on other city projects incorporating Seal-Label Rise that I previously mentioned. And finally, to direct staff to work on individual Seal-Label Rise adaptation projects, like the ones that were presented tonight in much more detail. Finally, the shoreline adaptation plan presents a collective suite of options, or as then-Mayor Kelman put, the opportunity for Sausalito-specific options for silverized adaptation that are relevant to Sausalito in a community-informed way. The adaptation strategy recommendations, which were presented here tonight, present opportunities for current shoreline extent, and represent both near-term and long-term strategies if there is consensus from relevant parties. Before I finish the presentation, I'd like to underscore that receiving and filing the shoreline adaptation plan tonight does not mean the city council is adopting a set of policy guidelines or preventing individual landowners from making adaptation decisions on their own property. And finally, I would like to say thank you to the many community members who contributed to this nearly two-year process. Thank you for showing up to the community meetings, to the council meetings, providing input, providing comments, reading a nearly 170-page document. Your time and consideration here is invaluable to the process. So thank you so much. We'll take questions now. |
| 02:34:46.50 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Katie. I'm going to lead off with a couple. First of all, will you reiterate, what was the source of funding for this project that you have undertaken over the last two years? |
| 02:34:57.95 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yeah, that's a great question. You know, sometimes we call it grant funding. Technically, it's not grant funding. delegation received under SB 179 so if you go into the legislation under SB 179 you will see delegation city of Sausalito seal rise planning 1 million dollars |
| 02:35:17.61 | Steven Woodside | And so the efforts that you and others have undertaken were not funded by the general plan, but by SB 79 funding. |
| 02:35:26.35 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, SB 179. |
| 02:35:28.61 | Steven Woodside | SB 179. Yeah, thank you. |
| 02:35:36.56 | Steven Woodside | Okay, some of the questions I have are for the... for you and for the consultants. I'm curious about what outreach you and they have done to the county and to BCDC, who have their Bay Conservation and Development Commission who have their own sea level rise committees and workshops to collaborate on potential shared solutions. |
| 02:36:09.62 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, absolutely. That's a great question. You know, towards the beginning of this process in 2023, We reached out to the county, you know, knowing that we had the million-dollar delegation under SB 179 and reached out to the county saying, you know, the floating home section is not technically a portion of Sausalito. We don't have jurisdiction there, but, you know, watersheds don't dictate where people have jurisdiction and where they don't. And so through a partnership with the county, through a letter of support that we received, we included the floating home section in our plan. In addition, you know, it predates me, but the Bay Wave, that's an acronym for I'm not exactly going to attempt, but... something about marine vulnerability. Sausalito members predating me have been sitting on the Bay Waves Technical Advisory Committee. I now go to all of the meetings and participate, present our information where we are in the process to everybody who shows up. That's mostly staff and Board of Supervisor officials who attend those meetings. And finally, BCDC, through the passing of PASSING OF SB 272, HAS BEEN ENGAGING DIRECTLY WITH A LOT OF JURISDICTIONS. I REVIEWED THEIR REGIONAL SHORELINE ADAPTATION PLAN GUIDANCE, DRAFT GUIDANCE, MANY TIMES, PROVIDED INPUT ON THAT. SO DID OUR CONSULTANTS WRT AND THE MANY OTHER CONSULTANTS ON THE TEAM. to provide relevant information to help that guidance document and create A final guidance that would be implementable from the jurisdictions perspective And so we haven't formalized the initiation process of consulting with BCDC At any point in time we've just had informal conversations thus far |
| 02:38:04.90 | Steven Woodside | I don't know if you remember, but I think I've shared with you the story in the past about our waterfront management plan and our interaction with the Richardson's Bay Regional Agency. And their president used to say that Sausalito was the hare and they were the tortoise. And so it's my impression, you tell me if you agree, that that is how the county is perceiving us on this path as well, because we were fortunate to receive the SB 179 funding. And so we're a bit ahead of the curve in terms of some of the analysis and the analysis of the and the analysis of the study that we've undertaken, but they are very much engaged in partnering with us. Would you agree? |
| 02:38:54.24 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, absolutely. So Sausalito's plan, you know, us getting the grant or funding in 2023 predates the BCDC developing their guidance, which was only published in late 2024. So that's one of the reasons why we have had why we've provided a lot of critical insight to BCDC's guidance process, because we are a little, you know, we are ahead for the Bay Area. It's, you know, we're more in line with some of the planning work that's going on in San Mateo County or San Francisco, you know, certainly ahead of the majority of Marin jurisdictions. Mill Valley and Tiburon have only recently been given funding from the Ocean Protection Council to start on this process. And they're anticipating roughly a year and a half to two years on their processes. |
| 02:39:46.26 | Steven Woodside | I'm glad you mentioned San Mateo County because... you know, some of the examples used by the consultant during some of the workshops involved you know, mentioned Redwood City, for example, I want to be clear that solutions that work elsewhere are not necessarily feasible for Sausalito. Would you agree? And so the seawall in Redwood City If something similar were adopted here, it would absolutely destroy our property values. It would absolutely destroy our tourist revenue, which really is dependent on tourists being able to enjoy and appreciate our scenic vistas. So, um, would you agree that what necessarily works for a more urban community is not necessarily the solution for Sausalito? |
| 02:40:43.18 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, yeah, absolutely. That's one of the reasons, you know, early on in I think the first community workshop we were presenting, you know, a whole bunch of traditional options that are done throughout the world, throughout you know, the Bay Area, and we were seeking community feedback on those recommendations on, you know, what about that would work or what about that would not work. And that was certainly a lot of the feedback that we had of, you know, how would I get my kayak or boat in the water if there was a large seawall, or how would I be able to Enjoy my coffee from Franco... looking at the water, and that's part of the reason why the plan is having recommendations for the near term, things like lower seawalls that would allow us to still have that view, to still have the salty culture that Sausalito depends on. |
| 02:41:38.53 | Steven Woodside | And so I'm gonna turn to some specific examples. In the report from the consultant, it listed options for the Spinnaker. that included, elevate the Spinnaker building, abandon or rebuild new. raise access and parking to building as needed. Consider peer structure for service and conversion of existing land area to title habitat. So I was shocked and dismayed to read a consultant who has been engaging with our community recommending possibly converting the Spinnaker property to tidal habitat. as well as considering abandoning or rebuilding the Spinnaker anew. You know, the Spinnaker is a Sausalito institution that has been here for 40 years. They're actually approaching us to expand and to provide additional services to our residents. And so I want to know whether the consultant actually spoke with the Spinnaker ownership before putting forth these solutions, these potential solutions. |
| 02:42:52.48 | Katie Thao Garcia | I don't believe we had a formal one-on-one conversation with the Spinnaker. Traditionally, in these sea level rise adaptation plans, you're proposing a range of options. You're not saying one option is the best option. You're saying this is the no action alternative and this is the action alternative. And if you want action, then it has to be raised. the area around that, which is very prone to flooding, even just in high tide, would have to be raised. So it's trying to address the suite of different options there. |
| 02:43:27.24 | Steven Woodside | So would you agree that perhaps it would be productive before proposing the obliteration of a Sausalito institution that perhaps there consultant confer with the ownership to see What? What future have they considered? What might be feasible from their perspective as they consider their long-term business plan. |
| 02:43:51.31 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, I think that would be an appropriate next step. But again, you know, these plans traditionally say this is the range of options. And if we want to hone in on one option, further engagement is needed. I think |
| 02:44:04.25 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:44:04.57 | Katie Thao Garcia | I'm not sure. |
| 02:44:04.97 | Steven Woodside | you know, Sausalito has the benefit of having a hugely engaged community, both in terms of businesses and residents. And so what may work elsewhere is not necessarily a feasible approach for Sausalito. And so, and I think the city manager would attest to that from his five years of experience. And so would it be possible moving forward for you and our consultant to engage more directly with our actual stakeholders? You know, another complaint that I received was various marine owners who never were approached or engaged with individually. by the consultant and yet the proposals in this plan Have a great day. you know, serious, financial and long-term consequences for our marina operators. |
| 02:44:59.75 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yeah, I don't know exactly that, you know, what's being proposed, at least in the adaptation strategy recommendations, would necessarily have long-term impacts, you know, they do present of Harden the Edge, create a bulkhead here, create you know, raise over here, which could be accommodated in my opinion. If you're looking at the conceptual idea exploration design that was often misconstrued towards the beginning of the process, then that might be the conclusion that you could reach. I will say that the consultant's contract tonight has reached 100%, so any further engagement would have to be through a separate contract to continue this plan. |
| 02:45:52.38 | Steven Woodside | That's interesting information. Okay, that concludes my initial questions. Yes, Council Member Sobieski. |
| 02:45:58.80 | Unknown | Hi, Katie. Hey, yeah, so that's news to me. I thought there was still money left on this legislative allocation. |
| 02:46:07.92 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, there is. But the consultant contract, which was approved in December 2023, was for $450,000. We later augmented that for an additional $50,000 to include the Bridgeway Princess to Richardson. Added in-depth study requiring seal rise analysis. So their total contract is around $500,000. We've also spent money on the community engagement consultant. Their contract was approved for city council at $50,000. So we do have money left in the SB 179 delegation. That is correct. But the money on the contracts... has reached its end. |
| 02:46:47.16 | Unknown | Thanks for clarifying that. So just in rough terms, there's $450,000 or $400 to $450,000. |
| 02:46:54.55 | Katie Thao Garcia | Correct. |
| 02:46:54.84 | Unknown | In the allocation yet to be committed. |
| 02:46:57.18 | Katie Thao Garcia | 400 to 450 would be an accurate assumption. |
| 02:47:00.07 | Unknown | Thank you so much. So in reading the report, forgive me if I missed a drawing or a graph somewhere, was the, I see some of the alternatives that call for the resilient edge to be at Bridgeway, for instance, and in other places, but was there a design I think it's a good thing. consideration for having a solution that would preserve 100% of the current land in Sausalito? |
| 02:47:25.94 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yeah, what you're talking about in the resilient edge is the resilient edge idea exploration chapter, which was presented in workshop one and two as more of a talking point of saying, if we were to prioritize Bridgeway being dry 100% of the time, this is what the seaward side of Bridgeway would look like. If we were going to say that resilient edge is somewhere else, you know, that is what the shoreline would look like. Um, Following those concept explorations, we went to the implementation chapter And that was the designs that were presented here tonight, which do present the current shoreline of YOU KNOW, potential consideration of bulkhead here, living shoreline considerations over here, hard in the edge, those kinds of things, the drawings that John was walking us through. |
| 02:48:24.12 | Unknown | I'm sorry I didn't. I don't think I fully understand that. Thank you. I'm happy to give you a break and ask some of your colleagues who have been working on this project too, so don't feel like you're on the spot to speak for their work. If they can speak to it directly. My question is, I thought I could flip to a section that would show me, okay, if Sausalito wants to preserve the current dry land, this is a solution that will do that. Even if we don't like it, even if as the mayor said, we don't wanna have a seawall, a seawall would have been one of the solutions and we would see that as an implementation or perhaps some whiz bang natural solution with dykes and pumps would have been presented, but that the goal would have been to keep the current economically used land area viable for a hundred years even, if not at least 20 or 50. So was that one of the concepts? |
| 02:49:16.37 | John Gibbs | Yeah, generally in the long term, option two is a more substantial shoreline barrier type treatment. And in the traditional sense, it's a seawall, it's a levee. In the resilient edge idea, it's a walkway. There's raised land behind it. It's a little bit more elegant than perhaps the Foster City example that others lament lament around the Bay which got the job done but is is is without a soul I would say and I think this plan recognizes solutions here need a need a soul but generally option two is a shoreline protection that's true at Bridgeway that's true in the Newtown area that's true that's true in the Newtown area, that's true in the Marinship as well. And while the line isn't exact in terms of all the ins and outs around every piece of property, it's a more general line because we just really can't possibly know exactly how to best do that. Also, wiggling the line adds a whole lot of linear foot cost and expense that we weren't sure that was quite realistic either, adding a lot more expense to major sorts of shoreline protection treatments. But generally, option two. |
| 02:50:38.80 | Unknown | Option two preserves all the current dry land in Sausalito. |
| 02:50:41.49 | John Gibbs | is much more inclusive. All might be a strong word if somebody was to read it with a fine tooth comb. So I will. |
| 02:50:45.22 | Unknown | if somebody was to read it with a fine-tune. I don't want to nitpick, but I did see a lot of, I mean, the only thing I have are the drawings that I perused in the report. And it does look as if they're, I'm not talking about the most extreme inundation drawings, which look like a lot of land is surrendered to the sea. I'm talking about even... |
| 02:50:59.84 | John Gibbs | Right. Thank you. |
| 02:51:09.21 | Unknown | little ponds here drainage which all have their own you know EPA water rules that happen around them a lot of those are on private property so I guess I'm just you know 26% of Holland which is a super environmentally friendly country lots of wind turbines ecologically forward-leaning 26% is under sea level so I guess the simple question is just again is Was there an engineering solution, whether natural or man-made, Um, contemplated and a cost ascertained for kind of keeping all the dry land in Sausalito dry. |
| 02:51:47.42 | John Gibbs | So, yes, part of the plan, and we might want to get into this more this evening, there is a projection of a cost associated with a shoreline levy protection system that goes extensively through the marineship that roughly follows the shoreline. That really gets complicated because it starts going right through the shoreline some of the working shipyard and repair areas. That's really complicated. They had a lot of concern. They were like, we don't want a big wall coming through here. How you wrap that through Clipper Cove would be another example. That starts to impact parking. So we've taken kind of a generalized line that does show that. I think this is specifically option two as a long-term potential. And the text is really clear to describe So here's the text, for simplicity, a single feature is shown, however, further planning and leadership by property owners will determine the combination of protective approaches, levees, bulkheads, beaches, et cetera, that are appropriate. Further planning will also refine the alignment. That's from option two, and that's pretty important. Option one talks about water dependent users will adapt individually through raising the land or perhaps elevating on piers or even floating, all things are potentially on the table. It's gonna take some creativity to maintain our character but also to solve for this. So option one tends to lean into more individual actions. Clipper Marina wants to continue to elevate their parking, wants to continue to build seawalls and the good work that they've done That's allowed and we endeavored to describe that. And that was a correction. We weren't as clear on that on the public review draft and I do feel like we heard that criticism and we did our best to adapt it. So I'm glad to be able to answer your pointed question. |
| 02:53:51.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. Well, I won't, I just had maybe just a similar question to the mayor that she asked, just in terms of process. you know, commend you for having the public meetings that you had. I think you had four there that you outlined at the workshops, but I did just wonder about the one-on-one engagement with people that are really at the front lines of this. So you have Jeff Sharash from Spinnaker saying that Neither I nor my fellow property owners were consulted regarding this. You have Blue Water Yacht Harbor say the city has not reached out directly for meaningful dialogue or consultation. You have Casey from from Clipper Marine and |
| 02:54:42.53 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:54:42.71 | Unknown | just talk about how the proposals would kill the working waterfront. you know, these people are, it's a smallish town, and these people have been living here generationally with these issues. And I'm wondering in terms of actually providing concrete proposals and actually costing those out and figuring out, as you pointed out, how to pay for them, whether it's all private money or some public private partnership or some sort of infrastructure tax zone. or some sort of. economic liberalization to raise more money to pour back into infrastructure repair, all those ideas seem to be in the minds of the of some of these folks, but they it looks like the the outreach was more through these public meetings rather than, let's say, weekly or biweekly calls with a committee of a dozen property owners along the waterfront. And so help me out with understanding that process. |
| 02:55:29.93 | Kevin McGowan | Right. |
| 02:55:30.27 | John Gibbs | Thank you. |
| 02:55:33.91 | John Gibbs | Sure. I can speak to the scope of work, had these three major meetings, it had a waterfront tour, which did include a lot of waterfront property owners, had focus group meetings. The waterfront tour and the focus group meetings were early in the project, and those didn't happen again per the scope of work. I think there were some briefs with staff and some of those specific property owners. But our main engagement was through the public meetings, letters, et cetera. I would say moving forward, that certainly we could be directed to go back out and do some more of that. I would also say, though, this plan sets a pretty wide horizon of futures and tries to give those processes space. Those would also all be really logical next steps for property owners to work together, to understand financing strategies. That's beyond the scope of the work, maybe beyond what's reasonable for a pretty high-level adaptation plan as well. And I would sort of look to your wisdom in terms of when's the right time to take that next step. |
| 02:56:46.83 | Unknown | That's a very helpful answer. So the scope of work is the reason why this process was the way it was. You're working according to the scope of work and you know, weren't free to, freelance outside of it, but you're also suggesting that now if we have additional monies and there is the will and decision to do so, you or some other consultant or the staff could engage directly, with property owners in a more, in a different scope. That could be, it's up to us. It could be collaborative in the way I described, bi-weekly meetings, iterative information sharing backwards and forwards with a clear goal. |
| 02:57:19.94 | John Gibbs | I think that's true. I guess the caution I raise is that I think the engineering and the broad community feedback behind this project I think is really valid, and there is a point at which a plan needs to be understood as that's the plan, and here's where we're going to go deeper within a specific area. If something specific went ahead with very local property owners, it might take the plan in a direction that was actually different than what the broader community public feedback might have been. So I just want to put that out there and we could be a resource. Katie is obviously a strong resource in how to best do that. |
| 02:58:07.07 | Unknown | Thank you. And so it sounds like you're taking a direction, in part, from how this evolved from some of these community meetings you had. with different groups that you heard from. Yeah. |
| 02:58:16.22 | John Gibbs | Correct. And at the high level plan. Thank you, Mayor. |
| 02:58:20.37 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I actually had one more question I forgot to ask earlier, so I'm just going to ask another question, and this has to do with the arcs. So there was a recommendation that the arcs and adjacent shoreline live with water through adaptive or floating strategies. The challenge with that approach is that the ARCs, the businesses, you know, many of the stakeholders affected by these recommendations pay taxes and depend on us to manage our resources in a way that does not adversely impact them. And so. I was very curious about the strategy to say, oh, Let them deal with it themselves rather than the city taking responsibility with its regional and community partners, for identifying. a solution that we can fund over the long term. I was curious about why you would include a strategy that essentially puts the onus on. individual property owners who absolutely lack the wherewithal and whose property values will be devastated by some of the strategies that were suggested as potential paths forward. |
| 02:59:39.97 | John Gibbs | It's a great question. It goes, I think, right to the heart of long-term adaptation thinking. And at this day and age, we could say, We're going to protect everything as is, and we're going to just put the price of that right into the plan, and that's going to be great. I would say, based on our understanding of the funding picture, our understanding of the cost ratios that certainly FEMA uses, understanding critical infrastructure at a federal level, understanding the economic generation of a particular area behind a protective wall, and how that is relative to the cost of the protection for FEMA to be able to fund. It's pretty tough for a lot of jurisdictions. So this plan lays out options. And one of the options is that in the character of Sausalito, those individual buildings over time are going to need to find a way. They're going to elevate. They're going to raise on piers. They're going to adapt, just as the joinery has gone through successive uses over time, that all those buildings, all those properties, they're all going to find a way. There's another option that says we're going to build the big levee wall right in the water, which is the paper street that Sausalito owns in the water, and that's going to be a location for a levee, for a wall. community members more broadly had a hard time imagining how to get up and over you know some of that barrier, but also appreciated that it could serve for public access. So I just highlight that as the plan includes all scenarios, both of those scenarios, |
| 03:01:35.09 | Steven Woodside | Hang on one second, I think we lost our Zoom again. |
| 03:01:37.40 | John Gibbs | Uh-oh. |
| 03:01:41.74 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, we're gonna take five minutes and then we'll resume. |
| 03:01:43.73 | Unknown | No. resume questions yeah I understand |
| 03:01:45.91 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, I understand. Thank you. |
| 03:01:47.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:02:37.96 | David Lay | . |
| 03:02:38.03 | John Gibbs | Wow. . |
| 03:02:45.05 | Mauro Dosolini | Yeah. |
| 03:02:47.08 | Nathan Scripps | Thank you. |
| 03:02:47.14 | Mauro Dosolini | Yeah, we're going through. So you're saying, what do you think? |
| 03:02:51.97 | Nathan Scripps | is the issue of the |
| 03:02:52.97 | Mauro Dosolini | I think it's better. |
| 03:02:54.26 | Nathan Scripps | Thank you. |
| 03:02:54.32 | John Gibbs | . |
| 03:02:54.72 | Nathan Scripps | . |
| 03:02:54.97 | John Gibbs | you Thank you. |
| 03:02:57.40 | Jack Carlson | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:02:58.77 | Angeline Loeffler | around the effective labor wage and such. |
| 03:03:02.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:02.16 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 03:03:02.97 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:03:03.97 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:03:04.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:06.26 | Steven Woodside | I'm told that we're back up online and so we're going to resume. I was in the middle of asking a couple of questions. |
| 03:03:19.07 | Steven Woodside | I'm So I was in the middle of inquiring about using the ARCs as an example. We received correspondence from the ARCs talking about that the live with water through adaptive or floating strategies would result in substantial depreciation and practical inaccessibility. OF properties, which undermines the stability of an established tax-paying residential community and so I just wanted to Um, inquire whether your various approaches considered the city's responsibility to its businesses and residents and other taxpayers. We no longer have redevelopment, but there are other mechanisms that we could undertake to address this holistically rather than a piecemeal approach that leaves and pardon the pun that leaves certain stakeholders out to dry. |
| 03:04:25.98 | John Gibbs | High and dry. Great pun. |
| 03:04:26.91 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Right. |
| 03:04:28.53 | John Gibbs | that. So, yeah, and I think what we were just talking about was that's, I think that's the challenge with looking long-term at these approaches. And I think that the plan in the case of the ARC and in case of those waterfront properties along Bridgeway, not far from the joinery, just for a reference, the plan identifies different options. Those properties can adapt on their own, whatever that owner may want to do, or those properties could all be protected by the city and property owners as a district working together to fund a major wall or shoreline kind of structure. And those options are out there in the future, and those options are described in the plan. And in the near term, really all we can do is say, hey, folks, you guys kind of need to get together and kind of work on this. What are your ambitions as an owner of that property? What are your opportunities? Do you see those abilities within your ownership? And how viable may be those major collective actions to build big infrastructure to support protection of a big district. |
| 03:05:55.13 | Steven Woodside | And finally, so I recognize that some of your work was constrained by the scope that was assigned to you. Um, in in. evaluating and analyzing and proposing solutions does your company typically include the financing aspect of it, such as formation of enhanced infrastructure financing districts or public-private partnerships or other mechanisms for accomplishing some of these really far-reaching and long-term goals? Because I did not see that at all in this short-line adaptation plan. |
| 03:06:37.81 | John Gibbs | Right. It's treated very lightly. At the end of the document, it's treated very lightly. And again, that was not a function of our scope to tap into those specialists. And you cited a number of those strategies. Those are mentioned in the document as strategies, but without giving a lot more specifics. There is a whole climate resilience financing district approach that's available through the state of California as a formation, and it's perfect for this kind of approach in a project. And there are scopes of work, and we have looked at this in other similar projects, to approach some of those folks as specialists. And that could be done to support any number of districts through Sausalito. |
| 03:07:31.13 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. That's the end of my questions. For now, I saw that the city attorney had his hand raised. I wanna recognize him. |
| 03:07:44.30 | Sergio Rudin | Oh, I just wanted to be promoted to panelists since the meeting was restarted. |
| 03:07:49.14 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thank you. Welcome back. Okay, Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 03:07:55.74 | Jill Hoffman | I believe we have until 2034 to submit our SB 272 compliance letter. Is that correct? For our shoreline adaptation plan? |
| 03:08:09.56 | John Gibbs | I'm going to let Katie answer. |
| 03:08:13.59 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:08:13.62 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, that's correct. I didn't dive in, but I will say a completed SB 272 compliant document goes much further above than the shoreline adaptation plan tonight. Thank you. |
| 03:08:27.63 | Jill Hoffman | And so we were, at some point you said, the plan's done and we should submit it to the state under SB 272. But we have until 2034 to make our submission. |
| 03:08:41.67 | Katie Thao Garcia | That's correct. We can submit portions of the plan to hope that our plan is going to get recognized for the work that we have done, given that it predates the passing of SB 272. That's why we need to go through that process. But that is correct. We have until 2034 to complete all elements. Okay. |
| 03:09:03.54 | Jill Hoffman | So we have nine years to do some work on it. |
| 03:09:03.66 | Katie Thao Garcia | we have, |
| 03:09:07.41 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yes, there has been informal guidance that perhaps cities who are ahead on the process might want to take advantage of it being a new process. |
| 03:09:17.87 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. And so I have some follow up questions for John. |
| 03:09:26.07 | Jill Hoffman | And specifically, and so it seems like your understanding was that through this process, and I'm trying not to you know, reiterate any of the questions that you've gotten before, so thank you to my other council members, fellow council members who have already questioned you. But that the working waterfront and these businesses along the waterfront were an important part of the shoreline adaptation plan, correct? I saw that several times called out. |
| 03:09:52.76 | Andrew Davidson | Yes. |
| 03:09:53.07 | Jill Hoffman | But in some of these businesses, I think, were called out, and I even saw pictures of some of them, in the report. but you did not reach out to any of them specifically, nor were any of their comments specifically included in the report. |
| 03:10:10.72 | John Gibbs | There were not follow-up meetings directly with those individuals, as was not part of the scope of work. I tried personally to go and engage, but those timings didn't work out. However, we did receive a really comprehensive letter from Sausalito Sustainable Waterfront Association on the public draft that was released. We got a lot of good feedback, and this feedback was then incorporated into the document that we were looking at tonight. |
| 03:10:22.63 | Unknown | Um, |
| 03:10:40.91 | Jill Hoffman | And what was the date on that letter? |
| 03:10:42.80 | John Gibbs | September 9th. |
| 03:10:44.42 | Jill Hoffman | September 9th, okay. And so, What I'm trying to look at is also the draft that we received at the City Council meeting in May of 2024. on the consent calendar. And so the May 2024 draft of the consent calendar that the council received was 25 pages long. And this final report is 166. And, 70 pages long. And so I'm trying to reconcile that and all of the information that's included in this report with The 24 page report that we received in May If you have. |
| 03:11:25.51 | John Gibbs | And was that 2024? |
| 03:11:27.69 | Jill Hoffman | May of 2025. |
| 03:11:29.34 | John Gibbs | Okay. |
| 03:11:29.36 | Jill Hoffman | it was item 3F on the consent calendar and that was a 25 page report |
| 03:11:35.92 | Andrew Davidson | I believe. |
| 03:11:36.09 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And so... this 168 page report that we received tonight All of this information about the resilient edge and the concept of the focus areas were not included in the 25 page report that we received back in May. And so I'm trying to understand why we wouldn't have received that information prior to what's being now called a final report for our adoption. |
| 03:12:10.08 | John Gibbs | If I may just speak a little to what I think may be the May report, we published the vulnerability assessment portion. We published that early in the process as an early submittal and review by council. And it was not recommendations. It was just the vulnerability assessment, which is one chapter of this final plan. At the workshop, which I think was maybe also in May, our second community workshop, maybe that was March. I can't remember. Let's say spring. In the spring, that's when we put lots of ideas out there, lots of long-term, near-term ideas out there, and had a pretty great workshop. People looked at trade-offs. I believe that was documented. And I think the results of that, I think, have been published. And then more recently, it was the public draft that was released, I think that was early September or late October, which this letter, for example, reviewed that public draft. And that document and the document that we're reviewing today is different only in that we I could go into some of the details, but it just clarified. Overall content, pretty similar, but really tried to clarify what we were actually recommending. Was one of the things also to incorporate just a lot of really good feedback, This group wasn't mentioned as a key partner in the marineship. That doesn't make sense. So thank you. we were able to recognize that and incorporate that into the document. Thank you. as an example. I hope I'm answering your question and happy to |
| 03:14:10.72 | Jill Hoffman | I think I mean, I think that this is the first time that we've seen this complete report as a council and before us. |
| 03:14:23.09 | Katie Thao Garcia | I'll just add, I initially the consultants were scoped to come One time to present an introduction to the document and then a second time to do what we're doing tonight. I received feedback from the agenda setting committee that, you know, one meeting would suffice. So that's why we're just here tonight. |
| 03:14:46.44 | Jill Hoffman | I think we'll discuss this, but I think a presentation of a document of this type with a resilient edge and focus areas of this type, with this type of community feedback, and we're being told this is a final document without the ability for council to give feedback and further work, and being told that your contract is done after two years and a half a million dollars is something that we're going to discuss during our discussion time. Thank you. |
| 03:15:19.30 | Unknown | Councilmember blasting. I definitely have have a few questions also. I just want to start and say thank you so much to Katie though Garcia for your intense work on this project and generally your commitment to sea level rise and everything that you've done for the city and how hard you've worked on this project and getting us funds generally for sea level rise adaptation. It's been really incredible. and also to the Sustainability Commission, whom we got a number of letters from. You know, I think it's really clear that there's a lot of commitment to this and that we're all working towards the best possible solution for our community. So I just really want to acknowledge you, Katie, and your hard work before I dig in here. Yeah, round of applause for Katie. I don't think we can ever give her too much praise. So I did want to dig in a little bit because, you know, when we chatted a little bit about next steps for community feedback, you had mentioned, that there's a concern if we engage too much with business owners, the plan could go in the wrong direction from the community. as a whole, and I was looking back at some of the near-term recommendations for the four areas, and a huge piece of them all say Study, create a working group with property owners to study law and fund long term agreements, study options for adaptation in a working group, coordinate working groups in advanced district scale. So I guess. Is that your way of saying, you know, we need to consider economic feasibility and that's the next step here? Because from what we received in correspondence, I'm rather concerned about, as my other fellow council members have said from the dais, that there wasn't enough engagement around the economic feasibility of some of these recommendations. |
| 03:16:59.70 | John Gibbs | Economic feasibility would certainly be a really useful next step. I think those recommendations that you just paraphrased are right in terms of next steps at district scale with property owners and the interested parties, for sure. And financial feasibility would be a part of that. What are the steps? What are the thresholds, dollar amounts, price tags associated with climate resilience CDF All right. |
| 03:17:29.25 | Unknown | But we didn't yet do any modeling of the economic impacts of some of the models that show, for instance, Clipper Marina underwater. |
| 03:17:39.21 | John Gibbs | yet not specifically. They were done by Arup at a broad brush to sort of understand some order of magnitude of the impacts of no action and the cost of some of the actions. But again, these are high level, and they're big numbers. |
| 03:17:55.29 | Unknown | And would you say that the modeling went to the worst case scenario, just in case, in your assessments? |
| 03:18:02.04 | John Gibbs | The modeling, yeah, was definitely, well, I would defer to Jack about which scenario, I don't remember which scenario we looked at. If it was the more extreme scenario, that would certainly |
| 03:18:15.03 | Jack Hogan | Thank you. be relevant. |
| 03:18:16.72 | John Gibbs | We did. |
| 03:18:17.02 | Jack Hogan | provide a range. |
| 03:18:17.90 | John Gibbs | Thank you. |
| 03:18:18.02 | Jack Hogan | which span from some of the more modest scenarios to some of the worst case scenarios to give a fuller range. And hence the range of dollar |
| 03:18:26.96 | John Gibbs | impacts then as well. Thank you. |
| 03:18:29.43 | Unknown | Right. Okay. Yeah. I'm just trying to get a, cause it seemed like in looking at all of them, it implies that most of the working waterfront is not going to be operable as it is today. So, A big concern for those of us on the dais and the city generally who relies on the tax income there would be how do we continue those those businesses so. |
| 03:18:47.01 | Unknown | the |
| 03:18:47.23 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:18:48.38 | Unknown | Um, I guess I would ask also then what is your understanding generally of the federal funding picture now, given that previously there was significant funds available for climate change mitigation and now we don't have maybe don't have access to those? |
| 03:19:02.11 | John Gibbs | It's a huge issue. We're all, I think, well aware of that. We started the project with a couple different programs, the BRIC in particular, which had funding, and local Bay Area communities have lost substantial funding for sea level rise planning and implementation of projects. We've had projects that have been impacted by the loss of that funding. I think we would hope that things may change in the future, but it definitely paints a more difficult picture for federal funding of major climate resilient projects. |
| 03:19:12.95 | Kevin McGowan | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:19:13.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:19:43.10 | Unknown | So what about state funding right now? |
| 03:19:47.63 | John Gibbs | We're seeing strong funding potential through SB4, the statewide climate bond, to fund ongoing planning, district studies, more technically rigorous focused studies. We're seeing continued strong opportunities for that. and with this plan this plan having a vision having something that documents that you've gone through a public process that you have ideas you understood your impacts, positions you well to seek additional grant funding. |
| 03:19:52.35 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:19:52.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:21.66 | Unknown | But... And I'm sorry to push here, but I'm just but it seems like based on what we just said, we don't have an understanding of our economic impact. |
| 03:20:30.76 | John Gibbs | I think that you don't have to have a full understanding of your economic impact in order to best qualify for some of these grants. |
| 03:20:43.35 | Unknown | I guess what I'm trying to get to the bottom of is given the, the, cost associated with something like a seawall or something like lifting or raising an entire harbor If there is no federal funding and there's no state funding, then all of that onus would rely significantly. We lean on the shoulders of property owners. |
| 03:21:01.93 | John Gibbs | That's correct, or the city, because it's certainly the city's interest for the economic viability of many of the important jobs and tax base of the city. But it also comes at a high cost. Some property owners are very adept at smaller-scale strategies, as has been demonstrated. Some land raising, some walls. I think in the long-term sea level rise projections, that's going to get harder for individual landowners to continue to protect themselves, and we're going to need more strategies. |
| 03:21:35.49 | Unknown | Yeah, I just I'm wondering if what the next step in your perspective would be then from an economic standpoint, if we know that we were going to lose significant tax revenue as a result of some of the models that are proposed in the plan as is now. |
| 03:21:47.56 | John Gibbs | Yeah, I think we recommend doing some more detailed, and Jack can back me up here, but some more detailed cost-benefit studies and economic financing district studies on more district scales along the waterfront. That could be a great way to understand what type of revenue, what type of dollars could be raised through these sorts of systems. But again, these are tax systems or tax increment systems. That's also not an easy conversation for a lot of cities and communities to have. |
| 03:22:27.38 | Unknown | Okay. And then in the document, you break it down into four different areas. So the Southern waterfront, the new town, the Marin ship. and floating homes and let's say the property owners have an opportunity to you know, get engaged and they say, Hey, this vision for raising our property is not economically feasible, but we've already submitted the plan to the state, for example, and we want to make a change in the plan. What happens in the process? |
| 03:22:40.31 | Jill Hoffman | you know, |
| 03:22:52.00 | John Gibbs | submitting the plan in terms of the this plan or in terms of |
| 03:22:58.52 | Unknown | 272, for example, because that's what we're required to do. |
| 03:23:00.68 | John Gibbs | to do first. once the subregional plan is submitted, I think there may, I don't know the answer to that. There may be opportunities to go back and revise it. Also that process of writing the RSAP is, which is short for the regional shoreline adaptation plan, also allows for, it may not look exactly like this or it could look like this. That's a bit of an unknown of how this is going to adapt to the subregional plan. |
| 03:23:33.14 | Unknown | Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that there's been a lot of work done here. And like I said, I have a lot of respect for Katie Tho Garcia. And so her presenting this brings a lot of weight. I just, I'm wondering what your recommendation would be for immediate next steps, given that we've heard significant concern from our property owners about what the models show in this plan. |
| 03:23:52.58 | Jack Hogan | Thank you. Please. I just want to clarify one thing on cost. Introduce yourself. Sorry, I'm Jack Hogan with ARIPA, Risk and Resilience Engineer on the consultant team. The cost that we developed and produced in the plan were industry standard for concept-level plans like this, really meant to evaluate different types of alternatives, not necessarily establish the economic basis or the economic impacts to the tax base, to specific properties, to the region or even the city specifically. So really what we're trying to evaluate is different strategy options and which ones should be left on the table versus discarded. So the cost numbers left in here are not construction budgets per se. They're really used for relative comparison against alternatives. I hope that helps just clarifying. |
| 03:23:56.65 | John Gibbs | introduce yourself. |
| 03:24:34.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:24:34.38 | John Gibbs | Thank you. |
| 03:24:34.55 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:24:42.20 | John Gibbs | Thank you. |
| 03:24:42.21 | Jack Hogan | THE FAMILY IS NOT A |
| 03:24:42.45 | John Gibbs | Check. |
| 03:24:42.68 | Jack Hogan | Thank you. |
| 03:24:42.74 | John Gibbs | Thank you. I think to your question was next steps associated with individual owners and property owners. I mean, I want to defer to Katie and you all for some of that guidance, but I do this type of work in a lot of cities and communities with very difficult kinds of issues. I often find that spending a little bit more time with an audience in some smaller groups helps to get closer to what the actions might be, to understand where everybody's coming from besides a letter and besides me up here at a podium, but just to be able to talk some things through and develop whatever the right action is out of that. At a minimum, it builds some trust. best day it's going to also make this plan better. |
| 03:25:37.66 | Unknown | Great. Again, I just, I really respect all of the time and effort and community outreach put into this plan, but given our significant concern from property owners, I've had a number of questions, so I appreciate it. That's all I have for now. Thank you. |
| 03:25:56.41 | Jill Hoffman | I have a follow-up for John. So I'm looking at the 2023 WR Consulting approved scope of work, and I'm looking at paragraph 2.6 engagement plan, and I'm reading directly from it. It says, through early assessments and interviews with community leaders, WRT will help the team identify key stakeholders to involve in the process and the best methods to communicate with them and the tools to use. So to me, that does seem to indicate that it is within your scope, and it was within your scope, to identify community leaders, and those community leaders being the business owners along the waterfront as the best people to give feedback on how to maintain and move forward with responses to sea level rise and adaptation, or at least be a part of the planning process. So I'm wondering why you thought that was not part of the scope and your decision not to include them. |
| 03:27:03.79 | John Gibbs | You're correct. The engagement plan identified key stakeholders. Those were discussed and reviewed. There's a number of individuals that are on that list. I don't remember exactly who's all is on that list, but they were the subject of a number of focus group meetings and a number of attended the waterfront tours. Both of those were early in the process. And so the engagement plan described that process of identifying some of those folks, and those were the folks that were included in that group. It was not comprehensive for every property owner on the waterfront. That was not the criteria for how that was selected. |
| 03:27:45.14 | Jill Hoffman | that's what we're doing. That was your job. You were specifically engaged to identify community leaders identify them and Evolve them in the process and that didn't doesn't seem to have happened |
| 03:28:05.98 | Jill Hoffman | And you're standing here telling us today that that wasn't part of your scope. |
| 03:28:10.40 | John Gibbs | I'm saying we did that, and if there's others, then by all means, |
| 03:28:16.20 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:28:16.34 | John Gibbs | Thank you. we can be redirected to amend that list |
| 03:28:23.31 | Jill Hoffman | Maybe I misunderstood what you said earlier. |
| 03:28:26.45 | John Gibbs | Okay. I could restate my initial answer. Katie may be looking up names that we engaged specifically as part of the focus groups and the waterfront tour. But there were a number of property owners, business owners in the waterfront area. And again, those meetings were held in the early stages of the plan. They did not occur later when, after workshop two, for example, when ideas and concepts were made public. There was not another round. |
| 03:29:02.90 | Jill Hoffman | I have no further questions. |
| 03:29:04.16 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thanks. All right, I really want to open this up to public comment, and so I'm going to, Katie, did you want to say anything? |
| 03:29:13.14 | Katie Thao Garcia | Yeah, I will just say, you know, going through the engagement plan, it doesn't identify doing one-on-one documentation and meetings with individual loan, um, landowners, property owners, residents. It's more of, this is the plan for engagement. This is the number of focus groups that we're going to, um, have. This is the general, um, general community groups that we are going to target, those kinds of things. It doesn't go so far to say, you know, we will have one-on-one meetings. |
| 03:29:46.54 | Steven Woodside | Thanks. I'll also point out that, you know, this process started under a different city council than the city council that's now sitting up here. So I do want to also acknowledge that reasonable minds can vary on the best path forward for a project of this magnitude. So we are where we are, and we will move forward from here. All right. First speaker is Mark Palmer, followed by Kimberly Wiltshire. Thank you. Welcome, Mark. He's been showing up a lot to our meetings lately. from our sustainability. |
| 03:30:21.03 | Mark Palmer | COMMISSION. Good evening, Mayor Cox and Council Members. Mark Palmer. The Sustainability Commission strongly supports the shoreline adaptation plan. It's clear and well-crafted and presents a full range of adaptation options. shows where living with water may be feasible, integrates green and nature-based strategies, and gives the city the information it needs to move forward without limiting individual landowner choices. We also want to acknowledge the Sustainability and Resilience Manager, Katie Phil Garcia, for her excellent work leading this effort. A major strength of the plan has been the broad community engagement through workshops, surveys, walking tours, focus groups. And as the city begins developing specific adaptation projects, we anticipate even more public engagement, especially with individual property owners and neighborhoods consistent with the parcel level outreach required under SB 272. The vulnerability assessment shows why this work is urgent. The city's strong collaboration with Marin County improves regional coordination and significantly strengthens future funding opportunities. The commission recommends that the council Receive and file the plan. Number two, direct staff to initiate CONSULTATION WITH BCDC. and begin work outlined in SB 272. and future state funding. Number three, prioritize and advance individual adaptation projects with continued strong community engagement. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:32:08.42 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Kimberly Kimberly wheelchair and then Casey Peterson Kimmery. Oh, okay. City Clerk, do we have Kimmerly online? Kimmery. |
| 03:32:23.37 | Walfred Solorzano | I do not see her. |
| 03:32:25.97 | Steven Woodside | my brain sees what it thinks it should be rather than what it is. All right, Casey and then Ken. |
| 03:32:36.81 | Steven Woodside | Welcome. |
| 03:32:39.34 | Casey Peterson | Yeah, thanks for having us. I appreciate your time. My name is Casey Peterson. I'm a Marine operator here. Um, the plan does show all three scenarios our property underwater and we were never met with I'm deeply concerned with the waterfront plan presented by the city's consultants after reviewing these options I need to say it clearly if any of these move forward the maritime industry and Saucelito will not survive maritime uses are not optional amenities they are the foundation of the waterfront's identity economy and culture Our industry depends on very specific infrastructure. Marinas require parking and ADA access. Boat yards, mechanics, rigors rely on haul out capabilities, boat yards and boat clubs rely on slips, commercial fishermen require slips and fuel docks. Removing any of these, we lose a working waterfront. And once it's gone, it's not going to return. THE PROPOSAL SHOWS A FUNDAMENTAL MISUNDERSTANDING OF HOW THE WATER FRONT ACTUALLY WORKS. A SIMPLE EXAMPLE IS THE PLAN REFERENCES ANDERSON'S BOAT YARD WHICH HAS NOT BEEN OR WHICH HAS BEEN CLOSED FOR 15 YEARS YET IGNORES KKMI THE LARGEST BOAT YARD IN TOWN. IT SHOWS A SERIOUS LACK OF OUTREACH. A SIMPLE SHORELINE WALK SHOULD SHOW YOU THAT. SO I'M ASKING THE CITY COUNCIL TO TAKE NECESSARY STEPS TO REJECT THIS PLAN. REDIRECT THE REMAINING FUNDS ON A NEW EFFORT. focus on existing shoreline, not the hypothetical relocations, real engineer and economic analysis and legal counsel. We need excessive engagement with those who are directly impacted. This plan is not workable, it's dangerous. We should not constantly be fighting on our heels defending our existence. The city should be fighting for the working waterfront, finding ways to invest, grow and revitalize it. Please protect what makes Sausalito Sausalito, and keep our waterfront Alive, viable, and resilient, not flooded and forgotten. Thank you. |
| 03:34:38.96 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Ken. followed by Jim Madden. |
| 03:34:48.77 | Ken Peterson | Yeah, thank you for listening. My name is Ken Peterson, owner of Clipper Yacht Harbor. We've been in Sausalito for 85 years. The plan that I saw It was brutal. eliminating all our parking, which is the only thing that sustains a marina. You have to have X amount of parking for X amount of slips. That doesn't work. You have to put it on water's edge. I hope you reject this, you've paid these people, that's fine, let them go, let's start again. Scott Stevens from Miller Pacific has already been down there, we've been working with him for years, he's already done a lot of work. to our property and to think that you wouldn't reach out to the individual property owners is just wrong. We have done it. I mean, Clipper's been raising our property. We have these things. There's probably better ways as we go on. That's true. The other thing we need to work on is No, you know, we know Redwood City with an eight foot, an eight foot wall. So there your first floor looks at a wall is unacceptable. So we need to do it in lifts. If you do it with a sheet pile around water's edge, and lifted as you need. It will work. We've, our SSWA group, they met with us one time. We told them this won't work. They didn't seem to change anything. Nope, we've got our plan. We can do it, we understand, we work together all the time. The whole working waterfront, all the marinas work together. We're allies, it's really, it's a pretty neat business to be in. um, And I really hope that you, you know, you reject this, find somebody new. We have a great council that can select somebody that could do the job, right? And that's and I truly believe that. And I know there had to be some reason that they did not talk. They did not come and individually talk to the property owners, which is not that many of us. You could have met us all almost in the same room. I don't understand it. Thank you. |
| 03:36:51.60 | Steven Woodside | Thanks, Ken. Jim Madden. And then Terry Thomas. |
| 03:36:58.37 | Steven Woodside | Welcome. |
| 03:36:59.21 | Jim Madden | Thank you, Jim Madden, Sausalito Yacht Harbor, and other properties. Good evening, Mayor, council members, and neighbors. My family, the Madden family, first arrived here in Sausalito in 1915, 110 years ago. We've been part of the maritime community ever since. We operate the Sasso Yacht Harbor. We own property in the ARCS neighborhood. We own 1311 through 1319 Bridgeway, including the Lighthouse Cafe. We've lived, worked, and invested in this shoreline for more than a century. Because of that long history, I have to express serious concerns about the shoreline adaptation plan. Across multiple shoreline segments, the plan repeatedly recommends live with water strategies and even floating or adaptive floating structures, ideas that may look creative on paper but are not realistic or economically viable for Sausalito. The plan itself admits that floating structures are significantly more challenging and costly than simply raising the land. Yet the plan still treats vital areas, Spinnaker Point, Yacht Hubbard Parking, ARCs, commercial properties along Bridgeway, as if they might be allowed to flood or transition toward amphibious use. These are defendable lands. They can be raised using standard, proven engineering methods that have been used all around the Bay Area. Allowing these areas to flood would harm longstanding businesses, marinas, commercial corridors, even the city's housing element sites, including our family's parcel on one. You cannot plan for new housing inland while deliberately allowing the shoreline systems that support these areas to fail. What's missing from this plan is the simplest and most reliable approach. Preserve and reinforce the existing shoreline. That means seawalls, bulkheads, raised grades, upgraded drainage. |
| 03:39:02.42 | Steven Woodside | Jim, would you mind sharing that letter with us? Yes. Okay, thank you. |
| 03:39:05.13 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:39:05.79 | Jim Madden | Thank you. |
| 03:39:05.93 | Unknown | you |
| 03:39:10.33 | Steven Woodside | Will you add that to our mail, City Clerk? Thank you. All right, Terry Thomas and then Carolyn Ravel. |
| 03:39:21.92 | Terry Thomas | Thank you, Mayor, council members, and staff of Sausalito, And also a big thanks to Katie with all the good work that she has done on this. My name is Terry Thomas. I am an ecologist that lives in a floating home in Capus Marina. And although we're in Marin County, we're still an important part of this plan. I worked on your sea level rise task force for Sausalito and on the Dunphy Park Sea Level Rise Consumptual Plan, as well as the Galilee wave attenuator. I have two comments. Thank you. Um, Clarify in the document that it does not restrict actions Um, for any further planning on the private landowners to pursue on their own land It clearly isn't. documented strongly enough because of all the comments that you're getting. So that's a really important thing to do. The plan is a framework to guide response to sea level rise. That's what it is. It's a very broad plan. Don't throw out this incredible piece of work that's just an approach to how you can plan. Take it and then go to the property owners. Work with all the small groups and find out exactly what we can do in our backyard that's not limited by that. Um, Our folks in, in the floating home community as well as in MarinShip. We need to know that we can pursue our own options, that you might help us pull that together. And that we can also work with funding to protect both our private shoreline property and our businesses. My second comment is just Please don't forget the Marin County lands and our floating homes community. If you do start to meet one-on-one, or in small groups to go to that next stays stage of planning We would really like to be able to work on our lands and like to use all the options. I looked at all the options in this and it's a good group of information. Thank you. Thanks, Terry. Carolyn Rivera. |
| 03:41:29.97 | Carolyn Revell | Belle and then David Lay. |
| 03:41:31.44 | Terry Thomas | Thank you. |
| 03:41:31.98 | Carolyn Revell | Good evening. I'd like to step back to the beginning and thank the Council and the previous Council were having the vision to recognize this existential problem of sea level rise. There are many criticisms of this plan, I'm here to thank you for hiring Katie Thao Garcia, getting the grant starting with the sea level. task force. including this concern in the general plan, Hiring consultants to give you a framework study, obviously more can be done, reaching out to more of the stakeholders, particularly the affected businesses, as has been said, and looking into financing with lack of federal funding. Of course, that's critical. But let's... I'd like to thank you and congratulate you and give you a pat on the back. tonight for getting this far. in an essential project and including the community, helping educate the community through the process that has been done to recognize the importance of this as an issue. Thank you so much. |
| 03:42:28.85 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:42:30.67 | Carolyn Revell | David Lay and then Jeff Shirash. |
| 03:42:32.63 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:42:35.55 | David Lay | Oh, thank you very much. The report we just went through is just a bureaucratic waste of time when we're looking at global warming. It's the end of the line. The causes are way years in front of that. We're probably not gonna have three feet by the end of the century. But then again, we could have a slide off in Antarctica and have 18. We don't know enough about what's going on down there. The northern hemisphere gets more sun than the southern hemisphere. That's a known. I've been there. There's things we can do right here for ourselves, though. One is... The houses don't have enough solar panels because there's no sun on most of the houses in town. All the ones on that side of the canyons? They don't get done. We need a survey of the wind coming over the ridge to find out where it has the most density, the most wind. And that's in places. There's places the wind blows. We need to know to get a couple of windows going. to kind of cross out at PG&E. They're not our friends. They're not the town's friends. And we know that. We need a tree survey. We needed a team of science kind of people kind of secretly working on doing a survey of where the wind is. So when somebody says, are you shovel ready? We're ready to put up a windmill to support our town. That's going to help. and get us maybe off the grid. That's what we need to do. And that's, in the end, going to slow down global warming if you spread it around. You know who we ought to bother? That Huffman guy who supposedly represents us. He gets the top 10 votes in the House, election after election. And sometimes it's in your top three. We need a few hundred people in his driveway to cut him down and get him active or turn the table over in the house. do something, but he's doing nothing. Thanks, David. |
| 03:44:52.98 | Steven Woodside | Thanks, David. |
| 03:44:53.92 | David Lay | Thank you. |
| 03:44:53.94 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:44:54.26 | David Lay | Stupid speech. |
| 03:44:55.27 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:44:55.41 | David Lay | Thank you. |
| 03:44:55.52 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thanks, David. |
| 03:44:57.25 | David Lay | Thank you very much. |
| 03:44:57.31 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. All right, Jeff Shirosh, then Carlito Berg. |
| 03:45:15.30 | Steven Woodside | Are you going to pass those along to us? |
| 03:45:18.90 | Jeffrey Chase | Baron Council that was sent via email today, but I'm not sure if you're able to read it. So I did give you hard copies of that as well. |
| 03:45:25.44 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, sir. |
| 03:45:28.18 | Jeffrey Chase | So I'm speaking on behalf of the Spinnaker restaurant today. We have been in Sausal on the Sausal Waterfront for 65 years. |
| 03:45:35.67 | Steven Woodside | Why is it 40? |
| 03:45:36.33 | Jeffrey Chase | First of all, I'd like to thank Katie and the city staff for the hard work and care they went into preparing the shoreline adaptation plan. We recognize the complexity of the issue and truly appreciate their dedication and service. However, I'm here today to respectfully urge you not to accept the current shoreline adaptation plan as presented. While well intentioned, the concepts in the report, such as floating buildings, floating parking lots and large marsh conversions are not realistically economically viable or workable for sausage existing waterfront businesses and properties proposals that effectively abandoned or sacrifice sections of our shoreline threaten the jobs, livelihoods character that define this community. For 65 years, the Spinnaker has operated directly on the waterfront. We understand the realities of the Richardson Bay, the tides, the storms, and the surge events. And the truth is that sea level rise is not a current problem here. The patterns we face today are same as we've seen for decades, storm surges and king tides, which can be addressed with raising parking lot areas as well as seawalls. Salsa businesses and property owners, marina operators, restaurants, offices, retailers have lived and worked on the shoreline for generations. We know what can be done and we are ready to help craft solutions that are practical, engineered and achievable. Many of us have never been consulted. And the current report does not reflect the knowledge and experience of those who work with this shoreline every single day. The document in this report is not a viable plan. We urge you to set it aside and work collaboratively with those who understand the waterfront firsthand to create a solution that protects Sausalito while keeping our community economically strong. Thank you for your time. your service, and your commitment to Sausage Future. Spinnaker and your fellow property owners look forward to working with you on a plan that truly will work for generations to come thank you |
| 03:47:37.14 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Carlito Berg and then Tim Rogers. |
| 03:47:49.17 | Unknown | Hello Mayor, hello Council, nice to see you all this evening. I'd like to just start and say, when I was growing up, sometimes I would do some silly stuff and my dad would say, if I had another brain, it would be lonesome. But, The reality is the math on here seems pretty straightforward. It's like if you have 20,000 lineal feet of shorelines, YOU THINK IT COSTS, YOU KNOW, 2000 BUCKS A LINEAL FOOT, That's $40 million. $40 million floated at a 4.5% bond is $2.46 million. Across just the MarinShip to say nothing of the entire waterfront, that's $11,000 per acre. Obviously, that's doable with an economic study. If you wanna say I'm off by an order of magnitude, fine, double it, triple it, like across the entire waterfront when you spread it out, these are very reasonable numbers to, you know, the Redwood City Wall, feet was twenty four hundred dollars a lineal foot roughly speaking so you know call it three thousand call it five thousand clearly it's possible to do economically it seems very clear to me that although you know I'm very appreciative personally of Katie Tao Garcia and the Sustainability Commission that a cohesive approach was not taken in this case. And we need a cohesive approach with everybody working together, whether it's an EIFD or tax increment financing or any of these other things, to actually, you know, come to a conclusion that works and is cohesive, collective, and makes sense. So I would just urge you to, if you do accept this report, I would encourage you to reject it, but I would encourage you maybe to receive and not file it or receive it and start over. And it should be explicit city policy in whatever someone says following all these comments that the shoreline should be protected Thank you very much. |
| 03:49:51.68 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. My last speaker card is Tim Rogers. |
| 03:50:02.04 | Tim Rogers | Hi everyone, Tim Rogers with the Sausageudo Sustainable Waterfront Association. You guys are kind of just getting to know us, but we're a collective of local business owners, parcel owners, business operators along the waterfront and the Marin ship. Many of whom you've heard from tonight. I'm here to ask you to not accept it as a plan because as it is, it's not really a plan. It's a group of ideas, a presentation of ideas. There's no budget behind it. It's just not a plan. But we're here, and you've heard from a half a dozen gentlemen who have nearly four centuries of family and are invested in this community, into this waterfront and this marineship. And they're here to work with all of us to get a cohesive, clear collaborative plan to make sure we do fight sea level rise. Again, council, thank you for everything. Mayor Cox, thank you. And we look forward to working with you, Katie. |
| 03:51:02.03 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. City clerk anyone online. |
| 03:51:04.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, we have Babette McDougall. |
| 03:51:07.53 | Steven Woodside | Welcome back, Babette. Thank you. |
| 03:51:09.58 | Babette McDougall | Thank you, ma'am. Thank you for including me. First of all, I want to acknowledge, applaud, and profusely thank each council member. This is probably the best I've ever seen the five of you dig into something And it actually resonates, not just with the residents who are your enfranchised voters, But with the business community, I love this critical thinking and we need more of it. I'm bet you Katie is probably feeling like she's been run over by a truck. But the truth of the matter is we all do. want. to keep Katie going. We love what Katie's doing. I have to say the WRT consulting firm, my own personal impression is I'm an independent consultant. I know what it's like. I've been doing it for decades. I would say you're new to the business. I would say you're new at what you're doing because you seem so naive. And I went to all three workshops. I sat, I didn't mean to stay the whole time at Newtown, but I could not believe that the person running the workshop It was her first time ever coming to Sausalito. would not accept anything that the people at the table had to say because she had overlays and specific questions that she was tasked to deal with. So there was no citizen input at the Noontown table, none that mattered to any of us. She seemed to be on another planet. Now that's really a sad statement. I went to the third workshop, and had it not been for Katie finally saying, Wow, we've got time to open it up to the public. I don't know that there would have been any direct public exchange for the records. I say this only because I feel like I want my money back. In a way, I almost feel like I just want my money back. I think we have spent a lot of money when we could have better invested it, bringing our stakeholders to the table in the first place. And I speak to you as a resident of some decades who's also a sailor, And so I appreciate our waterfront. It's my way of life. Thank you so much for being so rigorous in this review. |
| 03:53:12.82 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. City Clerk. Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 03:53:16.38 | Sandra Bushmaker | Welcome back, Sandra. Thank you very much. I'm a sailor. I use the facilities in Sausalito to fix my boat when it needs fixing. And I think this plan, unfortunately got off on the wrong foot and it needs needs help. And so I don't know what to say to you about what your action is tonight, but I do want to say one thing. In 2017, I went to the Netherlands and I traveled all over the Netherlands, not just North Holland and South Holland, but the rest of the Netherlands as well. Yeah. Part of the trip involved looking at their sea level adaptation. not plants, but actual devices And I found it most enlightening. In fact, I was so turned on by that I came to the city council and suggested that the city send a fact finding Yeah. entourage, maybe two council members and a staff person, an appropriate staff person, to go to the Netherlands with a schedule to look at their adaptation devices and their adaptation Uh, plans and you could talk to them about finances. How do they get the money? I recognize it's a completely different government, but nevertheless, it would be worth spending money on a trip to the Netherlands with the remaining money in this fund, not using all of it, of course, I don't think $400,000 needs to be spent on this trip, but you would gain so much information about a country who, by the way, reclaimed 30% of their land through their sea level adaptation plans. Did you know that? So that tells me this country knows their stuff. And I think we could learn a lot about it. They've got engineering, we've got engineering. Let's cross pollinate here. All right, thank you. |
| 03:55:15.23 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:55:15.24 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:55:16.15 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:55:16.19 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:55:16.20 | Steven Woodside | City Clerk. |
| 03:55:16.68 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Curtis Have Havell. |
| 03:55:20.83 | Steven Woodside | Welcome, Curtis. And thank you. |
| 03:55:24.96 | Curtis Havell | Yeah, good evening. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. My name is Curtis Havl and I serve as the Harbormaster for Clipper Yacht Harbor. The report for WRT really highlights an amazing disconnect between Sausalito's maritime sector frankly, the rest of the community. But I also see it as an opportunity for the city and when I say the city, I mean the elected, the appointed staff, community members to learn more about how the real working waterfront actually operates The members of the South Florida Sustainable Waterfront Association, also known as the SSWA, of which Clipper Yacht Harbor is a member, has discussed creation of what I'll call right now a Maritime Academy. And that's something where we would provide information and learning opportunities about Sausalito's real working waterfront, giving folks a kind of a peek behind the curtain of how things actually work down on the waterfront. In my experience, I've learned and found that just talking to community members and people around town You know, it's almost like it's this hidden community and they even though they admire it and they look at it, they don't really know how it works. So we'd love to help increase everybody's understanding of that. The report prepared by WRT is unfortunately based on uh, and perpetuates a number of false assumptions about Sausalito's waterfront and I think that's a good thing. we really think that the sea level rise adaptation management plan needs to start from a position based on factual data, solid information and consultation with our waterfront businesses. so that we can have a really productive conversation about what what we need to do to continue prospering and to be successful in the future. The other thing we need to look at, this kind of begs the question, when we look at sea level rise, we need to talk about the regulatory framework Right now, Sausalito doesn't really have any sort of land use regulatory framework that leads people to success. Instead, we've got the Marinship-specific plan. that really hurts us. |
| 03:57:27.04 | Unknown | Really? |
| 03:57:28.52 | Curtis Havell | So I think that's also worth talking about. And it's been raised in some of the other letters. Finally, |
| 03:57:33.55 | Steven Woodside | Curtis, I'm sorry, you're at your two minutes. Will you send us a letter with your remaining thoughts? |
| 03:57:42.41 | Steven Woodside | All right, next speaker. |
| 03:57:42.66 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Lorna Newlin. |
| 03:57:48.33 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:57:48.40 | Lorna Newland | Bye. |
| 03:57:48.42 | Steven Woodside | Welcome back. |
| 03:57:49.02 | Lorna Newland | Lorna. |
| 03:57:49.55 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:57:50.46 | Lorna Newland | Thank you, Mayor Cox. Um, I find these meetings incredibly interesting, so I just stay on. And this was all very interesting, and I want to applaud um katie who i met recently at a women's club presentation and everybody who worked on this but from what common sense from what uh jill hoffman mentioned this was the first time that they saw a final report and uh mayor cox that um major stakeholders like spinnaker restaurant and and others weren't consulted. And I, so I recommended the council that at this point, you either table this until you get all your answers or, um, not vote on it, you know, not vote on it tonight. And I believe you know, wholeheartedly in science. And my husband is a retired NOAA federal biologist who saved endangered species for 43 years. So this is all important, but not when the major stakeholders along the entire waterfront, and even though I'm not on the waterfront, I've been in the Chamber of Commerce for 23 years, and so I've had knowledge and access of all these people who have done so much there. And I also know what it feels like when something is going to change, your particular workspace or anything and you're not consulted, it's not good. Listen to people like Jeff and all the different harbormasters and marina owners of things and get more input into this because it's too important basically to rush through on something like this. So I don't know exactly what the answer is. That's not my expertise, but I applaud. I really enjoyed hearing everybody's input tonight and thank you all for your service. |
| 03:59:44.33 | Steven Woodside | Thanks, Lorna. City clerk. No further speakers. |
| 03:59:47.93 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 03:59:48.47 | Steven Woodside | Okay, I will close public comment and bring it back up here for discussion. |
| 03:59:55.94 | Unknown | . |
| 03:59:56.67 | Steven Woodside | So our agenda item tonight asks that we receive and file and provide direction. Um, Certainly some of the direction I'd like us to think about is some of the direction that was raised by some of our speakers tonight. And one is to really dig into an engineered solution. Miller Pacific has already done significant work at Clipper Yacht Harbor. Miller Pacific. So I think definitely exploring some engineering solutions, and also I think we have to look at the financial component of this. I really like the idea of considering, as Carlo wrote on his speaker slip, an EIFD, Enhanced Infrastructure Finance District, or a TIF, or other mechanism. Those are public-private partnership opportunities where the city can partner with its key stakeholders, form, a geographical a geographic boundary area. and invite the participation of all of the stakeholders within that area on a collaborative solution And as I, inferred during my questioning we should also include our regional partners in devising and paying for a solution. So those are some of the thoughts that I'd like for us to consider about how best to use some of our remaining funds. And obviously personalized outreach. You know, I learned a lot just listening to our harbor masters tonight who have centuries of experience here in Sausalito. And so I think really mining that field of knowledge and information would be beneficial to this process. and so. Thank you. |
| 04:01:51.18 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, go ahead. I know that you guys work very hard and I understand the specific purpose and the lens that with you look at these taskers. So and I know that Katie does an incredible job. So I know that you guys work very hard and I understand the specific purpose and the lens that with you look at these taskers. just um let me preface my comments with that but i don't i agree i with the comments that we received today from our from our businesses, I don't believe that we can receive this report, and here's why. Because once we receive this report as complete, it will become a reference point from now until the end of time. And it becomes the Sausalito Shoreline Adaptation Plan. And it will be used in ways far and wide and referenced as Sausalito's Shoreline Adaptation Plan, which I don't believe it's, I believe that as it exists right now, it is an unworkable plan. And I think we've received a lot of input tonight from our business owners along the shoreline that it in no way reflects the way that Sausalito wants to go or should go, along our shoreline I don't believe that and we can pull the City Council right now do we believe that we want to give up all of our businesses along our shoreline to floating floating concepts and give up our working waterfront And I completely believe Casey Peterson's point that if we accept this plan and accept the facts of this plan as they're presented, that we're gonna lose our working waterfront. And I completely disagree with our consultant that his job was not to reach out to the business owners and include them in this plan and get their feedback and incorporate that into the plan it's clearly set out in in um in the concept that um for which he was um for which's a good point. I think that's a good point. We had an inundation working and I think that's a good idea. The reason that we got the $1 million grant or the delegation was because we had the 21, that we have to do with the put out in six months and then we dissolved the Sea Level Rise Task Force, But it had the plan in that 21 page report, it said, that you develop a vision first, then you do adaptation options based on that vision, and then you do adaptation pathways. And it's... And so I have more comments, so come back to me. Great, thanks. |
| 04:05:00.74 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:05:00.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:05:00.97 | Steven Woodside | Who would like to? Councilmember Sobieski. Thank you. |
| 04:05:04.23 | Unknown | yes i can go i i've been working on a motion over the last few minutes typing it in um that summarizes my point of view and it seems to concur with several of us up here and uh and i concur with my friend council member hoffman that if we accept the plan it becomes a reference point so it's not a it's not uh rejecting the work or the value of some of the work but it's just saying it's not yet complete it's not complete so the motion is that the city council of Sausalito not accept or file the current shoreline adaptation plan as complete and instead direct staff to continue the work by directing staff to use the remaining grant funds and request additional funds if necessary to specify an infrastructure solution natural or otherwise that protects today's existing shoreline and the economic activity within that shoreline. Such an exploration should include a cost estimate of all solutions and make recommendations on how to enhance economic activity in the area including A special infrastructure revenue district, which I think is this EF ID that you're referring to mayor that could pay for the required infrastructure without using resident taxpayer dollars. Engagement on a solution can and should include feedback for everybody, but should involve a tightly coupled interaction with property and business owners with long history on the waterfront. That's the motion. |
| 04:06:26.93 | Steven Woodside | I would second that if you would add something about an engineering, you know, about exploration of an engineered solution as part of the ongoing |
| 04:06:37.21 | Unknown | specify an infrastructure, engineered infrastructure solution, engineered. |
| 04:06:37.23 | Steven Woodside | Let's go. |
| 04:06:41.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:06:41.92 | Steven Woodside | you |
| 04:06:41.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:06:42.07 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:06:43.39 | Angeline Loeffler | I heard him say at E-Tart, I think you said something about solutions, natural or otherwise? Natural or otherwise, yes. So I think what you're suggesting, engineering or natural, and it may be combinations. Yes. |
| 04:06:51.94 | Unknown | or other. |
| 04:06:59.60 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 04:06:59.89 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Okay, with that, With that amendment, I second that motion. May I comment on that? Of course. |
| 04:07:08.03 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. |
| 04:07:08.36 | Steven Woodside | There's a motion and a second, so of course, |
| 04:07:10.03 | Jill Hoffman | but yes. I'm not let me let me clarify something. I'm not sure that we need a motion if the direction is to go back to the consultant with that direction. |
| 04:07:21.66 | Steven Woodside | I am not advising that we go back to the consultant with that direction. Well, I'm advising next steps. We haven't discussed how to carry those out. |
| 04:07:25.83 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 04:07:30.11 | Jill Hoffman | I think that we gave them a scope of work and we have quite a large budget, but I don't believe they finished their work. And so my direction would be for the staff to engage with the consultant and talk to them about what they were engaged for and their scope of work. |
| 04:07:52.29 | Steven Woodside | I do not endorse necessarily moving forward with this consultant. |
| 04:07:59.71 | Jill Hoffman | And would you then talk to the consultant about their fees? because I don't believe that two years worth of work and $500,000. that we have got a finished product. And I do not think that we should accept this report as complete, it is not complete. And if it's not complete, then I think we go back to them and give them a chance to finish it and to bring it back to us. |
| 04:08:29.14 | Unknown | So Joe, maybe I'll just read it again because I think I'm saying the things you're saying. The first sentence is the city of South Florida. The motion is not except the current Shrine app to adaptation plan as complete and instead direct staff to continue the work by directing staff. |
| 04:08:45.63 | Jill Hoffman | I don't think the staff should, no, I don't think the staff should do this work. We paid a lot of money to a consultant. and the consultant has not finished their scope of work. |
| 04:08:57.55 | Unknown | Well, staff, it's a euphemism perhaps, but staff always coordinates the work. Director McCowan doesn't lay asphalt, he hires consultants to |
| 04:09:05.17 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I don't want to hire another consultant either. |
| 04:09:07.10 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I'm concerned that the that the key stakeholders here have lost confidence in in the consultant and so even if the consultant at this point reaches out to them to actually undertake the scope that was enunciated in their work. plan. I'm worried that that will not be a productive dialogue. Thank you. |
| 04:09:30.82 | Jill Hoffman | that might be that might be direction to the city manager and Katie the Garcia to sit down with our consultant and have this conversation and give the consultant a chance to complete their work. |
| 04:09:44.56 | Angeline Loeffler | If I may comment, it's very frustrating. I don't think there was an expectation that there be a plan that is complete. I don't think that was ever the expectation. I think this was a process that is not complete and it's frustrating that we're spending more time looking backwards than looking forward. We have problems, but we're not the ocean, we're a bay. We're Richardson Bay. We don't have enough data on I think, the impact of climate change specifically on our bay. On our bay, not the San Francisco Bay, not the ocean. Scripps several years ago predicted at the ocean a foot sea level rise 100 years from now. Others say, no, it's going to be six feet. Okay, that's fine, and there's lots written about the ocean. Coastal Commission has adopted a policy, apparently, a planned retreat. We do not wish to retreat. Our obligation, I believe, as a council is to protect our existing people, their businesses, their property, where we recreate, where we dine, where we live. And we have a very narrow shoreline to protect. We ought to try to protect it. That's fundamental. And I think We're missing the point if we look backwards and try to penalize people for doing what apparently was the scope of work at the beginning. To look at all these things, to have public outreach as it happens, some people felt left out and were left out. And we can't undo that. We can't unring that bell. We can't redirect it in a way that's meaningful unless we give clear direction as to what we're doing. I think your motion covers the main points I would be concerned about. But let's remember, we're on a bay. We're on a bay that at one end, the southern end, storm surge coming off the bay is much different than further up. I've lived at sea level, I've kayaked up and down, we've all experienced it, many of the speakers can tell you. We have very Sometimes subtle differences and maybe solutions that we cannot foresee right now So we need to look forward not backwards. That's my view and I support the motion |
| 04:12:09.21 | Steven Woodside | I would certainly be willing to. I have further comments. But you commented already on the motion. But Melissa hasn't. I haven't commented on it yet. Okay, oh I'm sorry. |
| 04:12:11.47 | Angeline Loeffler | I have. |
| 04:12:11.79 | Cheryl Basio | Thank you. |
| 04:12:13.70 | Jill Hoffman | But you commented. I haven't commented on it yet. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I thought you had. |
| 04:12:19.72 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. I would not object to having the city manager confer with the consultant and with Katie to understand whether the consultant has the... bandwidth and ability and willingness to follow the Council's direction about protecting the existing shoreline as opposed to um, advocating for this adaptive, you know, everybody for themself type of approach. um, And. I'm At what at at and and. I'm not clear whether it was a lack of direction I'm very concerned about the scope of work that Councilmember Hoffman read out that talked about identifying key stakeholders And then. conferring with them, I'm not sure that that was actually carried out So I'd want to understand what additional compensation or whether we would have any credit for work that has not yet been accomplished that was within the scope of the consultants' initial undertaking depending on the outcome of that, I would also, favor. us engaging directly with Miller Pacific with a financial expert it sounds as though the consultant has some experience with infrastructure financing perhaps but we haven't you know there was only a glancing reference to that in the plan so perhaps this is a scope issue perhaps this is direction given by a prior council that was not updated by this council I'd like the city manager to explore that and come back to us with his recommendation about how best to implement the direction that we're giving this evening so that's my comment on the motion |
| 04:14:22.05 | Unknown | Council member Blastie, great, thank you. I'm a little bit concerned about all of the discussion from the dais only because the way that we are moving forward doesn't seem to significantly address the threat of sea level rise and the amount of work that's been put into I know that there is, and I acknowledge in my questions, a lot of discomfort amongst property owners, and obviously the plan as is, is not a plan for the property owners. and I think that's a good question. sea level rise mitigation and options. And and I would love to see us absolutely work on diverting funds to economic analysis and supporting our working waterfront and our workers there. I just would like us to discuss our immediate plan for how we address the threat of sea level rise and how we might use some of the data from within the mitigation strategies, or at least be aware that we acknowledge if this is not the path, we're immediately committed to having a very clear path, because I'm not comfortable walking away from all of this work of two years with nothing at all. So I welcome ideas. |
| 04:15:35.96 | Jill Hoffman | Let me, if I could follow up on that. So this is, and that's kind of where I was going. So, and this is back to, you know, this, the report's not complete, right? And so we went from in May when we had our, on consent calendar, right, a 25 page report that was like, whatever it was it was highlights I think and then we have 139 payers 168 page report tonight with some very detailed things that that we're giving you feedback now so it's unfortunate this this should have been a here's a much more detailed this is where we think we're going okay consultant here's your feedback these these areas while interesting from a theoretical standpoint You know, now that we know that you think, you know, Bridgeway is, you know, the edge, right, the resilient edge, and you've got focus area two and three pretty specific plans, but you didn't actually include the stakeholders, nor did you identify as was laid out in, I think, the scope of work. and talk to those and I think we had some also comments from the county. And so we had some very clear stakeholders that we now have in the room with us. Our feedback as a council is you need to include them in this discussion of focus areas two and three. Focus area four is outside of Sausalito, but we have Terry Thomas in the back of the room from that area. That's focus area four, that's the county. uh, written public comment augmenting that area. And so that's the direction I would think of as the that the scope of what I would think feedback from the city manager with our from the city council. I just can't see that a 25 page report, going from 25 pages to 168, is acceptable from a consultant with a half million dollar contract over two years. I'm sorry. I just, you're not done. |
| 04:18:02.15 | Unknown | So just part of, and I want to apologize to Katie and to the people in that, The Brown Act means that we can only discuss and decide these things when we're on the dais like this. And it's awfully inefficient in some ways, because I think there may have been other opportunities to course correct during the course of this if we had just seen it differently. But this is just the way the sausage is made. but let's not repeat that mistake by giving me mishmash feedback and that's why i wanted whatever we do put it into a form of emotion which i made to try to be very clear and to my colleague melissa i i feel like this doesn't give up any of the good work that's been done there was a lot of great ideation, conceptualization, a variety of tools. which both will remain in the in the institutional memory of this exercise and will inform the creation of additional solution. That additional solution though, which just simply wasn't done, which is preserve the shoreline as is as an option, which we may not be able to afford or may not have a technical solution. So the motion again that I made was that we not accept the report as complete and that we direct staff to continue the work. They're gonna have to come back to us for further approvals on any particular thing. We're just directing them to continue the work really to make a proposal to use additional grant funds. So that's not the motion. I'll read the exact motion again, I'm When I say using remaining grant funds, they have to come back to us or request more money, right? They have to come back to us to specify an engineered infrastructure solution, natural or otherwise that pulls on some of the information they already have, but this is the key. We need an option that protects today's existing shoreline and economic activity within that shoreline And this proposal and all of them should have a cost associated with them. and a way of paying for it. And we should do an economic analysis and a way of increasing economic activity, perhaps this EFID, Special Revenue District, that could pay for it and we should direct staff to work tightly with the property owners and businesses that have a long history on the waterfront. That's my motion. So let me just read it out loud again just so We actually have the words in the record. We have it once before. This I move that the city of Sausalito not accept or file the current shoreline adaptation plan is complete and instead direct staff to continue the work by directing staff to use the remaining grant funds and request additional funds and necessary to specify an engineered infrastructure solution, natural and otherwise, that protects today's existing shoreline and the economic activity within that shoreline. Such an exploration should include a cost estimate of all solutions and make recommendations on how to enhance economic activity in the area including a special efid like investment infrastructure revenue district that could pay for the required infrastructure without using resident taxpayer dollars engagement on a solution can and should include feedback from everyone but should involve a a tightly coupled interaction with property and business owners with long history on the waterfront. That was the motion that the mayor seconded. |
| 04:21:04.66 | Angeline Loeffler | And if I may just add, if you're willing, at the beginning, that we receive but not accept as final because there is good work. Okay. |
| 04:21:15.02 | Unknown | Could we put something in there about acknowledging the ongoing threat of sea level rise? I mean, we have to at least frame this. |
| 04:21:22.91 | Unknown | about as a first sentence. The Chief Justice acknowledges the ongoing threat of sea level rise. |
| 04:21:27.60 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 04:21:27.84 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:21:27.88 | Unknown | Thank you. but, and receives but does not accept or |
| 04:21:31.99 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. What is the... Tell me what this... Sorry, I'm just clarifying. I'll just read it. |
| 04:21:34.83 | Unknown | I'll just read the... I'll just taking the my colleagues amendment so it'll say I move that the city the city of Sausalito acknowledges the threat of sea level rise |
| 04:21:44.36 | Jill Hoffman | Threat. |
| 04:21:49.39 | Unknown | and receives but does not accept as final the current shoreline adaptation plan. Thank you. What is... |
| 04:21:57.95 | Jill Hoffman | Can I ask you a question? What's the significance of receive? What do you want? |
| 04:22:02.60 | Angeline Loeffler | Why do you want that in there? There's a whole lot of good work there. You may not agree with every aspect of it, but let's look at various aspects. Look down at the southern part of town. |
| 04:22:12.97 | Sybil Boutellier | Well, sure. |
| 04:22:13.37 | Angeline Loeffler | There's a lot of very more specific to the existing shoreline that's useful in my opinion, but also, I think frankly, Looking at the alternatives, some of the alternatives that are very unacceptable to the marinas, for example, tells us that if we don't carefully understand what sea level rise and climate change will do to Richardson Bay, we may wind up. unless we have a good solution. I mean, that's the reality. And we don't know, it's hard to predict But we need a more tailored approach to our shoreline and our bay |
| 04:22:55.08 | Unknown | The city of Sausalito acknowledges the threat of sea level rise and receives but does not accept or file the current shoreline adaptation plan as complete. So it's saying we receive it. |
| 04:23:06.83 | Steven Woodside | As a practical matter, we've already received it. Yeah, we've just we've it's been presented we have received it so My concern with your motion is that it doesn't Um, . THE END OF direction regarding our participation in the process moving forward. I don't want to wait till the rest of the $450,000 has been spent before we give further feedback. And I don't want staff to just say, okay, we're going to just continue forward with the existing consultant. |
| 04:23:40.36 | Unknown | So Mayor, I don't think there is any authorization to spend any other money currently. |
| 04:23:41.05 | Steven Woodside | I don't. It says to, you talk about using the rest of the money and or even additional money. But they would have to receive additional authorization. |
| 04:23:52.04 | Unknown | from us. |
| 04:23:53.00 | Steven Woodside | just that's what's not clear to me from your motion. |
| 04:23:53.22 | Unknown | Well, that's right. I thought it was clear that, I mean, we can, we always, you're the lawyer, but I think we say, we want you to come back with an RFP for the right. |
| 04:24:03.29 | Steven Woodside | I want to authorize how the remaining monies are spent. Yeah, that I thought was... |
| 04:24:03.78 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:24:03.93 | Unknown | . |
| 04:24:08.61 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Any of the remaining money? Yeah. |
| 04:24:10.23 | Steven Woodside | I want I want counsel authorization for how the remaining grant funds are spent to ensure that |
| 04:24:11.02 | Jill Hoffman | One of them. |
| 04:24:17.59 | Unknown | they are being spent consistent with our direction. To continue the work by directing staff |
| 04:24:18.80 | Steven Woodside | And then it's just. |
| 04:24:23.07 | Unknown | to use the remaining grant money, change that to come back with a proposal on how to use it. |
| 04:24:27.16 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I like that. And are we authorizing amendments to the current plan? as necessary. |
| 04:24:34.61 | Steven Woodside | I want staff to come back and tell us how they would like to carry out our direction, whether it's to amend the current plan, use the current consultant, hire a different consultant, I want to hear back from staff after they've had an opportunity to confer with the consultant following the significant feedback they've heard this evening. |
| 04:24:50.32 | Unknown | Okay. So I'll just read it again. I don't want to read it all over again. Well, I just went for the record if you didn't run it, but I just added that. |
| 04:24:52.55 | Steven Woodside | I don't want to read it all over again. |
| 04:24:57.85 | Steven Woodside | We're on tape, if the city clerk has questions he can. Yeah, great. Thanks, Mayor. Okay. All right, are we ready to call the questions? All right, all in favor? Aye. Aye. That motion carries 5-0. Thank you everybody for being here this evening and for participating with us. |
| 04:25:21.16 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:25:22.98 | Steven Woodside | All right, I'm gonna take a moment to let the room clear and then we're gonna finish up our meeting. |
| 04:25:29.46 | Angeline Loeffler | And then the rest later. It's so much better when we have a motion so that whatever our direction is, we're not arguing about it. Three arguments. |
| 04:25:39.57 | Steven Woodside | And we |
| 04:25:42.11 | Angeline Loeffler | And we talked about, liked or didn't like about it. Yeah. So thank you for... |
| 04:25:43.09 | Steven Woodside | THE END OF THE END OF THE liked or didn't like about it. you No, it wasn't. |
| 04:25:50.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:25:50.97 | Steven Woodside | to but because |
| 04:25:53.45 | Angeline Loeffler | I think, just as an observer over the years, I've seen the Council say, well, we gave direction. And is it clear? And then argue about it a month later. |
| 04:26:03.31 | Unknown | There wasn't any motion. |
| 04:26:09.26 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, hopefully that is clear enough, but. |
| 04:26:10.58 | Unknown | . Amen. |
| 04:26:14.28 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. . Thank you. |
| 04:26:16.49 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah. |
| 04:26:16.54 | Carolyn Revell | Yeah. |
| 04:26:21.97 | Steven Woodside | I think there was, so what I have heard off the record is that there was a direction headed by prior council members that, oh, I can't do that. |
| 04:26:25.28 | Unknown | I think that, so what I have to |
| 04:26:39.02 | Angeline Loeffler | I went to all three workshops. They were clear. |
| 04:27:34.35 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:27:34.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:27:34.38 | Steven Woodside | Zoom. |
| 04:27:34.99 | Unknown | Thank you. Okay. |
| 04:27:37.32 | Steven Woodside | All right, guys. Okay. If you take your conversation outside, we're going to resume and finish up our meeting for the evening. Shh. Okay, next on our agenda is City Manager reports, Council Member reports, City Council appointments, other Council business. First on the agenda is Item 6A, City Manager information for Council. |
| 04:27:58.58 | Unknown | that. Thank you. I'm afraid of the American scent items. |
| 04:27:59.97 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot about 5D and 5C. Okay, so 5D is my selective memory. Yeah, is receive and is... Hold on by minute order wave remaining penalties pursuant to sausage to municipal code section 5.0 4.2 10 point D in the amount of 8,755 81 imposed on Bayside boat works for delinquent business license taxes. We have our Fine finance director here. Did you have a specific question? You know, I don't need. Yeah. |
| 04:28:36.50 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, you don't need to give the report. I'm sorry that you stuck around. Maybe. Okay, here's why I pulled it off. Because I think this is going to affect more marine businesses. And I've actually talked to Evangeline about this. More marine businesses down in the marineship. Because we're here, right? Because of Brown Act issues we just talked about. And I'm not on the finance committee. And think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. |
| 04:28:40.35 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 04:29:08.93 | Jill Hoffman | One of the people that's been affected by it came to the Finance Committee at the last one to talk about this issue and so I we may be hearing more about this and we may want to engage in a adjusting, I've talked to the city manager about this too, adjusting this new tax changes that we had to carve out something in there for similarly situated marine industries because we don't have a certain category right now that specifically addresses this category. So I wanted, this is why, that's the only reason I pulled it off because I think we do need to discuss this in a more holistic way and probably during the finance season when we're looking at our tax rolls and I think Evangeline is looking at it, right? and looking at the tax structure I know that city managers looking at that too so |
| 04:30:05.08 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, and we received another complaint from another resident that I forwarded to the city manager and the finance director a week ago. |
| 04:30:05.11 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 04:30:13.89 | Steven Woodside | And so I agree, this is right. for re-examination. The BLT was adopted in 2019. It's been in place for over five years. It's time for us to examine, audit, and recalibrate where necessary. . |
| 04:30:27.77 | Jill Hoffman | So anyway, that's the only reason I pulled it off, but I agreed to waive and that's all. So I just want to have that discussion if anybody else wants to weigh in. |
| 04:30:36.68 | Angeline Loeffler | And just to add, Mr. Kaplan did raise the issue at the Finance Committee, and I think we directed staff to take a look at it, and it may come back to us, through us, back to the full council. THE END OF |
| 04:30:47.97 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 04:30:49.19 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, we have someone else who's contending that our BLT is being illegally applied and is, so I do definitely think that a future agenda item, city clerk should, and this is something I put on the agenda two years ago as a future agenda item, is re-examining our business license tax and the manner in which we impose it. So with that, I'll entertain a motion to adopt the resolution enunciated in item 3E. |
| 04:31:19.46 | Angeline Loeffler | So moved. Second. |
| 04:31:21.47 | Steven Woodside | All in favor? |
| 04:31:22.55 | Carol Morales | I- It's 3G. 3E to wave |
| 04:31:27.51 | Steven Woodside | waive the remaining panel. Right, aye. All right, that motion carries 5-0. Okay. Thank you for staying to chat with us. And sorry we didn't call on your expertise more this evening. Okay. |
| 04:31:34.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:31:34.99 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 04:31:43.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Just for the record, it wasn't a resolution, it was by minute order. |
| 04:31:46.95 | Steven Woodside | Yes, but we So we changed it into, because we took it off consent and we discussed it, we made a resolution instead of adopting it by minute order. |
| 04:31:59.54 | Walfred Solorzano | Got it. |
| 04:32:00.43 | Steven Woodside | Okay. |
| 04:32:01.06 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:32:01.14 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:32:01.24 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, here's the issue with 3K. That's the matching grant fund for the SNAP payments. There were two issues with this that I wanted to talk about amongst all of us, and this is why I pulled it off, and again, it's going to be fast. One was process, because we heard about this on matters not on the agenda, after it happened and after that night, I thought, well, I was uncomfortable with it because it probably should have been an agendized item instead of us taking it on AS MATTERS NOT ON THE AGENDA. and we can talk about now or maybe next time if we think about it, But what we probably should have done was at the end of the meeting, we should have just said, hey, let's agendize this for the next meeting and had a quick staff report on it because the SNAP payments were in flux at that time because there were federal lawsuits that were going on to reinstate the SNAP payments. I think the SNAP payments never actually stopped. I think there were Indications that they were going to stop or they were going to be delayed because of the government shutdown. There were federal lawsuits. The federal lawsuits were granted. And I don't think the SNAP payments were ever actually stopped. And. Then the also other question was, well, even if we donate to Marin Community Foundation, how do those payments made through the federal government, like how does that mechanism work? and by the time we actually made the payment, the federal government went back to work anyway. So that conversation probably should have had a different type of and I think that's a really good thing to do. And I think that's a really good thing to do. that's why I asked him to find out some additional information on that and |
| 04:33:50.17 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:33:50.59 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know if you found anything between. |
| 04:33:52.13 | Steven Woodside | Well, I will say snap payments actually were halted temporarily in November causing delays and partial and missed payments from many recipients and when this issue was brought to us by Sophia, time, it was very clear that time is of the essence. The $10,000 matching payment is within the city manager's authority without our approval. And so the agenda setting committee, decided to agendize this as a ratification of an action that the city manager was entitled to take on his own without council approval. because of the low amount and because time was of the essence. So what do you think? |
| 04:34:39.99 | Jill Hoffman | you find out city manager? |
| 04:34:43.06 | Chris Zapata | So what we have is, yes, there was a halt. And on the 6th of November, a judge ordered it unhalted, a federal judge, and then the Department of Justice appealed it. So when we were tasked with this on November 2nd and discussed it on November 4th and the payment was made that week, time was of the essence. That's what I found in terms of backtracking whatCKING WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH THE SNAP PAYMENTS. SO TO THE QUESTION THAT YOU AND I DISCUSSED ON MONDAY, COUNCIL MEMBER HOFFMAN, HOW IS THAT MONEY BEING USED TO BENEFIT SAUSALIDO? I THINK THAT'S A FAIR QUESTION. AND SO I SENT A NOTE TO THE MARIN COUNTY FOUNDATION AND SAID THIS $10,000 MATCHING GRANT THAT THE CITY PROVIDED FOR YOU, I NEED SOME METRICS ON WHO AND HOW MANY FOLKS IN SAUCIALITO WERE AIDED BY IT. |
| 04:35:05.37 | Unknown | Right. |
| 04:35:34.21 | Chris Zapata | and what type of assistance was rendered. So I haven't gotten that back because I just sent that out today. |
| 04:35:39.93 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so my understanding though from the court order was that there was a restoration in all funds. So even if your funds were halted, you now have full restoration of your funds. Even though, you know. |
| 04:35:53.16 | Chris Zapata | But not on November the 4th, that was not the case. |
| 04:35:55.15 | Jill Hoffman | Right. But now everybody's, |
| 04:35:58.42 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 04:35:58.46 | Jill Hoffman | Fully funded. And even if your funds were stopped, they've all now been restored. |
| 04:35:59.25 | Chris Zapata | So you want it? |
| 04:35:59.92 | Steven Woodside | Yeah. |
| 04:36:03.26 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:36:03.28 | Steven Woodside | No, not true. They have not, so it varies from state to state. |
| 04:36:09.63 | Jill Hoffman | in California. In California, my understanding is the lawsuit in Corridor Hill led to full restoration of November benefits. So. |
| 04:36:20.14 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, so at the time there there was what was termed food insecurity by the Marin County Foundation We provided the $10,000 after the county provided $800,000 and then if The court was in flux at that point and then they restored them that would have been after we did it So are you suggesting that we call that money back? |
| 04:36:41.93 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know and that's why that that's my point right and so my points to one is a process point of you know do we take action on things for matters not on the agenda at that meeting I don't think so I think we |
| 04:36:45.38 | Adriana Dinahinian | Thank you. |
| 04:36:59.07 | Jill Hoffman | We maybe discuss it at the end of the meeting, and then we agenda it for the next meeting with the staff report. |
| 04:37:05.47 | Steven Woodside | There wasn't time to do that. |
| 04:37:07.36 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:37:07.37 | Steven Woodside | Time was of the essence. At the time of our meeting, |
| 04:37:08.94 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 04:37:10.53 | Steven Woodside | the, the, the county had just contributed $800,000. We were matching another $10,000 contribution to ensure that our residents who are in need did not miss out on payments upon which they depended. Okay. |
| 04:37:29.87 | Angeline Loeffler | And we did not take an action, but the city manager did. And I'm very comfortable with what he did under the circumstances. |
| 04:37:37.80 | Steven Woodside | And so the action for us tonight is to ratify the action that he took. So that's what's being sought. |
| 04:37:39.67 | Angeline Loeffler | to ratify. |
| 04:37:41.46 | Jill Hoffman | So that's what's being sought. I understand. Look, I'm not saying not to support people that are experiencing food insecurity, but my point was a process point and that we didn't have all the facts. I'm not sure that we have all the facts now, The only other thing we could |
| 04:37:58.93 | Steven Woodside | we could have done |
| 04:37:59.79 | Jill Hoffman | It's called |
| 04:37:59.97 | Steven Woodside | AND EMERGENCY MEETING. |
| 04:38:01.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:38:01.71 | Steven Woodside | you know, we could have possibly called an emergency meeting, 24, called a special meeting with 24 hours notice and reconvened the council to take it. |
| 04:38:12.11 | Jill Hoffman | We're going to have a lot of people that come to us at City Council meetings with emergency situations. And so, you know, we as a council have to figure out how, what's our process for that. We have a lot of emergencies that happen in Sausalito all the time. |
| 04:38:28.19 | Steven Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:38:28.56 | Jill Hoffman | and our community. |
| 04:38:28.96 | Steven Woodside | process for emergencies under the public contract code is that the city manager has authority to take immediate action and come back and seek council ratification at the next meeting. That's already an emergency process enunciated in the public contract code. |
| 04:38:48.67 | Jill Hoffman | It seemed like we were not following that. |
| 04:38:50.97 | Unknown | So, okay. If I could just, I just want to speak to the significance of SNAP and where the money is going now, because the fund through the Marine Community Foundation, which was set up, I think it's called Food on Every Table, all of the funds go directly to the Marine Community Food Bank. And whether SNAP benefits are fully restored, which I'm glad to see that the federal government is working again, SNAP benefits have been restored. There was certainly a period of time during which the county of Marin and a number of families were deeply concerned about how they were going to get the benefits food on the table. and Given the situation economically and given the situation for many families, especially federal government employees, perhaps who didn't have any pay for a number of weeks, at that moment there was significant struggle. And I heard from many community members, some of our neighbors in Marin City, folks at the county, specifically saying, I've never seen longer lines at food pantries. I'm deeply concerned. And the $10,000 is 0.04% of our annual budget and well within the city authority of a city manager and there's certainly been other times when he's acted on on within that authority and we've later ratified it and I'm rather I guess I just I'm sorry to see this be the time that we are bringing it up and I would hope, I mean I know that we all care about a number of issues in Sausalito, but I think when faced with this type of emergency, I'm really comfortable with the action that was taken. |
| 04:39:33.46 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:40:22.90 | Steven Woodside | Again, We heard this item for the first time on November 4. On November 3, the Trump administration announced that it would restart SNAP food benefits, but only at half the amount people usually get. So at the time that this came to the city council, people had not been receiving SNAP benefits for some period of time and were told the day before that they would resume at half the amount they typically get and you know having worked with the anchor outs with the homeless in Sausalito you know every penny counts to people who lack who do not have financial resources |
| 04:41:00.72 | Jill Hoffman | I don't disagree. I don't disagree that there were, that it was an emergency situation, but there are, on the hierarchy of emergency situations. you know, where Sausalio is going to spend our emergency dollars, there's always a hierarchy. So we might have people coming to us all the time for an emergent situation and we need to have some sort of i suppose what i'm asking is do we have some sort of disciplinary tree about what we spend our money on for or how we look at that amongst ourselves as a council. |
| 04:41:40.68 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, we've delegated to the city manager certain authority because we imbue a certain level of trust and respect in the city manager's decision-making process. In this instance, that process was supported by the agenda setting committee who had a dialogue with the city manager two days after the council meeting. |
| 04:41:58.89 | Chris Zapata | MAYBE THERE'S SOME CULPABILITY ON MY PART. AT THE END OF THE MEETING I COULD HAVE SAID UNDER CITY MANAGER REPORTS IS IT CLEAR THAT YOU WOULD LIKE ME TO DONATE THE $10,000 MATCHING FUNDS FROM THE CITY GENERAL FUND TO THIS PROGRAM. I DID NOT. IN THE FUTURE I WILL. so that it's clear and if you want to at that time, SUGGESTED IT NEEDS TO BE PUT ON AN AGENDA, THEN THAT'S A PROCESS |
| 04:42:24.89 | Steven Woodside | Okay, thanks. So with that, I move we ratify... Public comment? Is there a public comment? |
| 04:42:34.51 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Babette McDougall. |
| 04:42:39.54 | Babette McDougall | Well, I can tell by your faces that you're all ready to go home. So thank you very much for engaging me. So I just have to say that as somebody that's involved with fundraising for probably 40 years without revealing my true age. So, I'm going to go ahead and get a little bit of a Have you any experience at all with something called restricted versus unrestricted giving? If you do not, then we should talk a minute about it. First of all, giving a city donation to Marin Community Foundation or one like it which has a certain kind of mission and purpose that is not necessarily to feed the masses of hungry people of which many people in Sausalito are This is where the word restricted comes in handy. Because if you restrict that $10,000 donation for use in Sausalito, then it bounces right back to us. Legally, they can only use it. as it bounces back to Sausalito, if it's been restricted, in that manner. I don't know if this makes any sense to you or not. But to ask for a question later on and say, Gosh, by the way, did anybody in Sausalito benefit? I think that's like closing the barn door after all the animals have escaped. So I like Mr. City Manager's approach where he says, you know, maybe we didn't handle it the right way. But going forward, Maybe we can be a little tighter in the future. And I totally endorse that. This is a one off. and impassioned local resident who is perfectly capable of writing the $10,000 check herself, from what I'm told. I mean, she could have appealed to her five best friends and together Sausalito could have made that up because this is the kind of citizen initiative that usually powers these kinds of programs. So to have the city step up without looking specifically about how it inures to the city is really the trouble that I have here. I totally support feeding anybody that's in need of food support or suffers food insecurity. That's not my problem or the issue here. The issue is how does it come back to the people? |
| 04:44:42.78 | Steven Woodside | Thank you, Babette. City clerk. |
| 04:44:45.24 | Walfred Solorzano | City clerk. speakers. |
| 04:44:46.71 | Steven Woodside | All right, I move that we ratify the matching grant payment of $10,000 from the general fund for the supplemental nutrition assistance program. |
| 04:44:55.49 | Angeline Loeffler | Second. |
| 04:44:55.89 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:44:57.34 | Steven Woodside | We call the roll. |
| 04:44:59.79 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Baustein yes council member Hoffman yes council member sobyeski yes vice mayor Woodside yes mayor Cox |
| 04:45:01.56 | Steven Woodside | Yes. Yes. |
| 04:45:08.67 | Steven Woodside | Yes, that motion carries unanimously. We will now turn to city manager reports, council member reports, city council appointments, other council business. 6A, city manager information for council. For the second time, city manager. |
| 04:45:21.37 | Chris Zapata | THANK YOU MAYOR MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL YOU MUST INDULGE ME BECAUSE I WANT TO SAY THANK YOU I want to tell you that Your buildings aren't your most valuable asset, your people are. BUT WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO NON-PEOPLE ASSETS, YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSETS ARE YOUR ROADS. And the investment you've made in your roads today, Christmas came. Because when you start to see the courses of asphalt being laid down on Bridgeway, that is in the core part of our city that has businesses and people walking, biking, putting strollers through there, and the safety aspects of that project that have been put in place it's a very good day for Sausalito so I wanted to thank you all for your commitment to fund infrastructure in particular roads streets sidewalks and stairs but I also really want to thank our community for their patience the people that are you know businesses along that corridor the people that use that you know to get to and from but it's actually a good day to see pavement going on and going in in Sausalito in that way on ebtype there's also paving going on you may have noticed that there were some issues this weekend I thank Councilmember Hoffman for calling me and Kevin McGowan eight o'clock on a Friday night saying there's water running on on this street. ISSUES THIS WEEKEND I THANK COUNCIL MEMBER HOFFMAN FOR CALLING ME AND KEVIN MCGOWEN AT 8 O'CLOCK ON A FRIDAY NIGHT SAYING THERE'S WATER RUNNING ON THIS STREET AND I THANK KEVIN AND THE MARIN WATER COMPANY FOR COMING IN AND WORKING ON IT BUT KEVIN MAKES THE POINT THAT WE HAVE A LOT OF OLD INFRASTRUCTURE UNDERGROUND AND SOMETIMES WHEN WE RATTLE IT WITH THESE BIG PIECES OF EQUIPMENT, THINGS HAPPEN. BUT IT'S A VERY GOOD DAY FOR SAUSALIDO. AND AGAIN, WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT YOUR COMMITMENT TO FUNDING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE IN A MAJOR WAY IN THIS PAST BUDGET CYCLE. SO THANK YOU AND THANK THE COMMUNITY FOR THEIR PATIENCE. |
| 04:47:16.14 | Jill Hoffman | I JUST WANT TO SAY THANK YOU TO THE STAFF AND EVERYBODY FOR getting Easterby Street repaved, And, um, answering the phone on Friday and Saturday and Sunday. about the, and we have a newly paved road and some new pipes, so thank you. |
| 04:47:35.66 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, thank you for always being available on the weekends city manager All right, city attorney information for counsel. Sergio. |
| 04:47:44.74 | Sergio Rudin | Uh, not at this time. |
| 04:47:46.94 | Steven Woodside | Okay, council member committee reports. Yes, vice mayor. |
| 04:47:50.26 | Angeline Loeffler | We did have a finance committee meeting on the 13th of November. There were four items on the agenda. I'm just gonna quickly say one of them was an announcement that We are, or the city is reestablishing a transparency tool, a financial transparency. transparency tool through OpenGov. This is something that used to be done and it will help us all as we go into budget and other financial decision making. Um, We also decided to defer until next year consideration of such things as an annual comprehensive financial report, But we will keep it on our agenda to make sure we address it early in the year so we have whatever we decide or recommend we can have it in place or at least understand the implications as we go into budget. We did have extensive discussions on two other items. One was the forecasting, a 10-year financial forecasting project. I don't think we're ready to report on any detail right now. Similarly, we have questions with respect to the 115 trust for pensions and how best to handle the invested money right now. and what the options are and we'll be coming back to the full council with recommendations as soon as we have something to recommend. Thank you. |
| 04:49:11.48 | Steven Woodside | Great, thank you for that report. And thank you for convening the finance committee again, city manager. I think it serves a really important function for our town. Any other council member committee reports? I have no appointments for this evening. We've already given direction on future agenda items. Are there any other future agenda items folks would like to memorialize? |
| 04:49:35.71 | Unknown | I would, Mayor. We had an election where if Measure K hadn't passed, there was gonna have to be some action taken by this council to keep us at safe harbor. And I presume staff had contemplated that, and I think it would behoove the community and everyone to get a report on what Plan B would have been. |
| 04:49:59.40 | Steven Woodside | Yeah, you're gonna get a report on December 2. |
| 04:50:02.00 | Unknown | Okay, so we'll see the report. Maybe I'll ask for an agenda item then, but let's start with the report. Okay. Thank you very much. |
| 04:50:11.10 | Steven Woodside | Um... minutes from Boards Commission we still are not seeing many minutes so I don't know what whether Minutes are being taken from Planning Commission meetings and other things, but I would like to see them attached when we have them. Other reports of significance and now I'll open it up to public comment on items 6a through 6c and 6e through 6g City clerk |
| 04:50:34.93 | Walfred Solorzano | We have a bet McDougal. |
| 04:50:39.84 | Babette McDougall | So I just want to address the Finance Committee meeting issue. I wonder, Mr. Woodside, did you know that a notice went out apprising citizens that the November 13 Finance Committee meeting was canceled? and that a new one had not yet been scheduled Thank you. |
| 04:50:58.72 | Walfred Solorzano | Next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 04:51:01.20 | Steven Woodside | hold on city manager can you track that down so somehow some notice went out that the Finance Committee evidently that the Finance Committee meeting was canceled if you can get a hold of that notice from Ms. McDougall and figure out how that happened |
| 04:51:16.32 | Angeline Loeffler | May have been the previous meeting that was canceled. |
| 04:51:18.78 | Steven Woodside | I know the previous meeting was canceled. I just want to track it down and make sure that we're communicating clearly. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:51:26.94 | Sandra Bushmaker | Sandra. Hi again, two things for future agenda items. I really would like to see this Rem- or this caught- the MLK tenants costs that the city has announced that they are going to cover their relocation costs. That to me is a blank check. And I think that needs to be discussed thoroughly by the council before. we start writing checks for this relocation. And I realize that it's downstream. We're not anywhere near it as a imminent. expenditure. But I think it needs to be discussed because I, like I said earlier, I was very surprised to see that as I Don't believe it was discussed at all by the council. Secondly, I really want to light a fire under you with regard to this Plan Bay Area 2025. This is based on just terrible, terrible data that has just basically been, as far as I can see, made up or there are some other influences that are going on. plus the the EIR. has these Significant and unavoidable. Yeah. impacts that are not 51% of them are not going to be addressed. This has impact on Sausalito. We're going to get hammered, in my opinion, on the next RHNA cycle, because this plan is going through based on erroneous data. Now, the December 18th meeting is the absolute deadline for putting city council input into this. So I'd really like to see this agendized so you can discuss this plan. And we're going to be, Catalyst California will be providing information to you. It's really, really a big deal. MTC, as you know, has subsumed ABAG. ABAG doesn't even have a staff anymore. MTC staff |
| 04:53:33.73 | Steven Woodside | Sandra, your time is up. If you have recommendations of feedback that you believe the city council should provide to a bag slash MTC, I request you put those in writing to us. I don't know that we're gonna be able to fit anything else on our December two agenda, which is our last real working agenda for the year. But I invite you to provide us with your feedback so that the housing committee can consider taking action. |
| 04:54:03.33 | Walfred Solorzano | All right, city clerk. No, no more speakers. |
| 04:54:07.67 | Steven Woodside | All right, then we'll move on to item seven, adjournment, and we will adjourn this evening's meeting at 10.24 p.m. Thank you, everybody. |
David Lay — Neutral: Discussed housing location issues, arguing that senior housing should be near the town center and that young people need proximity to transportation and job opportunities. ▶ 📄
Mike Monsef — Neutral: Congratulated Councilmember Blaustein, thanked Vice Mayor for seawall idea, and suggested a parklet at Princess Street for safety and community benefit. ▶ 📄
Mauro Dosolini — Neutral: Reported severe flooding at Gate 5 Road, requested city action to maintain the flap valve, and noted lack of response from city engineers. ▶ 📄
Michelle Mocalla — Against: Criticized the Measure K campaign as unfair and biased, expressed feeling like a second-class citizen in Northside, and opposed building 50 units in MLK Park. ▶ 📄
Bora Hanh — Against: Stated the council does not care about North Sausalito, cited poor maintenance of MLK Park, opposed housing there, and demanded accountability for Measure K promises. ▶ 📄
Aaron Nathan — Against: Condemned the Measure K campaign as misleading, especially regarding senior housing promises, and called for a public audit of all commitments made. ▶ 📄
Nathan Scripps — Neutral: Provided an update on school funding from Measure G and called for restructuring district administration based on educator feedback. ▶ 📄
Deborah McCutler — Against: Opposed Measure K, concerned about losing public park space to private housing, and mentioned impacts on the artist community, traffic, and safety. ▶ 📄
Cheryl Basio — Neutral: Expressed frustration with state housing mandates and urged the council to involve assembly members to address unrealistic housing numbers. ▶ 📄
Alice Merrill — Against: Stated Measure K was 'jammed down people's throats' with misinformation and urged the council to stop the project for the good of the town. ▶ 📄
Sandra Bushmaker — Against: Opposed Measure K, questioned city-funded tenant relocation, and raised concerns about Plan Bay Area 2050's growth forecasts and funding shortfall. ▶ 📄
Babette McDougall — Against: Criticized the city's aggressive Measure K outreach and urged similar effort for general city communications; suggested family-friendly improvements for city events. ▶ 📄
Jack Burrows — Against: Contrasted city spending on Dunphy Park with the potential negative impacts of Measure K on MLK Park, warning the council of future consequences. ▶ 📄
Sybil Boutellier — In Favor: Called for community unity post-Measure K, hoping all sides can work together to implement the measure in the best possible way. ▶ 📄