| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:49.44 | Mayor Woodside | It's 514 and... Thank you all for being here. We're sorry that we were a little bit late, but we will call this general regular meeting of the city council to order and ask that we have the roll call. |
| 00:01:14.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:01:16.27 | Scott Thornburg | And I will note for the record that Councilmember Sobieski arrived at 3.06 p.m. |
| 00:01:23.17 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Hoffman. Thank you. Council member Sobieski. Vice mayor Blaustein. Here. |
| 00:01:30.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.43 | Mayor Woodside | Here, and we'll now have the Pledge of Allegiance. |
| 00:01:37.87 | Diane Oshima | Thank you. |
| 00:01:38.02 | Walfred Solorzano | But allegiance to the flag |
| 00:01:38.06 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:01:38.94 | Diane Oshima | to the flag of the United States of America. |
| 00:01:39.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:01:40.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. |
| 00:01:40.35 | Unknown | I think I understand. |
| 00:01:41.03 | Jill Hoffman | of America and to the Republic for all. |
| 00:01:41.97 | Unknown | and to the Republic. |
| 00:01:43.64 | Walfred Solorzano | for which it commands. |
| 00:01:43.95 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:01:44.37 | Unknown | So yeah. |
| 00:01:44.79 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:01:45.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:45.26 | Unknown | One nation. |
| 00:01:45.35 | Unknown | one nation, under God. |
| 00:01:46.02 | Jill Hoffman | under God, indivisible, liberty, and justice for all. |
| 00:01:48.52 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:01:48.59 | Unknown | individual. |
| 00:01:48.98 | Jill Hoffman | Liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:01:50.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:57.50 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, we just came from a closed session, a rather lengthy one, and again, our apologies for being a few minutes late, but there were no actions taken in the closed session to report out at this time. We met on the seven items on the posted agenda, and again, there was no action taken to report out at this time. We do at this point ask for approval of the agenda and before we get to that, I just wanna announce that we will be considering on May 14th somewhere between four and about 6.30 and we'll post the exact time the issues related to Pelican Harbor. That will take place, public open session, on the 14th, and stay tuned for the exact notice as to when the start time will be. |
| 00:02:55.18 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, just. THE END OF THE END OF THE To remind you, there is a change to the agenda because of some email that we received. |
| 00:03:02.04 | Mayor Woodside | Very well, I think I'll ask the city attorney if he could explain that to us. |
| 00:03:02.09 | Chris Zapata | Very well. |
| 00:03:09.84 | Mayor Woodside | And by the way, Sergio, thank you for being here in person. |
| 00:03:13.67 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm hoping my mic is on. Yeah, so we did receive an email correspondence from applicant Jake Beyer requesting withdrawal of item 5E from the business calendar. I've asked the clerk to add that item as late mail to this agenda item. |
| 00:03:36.96 | Chris Zapata | Is your microphone picking up, Mr. City Attorney? |
| 00:03:38.76 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:03:38.97 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 00:03:38.98 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 00:03:39.03 | Scott Thornburg | I hear it. |
| 00:03:39.71 | Sergio Rudin | . |
| 00:03:39.96 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 00:03:40.20 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 00:03:40.22 | Scott Thornburg | TODAY. |
| 00:03:40.42 | Sergio Rudin | All right. |
| 00:03:40.49 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 00:03:41.45 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:03:41.50 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 00:03:41.57 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:03:41.67 | Sergio Rudin | THE FAMILY IS NOT ABLE TO |
| 00:03:41.72 | Mayor Woodside | it. |
| 00:03:41.80 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 00:03:41.84 | Mayor Woodside | if it's a little closer. |
| 00:03:44.62 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, so it just the email correspondence indicates I'm withdrawing my appeal to the JADU denial at 426 Pine, project ID. and request the item be removed from tonight's regular agenda dated May 5th, 2026. to be clear about what this is and is not, I'm not conceding the merits. The email goes on to discuss further anticipated litigation and that will be attached to the agenda at a later time. I would suggest that the council take public comment since it is a listed item on the agenda, but then Afterwards, I would recommend we honor the applicant's request for the drone. |
| 00:04:24.53 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, so we'll remain on the agenda, and when we get to it, if there are members of the public who wish to comment, we'll take comments on that item at that time. Very well. So do we have, Motion to approve the. |
| 00:04:37.86 | Scott Thornburg | Move approval of the agenda. Second, |
| 00:04:41.24 | Mayor Woodside | and we do have to have a roll call because we have a member attending remotely. |
| 00:04:47.48 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? Yes, councilmember Sobieski. Yes, vice mayor Blaustein. Yes mayor Woodside Thank you. |
| 00:04:58.18 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. We have an unusual agenda order tonight. We have a business item first, and it's with great pleasure that I ask Kathy Nikitas, the HR director, to Give a little report on this. Thank you. |
| 00:05:20.37 | Kathy Nikitas | Good evening, good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor, council members, city attorney, city manager, residents of Sausalito and all other members of the public that are here. As you all know, Chris Zapata, city manager, will be leaving his position after nearly five years with the city of Sausalito at the helm. No one can replace Mr. Zapata, but the work of the city continues, and last fall, the council began a robust process to find our next city manager. In January, the City Council enlisted Bob Murray and Associates, BMA, a top-level executive recruitment firm based in Roseville, California, for this search. BMA screened a pool of 25 highly qualified applicants, and council interviewed the top recommended candidates. After interviews and consideration, the City Council extended a conditional offer of employment to Elaine Forbes on April 7, 2026. Ms. Forbes has served the Port of San Francisco for 15-plus years, first as the Finance and Administration Deputy Director and most recently as the Executive Director. She brings further strong budget and administrative experience from her years as Finance Director and Chief Administ administrative officer with the city and county of San Francisco. Ms. Forbes also holds a master's degree in urban planning from UCLA. Pursuant to government code section 54953D of the Brown Act, council shall receive an oral report on salary and fringe benefits prior to taking any final action to approve changes to local agency executive compensation. Thank you. So therefore, I will be reading the material terms of Ms. Forbes' employment are as follows. Commencement date, July 1st, 2026. The term is an initial term of three years ending June 30th, 2029, with an automatic renewal of a one-year term unless notice of non-renewal is given by council. The base salary is $275,000. Incentive pay after one year of employment, Ms. Forbes will be eligible for incentive pay of up to $10,000 annually. Severance in the event of involuntary termination without cause, the city agrees to pay Ms. Forbes a lump sum cash payment of three months base salary, calculated at the base salary and effect at the effective date of termination, and health care and other insurance-related benefits will be continued for the same period. Retirement benefits through the California Public Employees Retirement System, CalPERS, AT THE RAID OF 2% AT 55 FORMULA. AUTOMOBILE ALLOWANCE OF $12.50 PER MONTH. AND OTHER BENEFITS, SHE WILL GENERALLY BE PROVIDED THE SAME FRINGE BENEFITS PROVIDED TO OTHER DEPARTMENT MANAGERS OF THE CITY AS ESTABLISHED BY THE COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS PLAN FOR THE NON-REPRESENTED EMPLOYEE GROUPS EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2023 THROUGH JUNE 30, 2026. which includes a city cafeteria plan, participation in the city's deferred compensation program, including employer contributions, vacation, sick leave, and holidays will occur at the same rate as other department managers provided however that Ms. Forbes will be entitled to upfront 80 hours of vacation leave and 40 hours of sick leave at the beginning of her employment. And leave a call is offset to not begin until after these initial banks would have normally been earned. And finally, administrative leave shall be provided at the same rate as the assistant city manager position. To complete the appointment of Elaine Forbes, the City Council is now requested to consider and approve the employment agreement for the position of City Manager, which is part of the agenda. And at this point, I am pleased to introduce to the city Elaine Forbes. |
| 00:09:01.77 | Elaine Forbes | Welcome. |
| 00:09:06.93 | Elaine Forbes | Thank you so much. I hope everyone can hear me. I want to thank our HR director for her diligent work getting me to this point. And also to thank every single member of the city council for your diligent work in evaluating me and figuring out if I was the city manager that this wonderful community needs at this time. I'm heart warmed by the people who came without my solicitation to express their excitement for me about joining. I have Diane Oshima here, who I worked with at the port for many years, planning and environmental director. And she was responsible for such great planning on many of our big development projects that had both community benefits and innovation as part of those developments. Alice Rogers is here, who is our really number one community advocate and at every meeting for 15 years on our developments in her neighborhood and in other near-term issues related to the well-being around the Giants ballpark and other issues. And she has come here to express her happiness for me. I have Sarah Jones, who I worked with at the planning department, a million, million years ago now. and she has many of the same functions that I will have here in Marin County. And I wanna thank the council for asking me why Sausalito. I've been watching this community and it's a beautiful place. There's a lot of controversy and I think the controversy is actually a strength of the community because the engagement is so strong. And there's not a lot of places in our government world that continues to listen to one another and fight things out. So I think you have the ingredients for extreme innovation. And somehow this community has stayed, the fabric has stayed intact, even with development pressures and economic pressures. And I think that people from around the world save money and dream about coming to Sausalito for a very, very good reason. And I'm incredibly honored to join this community. Thank you so much. Oh, one last thing. To our city manager, Chris Zapata, you are a wonderful city manager. I'm joining a workforce that's inspired, that has succession planning, that stretches across all kinds of work that is not in your job description to grow and innovate for this town. I had the opportunity to speak with the leadership team and it helped me make a decision about what I wanna do for this community. And I'm very excited to join the leadership team and thank you Mr. Zapata for making us so strong. Thank you, happy to join. |
| 00:11:50.18 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you very much. |
| 00:11:56.15 | Mayor Woodside | Since we've had an opportunity to ask Elaine questions before this moment, I don't know that we have any further questions from the dais before we hear from the public. Is there anyone wishing to speak on this business item one? Sarah, welcome. |
| 00:12:19.00 | Sarah Jones | Thank you and good afternoon. My name is Sarah Jones. I'm the Community Development Director for the County of Marin. I am also a resident of Marin County and I am also a longtime friend, colleague and fan of your new city manager. and so first I want to say that I told the county executive Derek Johnson that I was coming down here and he said please please please on behalf of the county welcome her congratulate Elaine and tell her we're excited she's coming so you have an official Marin County welcome and then also as an individual I just want to say Sausalito has lucked out enormously. Elaine is just fantastic. Truly, I've known many, many public servants in a quarter of a century of doing this work, and Elaine is the top. Um, and also Elaine, you are very, very lucky to be in Marin and be in Sausalito. So welcome and thank you. |
| 00:13:24.83 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Sarah. |
| 00:13:31.40 | Alice Rogers | GOOD AFTERNOON, MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. I'M ALICE ROGERS. I'M A FORMER SOSCELO RESIDENT, A FORMER CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, AND A FORMER MAYOR. SO IT'S FUN TO BE HERE AGAIN. |
| 00:13:43.88 | Mayor Woodside | Welcome home. |
| 00:13:44.98 | Alice Rogers | Thank you. um, I also have the great fortune to work with the port a lot in San Francisco, and that's why I'm here to commend your choice of Elaine Forbes. I'm here to commend the process that brought you Elaine and to enthusiastically congratulate you for making the selection. She's a gem. I doubt there's a better suited person to be working with you. as you come to terms with the challenges of the marinship and the broader sea level rise reality. I say this as one who worked in Elaine's orbit as her staff led a three-year waterfront plan update process, a process that spent as much time educating the general public on the arcane policies of legislation, economic, and ecological forces that shape planning as well as collecting the input from diverse sources. This was a process that yielded recommendations to guide the plan that were unanimous. It's amazing and it's thanks to the process that the port led. As one of the council members who helped craft the MarinShip specific plan, I'm aghast to know that it's still here. The working waterfront is no less important now than it was then, but it's time to integrate it into the city's fabric and, um, Elaine Forbes is the ideal thought partner and resource to help you And I want to thank Elaine, for choosing Marin Sausalito as well. This is a city that still has my heart. Thank you. |
| 00:15:40.69 | Jill Hoffman | Alice Rogers is also one of the youngest ever mayors in the history of Sausalito and was only in her 30s when she was elected to the city council. So just putting that out there. Months, close. |
| 00:15:52.13 | Mayor Woodside | So we have two records that are Thank you. I see someone else approaching the dais. Welcome. |
| 00:16:03.73 | Diane Oshima | Good evening, Mr. Mayor and the City Council members. I am Diane Oshima and As mentioned, I really had the great privilege of being able to work alongside Elaine, and I too attest to what a phenomenal person you will have taking the helm. A lot of the points that Alice just cited highlight the relevance of the work that she's done in the San Francisco waterfront and what she can bring to Sausalito. But I think the qualities that really highlight her services, her is your fierce devotion to public service and to working with community and to creating teams of people who will find support and discovery and engaging with each other to come up with good solutions and addressing the needs of this town. She's strategic, but she's also totally operational, working hands-on to solve the day-to-day problems in the interests of your long-term vision. So you are so well set and I am very happy for Sausalito as well as Elaine. Thank you. |
| 00:17:18.64 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you very much. Anyone else? Any other public comments? Seeing none. |
| 00:17:27.50 | Mayor Woodside | Online? Thank you. |
| 00:17:29.32 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 00:17:33.52 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. Bushmaker? |
| 00:17:35.04 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good afternoon, Council and Ms. Forbes. I want to welcome you to Sausalito. I'm a former Council Member and Mayor group, and Bye. am very active with this town in terms of following what's happening with the City Council. I welcome you. and look forward to working with you. You have your work cut out for you as everything is controversial in this town, just about. So thank you very much for being here with us. |
| 00:18:05.26 | Mayor Woodside | Any other comments online? |
| 00:18:07.22 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 00:18:08.21 | Mayor Woodside | All right, so let's bring it back for council discussion and action. |
| 00:18:14.78 | Chris Zapata | I'd like to put the motion on the table to approve. The contract. |
| 00:18:19.03 | Mayor Woodside | Is there a second? |
| 00:18:19.34 | Chris Zapata | Or is that Lane? |
| 00:18:19.93 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:18:19.96 | Chris Zapata | THEIR OWNERS. |
| 00:18:20.48 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:18:20.72 | Jill Hoffman | Second, |
| 00:18:21.56 | Mayor Woodside | All right. You beat your colleague over here. |
| 00:18:25.73 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I'm really excited. Thank you. |
| 00:18:27.55 | Mayor Woodside | Yes, okay, so we have a motion and a second, and I think it's fitting that each of us maybe say something very short. Brief. |
| 00:18:37.41 | Chris Zapata | The waters of the port of San Francisco touch the waters of Sausalito. So in some sense, you've always been here, and we look forward to having you on this side of the bay. Good luck to you, the team you're going to lead. Congratulations to City Manager Zapata for laying the groundwork for a promising future. We are indeed super lucky to have someone of your depth, skill, and experience as evidenced by some of the comments here today here to lead the town we all care and love about. |
| 00:19:02.86 | Mayor Woodside | And Jill from the East Coast, would you like to saying it's the words. |
| 00:19:06.23 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. Yeah. From the other coast, the other, the other waters that touch San Francisco, if you go down around the, down around the hill. down around the other ocean. Yeah, I thought going, you know, managing 200 plus employees and a 200 plus million budget down to Sausalito, 20 plus employees and something less than 200 something million, you might be the perfect person to manage Sausalito and, going from Teamsters and whoever else along the waterfront to our waterfront. He might be the perfect person to wrangle Sausalito. So, um, Welcome. We're excited to have you in a, And we look forward to working with you in the future. So thank you for coming to South Salido and taking us on. |
| 00:19:52.81 | Mayor Woodside | Thanks. Ciao. |
| 00:19:55.00 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. I want to follow on to Elaine Forbes' public announcement regarding this opportunity and say welcome home. Um, Beyond the waterfront experience and the other points of intersection between Sausalito and San Francisco, I am so impressed by Elaine's experience collaborating with regional partners, such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which was instrumental in accomplishing some of her biggest projects on behalf of the Port of San Francisco, and I look forward to collaborating with them. They are based right here in Sausalito as well. and to collaborating with them on the future of our marineship and our waterfront. And so welcome aboard. You have inspired our leadership team, and you have inspired us to really embrace the challenges in front of us. |
| 00:20:45.71 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 00:20:47.13 | Jill Hoffman | Elaine, I was very lucky to first meet you in the water at the South End Rowing Club, as we are both bay swimmers, but I have admired your career as the director of the port, as someone who has worked in public affairs and with the city of San Francisco for over a decade, and I was so thrilled and excited to see that you had applied, and I don't quite have words for how thrilled and excited I am that you are here with us today. We are so lucky to have someone of your caliber, experience, connections, network, and also just general kind personality and demeanor. You're not only a great public servant, but in my experience knowing you outside of your day-to-day work, you're also just a great person. So we're very lucky to have you, and we can't wait for you to get started. And a big thank you to city manager Zapata for setting us up for success, for doing so much work here in our community. to make sure that as Elaine takes the reins, we're in an excellent position to continue to set Sausalito up for success for decades to come. So welcome home, Elaine, and thank you so much, Chris. |
| 00:21:50.38 | Mayor Woodside | It's probably the most important single decision that we make and in this case, a decision that we hope will last for several years. Elaine, I think has proven to be a strong executive and it's very important for this community, I think, to have a strong executive to help us sort through the many issues that we face and you're so well equipped to do that. We're so excited that you're here. So we should vote on the motion first, and then I'm gonna ask the vice mayor to do something that it may start a new tradition here. |
| 00:22:29.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:22:29.88 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:22:30.50 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. So on the motion roll call. |
| 00:22:34.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? Yes. Councilmember Sobieski? |
| 00:22:39.82 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. |
| 00:22:40.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Blaustein. Yes, Mayor Woodside. |
| 00:22:43.33 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:22:43.45 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. |
| 00:22:44.46 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:22:44.48 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, Elaine, we'd like to pin you formally with the city of Sausalito pin. So if you wanna come forward. |
| 00:23:05.45 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Amen. Thank you. The Pressure. |
| 00:23:30.41 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:23:31.03 | Unknown | I was trying to. Maybe you can do it that way so you can chill in your kitchen. Okay, because you can get chills. |
| 00:23:34.91 | Unknown | Okay, let's do it. |
| 00:23:37.97 | Unknown | You sent me an inundated. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. All right. |
| 00:23:39.98 | Aubin Salazar | Yeah. |
| 00:23:40.97 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:24:04.51 | Jill Hoffman | Mayor, I have an announcement about the post office box and I know we're getting ready to start the PG&E presentation, but can I? do a quick announcement about it. I think people are going to be excited about it. |
| 00:24:15.65 | Mayor Woodside | Um, Sure, we do have that later on the agenda, but sure, go ahead if it's short. |
| 00:24:22.03 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, yeah. Good news. The post office box from the, um, The postmistress. Oh, look, you have the graphic. Okay, here it is. See where the little red X is right there? The new drive up post office box is going to be right there at city hall. It's going to be a left hand post office box. You get a drive around one way. The police chief, the postmistress, and the city manager have all agreed that that's where the new drive out post office, the mail post office box is going to be in Sausalito. So there you have it. |
| 00:24:53.01 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, thank you. |
| 00:24:53.32 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:24:54.36 | Mayor Woodside | Um, |
| 00:24:54.87 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. quite, |
| 00:24:55.19 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. We're now going to a special presentation, which means we are here to listen. This is not an action item, but we do have Mr. Van Goethe from PG&E here to make a presentation. Mark? |
| 00:25:11.80 | Chris Zapata | Vicente. |
| 00:25:15.14 | Mayor Woodside | on Zoom. |
| 00:25:24.54 | Mayor Woodside | Mr. City Manager. |
| 00:25:27.96 | Chris Zapata | I don't see him in the. |
| 00:25:31.08 | Mayor Woodside | I think we better skip this then. |
| 00:25:33.01 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Yep. |
| 00:25:35.29 | Mayor Woodside | We did set it for his schedule, as I recall, but I'm sorry, I hope he's okay. |
| 00:25:46.52 | Mayor Woodside | OK. Okay, so now it's time for hearing from the public on public communications on matters that are not on the agenda. I have a number of cards and I'm going to go |
| 00:26:05.58 | Mayor Woodside | I'll just start with Ha ha, never mind it, we've already heard from Diane. |
| 00:26:13.66 | Unknown | He's walking in. |
| 00:26:15.40 | Mayor Woodside | He's walking in. |
| 00:26:16.34 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:26:22.91 | Mayor Woodside | There he is. Okay, welcome, Mr. Van Gorder. |
| 00:26:28.19 | Mark Van Gorder | Amen. I apologize very much. Hello, Council Members, Mark Van Gorder, Local Government Affairs with Pacific Gas and Electric. I'd hoped to be here about half an hour ago, so I apologize. We can dive right into this. I'm going to move through this fairly quickly. The intent that council may have questions about any part of this. The main purpose of this is to especially make it available to the public. So do I move this clicker? You just asked for the next slide. All right. So I'll just kind of roll through this fairly quickly. We can go to the next slide. We can just next, next. Thank you. Nice. So, okay, briefly, so people are aware, and it's been a particular topic here in Sausalito about undergrounding. PG&E is working to make wildfire mitigation through many different protection levels. So without reading this directly, I'll just say that the main operational ways that we have is constant monitoring. Right now we're in a 24-7 posture of monitoring from our hazard awareness warning center. which is located in San Ramon. Uh, If we have a public safety power shut off, the city along with the County Office of Emergency Services gets a notification. We send that out to customers, to council, to local emergency operation centers. So that's the situational awareness. We have resiliency work going on to rebuild our lines overhead and underground. There is currently a 16 mile scoping project in Mill Valley with the possibility for more undergrounding to come in the high fire risk areas of Marin County. But that work is always approved by the California Public Utilities Commission in three year increments. I'm sorry. And PG&E is currently working on the possibility with CPUC and the California state legislation for more undergrounding in a 10-year program. That economy of scale will help us to reduce costs, plan better with cities, let people know where we might be building, coordinate road paving and restoration, that sort of thing. So we're rebuilding the system overhead and underground, there was a lot of work just the past two to three years right here in Sausalito at the substation and the distribution lines that went out from there. And then the other thing that is somewhat a pain point where we have high fire risk areas, we have enhanced power safety settings. If a branch, an animal, a bird's nest, whatever the thing is, a Mylar balloon, HITS THE ELECTRIC LINE. Those lines will turn off in one-tenth of a second. So typically, something hits the branch There will be a fireball. of energy and sparks and heat that travels down the line. And if it's in an area where we have dry vegetation, high winds, that can create a problematic fire situation rather quickly. So what the lines do is they shut off within one-tenth of a second. We then have to patrol the lines. While we have good fire mitigation in place as a result of that, what we also have is some power outages. So that that's the balance that we're trying to achieve. We have drones, we have foot patrol, helicopters, And we're trying to get the power restored as quickly as possible, but we have to patrol those lines first. So that's the layers of wildfire protection includes vegetation management and such. So if we can go to the next slide. And here's some of the tools. This shows where we have high definition cameras and weather station that overlooks most of Sausalito. We have AI assisted cameras that can detect the difference between smoke and fog. They will automatically, in many cases, alert the local authorities. If we see something that looks like it might be smoke, ignition or whatnot, and that will go to the local authorities to investigate. Next slide. We have safety infrastructure protection teams. In the event that we have a fire that's breaking out in a particular location or very high fire risk area weather where we have low humidity, high winds, red flag warnings, all the typical indicators that there could be fast fire spread, we will send our teams out in advance and they will pre-treat the polls, something you probably heard about either in the papers, television, FOS check, just goopy stuff that typically they drop in from the airplanes or the helicopters, but they'll pre-treat the poles. What's the advantage of that? If, God forbid, there is a fire that comes through the area, it helps people return home more quickly because they're not waiting for PG&E to rebuild the entire electric circuit that was serving their communities if the poles burn. So it's been very effective in reducing costs and getting people back home should the sheriff or local law enforcement require evacuations of those areas. And so these are the different safety and infrastructure protection teams covering the various counties and locations throughout our five regions. Next slide. I will quickly cover this. We haven't had a public safety power shut off. Next slide. We haven't had a public safety power shut off that I recall since 2019. We may have had a small one in 2020. but many people in Marin will probably remember that a good portion of Marin, most all of Marin was without power at the time of that event. So what we've done is we've gotten a lot more surgical in the scope of these public safety power shutoffs down to the circuit level. Without getting into the details, this one in particular was transmission level shutoff and because of that, it was shutting off substations that then served the county of Marin Now we can, bring it down to a substation that maybe is, we'll take Sausalito as an example, serving the city of Sausalito, but we don't have high fire risk in the downtown and the business areas, the residential areas here. but we might have some of the surrounding areas that have, um, more vegetation and more chance for sparks and ignition. So we can just, we can isolate those circuits. And so it's just gotten a lot more precise. In the event that this happened, as I mentioned, we'll be talking with the county, with the city at a regular cadence. We have twice a day meetings, we have briefings. You can always reach out and contact me directly, but that's typically how we work at the county and city level and then customers are notified, the media is notified and we can set up community resource centers to provide blankets, food, charging stations and other support needs. Next slide. So this is the timeline that I just mentioned as far as our communications are concerned. And this just shows you, right? 2019, that's more of a mallet versus a scalpel that we're working towards now. Next. Again, I won't, anyone can take this report, this presentation off. If you have questions, we can come back to it. But this is just talking about how we're, public safety power shutoffs to me, We're still going to use them, but they're fairly rare. And when we use them, they're very small in size and duration. |
| 00:34:23.08 | Unknown | next. |
| 00:34:26.76 | Mark Van Gorder | next. This may be helpful to city staff and I'm happy to help post meeting, but there is a portal where maps and data and daily briefings and situational reports are available to staff if you open your emergency operations center. So this is the portal for the public safety power shutoff should we have one. Next. And we do have a lot of customer services and support. This is where I'm hoping community, residents, businesses may wanna take a look at this link. Each one of these should have a link to, you know, provide more information, whether it's food assistance, transportation, the backup power programs. We do have a program Going back to the enhanced power safety settings that I mentioned, we have something called the Residential Storage Initiative here in Marin. That is a I'll say it's a Tesla battery. It's a, it's a Tesla type battery, but, uh, you know, a full wall battery, not just a small two hour charger, um, that PG and E will, uh, provide, install, um, and get the permits for this is a qualified customer outreach program. It's not something that it's, it's something we will reach out to customers about. Um, but if customers have had three or four enhanced power safety setting outages, if they have medical needs, if they're identified with medical needs and maybe have some income challenges, PG&E has identified about three or 400 customers in the county of Marin who might qualify for that program and we continue to send letters out to those folks to encourage them to apply. I'm working with our team to, see if there's a way we can get better engagement because you might imagine the reaction from some customers say, hey, guess what, we're gonna install a brand new Tesla you know, battery powered, all you have to do is give us a phone call and I'd probably tell my mom to you know, don't call that number. They're going to want information from you. So we need to work on the trust factor of that. of that program. So I'm trying to work with our team on getting more people because we haven't had a lot of adoption. that the program exists. We'll skip through this. I think I covered it fairly well. This is a nice little graphic of how that works. The key part here is the patrol. So main point is the power goes off. That's terrific. But until we patrol the lines, we don't turn the power back on. Because if we do, and there's still a branch or something on it, and it catches fire, we have a problem. Next. |
| 00:37:20.63 | Mark Van Gorder | Communications of the, this is the process next. Next one. |
| 00:37:30.95 | Mark Van Gorder | And again, this is how we're trying to make sure the customers are fully aware of what's happening when we have these outages. And a lot of the work that we're doing, strengthening the lines overhead, we're covering the wires with insulation, They'll start to look a little bit more like your communications lines, your heavy communications lines. But I think EPSS will be a lot more reduced here in the community. Next. next. |
| 00:38:07.00 | Unknown | Next. |
| 00:38:10.29 | Mark Van Gorder | This just shows how much of our service territory is in a high fire risk area. It's a substantial amount. And each year that we go back to remap this, it's growing. So dead, dying and diseased trees with drought, higher winds, less water, less snowpack. It's causing a real problem in the service territory area. Next. So this is a great webpage. Again, council members, the community, you can go onto this page to take a look at the work that we're doing. And it doesn't show it here very well, but on the left-hand side, there's a drop-down menu. You can see where our enhanced power safety settings are. where we're planning undergrounding, where we're performing work, where we're restoring the roads, where we may have traffic breaks, and they try and keep that updated in real time. But it's a really helpful tool. Next. Next, I'm trying to get to, we can skip through most of these here. I know we wanna get to the undergrounding. Next there. All right, if we can go back one. So, question. What's the outage situation in Sausalito? And what I would say is that, you know, the data shows that it's improving. 85 in 2024, 43 in 25, 277 customers on average, 107, seven hours, five hours. So on the whole, the improvements that we're making to the system are reducing the numbers of the outages, reducing the number of customers impacted and reducing the hours. So all of that is trending towards improvement over the last couple of years. Next slide. and then we specifically get into the to the uh unplanned outages just so we can take a look at what those were a total of 42 citywide so that doesn't mean 42 outages that a customer experienced or a business that's 42 spread across the city and again 4.5 hours a lot of these outages were, uh, uh, vegetation and animals, equipment failures is the one thing that we're gonna be taking a harder look at to see where was the equipment failure, What was there repeatedly failing equipment? And I'm working with the electric superintendent to get that data. What are the locations? and what's the timeline for improvement. |
| 00:40:42.80 | Unknown | Next. |
| 00:40:45.17 | Mark Van Gorder | We can skip these. Again, more resources for customers, but financial assistance programs, next. Are there, I won't cover all of this unless you guys have questions about it. I think we've talked about a bunch of this before. But I just want to call this out. There are a lot of people throughout Marin County, I haven't drilled down to Sausalito specifically, but there are a number of people in the communities who are not taking advantage of these programs. And I know for people who have Uh, you know, challenges with paying bills, that these can save a couple hundred dollars Some some I've had some folks that have gotten you up to $1,000 of total help and it's it's been a big help to them. So hopefully people will take more advantage of these next. |
| 00:41:40.87 | Mark Van Gorder | And we have programs for access functional needs, self-identified vulnerable program it used to be that you had to have a note from your doctor. No longer the case, you can go onto this line this link sorry and and self uh identify as as vulnerable you don't have to have a doctor's note that sort of thing |
| 00:42:01.36 | Unknown | THE END OF THE |
| 00:42:01.63 | Mark Van Gorder | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:42:04.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:42:04.68 | Mark Van Gorder | I'm just... |
| 00:42:08.65 | Mark Van Gorder | Again, more maps to see the work that we're doing. Next. I hope the community and staff will take advantage of this reported app. The reported app is fantastic. I really haven't looked to see if the city has it. More and more cities are adopting it, but you know, you have your phone. You'll take a photo. If you see something wrong with the sidewalk around a PG&E facility, lifted up, broken. sagging wires, trees near them, or whatever. Take a photo with the PG&E Report It app, put in some notes about what the concerns are, hit send, you can go back and check it to find out when that issue will be addressed and repaired. And I think that's a good question. and they will send you updates People who have any questions about any of this stuff that we're doing can go to wildfiresafety at pg.com or call this number and ask questions and get updates. I think we're coming to the end of this presentation and we'll get to the Rule 20 stuff. Alright so that's that and I think there's another four or five slides that talk about rule 20. |
| 00:43:24.28 | Mayor Woodside | I don't think we have seen that. Okay. |
| 00:43:29.95 | Scott Thornburg | Is it possible for the city clerk to add this to the website so that people watching have access to this presentation as well as the one we just saw? |
| 00:43:39.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Will do. |
| 00:43:40.21 | Mark Van Gorder | Last? Last I checked, the agenda had been updated with the link to that presentation. I don't know that it has yet the Yeah. |
| 00:43:51.92 | Scott Thornburg | Yeah, I was just asking you to update it to the one you're about to show us. |
| 00:43:54.69 | Mark Van Gorder | Got it. Perfect. But I was rather pleased, though. That was quick action, so credit to you all for updating that with Link. I thought that was fast. Thank you. So our Rule 20 program, next. And I think the intent here was to have more dialogue and engagement about the program, how people apply, and what it's all about. effectively. There are, The California Public Utilities Commission at one time had this program in place, and it was really more of an aesthetic program to remove telephone, power line, telecom, COMMUNICATION FACILITIES ALONG MAJOR CORRIDORS FOR BEAUTIFICATION, DOWNTOWNS. THAT WAS THE INTENT OF THE of the program is to remove that infrastructure and sort of beautification projects. But there's main corridor work that was called the Rule 20A program. Next slide. And here, it breaks down, so. It was 100% ratepayer funded. Cities would get credits. accumulate enough credits over time. Some cities would borrow credits from other cities or towns. And ultimately, they would come up with a program of a half mile, a mile or however long in these main major arteries. Again, removing all infrastructure, poles, lines, et cetera. Um, That program, the CPUC is sunsetting. The public works department here has been in communication with our rule 20A liaisons talking about how many credits the city has remaining. And I know the city's had questions and the communities had questions about, well, how do we underground in our neighborhoods if we don't have those credits available and those the rule 28 credits would never typically would never be used in a particular residential area. It's going to be a business corridor. So we have the rule 20 B. and the Rule 20 C options. The city can join in to part of that or it can be completely funded and applied for by the neighborhoods that wanna be involved in that. So that's the Rule 20 C. Something I had just heard and maybe city staff is able to comment on it. I want to find out if it's possible to use some of the Rule 20A credits to do some exploratory work, possibly, on Rule 20B projects. I'm not sure if that's accurate. I just heard about that and I want to find out more. But in prepping for this presentation, that question came up. I don't have the answer to that. But so those are the options. Next slide. |
| 00:46:56.20 | Mark Van Gorder | Again, here's the Rule 20A criteria that's set. I put the slide in here just so that people understand the differences between the B, the C, and the A. The A is really, not an option for the residential neighborhoods. Thank you. And I think you know we can pause here or we can go to the next slide, but I think you counsel has questions and if you would like to you I'm not sure. I don't know what your preference is to ask the questions now. |
| 00:47:28.57 | Mayor Woodside | Well, it's six o'clock, so we're running way behind. These presentations are normally one way in the sense that we appreciate your coming and presenting this so the public is aware. I hesitate to ask for questions, but I think member Cox has only one question. Okay. And then I think just generally speaking, if you can make it clear how people can get in touch with you, particularly those neighborhoods that might want to explore undergrounding or, uh, |
| 00:47:40.66 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:48:01.18 | Mayor Woodside | have a better explanation of the fix it app or whatever. Absolutely. |
| 00:48:04.09 | Mark Van Gorder | Absolutely. Yeah, and I apologize. I thought there was some ask for questions, but happy to just be able to. |
| 00:48:09.20 | Mayor Woodside | No, that's okay. Sure. One question from Member Cox. |
| 00:48:12.73 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you, Mark, and thank you for focusing on undergrounding and for advising us of the 16-mile scoping project in Mill Valley. I'm sure you're aware that based on the February 24, 2025 CAL FIRE map updates, significantly more of Sausalito is now designated within the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. Roughly 702 acres in Sausalito is now in this high-risk zone covering steep vegetation-heavy areas and bordering the wildland-urban interface. These maps, which affect a lot of our hillside dwellers, represent actual hazards rather than risk. Southern Marine Fire is actually reactivating Station 2 to address important vegetation management needs this upcoming fire season. So given the close proximity of our homes nestled next to one another on our hillside, and given that the CPUC modeling considers the consequences if a wildfire were to start in a specific location, how can you help us elevate Sausalito's priority on the CPUC list of areas needing undergrounding? |
| 00:49:24.12 | Mark Van Gorder | Well... Thank you. That question is being asked by every town and council in a high fire risk area. So I completely understand and applaud your question. the So the answer is simply put, I can ask as I always do. So as your representative and liaison with the company, I have been beating the drum about Corte Madera, Mill Valley, well anyway, all of Marin. So if you take a good look at Marin County alone, I don't know. 80%, 85% of the whole county is in the highest fire risk. So point well taken. What I will say is that, and I've asked for this in prior meetings with our folks, I'm trying to get to see if there is a list that we can get that looks ahead 10 years. So as we mentioned, we're trying to work with the CPUC to get a 10 year plan. And if and when I can get a list of areas that may be in scope within the county, that will give us a good idea of what parts of the city of Sausalito might be considered. That's that's what I can tell you that I'm asking for. The other part of the answer, really quick though, is that we're not just sitting and waiting for the CPUC to make decisions. So for the high fire risk area, I would, urge the city residents, I mean, people who live on your streets and take a look at our electric facilities, know and see it better than anyone. Please use the reported app. If there's trees that you think are too close, if there's trees that are near your property and you would like peach, you need to come and limb them or trim them away. It just helps us. We patrol every single year. Um, And in the meantime, Thank you. If there's concerns, I will have our crews bring us back a report about what all has been done on those circuits to mitigate for fire. So it's a separate answer from what we can do, but more what we have done. I can get our crews to bring back a report in those high fire risk areas. What exactly have we done to help mitigate the concerns about fire? |
| 00:51:41.32 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, seeing no more questions from the dais. We'll move on. Thank you very much for your presentation. And again, if we can put out on our currents some contact information for you and the apps that might help our residents follow through with questions and suggestions for you, okay? |
| 00:52:02.04 | Mark Van Gorder | Perfect. |
| 00:52:02.51 | Mayor Woodside | All right. |
| 00:52:02.56 | Mark Van Gorder | And I apologize for showing up |
| 00:52:03.97 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. Thank you. Thank you, we're now public communications for items that are not on the agenda. I have a few speaker cards. Rob McCullough is first. Bye. |
| 00:52:21.03 | Robert McCullough | him, Rob. |
| 00:52:24.79 | Robert McCullough | Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers, and welcome, Ms. Forbes. Good luck to you, and to Mr. Zapata, thank you for all your hard work. Appreciate it. My name is Robert McCullough. I'm a resident of Sausalito. I've lived in Pelican Harbor for 26 years. I submitted a brief and a short executive summary of that brief to the council last Friday together. I'm going to talk to you about the council. for your consideration regarding the potential lease assignment of Pelican Harbor, including the postulum development of and Mr. Cameron Rosavi. Based on the documents provided by the city to date, together with applicatory regulatory frameworks, this matter involves public trust, and multi-agency oversight including BCDC and the Public Lands Commission. The city's own records reflect a long-term pattern of regulatory complexity, as similar Marina operations associated with Mr. Rosavi. These include periods of noncompliance followed by incremental corrective actions requiring continuing monitoring. and coordination among multiple agencies. For example, inspections at one point identified over 30 code corrections, many of which were addressed over time, while others required ongoing follow-up. This reflects not a one-time issue, but a process that required sustained oversight, to achieve compliance. Importantly, the city has also indicated that additional responsive records, including internal communications, are still being processed under an active Public Records Act. So administration record is the administrative record is not yet complete. This is not about a particular outcome, but about ensuring that any future consideration should occur only after the record is complete and there is a clear understanding of the regulatory obligations involved. Given the documented history reflected in the city's own records, it may be appropriate to consider whether any future approval should include clear conditions and oversight mechanisms to ensure consistent compliance going forward. Thank you. |
| 00:54:25.61 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, and as I said earlier, we will be taking up the issue on the 14th. We'll put out notice as soon as possible, it's the precise time. And the city attorney is listening and is here to all of these issues so that we do have before us records of everything that you've submitted thus far, as well as anything that comes in prior to the hearing and during the hearing. So I just want to encourage you to stay tuned. Lauren Drimmer. Followed by Skip Klieger. |
| 00:55:09.35 | Skip Klieger | Thank you for having me. You guys all know me, so I'll keep this short. As you all know, I've been a resident in Sauceto my whole life, on and off, for 42 years almost. And my boat has been a tenant in Pelican Harbor for over 33 years under my ownership's eight. I just wanted to add to my comments to last week and say that you guys all know our feelings as tenants about this potential buyer, our concerns about an unqualified buyer, both from a compliance standpoint and for plans, no plans to invest in the property or have tenants in mind, or much less even have a harbor master. But we're also talking about someone that has already shown us visually what they've done with another harbor right next door who has been out of compliance also for unpermitted work on marine railways that I want to go on to say that has happened decades ago. So I think that while you look at all that, I think I want to say that You know, this is a really big opportunity to do something for the waterfront. We spin and spin and spin all these city council meetings on what to do and you have, a small historic harbor that had all the old wooden boats back in the day and tenants that have been there for decades that are trying to come to the table with not only other options and also do a lot of background work for you on this other concerns we have with this buyer but also come to the table and show up at this meeting so thank you for having having a meeting for us next Thursday. And thank you for all the work that you're doing in this. I know that you guys care about our waterfront too, but I just want to say that, you know, we have the opportunity not just to find a more qualified buyer and to stop this from happening, but to also really think through you know, kind of what we want in the long term for our waterfront and to use this as an example to set forth for what we want for for our town. And I had one of you come to me last week, which I won't say which one it was. who had said, you know, I'm sorry this is happening to you. because we're all concerned about losing our slips, we're concerned about our rent doubling, but instead of Being sorry, just I ask you to help us. |
| 00:57:13.66 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Skip Klegger, followed by Dan McCullough. |
| 00:57:25.47 | Unknown | You know, my short piece is going to be edited because of the revelation of thank you for the 14th. Um, Any of you on the council that has participated in coming up with that date I can't thank you enough. We've been very concerned. |
| 00:57:44.91 | Walfred Solorzano | It's all five. |
| 00:57:47.08 | Unknown | Having said that, I wanted to speak just for a moment about a concern that I have that the city the city of Sausalito, has been very slow in acting. on Bridgeway Marina. It seems like it's gone back for decades and I can understand how slow these, how these violations can get, how you can get strung out. by the owner of the property. I'm sorry about that, if there's something I can do, You've got my number, I will happy to, you know, I'm next door. And I'll leave it to the next speaker. Thank you. |
| 00:58:33.00 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Dan McCullough. followed by Linda Fudge. I think Linda left, is she back? |
| 00:58:42.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:58:43.33 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 00:58:45.93 | Dan McCullough | Good evening. Council members, Mr. Mayor, my name is Dan McCullough. I represent the North Coast State's Carpenters Union, Local 751. Sausalito is a unique place, not only for Marin County, but for California as a whole. It costs more to live here, but it's worth it. Tourists visit here, spend a lot here and in return, they will have fond memories of their experiences. There should be no reason for a developer or contractor to come into town and undercut the workers on any construction project in this community. Hurdy workers is a crime and needs to be treated as such. Out of state contractors are performing work right here, right now in this town. Once completed, they'll be leaving the estate, taking the money with them. Hopefully they'll have all their workers and vendors paid. not to mention, Well, the work will hold up. Good luck getting a warranty out of a cut rate out of state contractor. Not surprising, oftentimes this is where we find exploited workers. Something needs to change. This town can do better than that and step up for the people that are building it. Having safeguards in place to ensure that workers are being treated correctly will only make Sausalito a better place to live and visit. Let the Carpenters Union be a resource for Sausalito and help make a real difference in the lives of the workforce that makes Sausalito so unique. Thank you. |
| 01:00:16.55 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. I don't see Ms. Fudge. Do we have comments online? |
| 01:00:22.37 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 01:00:23.45 | Mayor Woodside | Very well. Thank you all for your comments. And we do appreciate your coming, being here in person to make your suggestions and so forth and of course we stand ready to try to follow through and speak offline as you deem appropriate. Okay, we now can move on to item three, the consent calendar. almost an hour behind schedule, but I think we can make up for lost time quickly. The items on the consent calendar, I don't believe I need to read them all in detail, but they're items 3A through 3I, several. These are matters that are typically not controversial, have been the subject of prior meetings and questions, et cetera. So they can be approved on a single vote. So, |
| 01:01:15.88 | Chris Zapata | I move approval of the consent calendar. |
| 01:01:17.41 | Mayor Woodside | First, I would just ask if there are any conflicts anyone has to recuse. |
| 01:01:21.36 | Chris Zapata | I don't see the Spencer Station on there, is it? No. I don't think so. |
| 01:01:25.30 | Mayor Woodside | So, Thank you. Yeah, yeah. So before you make the motion, let's hear, is there anyone who would like to comment on the consent calendar? |
| 01:01:34.17 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not going to pull it, but I hope that Anne Richmond would make comment. Item 3F is the resolution to approve Measure AA, and we're lucky to have the executive director from TAM here. So maybe at some point she could just quickly approach the dais and say what TAM does or we can do some. |
| 01:01:51.43 | Mayor Woodside | It's on the consent calendar, so that would be the time. Okay. Welcome. |
| 01:01:54.71 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 01:02:02.71 | Anne Richmond | Thank you, Mayor and Council Members, and good evening. I'm Anne Richmond, the Executive Director of the Transportation Authority of Marin. And I would just like to thank you for considering this item tonight, the TAM Board. has been going through a process for close to a year and a half to review our sales tax measure expenditure plan. Commissioner Blaustein has been a key part of that effort. And Tam's A lot of TAM's work is centered on delivering the commitments of that sales tax plan. throughout many years and all the jurisdictions of Marin. So we really appreciate your consideration of this tonight. And if you have any questions, I am available. Thank you. |
| 01:02:44.95 | Mayor Woodside | Very well, thank you very much. So now a motion. |
| 01:02:47.04 | Anne Richmond | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:02:50.12 | Mayor Woodside | Mr. Sobieski. |
| 01:02:51.36 | Chris Zapata | I move approval of the consent calendar. |
| 01:02:54.68 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. |
| 01:02:55.39 | Mayor Woodside | We asked if there was public comment. Can you eat online? |
| 01:02:59.95 | Walfred Solorzano | None online. |
| 01:03:00.50 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. OK. So we have a motion, is there a second? |
| 01:03:05.13 | Walfred Solorzano | Second. |
| 01:03:05.50 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, we do need a roll call. |
| 01:03:09.06 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox yes councilmember Hoffman |
| 01:03:17.23 | Mayor Woodside | We can't hear you. There are two thumbs up, but I think if, |
| 01:03:21.70 | Walfred Solorzano | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:03:23.96 | Mayor Woodside | You're still muted. |
| 01:03:24.75 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:03:24.77 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, sorry about that. Okay. Councilmember Sobieski? Yes. Vice Mayor Blaustein? Yes. Mayor Woodside? |
| 01:03:27.17 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 01:03:32.24 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Okay, the consent calendar is approved. And now we don't have any public hearing items, but we do have business items. First is item 5A relating to the introduction waiver of first reading of ordinance number 07-2026, an ordinance of the city council, the city of Sausalito. regarding the licensing of tobacco retailers and tobacco sale restrictions. So I do believe there are some, there's a staff report and the city attorney is prepared to give it. |
| 01:04:15.18 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. So the city has regulated the smoking and the sale tobacco related products since 2012 in Chapter 1228 of the Sausalito Municipal Code. Um... The proposed ordinance before you this evening is modeled primarily on the county of Marin's recently adopted ordinance in chapter 576 of the Marin County Code. and it proposes establishing a minimum floor price law for tobacco and nicotine products, which includes banning discounts, promotional sales, and additionally, the proposed legislation before you would include a ban on the sale of electronic smoking devices and heating smoking systems. The Marin County ordinance reflects a coordinated effort amongst all of the county jurisdictions to try and regulate, tobacco products, reduce reduce youth access and promote public health. This ordinance or similar regulations are before most of the municipalities in Marin County for consideration if they haven't been adopted already. As mentioned, the ordinance would require minimum retail prices for different kinds of tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars, little cigars and smokeless tobacco. It would prohibit the use of discounts or promotional sales to prevent going around the minimum price policy. It would ban the sale of electronic smoking devices and heated tobacco systems as defined. Um... And it would require tobacco retailers to display pricing and maintain conformance with federal labing and child resistant packaging requirements which are required by federal law. Importantly, the issue of sales of vapes and similar kinds of electronic smoking devices has to some extent already been litigated and has been found to be allowed under federal law. in the Wisconsin Wisconsinites for alternatives to smoking tobacco ink versus David Casey. The Wisconsin statute was upheld that banned selling vaping products that lacked federal marketing authorization. And so the proposed legislation before you this evening is drafted to align with that federal precedent. Additionally, in the actual draft of the ordinance itself, which is attachment one of your packet, you will see a red line of the proposed language changes that would be added to the municipal code in section one. Additionally, besides the New policies, the proposed ordinance would make some minor textual corrections to existing code. Notably the decision on revocation of tobacco retail licenses is actually not subject to review under California government code 5306 9.4 which governs review of administrative citations So that would be one other correction that would be made to the municipal code |
| 01:07:27.62 | Mayor Woodside | Very well. Are there questions from the dais? Thank you. |
| 01:07:32.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:32.19 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:07:32.68 | Jill Hoffman | I just want to say that this is an ordinance that was brought to us thanks to a lot of significant community advocacy and outreach. Dr. John Ma from the San Francisco Marine Medical Society is here. But we also, I had the opportunity to work with um, Raven Twilling, the Tobacco Prevention Coordinator, And Anita Renzetti is here from the Marin County Department of Health, who is responsible for all of the programs to address tobacco usage in Marin County. And I am really pleased that we were able to partner with these organizations to get this in front of all of us tonight. So thank you to all of them. I know many of them are here to make public comment and wanted to make sure that you all know that we do have experts here who can answer questions. |
| 01:08:16.56 | Mayor Woodside | Very well. Are there any questions of staff at this point? Seeing none. Let's start with. John Maugh. |
| 01:08:29.48 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:08:29.50 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:08:29.60 | Mayor Woodside | Bye. |
| 01:08:29.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:08:29.63 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:08:29.65 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm going to go. |
| 01:08:29.72 | Mayor Woodside | you Thank you. |
| 01:08:30.55 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:08:30.88 | John Ma | Good evening Mayor Woodside, Vice Mayor Blaustein and council members. My name is John Ma. I was the 2018 president of the San Francisco Marin Medical Society, which represents nearly 3,500 physicians across Marin and San Francisco. They've submitted their letter of support. We applaud the leadership of your town and of your city attorney to agendize this tonight. I'm here to stand alongside the Marin high school students to urge you to adopt the ordinance. Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death across America and around the world. |
| 01:08:31.51 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:08:46.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:09:00.38 | John Ma | There was an economic toll estimated by UCSF researchers at $550 per resident in Marin County in 2009, the burden of smoking. About 70% of those who smoke report they wish to quit, and by starting with this ordinance tonight and continuing discussions to permanently end the sales of these deadly products will really help them achieve that goal. There's been breaking news today. The Mill Valley mayor just texted me the unfortunate, disappointing news that the Food and Drug Administration is allowing fruit-flavored electronic cigarettes back into the marketplace. |
| 01:09:35.48 | Mayor Woodside | in the marketplace. Yes. |
| 01:09:37.13 | John Ma | and it only underscores and highlights the urgency and importance of this issue marin county california have led the way nationally and it's |
| 01:09:37.23 | Mayor Woodside | you know, |
| 01:09:47.61 | John Ma | essential to have continued proactive leadership and action to counter the trends that we're seeing from the White House and Washington, D.C. There's been data from Beverly Hills that action to reduce the sales of commercial tobacco products has reduced the smoking rate by 50%. And I encourage you to look down the road at the possibility of ending all commercial tobacco product sales in your beautiful city. So thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your time. I urge your aye vote this evening. |
| 01:10:18.78 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. and thank you for your advocacy. THE FEDERAL Anita Ranzetti. |
| 01:10:29.90 | Anita Renzetti | Hi, everybody. I'm Anita Renzetti. I work with the Tobacco Prevention Program at Marin County, and I'm actually here just as support if anyone has questions about if you pass this ordinance, how it would go into effect, how it would be implemented, how retailers might be educated and supported for the transition, and other questions such as that. So I'm just here for logistical support since I cannot speak to whether, you know, this ordinance should or should not pass. Thank you. |
| 01:11:02.98 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Now, Melissa, can you help me with the pronunciation? |
| 01:11:08.19 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 01:11:09.66 | Jill Hoffman | Oh yeah, Mel Blaustein? |
| 01:11:19.99 | Mayor Woodside | Dr. Blaustein, welcome, and a belated happy anniversary to you and your wife. |
| 01:11:25.52 | Dr. Blaustein | Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, who I sort of know, council members. Thanks, I want to, following Dr. Mahler and I, Encourage me to wear a white coat to look more educational and scholarly, so here's my white coat. I'm a Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF. I was a former president of the Psych-Edge Society I am a delegate to the Medical Society, but more important tonight, I'm an addiction medicine specialist, so very conversant with dealing with alcohol. And I guess the good news is alcohol is decreasing, I mean, with smoking. The good news is smoking is decreasing in the United States, and there are treatments, so that's the upside. Of course, the downside is that we know how dangerous this drug is, and supposedly 90% of smokers began before 18. That's why it's so imperative to try and discourage smoke in the community, to really work for our youth and work for all of us for our smoking. So I encourage you to pass the ordinance. Pleasure to be here. Thank you. |
| 01:12:24.38 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you very much. Aubin Salazar. |
| 01:12:36.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:12:44.46 | Aubin Salazar | Good evening, Mayor and the City Council member. My name is Aubin Salazar, and I am a resident of Sausalito for over 40 years. I wanted to speak in support of the proposed tobacco and retail licensing and restrictions on electronic smoking devices and sales. After experiencing a stroke at a very young age of 28, I became more aware of the importance of public health and prevention. I have also supported smoke-free coalition efforts because I believe communities benefit when we take steps to protect long-term health, and especially in young people. I understand these decisions can be complex for businesses and the community. but I appreciate the city and taking public health seriously and looking at ways to reduce access and exposure to addictive nicotine products. Thank you. Thank you for your time and consideration. |
| 01:13:52.93 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Rachel Johnson. Welcome. |
| 01:14:07.99 | Rachel Johnson | Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Rachel Johnson, and I'm a high school student in Marin. I'm here to express my strong support for the adoption of the BOS policy in Sausalito to end the sales of vapes and other heated tobacco products, end the use of discounts and coupons, and adopt both a minimum pack price and a price. A minimum pack and a minimum price. Nicotine and tobacco are both very prevalent in my life. During the transition from middle school to high school, I did not observe an immediate change in the culture around drugs in my academic community. Substance use and addiction seemed distant and unfamiliar. Then one day, everything changed. It wasn't gradual. It all happened at once. I looked around, and so many of my friends that I thought would never use tobacco or nicotine had started to. This changed the way I think about my school and community. Going to a private high school, adults often think that underage substance use wouldn't be accepted. Include... But the opposite is true. Many students, including myself, often feel pressured by our peers to participate in the use of both tobacco and nicotine use. Addiction impacts all of us, regardless of where we live or go to school. A key factor in addiction is access. When products are cheap and sold on every corner, people are more likely to start using them, especially kids and other vulnerable populations. We need to stop normalizing the sale and use of tobacco. Passing the BOS policy in Sausalito is a great first step towards ending the normalization of addiction and making these toxic drugs less accessible. Please choose to prioritize the health of our community and take these evidence-based steps to prevent nicotine addiction. We need to do more if we want to one day see a Sausalito that is free from the influence of big tobacco. This can be done by passing a complete ban on all products, and I hope you consider the possibility of that for the future. Thank you for your time. |
| 01:16:20.80 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you very much, that was very well done, thank you. Sonia Iguchi. Did I pronounce that correctly? |
| 01:16:33.20 | Mayor Woodside | Sorry, I saw you. |
| 01:16:35.60 | Sai Gucci | Yeah. |
| 01:16:35.94 | Rachel Johnson | It's okay. |
| 01:16:36.44 | Sai Gucci | Thank you. My name is Sai Gucci. I'm here to speak in support of the tobacco and nicotine policy you guys are considering. I'm currently a student at Terralinda High School, and nicotine is something I see every day at school. I've seen students use nicotine in bathrooms, at lunch, and especially in classrooms. I've seen a lot of people use nicotine in bathrooms. which affects not only them, but especially the students around them. I believe these policies are extremely important because they prioritize the health of our community, especially in young people. Teen nicotine addiction is such a big issue. as nicotine harms brain development, increases anxiety, and makes it hard for people to quit later in life. Policies like these send a clear message that our community values public health over corporate profit. At my school, I see how common nicotine use has become among teens, particularly through vapes and disposable nicotine pouches. These products are easy to access and often not seem as harmful, which is why I urge the council to consider adding a ban on nicotine pouches as it is becoming a much larger market towards youth. Just today, in my first period math class, I saw a friend in my friend group put a zin in his mouth. This is just insane to me as like we're in a learning environment and you are already using nicotine at 830 in the morning. Beyond health effects, these products also negatively impact the environment. Disposable vapes and nicotine pouches create plastic waste, contain lithium batteries and microplastics, and often end up in the streets or in waterways. Especially in Sausalito, this water around this area is beautiful and we want to keep that. This creates a long-term environmental damage that our community is left to deal with while companies profit off of their waste. I also want to say, Vice Mayor, thank you so much for coming to the youth town hall. And I know that you particularly really strive on mental health for teens, and so I think this policy would definitely improve that since nicotine has such a big impact on it as well. Thank you. |
| 01:18:49.67 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you very much. I'm seeing no more cards. Are there comments online? |
| 01:18:54.72 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Mr. Rojas. |
| 01:19:01.52 | Jaime Rojas | Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council members. My name is Jaime Rojas and I'm here tonight on behalf of the impacted South Salida retailers who will be directly affected by the proposed tobacco ordinance. We understand and respect the city's goal of protecting youth and promoting public health. Responsible retailers share that goal. They already operate under state and local tobacco laws, age verification requirements, licensing rules and restrictions on various subjects, including flavored tobacco products. These changes would directly affect small businesses that are already complying with the law and serving adult customers only. The practical concern is that these rules may not eliminate demand, but instead they only push adult consumers to neighboring jurisdictions, online sources or unregulated sellers. That harms local retailers, reduces local sales activity, and does not necessarily improve enforcement or youth prevention. We respectfully ask the council to slow this process down and work with the impacted retailers before adopting the ordinance. At a minimum, we request three things. First, to conduct an additional outreach with licensed tobacco retailers so the city understands the economic impact and compliance challenges. Second, to consider a longer implementation period and clear written compliance guidelines before any new penalties or license consequences take effect. And lastly, to focus enforcement on illegal sales to minors, unlicensed sellers and non-compliant operators, rather than creating a broad restriction that punish responsible local businesses. South Salida retailers want to be part of the solution. They are willing to continue to work with the city on education, compliance and signage and responsible enforcement, but they should not be treated as a problem when they're following the rules. For these reasons, we respectfully ask the council to delay the adoption tonight, direct staff to meet with impacted retailers and bring back a revised ordinance that protects youth while also protecting responsible small businesses in South Salido. We thank you for consideration. |
| 01:20:56.34 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Anyone else online? |
| 01:20:59.86 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, next we have Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 01:21:04.45 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening, Council. Very much in support of this ordinance and I hope that it passes unanimously tonight. Some of you may not know, but I'm a I'm a registered dental hygienist and I graduated from UCSF and practiced in San Francisco before my law career. on the city council. During that time of practice of dental hygiene, we routinely screened for oral cancer. and tobacco use was the number one cause of oral cancer at that time. And I, would venture to say probably still is not just smokers, but vapors and also poultice users, poultice users. Here we go. So anyway, I want you to know that the devastation of oral cancer, if you can imagine a lesion that is large in someone's mouth, A large portion of tissue has to be removed in order to treat it. It is a devastating disease, and I would like to see everything we can do to prevent it. Thank you. |
| 01:22:06.74 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Any additional comments online? |
| 01:22:10.74 | Walfred Solorzano | Next we have Bob Curry. |
| 01:22:14.03 | Mayor Woodside | Bob Curry. |
| 01:22:17.56 | Bob Curry | Hi, good evening, Mayor Woodside and Council members. I have worked in tobacco and nicotine prevention for 30-plus years. Over 20 of that time, I had the pleasure to work for the County of Marin and the opportunity to present on a number of preventive policies that you as a Council adopted as leaders in protecting the health of your residents from secondhand smoke and youth access to tobacco and nicotine. I now am retired, but I serve as the co-chair of the Smoke Free Marine Coalition. The coalition sent you a detailed letter on the priorities of requests that they have. This evening you heard from incredible youth. Our incredible youth have been going around and speaking to all the counties, and we really thank them for their advocacy. They've spoken on the dangers of nicotine pouches that need to be included in your protective youth policy that is before you this evening. Fairfax Councilmember Barbaraohler sent you a letter on the action that she took to include this addictive product in the fairfax model model which is otherwise the same as what is before you this evening cordon madera has followed with this ban on nicotine pouches and others are currently discussing the inclusion of the nicotine pouches ban you have heard and read on the dangers of these nicotine pouches, and I support, although this evening I do support the policy that is before you, but I ask you that you consider coming back in the next couple of months and include the ban on the nicotine pouches. Nicotine is especially dangerous for teens because it can rewrite the developing brain, cause addiction quickly, and negatively affect learning, mood, and impulse control. I hope you pass this policy this evening and come back with the nicotine ban or a ban on everything at a later time. Thank you for all that you do. |
| 01:24:22.89 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:24:24.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing no further comments. |
| 01:24:26.02 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, back to the dais. Would you like to make a motion? |
| 01:24:30.21 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. you |
| 01:24:30.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:24:31.07 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, well before I do I just wanted to see if we might open up the conversation potentially about adding nicotine pouches because I was really Troubled by say as comments about being in class and having someone take a Zins pouch And I I don't know what it would take to be able to add that on or if we could Approve today and direct staff to consider that pending outreach to other To our local businesses. It just seems like it's like another critical piece that I'd like to see us do more on |
| 01:25:01.46 | Mayor Woodside | Mr. City Attorney, any comments on that? |
| 01:25:04.48 | Sergio Rudin | I have not independently done any research on the legality of a nicotine pouch ban, and I, given that banning a specific product does create an incentive by the manufacturer of the product to litigate the issue, as we have seen in the case of the evapes and other like the Wisconsin litigation I alluded to earlier. I would like the opportunity to look into that and provide a recommendation to counsel. So my suggestion would be that you move forward with the ordinances drafted, which would go into effect September 1st in alignment with the county's regulations. And there will be plenty of time for the council to consider amendments after. |
| 01:25:40.97 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, and could we also maybe consider or at least start to conduct some outreach on an all-out ban on tobacco sales in Sausalito? Or at least put it into the conversation. I'd like to see us take every step we can. I grew up here, and I remember that thanks to decades of hard work from public health officials, the teen smoking and nicotine rate was going down significantly. And with the onset of things like vapes, which I didn't have access to when I was in high school and the Zins tablets and I've seen young people that I care about who are now addicted so I would like to at least I'd like to make a motion to pass tonight and I'd like to add direction to staff to pursue at least research and outreach on an all out to tobacco ban and on nicotine pouches. |
| 01:26:24.89 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I'd be happy to look into, you know, researching further authorities. The council may have to take stricter action. |
| 01:26:31.56 | Scott Thornburg | Great. So I'm going to formally move that we |
| 01:26:32.60 | Sergio Rudin | Second. |
| 01:26:34.97 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. introduced by title only and waived first reading of ordinance number 07-2026, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito amending section 12.28.190, licensing of tobacco retailers and tobacco sale restrictions of the Sausalito Municipal Code to prohibit electronic device sales and enact minimum price and packaging requirements. |
| 01:26:54.85 | Jill Hoffman | I would second that with the direction to staff that we move forward on researching and allowed tobacco ban and a ban on pouches. |
| 01:27:01.19 | Scott Thornburg | I accept that amendment. And I see that. |
| 01:27:02.68 | Jill Hoffman | And I see that Councilmember Hoffman has her hand raised, so I want to give her a chance. |
| 01:27:06.71 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you for that. Yeah, I just wanted to note that we did receive I think it looks like the mayor and I received an email today from Barbara Kohler, who's on the council in the town of Fairfax. and she let us know that they passed an ordinance that included a ban on the sale of nicotine and tobacco pouches, and she included a link to their ordinance. that our city clerk has that and I'll forward that to our city attorney and I support the motion. So I just wanted to pass that along and that there is at least Fairfax has passed that in the county of Moran. |
| 01:27:49.49 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, any additional comments on the motion? It's been seconded. Let's have a roll call. |
| 01:27:57.70 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? |
| 01:27:58.68 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. |
| 01:28:02.09 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. Councilmember Sobieski. Yes. Vice Mayor Blaustein. Yes. Mayor Woodside. |
| 01:28:04.05 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Yes, that passes, that's the first reading and it will come back on a consent calendar as soon as we can schedule that. And thanks to those who appeared, you were very persuasive. Thank you all for coming. |
| 01:28:32.18 | Jill Hoffman | Bye, Dad. |
| 01:28:42.66 | Unknown | You want a quick break? We're going to get harder. The charter might take a little time. |
| 01:28:46.03 | Chris Zapata | Let's go. |
| 01:28:46.46 | Scott Thornburg | just get started. |
| 01:28:46.88 | Chris Zapata | through it. |
| 01:28:47.28 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, we're now moving on to item 5B, and I'm going to... ask the city attorney to summarize, if you can, what's before us at this juncture. And just to be clear, this is a first step in the process for consideration of becoming a charter city. Ultimately, should the process proceed and go forward, this would require a vote of Sausalito residents. So having said that, yes, and I think the city attorney will explain in a little more detail what's before us tonight and what could follow should we wish to proceed. |
| 01:29:32.73 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you, Mayor, for the introduction of the item. Before you this evening is a draft city charter being presented to you as part of a study session. Under state law, there is actually a pretty long and detailed process by which the city must put a charter on the ballot. This process requires two agendized public hearings with published notice in advance of those public hearings 21 days in advance those public hearings will provide a significant opportunity for the public to participate in review and drafting of the proposed charter the draft that is included in the agenda packet is a starting point for the council's deliberation and consideration as to whether you want to go forward with this process. So as a practical matter, the recommended action this evening is to receive information from the city attorney and from the city council working group on the draft charter to provide direction to staff as to whether or not the council wants to proceed with the charter city process. And if so, if you have any initial feedback before we take it to the first public hearing, Additionally, if you want to proceed, the staff will need direction to publish notice for the first public hearing, and it's suggested that the first public hearing occur on June 2, 2026, which is the next regular meeting that can be held in compliance with the statutorily required 21-day notice requirement. And then also, there is suggestion that staff conduct community engagement activities, including community workshops or other informational meetings. you know, may be appropriate or directed by council a suggested schedule on the public hearings would be to have the first public hearing conducted on june 2nd with a potential second public hearing conducted on july 7th that will give the council the opportunity to place this on the election for november 3rd 2026 at a regular meeting scheduled for august 4. I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE And Mayor, That's enough. I'm happy to stop here. If you'd like me to summarize the proposed charter, I'm happy to do that as well. |
| 01:31:57.09 | Mayor Woodside | You may stop there. I think you've explained the process and where we are now is in the very early stages to decide whether or not to move forward. And given the deadlines for putting things on the ballot, the schedule that you outlined, I think comports with what some of us will say. Member Cox and I who have been working on this for some time understood with one exception. I think we were hoping to perhaps schedule the Item to place it on the ballot for the last Tuesday in July |
| 01:32:37.78 | Sergio Rudin | And I think that may be possible. You have to have at least 21 days between the second public hearing and the action to put it on the ballot if the second public hearing is July 7th |
| 01:32:52.36 | Scott Thornburg | So that would be July 28th, which is? Thank you. |
| 01:32:55.41 | Sergio Rudin | 21 DAYS. |
| 01:32:55.90 | Scott Thornburg | I'm sorry. |
| 01:32:55.97 | Sergio Rudin | to the community. |
| 01:32:56.12 | Scott Thornburg | 21 days. |
| 01:33:00.71 | Sergio Rudin | and I will have to trust your mouth on that one for now. |
| 01:33:04.31 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. And any time there is an election year and we are called upon to place various things on the ballot, including in this year, election of city council members. Last year, we were facing a deadline for measures J and K. It might be advisable, I'm just for scheduling purposes mentioning this now, that we consider routinely during election years to have a regular meeting set on the last Tuesday in July to allow for time, should we miss something, we'd have at least another week to make up for it so that we don't miss a deadline for placing on the ballot. But that's for future agenda setting and consideration and I just want to mention that at the outset since you mentioned the schedule. So, questions? Sure. |
| 01:34:07.69 | Jill Hoffman | So it seems like at this point we're really just initiating the process, so it wouldn't be the most opportune or necessary time for us to engage in significant discussion regarding what's in the charter. And given our... very busy agenda for the evening, perhaps that's the best course of action. If others are comfortable with that from the dais, of course we have to take public comment, but I believe you are the request from the working group is that we consider beginning the conversation but have yet to determine whether or not we would approve aspects of the charter and we would still be able to give feedback on aspects of that charter going forward. |
| 01:34:41.93 | Mayor Woodside | I think in addition to feedback, the substance in the charter could be changed all the way up until the last time. That's what I was, right, okay. That's correct, Mr. City Attorney? |
| 01:34:48.43 | Jill Hoffman | That's what I was, right, okay. |
| 01:34:51.92 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, that's correct. You certainly can make revisions to the draft charter before you put it on the ballot. And the two public hearings, I think state law envisions that you will make changes. |
| 01:35:01.84 | Jill Hoffman | And just as a follow up, this doesn't even mean we're necessarily putting it on the ballot because we could still make a choice to determine to not do that. |
| 01:35:06.14 | Mayor Woodside | a choice. |
| 01:35:06.70 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 01:35:08.10 | Mayor Woodside | Exactly, it's a first preliminary step. It's opening a process. |
| 01:35:17.01 | Scott Thornburg | I think we are asking that if the council decides to move forward beyond this study session this evening, that we ask the agenda setting committee to approve our timeline to enable us to continue to meet the requirements of discussion for so long as we choose to pursue the dialogue. |
| 01:35:36.62 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, I think Councilmember Hoffman has your hand raised. I know you guys can't always see her, so I just want to make sure. |
| 01:35:38.98 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Okay, Ms. Hoffman, questions? |
| 01:35:46.96 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry, yeah, thank you. I mean, that's That's kind of the discussion tonight though. I mean, that's, I think, It's a pretty lengthy process and it's pretty timely process. And it's a staff intense process. So. when we talk about whether or not we're going to start down this road of We have a draft charter, who, as I understand it, Councilmember Cox And, with the assistance of the mayor drafted the draft what's before us. And so, What's in the charter, the 10 page charter is just a draft. So. You know, that's just a starting point. That's just a rough draft of what, how we're gonna govern our city. anywhere close to what it finishing point is going to be. So that's an intensive process. So, We have a staff that's already overburdened. We talked about this a lot, and that's why we had a strategic planning session where we set priorities. So everything that comes to us, remember, it's supposed to be in the staff report is how does this fit into our priority? for this year. And that wasn't in the staff report. And every minute of our staff should be prioritized because there's a value proposition for staff time. So if you look at, the steps, the pretty comprehensive steps that it's going to take to get this across the line. That's a lot of staff time. That's a lot of community time. that's gonna be spent on something there may not you know, that may not warrant this, getting it across the line. So I think that now is the time to decide if we want to go down this road or not. This isn't a pro forma meeting. This is a. Is this something we want to engage in Is this a fully baked plan at this point? And does this warrant staff time You know. This isn't a let's go down this road with a half baked, half filled wagon. This is a. Are you ready to go or not? And we talked about this at our strategic planning session My notes and the notes from our facilitator were that we're not going to pursue that this year. We're going to talk about it. and maybe lead up to it maybe next year. for getting on the ballot in 2028. But this is a long conversation, and I don't think what's been presented to us today is nothing that nowhere has a council directed that we're going to before tonight, before the staff report was on the agenda today that we're going to gun for getting something on the ballot. you know, on this accelerated plan where we're now talking about adding council meetings when we've got another initiative that's floating out there to also put on the ballot. So that's That's... where I'm at. And this is a significant lift for our |
| 01:38:35.93 | Mayor Woodside | I know I appreciate because this is more like discussion and we should hear from the public before we go much further but let me just say When I was 30 years old, on behalf of the Charter County of Santa Clara, successfully sued the state on the basis that actions by the state in 1978 violated the Home Rule provisions of the California Constitution, which extend to charter cities. and we have spent millions of dollars and inordinate staff time responding to state demand charter cities and we have spent millions of dollars and inordinate staff time responding to state demands that may well for charter cities exceed what the state should be doing in relation to housing there's no definitive answer on that but that was clearly discussed more than a year ago the city manager gave us a report and a working group of Miss Cox and I have rather diligently put out a draft that addresses primarily home rule should we talk about it yes should we try to elicit public comment and decide whether this is something we wish to seek, that is charter city status? I think it's imperative that we don't miss another two years. Delay, delay, and delay, as I think it was Parkinson said, is the deadliest form of denial. |
| 01:40:09.40 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, but we should talk about this at our strategic planning session and we should have had a calendar and this should have been vetted and we should have had a fully baked charter before us right now. And we should have said, okay, this is our charter and we want to get this on the ballot and that's the plan. It's not, we're now, you know, talking about adding. you know, city council meetings at this point I mean, this is not ready to go. I'm sorry. It's just not. |
| 01:40:38.41 | Scott Thornburg | Mr. Mayor, are we discussing this or are we still in the question period? |
| 01:40:42.19 | Mayor Woodside | Well, we should have been in the question period, however, it seemed like Ms. Blaustein wanted to make it clear that we weren't No. Ms. Blaustein wanted to make clear that we are not- |
| 01:40:52.20 | Jill Hoffman | What? What is the public supposed to be able to look at this and be able to comment on in the public in public sessions for the public comment? |
| 01:41:03.76 | Mayor Woodside | That's the whole purpose of the schedule, Ms. Hoffman. We are introducing it tonight so the public can see what I believe could be a fully baked charter, written primarily by my colleague to the left, who's an expert in this area. We worked on it jointly. It's been reviewed and a presentation by the city attorney who's here. |
| 01:41:19.13 | Unknown | We've worked on it jointly. It's been |
| 01:41:25.81 | Mayor Woodside | and I think the public deserves at least the process for consideration. And that's all we're doing tonight. So please, I respectfully disagree with you that this is half-baked or ill-considered or hasn't been a topic of discussion for at least a year. and to the extent it was not included on some specific priority list, probably should have been, but the point is we've been working on this for months. And it's time to move it forward for public review in the manner required by law. So I think we are arguing about this, about whether to take this first step. And I'm sorry to have engaged in such a discussion, but I wanted to frame it. And, thank you, Ms. Blaustein, frame it. We're not deciding on any substantive thing tonight other than we're gonna move forward for consideration. But let's hear from the public before we make a decision. |
| 01:42:29.64 | Walfred Solorzano | No comments online. |
| 01:42:31.10 | Mayor Woodside | No comments online, no comments in the audience. One popped up. |
| 01:42:42.60 | Mayor Woodside | is Bushmaker. |
| 01:42:44.01 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yes, I'm here. Thank you. You know, this surprises me that we're dealing with this at this moment. I remember the discussion came up. a few years ago about whether to be a charter city during our housing element process. And one of the things that came up, one of the disadvantages, and I noticed that in the chart that was attached to the agenda, is that There's no residential requirement for city council members, for example. that the determinants to be a council member is determined by the Council. and rather than by state law. Now I do know that there are advantages and disadvantages, so I would like to see a complete advantage and disadvantage chart. available to the public so we can adequately deal with this issue. But I have to say that with all this going on, it seems like we are rushing this to the November ballot. It seems to me, that this big of a change in Sausalito's governance is going to require more than five months of public engagement. Thank you. |
| 01:44:04.32 | Mayor Woodside | Any other public comments? |
| 01:44:06.35 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, next we have Alice Merrill. |
| 01:44:09.05 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. Merrill? |
| 01:44:11.83 | Alice Merrill | Hi, I would agree completely with Sandra. We have... This is a very big thing to change it. There are probably many more innuendos and unknown things if this happens, besides not having to be a member of the actual resident in Sausalito. AND For heaven's sakes. just, Give us time. You need to have public meetings and conversations and community computer, I don't know, community groups, you need to You need to... Not just rush this through, but why? Why would you rush this through? Just because you like the idea, but maybe everybody else doesn't and we need to know about it, find out about it, digest it, figure it out, It's not something to do just overnight, which it sounds like you've decided to just do it like that. And I know you, some of you have been working on it, but clearly not all of you. |
| 01:45:14.54 | Unknown | I THINK I'M GOING TO BE |
| 01:45:16.23 | Alice Merrill | And why rush it? Why? I mean, one more or two more years is just not the end of the world in, um, in a lifespan of a city. Thank you. |
| 01:45:29.68 | Mayor Woodside | So is there a motion? |
| 01:45:32.58 | Walfred Solorzano | more. |
| 01:45:32.88 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:45:32.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. No more public comments. |
| 01:45:34.43 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't see any. |
| 01:45:35.87 | Walfred Solorzano | you know, |
| 01:45:38.15 | Mayor Woodside | I'm going to ask for a motion. |
| 01:45:38.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 01:45:38.99 | Jill Hoffman | I'm out. |
| 01:45:39.33 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:45:42.15 | Jill Hoffman | I have additional question because I know that our city attorney also had some questions about the draft. Um, It's an... questions and comments about the draft motion or sorry, the draft charter. And I'd like to hear his comments. |
| 01:45:56.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:45:56.78 | Jill Hoffman | AND THE FAMILY IS |
| 01:45:56.83 | Scott Thornburg | he wants to hear. |
| 01:45:57.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:45:58.84 | Mayor Woodside | So let me take this in order. You want the city attorney to comment on the draft as it is now? |
| 01:46:10.11 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. Yes. |
| 01:46:13.89 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, and Mr. Sobieski, you have questions? Okay, so Mr. City Attorney, would you respond to Ms. Hoffman? |
| 01:46:25.06 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, sure. I mean, I have reviewed the proposed draft charter. I have provided my comments to the council working group, which has made revisions. I have some additional suggestions, which I've provided to the whole council in writing about ways. I think that the proposed charter could be improved and some, Particular points where, you know, some further redrafting or retooling should strongly be considered. I'm not prepared to comment in public about those issues at this time, but I anticipate that during the course of the public hearing processes where the council will review the actual full text of the charter. And I fully anticipate also that the council working group, um, whether it's the same council working group or a different council working group, which may be designated by council, to further continue working on this may make other revisions or suggestions. And certainly all five council vendors individually can make suggestions to the whole council and i would be happy to review those and comment on them as well as needed um but But, you know, besides my writings, which I've provided the whole council at this point, um, I'm just going to say this is an initial draft. |
| 01:47:40.05 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Mr. Sobieski. |
| 01:47:41.59 | Chris Zapata | Thanks, Mary. Yeah, I had a question about the schedule. THE MEETINGS, THE PUBLIC HEARING SCHEDULE, DOES IT HAVE TO COINCIDE WITH REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS? |
| 01:47:52.49 | Sergio Rudin | The answer to that is no. |
| 01:47:56.81 | Sergio Rudin | One of the council meetings does need to be outside of regular, or one of the public hearings needs to be outside of regular business item, hours in order to facilitate public participation per requirements in the statute. But since our regular council meetings are outside of business hours, that does fulfill that requirement. I think it's scheduled for regular council meetings for administrative convenience in terms of burden on staff. |
| 01:47:56.89 | Chris Zapata | . |
| 01:48:18.58 | Chris Zapata | And is that true for, so are there two Public hearings. THE SECOND AND THE SEVENTH OF JULY. AND THEN THERE IS AN ACTION CURRENTLY SCHEDULED ON THE FOURTH to place the measure on the ballot. Does that action of placing a measure on the ballot have to be a regularly scheduled? City Council meeting. |
| 01:48:40.92 | Sergio Rudin | No, I believe the answer is no. So the requirement is that there must be two public hearings. One of them must be outside of business hours. The two public hearings must be 30 days apart. Each one must be preceded by 21 days notice, and you can't take action to put it on the ballot until 21 days after the second public hearing. |
| 01:49:00.44 | Chris Zapata | OK. We have earlier in the year adopted a city calendar of meetings. Would we be amending that calendar by this action or that have to be a separate action? |
| 01:49:13.10 | Scott Thornburg | I'll see you next time. |
| 01:49:13.13 | Sergio Rudin | Um, |
| 01:49:13.57 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. Is the 28th on our regular? it. Thank you. No, it's fine. |
| 01:49:17.77 | Mayor Woodside | The only date that's not a regular meeting currently is the 28th of July. |
| 01:49:24.12 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. And I would suggest that if the council wants to go that direction, either the mayor or a majority of council can call a special meeting under the Brown Act. So that would be just how we handle it. It would be considered a special meeting. |
| 01:49:35.02 | Chris Zapata | Okay. And then, as you pointed out, you made a variety of comments to us. How would those comments be? Would we interact with you directly offline? Would we bring those up here at some future in some future way? What's the? protocol for engaging with legal questions. |
| 01:49:52.47 | Sergio Rudin | So. You could decide that you want to discuss some of your own policy suggestions for the charter this evening, time permitting and council's willingness to entertain. You can certainly discuss any of my suggestions or advice with me directly at any time you want to. Um, I assume that by the time this is scheduled for the first public hearing, there may be some revisions to the, charter that may address some of the concerns. But if not, then certainly the council, I think, decide as a policy direction what it wants included and the exact text it wants included in the charter in public at the public hearings. Now, whether or not you need to reveal any sort of attorney advice in that public setting, I think you probably don't. I think that there will be ways to discuss policy preferences in public without discussing any sort of legal concerns or risks. And we can talk about how to do that if you would like. |
| 01:51:00.63 | Chris Zapata | Okay. I've said many times I'm not a lawyer. I'M PROUD OF THAT. had joining the council or recurring experience was that I would turn to our prior city attorney and now to you often and say, what's the law governing the process of whatever we have to do? And the answer would always be, well, for general law cities, it's well established by this case, by that case, by this ruling, by this, that this is what the law is. uh, when we become a charter city, if we become a charter city, or perhaps for the 150 other charter cities around California, Is there a well-established then body of procedures that that can be relied upon to tell us what is and isn't true, or is or isn't, you know, legally allowed in terms of procedure. |
| 01:51:51.93 | Sergio Rudin | So, One of the suggestions that I had for the city council working group in terms of provisions to include in the charter, and what I typically see in most charters is a savings provision that says general law continues to apply unless the city exercises its charter authority to overrule it on a matter of municipal affair. So usually for most charter cities, if there's a gap in terms of the process that the city hasn't acted to fill, then state law is the default. You follow state law until you decide that you both don't have to follow state law because it's a municipal affair and you take action to not follow state. |
| 01:52:27.62 | Chris Zapata | Okay, so I think that's a really key insight that you've just given me that I think I want to underline to make sure I understand. One. general law cities are the norm unless you become a charter city. But by becoming a charter city, you could preserve 99% of general law procedures and change just one thing. and now you're a charter city officially, basically a general law city with a few modifications. That could theoretically be done. |
| 01:52:52.20 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, and I would say for many charter cities, the bulk of what they do follows state law, general law procedures. |
| 01:53:00.78 | Chris Zapata | And so the motivation of becoming a charter city is that, There are particular aspects of the general law and we have to do that. We want to change here in Sausalito for a variety of reasons. |
| 01:53:14.60 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah. And so I'll give you an example of some of the procedural quirks the charter cities have worked to avoid and to streamline government operations. One is a requirement to not go back to planning commission for things that like zoning ordinance amendments where the zoning has been presented to them. They've rendered a recommendation. And then the council decides to you know introduce something else or tweak concepts you can set procedural rules like that in terms of you know when you have to go back to planning commission you can change which items need to go to planning commission you can change the need to go back to first reading when you introduce any ordinance so for some charter cities they say as long as it's on the same topic we can make amendments on second reading and adopt them immediately. The public has sufficient notice. We're legislating in this area. So let's just go ahead and do it. So those are the kinds of procedural rules to streamline government that you can enact as a charter city, but you can't as a general law city. |
| 01:54:12.61 | Chris Zapata | Got it. And then, Say we have a draft, or after all these hearings, we adopt a charter. To change the charter, does that also require now an entire new vote of the people? |
| 01:54:22.11 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. And the process for amending the charter is the same as the process for adopting the charter. It is this, at least for council initiated changes, it'll be the same to public hearing, you know, public participation, putting it on the ballot vote of the people. |
| 01:54:38.90 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:54:38.94 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:54:42.62 | Mayor Woodside | Any further questions? |
| 01:54:43.85 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so Sergio, I'm not understanding. So what's the process for us talking about your concerns about the review that you did of the draft charter. |
| 01:54:55.51 | Sergio Rudin | Well, |
| 01:54:55.85 | Jill Hoffman | And why is Thank you. I don't understand why that's not a public why that's not a public conversation. We don't have legal review of the draft charter. And I'm not understanding why that wasn't drafted by Outside counsel. Anyway, either our city attorney and outside counsel Why that why that document was drafted by council members. |
| 01:55:20.33 | Mayor Woodside | So as to the first, there are attorney-client privileges that I think you're well aware of. And in any case, our city attorney advises us confidentially as to the risks that we may face almost no matter what we do, on almost every issue that comes before us. |
| 01:55:39.89 | Unknown | that comes before us. |
| 01:55:41.97 | Jill Hoffman | Do not interrupt the mayor when he speaks. |
| 01:55:42.27 | Unknown | You're not. |
| 01:55:42.61 | Scott Thornburg | interrupt the mayor when he's speaking please this is like the third time you've interrupted. |
| 01:55:44.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:46.71 | Jill Hoffman | But I wasn't asking you. I wasn't asking the mayor, I was asking our council. |
| 01:55:49.54 | Scott Thornburg | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:55:49.58 | Mayor Woodside | Bye. |
| 01:55:49.60 | Scott Thornburg | Bye. |
| 01:55:49.61 | Mayor Woodside | Bye. |
| 01:55:49.63 | Scott Thornburg | and I have to go. |
| 01:55:52.01 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I, |
| 01:55:52.33 | Mayor Woodside | And I'm trying to say that we have received and we always receive confidential attorney-client privileged on topics that are coming up where the city attorney carefully advises us as to the legal risks that almost inevitably accompany everything we do. |
| 01:55:52.95 | Jill Hoffman | TO SAY THAT |
| 01:56:12.26 | Mayor Woodside | And we are not. I'M CERTAINLY NOT WILLING TO WAVE on behalf of the city. |
| 01:56:18.55 | Jill Hoffman | So this is... Okay. I got it. Yeah, OK, I got it. I understand what you're saying, but this is an odd situation. Normally we have a staff that drafts are you know, a staff or city attorney who drafts our documents in our you know. are, You know, what we're doing, our work. But in this case, we have our city council who's drafted our council members who's drafted something and our city attorney has done a review. |
| 01:56:49.25 | Jill Hoffman | You know, it's we're in an odd situation where we have concerns about something that our city council has drafted. |
| 01:56:54.36 | Sergio Rudin | Marified. |
| 01:56:54.94 | Jill Hoffman | So I'm not understanding why the council drafted this and not our paid city attorney. |
| 01:57:00.17 | Mayor Woodside | I appointed a |
| 01:57:02.60 | Jill Hoffman | working? |
| 01:57:02.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:03.10 | Mayor Woodside | working group consisting of Ms. Cox and myself to draft what, in my case, I've drafted |
| 01:57:05.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:05.82 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 01:57:05.97 | Unknown | myself. |
| 01:57:13.06 | Mayor Woodside | redrafted, litigated, and thought it would be a good idea to lend what expertise I have to a draft and just get it out there so we can all comment on it. I've spent 50 years. |
| 01:57:25.95 | Jill Hoffman | I can't. Yeah, but you understand my concern now. I have a concern now that we have input from our city attorney, that I'm concerned about the draft that's been presented to me as a city you know, that were for adoption apparently. |
| 01:57:42.61 | Sergio Rudin | Mayor, if I may respond. Yes, please. I think the best way to address this issue is that if council members have different topics they want to discuss and address, one way is that council members can propose substitute language. |
| 01:57:42.99 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 01:57:43.11 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:57:43.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:44.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:57:44.28 | Mayor Woodside | Yes, please. |
| 01:57:57.25 | Sergio Rudin | And there are a number of policy points that are in the proposed charter where you can just talk about them in terms of saying, hey, I think it would be a good idea to do something else. You don't necessarily have to say, hey, our city attorney thinks that doing it this specific way is, you know, is a problem. You can just say, hey, how about this other idea and this other policy preference that we should, you know, consider debating? So in terms of if you want to suggest revisions to the charter... You certainly can say, hey, you know, I think that we don't need Article one, section one, or for something like that, you know? And what did I just even reference right now? Um, You probably do want a section that references the name that we are the city of Sausalito, but you get the point. |
| 01:58:45.25 | Unknown | Well, there's some odd link in there in general. |
| 01:58:46.12 | Sergio Rudin | If I might. Bye. |
| 01:58:47.69 | Mayor Woodside | I'm going to ask if Ms. Cox would like to say something, and then I'll get back to you, Jill, Ms. Cox. |
| 01:58:48.55 | Scott Thornburg | Yeah. |
| 01:58:50.85 | Unknown | you |
| 01:58:50.90 | Scott Thornburg | Ms. Cox would like to say. |
| 01:58:55.05 | Scott Thornburg | Okay. Thank you. I do want to say that this has already been an iterative process where drafts were circulated amongst the working group. The city attorney gave preliminary feedback, which was incorporated and addressed by the working group. The city attorney has now provided additional feedback, which also will be addressed and incorporated by the working group Um, in prior to the next draft. Should the council decide to proceed, So- You know, if the council decides tonight to continue forward with this process, the working group will continue to work with staff to update the draft appropriately to address issues raised by fellow council members as well as by the city attorney. Council as the vice mayor addressed earlier this evening. This is an iterative process this initial draft is is a working draft based on how many other cities have moved forward with their adoption process and based on the very extensive League of California Cities toolkit supplied to all council members as part of the staff report. |
| 02:00:06.50 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I saw that I saw the league toolkit, but but that's not what we've got. And we've got it. We've got a draft that's got some significant litigation risk in it. And we've also got a draft that differ significantly from just basic California law and, and, You know, I don't know why we have this. So, and why we're expected to recommend that this go to a public hearing. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm climaxed here as to why we're, why we have this. |
| 02:00:38.73 | Mayor Woodside | Mr. Sobieski. |
| 02:00:39.85 | Chris Zapata | I have a question for the working group or the city attorney. There's a statutory requirement for these two public hearings. Correct. And I'm wondering if some of the concerns that I'm hearing from Jill, but also just, you know, comments around the pro-con chart that Sandra Bushmaker asked for and others might not be, |
| 02:00:47.24 | Kevin McGowan | Correct. |
| 02:01:02.73 | Chris Zapata | uh, satisfied and there would be more time to iterate on the product if they're a way of adding some, keeping this timeline of getting this done by August the 7th, but adding some extra workshops or hearings. So you have these two statutory requirements, which by the way, don't need to be on a regular city council meeting, given what our agendas are, even though I hate to say it, I'm wondering if we shouldn't have those statutory meetings separate from a city council meeting, And in addition to that, Add two or three or even four. FEDBACK SESSIONS FROM THE COMMUNITY WHERE THE CITY ATTORNEY CAN ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT THE GENERAL LAW IS AND HOW THE WORLD WOULD OPERATE UNDER the what is would be then current draft. And there'd be an opportunity for members of the public to provide exactly the kind of feedback not just feedback, but ideas on, we think you should do this. And We think you should do that. For instance, we think you should add a requirement that city council members be residents. |
| 02:02:01.15 | Mayor Woodside | Oh, and there's nothing in this draft, just to interrupt. What you hear is a lot of concern that reflects a concern that somehow we'll have a charter that would do such a thing, which it can't. I'm sorry. So I'm sorry that you picked up on that because I think I agree with you. We need to get this out in the public, and you're right, we should probably have special sessions rather than general regular meetings to deal with this. I personally believe that we have an opportunity to protect ourself from an overreach by the legislature, and that's the heart. |
| 02:02:01.76 | Chris Zapata | And it's... |
| 02:02:16.28 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm sorry. |
| 02:02:42.19 | Mayor Woodside | of what is in this draft. Maybe people will like it, maybe they won't. |
| 02:02:46.46 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, so sorry, I was beginning to make a speech when I should have just been asking a question, but I'm wondering if my suggestion for the working group for your reaction to So it's in the form of a question is whether we could move the two statutory meetings to non city council, regular dates and add three workshops in between for the general public. So you'd have these two statutory meetings be where action would be taken to change the draft, but there would be, the last one before it's put on the ballot where members of the public can be educated and provide input. |
| 02:03:17.78 | Mayor Woodside | Would you trust the vice mayor and I to make sure working with our City Manager, both present and future, to do the best that we can to get as many of those scheduled as possible. |
| 02:03:32.51 | Chris Zapata | I THINK COUNCILMEMBER COX SAID It helped us clarify what we're deciding is, yes, we want to look into this. Yes, we're starting with your draft. Here's the schedule. Do we agree with the schedule? And what I'm proposing, I guess, is unless we want to do it right now with a pen, I would suggest we come up with a new schedule with new dates that have two statutory meetings, three workshops, but ends on August the 7th. |
| 02:03:55.46 | Scott Thornburg | So the recommended motion of your staff report has as number four direct staff to conduct community engagement activities including community workshops and Informational meetings prior to and between the required public hearings. So that's already a recommendation. We're asking you to endorse this evening |
| 02:04:14.02 | Jill Hoffman | But can I just ask before we start down this road, Is this the highest priority of our staff? Is this the high, are we gonna set everything else aside that our staff is working on? |
| 02:04:24.03 | Mayor Woodside | This would not require everything to be set aside, Ms. Hoffman. |
| 02:04:24.52 | Jill Hoffman | because- |
| 02:04:29.28 | Jill Hoffman | But how they're already fully employed and now you're talking about adding more meetings, you're talking about adding more you know, more workshops you're at. We just finished an, an, a tremendous exercise with a measure K RFPs. There was 17 meetings. you know, to come up with an RFP for three sites, you know, to get an RFP off the ground. We just finished that with our CDD staff. And now you're talking about You know, another... priority, a new priority you know, to get something on the ballot. where you haven't even talked about the value proposition of a charter city. So what exactly, because we've looked at this in the past. Council Member Cox and I looked at this two years ago. about what is the value proposition for you know, for a charter city and it's, There was case law that we looked at that. Yeah, I mean, there's a little bit, but the only real What benefit is the ability for property tax, right? Or a transfer tax. No. |
| 02:05:38.53 | Mayor Woodside | No, the home rule provisions are the key |
| 02:05:38.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So- approval. |
| 02:05:43.26 | Mayor Woodside | to and the main reason. |
| 02:05:43.91 | Jill Hoffman | Tell me what the guy, tell me. What is like, what is the, okay, you say home rule, but what is that? you don't you're not going to be able to overrule housing element right? Housing element from eight, you know, that come down from the state legislature. We have case law that specifically says that if you change from a general law to a charter city, you're not going to be exempt from those regulations, right? |
| 02:06:11.03 | Scott Thornburg | Five charter cities avoided SB 9 because of the home rule. That's just an example. |
| 02:06:17.83 | Mayor Woodside | That's one example. There may be others in the context of housing and the demands. For example, is builders remedy a matter of statewide concern such that it should overrule a charter city that says no, we think builders remedy is the worst possible way to develop in our community. These are arguments that we'd like to equip our attorneys with should should we be challenging, not just in court, but in the legislature, before MTC, when they give us an impossibly high number to try to build. I think this community is still reeling from the impact |
| 02:06:20.45 | Scott Thornburg | Text. |
| 02:06:58.94 | Mayor Woodside | a costly, time consuming, burdensome impact of being thrown a number, that years and multiple litigation. I would like to see us have some tools in our toolkit that might give us a fighting chance |
| 02:07:15.82 | Jill Hoffman | You and I agree with us. But my understanding was, my recollection was, we went down this road and the answer was, It was not going to happen. |
| 02:07:22.87 | Mayor Woodside | Well, you may have gone down the road and answered it your way, but I certainly have answered it differently, as has Member Cox, and I'd like to see the public have a discussion. |
| 02:07:24.19 | Jill Hoffman | and- |
| 02:07:28.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Have a discussion brief on this at all. Do we have any legal research on this at all? |
| 02:07:35.69 | Mayor Woodside | Pardon? |
| 02:07:36.86 | Jill Hoffman | Do we have any legal brief or research on this? |
| 02:07:38.85 | Mayor Woodside | Yes, you want me to cite the case that I argued in the California Supreme Court in 1978? |
| 02:07:43.63 | Jill Hoffman | Not in 1978, but do you have anything recent? |
| 02:07:46.55 | Mayor Woodside | It's been cited with approval ever since. Thank you. |
| 02:07:51.42 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:07:51.47 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 02:07:51.49 | Jill Hoffman | If you have a case recently that says you're if you're a charter city and you're exempt from recent state housing mandates or anything, then then I then you're going to. sway me somewhat, but... We looked at this two years ago, and it did not seem to be Uh, worth the The juice wasn't worth the squeeze on it. I disagree with that characterization. |
| 02:08:15.03 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:08:16.77 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah, I think we're debating the merits prematurely. All we're trying to do is initiate a process and I'd like to move forward with a motion and let's make a decision tonight as a council whether we're going to initiate this with the understanding that there will be multiple public workshops and outreach and an effort made to discuss and get the public input as much as we can. |
| 02:08:48.83 | Chris Zapata | So I mean, my comments are I would like to have at least three of these public workshops in addition to the two. So I guess. I'm asking for that kind of if that's if there's consensus around that, influences my mind. Defined by me. And I think the schedule should end on August the 7th. I appreciate. |
| 02:09:02.13 | Unknown | Bye. Thank you. |
| 02:09:06.89 | Chris Zapata | Of course, I'd rather do it on the week prior, the last week of July, The fourth is the last Tuesday before the deadline, and that just gives us an extra week. I would like to suggest that as for scheduling purposes to the working group. |
| 02:09:24.88 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. I'm going to go ahead for purposes of our ongoing discussion and make a motion that staff receive the informational presentation on the proposed Sausalito city charter and the charter city process, provide direction to staff to continue. with the process for considering becoming a charter city, direct staff, to conduct three community workshops in addition to the two required public hearings. Direct that staff work with the agenda setting committee to come up with the schedule of those five meetings and direct staff to post and publish notice for the first public hearing 21 days in advance of that hearing in compliance with government code section 34458. |
| 02:10:15.32 | Jill Hoffman | You have, I'm gonna make it for you. |
| 02:10:16.82 | Scott Thornburg | If there's a motion pending, we're going to see if there's a second, and then you can make an alternate motion. |
| 02:10:23.08 | Unknown | So, |
| 02:10:23.48 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:10:23.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:23.62 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:10:23.64 | Unknown | denying my friendly medicine. |
| 02:10:25.41 | Mayor Woodside | Wait a second, the procedure calls, she's made a motion. Is there a second? |
| 02:10:29.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:29.27 | Scott Thornburg | I didn't know you were making a friendly amendment, I thought you were making a revised motion. But I think Robinson says you get a second and then you. |
| 02:10:36.88 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:10:37.00 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:10:37.05 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:10:37.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:37.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:10:37.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:37.24 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:10:37.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:37.30 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:10:37.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:37.40 | Jill Hoffman | Robinson. |
| 02:10:37.91 | Chris Zapata | And so, |
| 02:10:40.53 | Mayor Woodside | I'm looking for a second on the original motion. I'll second it too. |
| 02:10:44.76 | Scott Thornburg | Okay, friendly amendment. Councilmember Hoffman |
| 02:10:48.39 | Jill Hoffman | The friendly amendment was, do you have any objection to having BBK write the just have BBK write the proposed, um, the proposed charter. |
| 02:11:03.17 | Scott Thornburg | So BBK has weighed in extensively on the proposed charter. |
| 02:11:07.83 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, but just have them write it, and then we don't have to deal with who's writing the charter. I think that creates a weird dynamic. |
| 02:11:17.33 | Mayor Woodside | Most charters come from the people. Somebody puts on the back of a napkin an idea, and then it goes further and further and further. We thought we were saving time and resources by putting together a draft that's sensible. You may not agree with it. But it's out there. Mr. Rudin, who knows a lot about this topic, has been most helpful and I'm sure will be In effect, the final of whatever we produce consistent with what policy direction we give. Having said that. |
| 02:11:51.98 | Jill Hoffman | said that doesn't it take away the issue? |
| 02:11:52.90 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah. |
| 02:11:55.11 | Jill Hoffman | And then you don't have to have an issue |
| 02:11:56.94 | Mayor Woodside | the issue because Two of us have had a hand in it. Is that the issue? |
| 02:12:02.57 | Jill Hoffman | Come on. |
| 02:12:04.14 | Mayor Woodside | How is that an issue? You've suggested many things over the years. We've all suggested things. |
| 02:12:04.70 | Jill Hoffman | issue. |
| 02:12:10.02 | Mayor Woodside | I'm sorry to be so, it's 7.30, I'm getting tired, so. I'm sorry. We've been in session since. |
| 02:12:18.10 | Scott Thornburg | So I reject the friendly amendment. |
| 02:12:21.73 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, let's have a roll. |
| 02:12:21.74 | Scott Thornburg | Okay. |
| 02:12:23.55 | Chris Zapata | I've made the motion, I second the motion, but I just want to, you didn't mention it, but I would like the date to be, the ending date to be anchored on August the 4th. |
| 02:12:30.70 | Scott Thornburg | Yes, I'm fine. So I will add to the motion that the last meeting regarding the, approval of a of placing a possible initiative on the ballot be scheduled for August 4, 2026, assuming we get that far in the process. |
| 02:12:49.52 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. And then my only other question. Will you second that amended motion? I second it. I did have a question also. |
| 02:12:50.28 | Scott Thornburg | but you second that amended motion. |
| 02:12:56.10 | Chris Zapata | So. you know, if we have ideas that we want, as this unfolds, and there will be legal review, there will be ideas on how to add things to the charter. The public will suggest ideas, council members may have ideas into the draft charter. How do we make sure that it is vetted on an even playing field? I think that might be part of what Jill's referring to is that |
| 02:13:25.07 | Jill Hoffman | What's my point? Like, I don't understand why there's pushing |
| 02:13:25.95 | Chris Zapata | Like I don't understand why there's pushing. So for instance, if I wanted to propose that it be in our charter that everyone wear you know, a funny hat once a year. How do I get that not to seem like just a wild idea from the dais, but instead something that's vetted by the city attorney? |
| 02:13:40.48 | Mayor Woodside | Why would he have to vet something so ridiculous? |
| 02:13:43.49 | Chris Zapata | He's wearing a hat. Well, I meant to, sorry, I shouldn't use that example. I can't think of a serious example, but imagine it was a serious example. |
| 02:13:49.16 | Mayor Woodside | The city attorney, should the voters adopt something, right, of any type, the city attorney is called upon to defend it on behalf of the city when the people put something forward or vote on it. So my point is this, it's always gonna be vetted by the city attorney, and we, as council members, |
| 02:13:53.95 | Chris Zapata | of the world. |
| 02:14:10.69 | Mayor Woodside | often will do writing. I've seen both member Cox and member Sobieski do some excellent writing that has wound up as an ordinance or a resolution. You know, we can all, do what we can to improve the processes in our town and we use our resources whatever they happen to be |
| 02:14:34.75 | Chris Zapata | But what I meant was just as a non-lawyer on the dais, it is if I wanted to get an idea that would be included in the charter as an idea, do we have license and city council members to send it to Sergio? |
| 02:14:48.10 | Mayor Woodside | Why wouldn't you just send it to, you know, when we have these workshops, put it out there? |
| 02:14:53.35 | Chris Zapata | because it may be half baked and I don't want to throw a half baked idea out there. Well then, you know, I think we need to have some license interact with the city attorney |
| 02:14:56.86 | Mayor Woodside | Well, then, you know. |
| 02:15:01.52 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:15:01.89 | Mayor Woodside | We always do as members of the council. Okay. And you might say, Mr. City Attorney, what do you think of this idea? Is it legal? Can we do it? And he'll tell you. |
| 02:15:10.16 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:15:10.19 | Jill Hoffman | What do you think? |
| 02:15:13.94 | Jill Hoffman | I just propose like sort of middle ground friendly amendment then that might say we'll move forward in the process with this timeline. with direction that members of the city council may interact with the city attorney and the city attorney will thoroughly review the final draft with feedback from all members of the council because I hear the, I mean, the feeling of that we would all like an opportunity to weigh in before it goes to the workshops and we would like to have the legal counsel that is representing all of us, not one of us weigh in in some way. Is that? I accept that friendly amendment. |
| 02:15:47.69 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 02:15:48.85 | Chris Zapata | Second. |
| 02:15:51.60 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. Let's have a roll call. |
| 02:15:58.62 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? |
| 02:16:04.93 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, council member Sobieski. Thank you. |
| 02:16:08.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:16:08.14 | Walfred Solorzano | All right. |
| 02:16:08.21 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:16:08.22 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 02:16:08.24 | Walfred Solorzano | Bye. |
| 02:16:08.27 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 02:16:08.32 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 02:16:08.39 | Walfred Solorzano | you Vice mayor Blaustein yes mayor Woodside |
| 02:16:11.51 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 02:16:11.97 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:16:16.15 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 02:16:16.48 | Walfred Solorzano | I'm sorry. |
| 02:16:16.54 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Um, it's 7.30. We now can go to the Parks and Recreation Commission effort to streamline the placement, if you will, of, and the process for public art. |
| 02:16:33.43 | Chris Zapata | Mayor, if I may, I can ask you to do one of two things. One, take a restroom break to allow the Parks and Recreation Commissioner to get here from Berkeley. The other one is to move this after the budget discussion where she should be here. |
| 02:16:47.41 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, so our Parks and Recreation Director has had a child two days ago, so he's not able to give the report, but thankfully, the Parks and Recreation Commission Chair, Stacey Cray, who was really instrumental in bringing this about. is able to do so, but a little bit later. Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. Okay, sure, so we'll take a, |
| 02:17:09.55 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. |
| 02:17:15.50 | Mayor Woodside | Five minute break. I've yet to use this all year. We're back in session. And in the meantime, Stacey Cray has arrived to deliver a staff report on the item that we would have otherwise skipped We can save the budget until later, right, Mr. City Manager? Stacey, please proceed. Thank you. |
| 02:17:39.62 | Unknown | I'M HERE TO PRESENT A RECOMMENDATION FROM THE PARKS AND REC COMMISSION. I'M THE CHAIR OF THAT COMMISSION. in Brian Vitale's absence tonight. So we met on a meeting. April 27th and unanimously agreed to recommend the City Council that we update our existing proposal sorry, our existing resolution on public art being donated to the city. And what we are trying to do is create a more streamlined, transparent, and community-focused process. Next slide, please. Next slide. So we took guiding principles that were in the existing resolution 4510, continued artistic excellence in Sausalito, having art that has a relationship to place, trying to create an art environment that invites public engagement. finding art that is durable and that the city can steward over time. We want our art to be accessible and safe, and we want to honor diversity of expression. Next slide. So our vision of the function of public art in places is to make sure that our residents and our visitors can celebrate the artistic legacy of Sausalito. to encourage community interaction with art and with our parks to support diverse expression and to make sure the public can safely engage with art. Next slide. So the current challenge that we have is that the, Current resolution, which was put in place in the year 2000, is relatively complex and has a heavy reliance on advisory panels. The timelines are either slow or difficult to interpret, and there's very little public visibility and a lot of questions for artists that are submitting artwork as to how the process works. Next slide, please. So under the current resolution, we have accepted in the city of Sausalito a total of zero public artworks. So we would say that maybe this is a pace that we want to accelerate. The last piece of art that was accepted here was in 1994, and that predated this resolution. So the current approach requires an applicant to be referred to the city manager. The Parks and Rec Commission then appoints or has appointed a 10 to 15 person expert advisory group consisting of artists and other experts in public art installation. A subset of those people can be appointed to the public art installation. are put onto a particular application, those people make an investigation, then they make an advisory referral back to the Parks and Rec Commission, then the Parks and Rec Commission considers it. and then we send a recommendation over to the council. So in a nutshell, we are proposing that we kind of cut out these middle two steps. Next slide. So let me walk through the proposal for a new process. Next slide, please. So an artist will submit an application and artist information They'll submit information on funding sources, installation costs, I'm not sure. the project description. installation type artwork, information on the safety, the maintenance costs and the durability of the artwork And if they like, there is an optional... portion which would allow them to to include letters of community support to show that there is support within the community for the artwork. Next slide, please. So then the staff would essentially review it along the lines of the principles I've already outlined, make sure that the application is administratively complete. Next slide, please. And then a new process would be that we would put in place of the advisory committee, we would have public notice period. So we would post the application. online and on site here at City Hall. We would likely also publish it in Currents. We would have a 10 to 14 day window for written public comments. We would then hold a hearing at the Parks and Rec Commission, take additional public comment, Next slide please. And then we would review it along the lines of these guiding principles and determine whether or not to make a recommendation. to the City Council to accept the artwork. or to modify it or to reject it. Next slide, please. The council's role remains the same. You would have the final approval for the artwork This process, we believe, ensures public accountability. And you would be the ones formally accepting the donation and entering into the agreement with the artist and the donors. Next slide, please. The timeline here's what's really cool is Brian thinks that we've gotten this down to about a two-month window where we would have a staff review within two to four weeks, and by the time it got to you, it could be as little as two months. Next slide, please. So the benefits of this model, it's a faster process. It enables clear decision-making that's very transparent to the public. It reduces the bureaucracy, the need for having these advisory councils who are not Um, appointed officials. and hopefully develops a stronger public trust and better engagement and alignment with the public feeling that they're a part of our legacy of art. Next slide, please. We did a comparison of other cities. Large cities have advisory groups. Smaller cities like ours tend to not have that. They tend to do this more along the lines of what we're doing here and put the decisions in the hands of government. Next slide, please. So our final recommendation is for you to adopt the streamlined process as part of your agenda materials you received a proposal. and we would be eliminating these advisory panels. We would be strengthening transparency, especially by creating this public notice period and allowing the public to comment on their support or or objections to the proposal. And we would maintain flexibility through staff expertise. What that really means is that if we had a complicated piece, this would allow us to. have advisors, if we feel like it's something that's, you know, beyond our expertise in terms of the weight of the material or the durability, we could call in folks to help us make decisions. So that is the presentation. You're welcome. |
| 02:24:20.94 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Thank you very much. Questions? I'm going to start with Mr. Sobieski. |
| 02:24:27.22 | Chris Zapata | Thank you for your work on this. I'm a big fan of public art. It elevates us all. And some of the beloved pieces here in Sausalito are some of my favorite parts of Sausalito. One question about public art, and San Francisco is experiencing this right now in the Embarcadero, is that some pieces don't age well. They're relevant to the culture or they're the feeling of their population changes over time. But it can be very hard to remove public art once it's established. Is there any kind of consideration given. to the longevity of some of the pieces under this policy, or a way of having a regular review of the continued, whether a piece should continue to be where it is. |
| 02:25:12.85 | Unknown | So we didn't build in a public review process, but this was one of the questions that I raised for Brian and the staff for the very reason that you're mentioning, which if people don't know about it, there's a fountain in the Embarcadero in San Francisco would like to remove it for safety reasons and other reasons. and is having trouble doing so because the policy that they have there is very unclear about how long and what the rights are of the artist, for example, with respect to that artwork. We've specifically suggested that the city retain wide discretion over the reasons for removing art in the future, and so we included language along the lines of, not just about safety or accessibility, but if the city determines that it has different needs culturally, civically or operationally, They can just be done with the art. There would be an effort to reach out to the artists beforehand to make sure that we could Potentially preserve the art or move it somewhere or donate it back But as a resident who's seen this very thing happen, and it's not just that example, obviously, there have been a lot of cultural problems as well, I believe that the city should have absolute jurisdiction over when and if this artwork is still enhancing the city. And if it's not, it really should be within your ability to determine that that artwork needs to go. |
| 02:26:30.81 | Chris Zapata | So I've seen it done, or read about it being done, where there is a regular annual, or biannual, or decentennial review of all the art. in the same process, whether it's the Parks and Rec Commission or the staff, that then makes, there has to be an affirmative action to keep the art where it is. Usually it's pro forma because 90, 95% of the pieces are beloved. Thank you. But it's a way of tolling or making sure that there's continued commitment to the art pieces that are installed. Is that possible to work into the recommendations? |
| 02:27:08.39 | Unknown | I certainly don't see why not. I think you all have control over amending the proposal, and I certainly feel that that would be consistent with, um, with the Commission's position on, I can't speak for all the Commission members, but this was a unanimous decision and we're all very eager to work with you to get something finalized. I don't see a problem with that. It may be... relatively infrequent since we do have high demands on the staff. I'll speak for Brian here, like the less we can put onto parks and rec. to make this a process that is streamlined and easy, and maybe we do it through volunteers, and maybe we do it, as you say, every 10 years. I would say not every year. That seems too frequent to me. |
| 02:27:47.89 | Chris Zapata | Okay, and then my last question is you had City Council be the last decider. Could the Planning Commission instead be the decider with maybe a right to appeal? And my colleague doesn't like it, but I'm wondering if you deliberately thought of City Council for a particular reason versus say the Planning Commission that deals with land space issues regularly. |
| 02:28:07.28 | Unknown | I think that is the way the process functions now. I also prefer coming to city council meetings to go into the planning commission myself, but I certainly see that they would be someone who would be consulted. And I think that if you wanted to delegate that authority, frankly, to either the Planning Commission or to the Parks and Rec Commission, I think that would be within your, jurisdiction to do so. |
| 02:28:31.35 | Sergio Rudin | If I may recommend, I did take part in drafting some of this language. I do support the recommendation that the decision to accept artwork come to city council. One of the reasons for this is that with respect to the acceptance of artwork, monuments, sculptures, the Supreme Court has said that cities, you know, in the context of the First Amendment, have the right to speak. And when it is the city's governing body that decides which artwork is displayed and not displayed, I think there's a very strong position for the city that these decisions are not creating a First Amendment public forum where artists get to come to the city and demand that their artwork be displayed, but rather when it is the council as the governing body, the highest body of the city that makes the decision of where artwork goes and which artwork goes, then all of these decisions I think are government speech, should be considered government speech, and therefore are insulated from First Amendment challenges. |
| 02:29:30.12 | Chris Zapata | Thank you very much, City Attorney. |
| 02:29:33.08 | Scott Thornburg | I just want to add to that. |
| 02:29:33.25 | Chris Zapata | I'm sorry. |
| 02:29:38.54 | Scott Thornburg | The planning commission is appointed. The city council is elected. We are the elected representatives of the city. And so I feel as though this kind of responsibility best rests with us. A couple of questions. In the staff report, it talks about that... The Park and Rec Commission reviews the proposal based on compatibility with the proposed site, Um, It also in the city council review, it talks about uh, making final acceptance. In the process, it talks about disqualification criteria, and then the question is, but not listed in the disqualification criteria is reflecting values. And I feel as though that's a really important disqualification criteria. If the artwork doesn't reflect the values then that. should be a basis for disqualification. Is there a reason you didn't include that? Oh, I see the city attorney getting ready to speak. |
| 02:30:48.25 | Sergio Rudin | And I think I, I can't say I definitely speak for Brian on this, but I think that the disqualification section says during initial staff review. And so I don't know how comfortable staff are in terms of saying they definitively can select the values of the city or which artwork may or may not reflect those. I think in discussing these issues with Brian, I think the initial review was I think to be a first pass screen. of things that obviously are no-go's. for the initial staff review, I know he wanted to confer with Public Works to make sure that there's no existing utilities underneath where the proposed artwork is going to go, that the artwork isn't gonna light on fire spontaneously, things like that. So, I mean, obviously I think that the decision of whether or not artwork aligns with city values A reason the council can reject artwork, but I don't know whether or not you necessarily want to delegate to staff that as a first Pass. |
| 02:31:54.69 | Scott Thornburg | That makes sense, thank you. And my other question was, in terms of the city council review, Is it possible to ensure that the council review is not just a take it or leave it as proposed? Because what if, you know, the city council says, yes, we want a picture of Sally Stanford but we don't want it at the Shell gas station on the north side of town. So I think that You know, there's a mermaid at the Shell gas station on the north side of town, sculpted by a local artist who has since passed away, but it is there because the owner of the Shell gas station at that time, my beloved friend Herbie Weiner, was the only person who would accept that piece of art. And he owned the Shell gas station, and so he put it there because other members of the community did not want to see it elsewhere. And so I think it's important for the city council to be able to piecemeal weigh in on various aspects of the Um... proposed gift of artwork, is that possible to ensure that the city council has that discretion. |
| 02:33:07.37 | Sergio Rudin | So I think that the proposed policy before you is intended to ensure that whatever comes to the council is fully vetted and not half-baked. Now, if the council gets a proposal that is vetted for feasibility, for financial wherewithal, et cetera, that comes before you and you don't like the location or you want some modifications to the artwork, I think certainly the council can say, hey, we don't like this proposal, artist, donor, Will you consider these amendments and work with staff? And then the question is, do they have to resubmit under the policy? |
| 02:33:43.01 | Scott Thornburg | That's what I would like clarified. So I'd like to have the ability to... vet and negotiate a final I'm wondering if it's possible for staff so that I'm framing this as a question, to provide counsel the ability to you know, Um, collaborate during the hearing. on whether or not to accept the proposed gift of artwork to make final tweaks to the proposal as a part of that process. |
| 02:34:18.03 | Sergio Rudin | I would say one, we actually have two step fives on page three. I see that. But I'm thinking for step five city council review that the council can direct that we change that section to um, enunciate that concept that the council retains discretion to request modifications to the proposal and approve, you know, content, you know, approved on based on contingency or something like that. |
| 02:34:43.68 | Scott Thornburg | Wonderful. Thank you. Those were my questions, Mayor. |
| 02:34:46.19 | Walfred Solorzano | Ms. Huffman. |
| 02:34:50.07 | Scott Thornburg | It looks like she's frozen. |
| 02:34:52.13 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for the Parks and Rec Commission for taking this on and Art is obviously very important to Sausalito and art sense of place and the iconic pieces that we all feel a connection to in Sausalito you know, from our sea lion on the south side and our our tile, our beautiful tile sculpture, our tile wall that you guys showed in the in the in Marinship Park. that you showed in the slides. So which brings me. You know, they definitely define us in our community. We all feel connections to those as we go through town here. And also, you know, when we were doing, I remember when we did our, we did our three main parks, Dunphy, Southview, and Robin Sweeney, one of the criticisms was that they felt too sterile and that there wasn't enough of art in those three parks, that they were beautiful, that they were redone, that they were great, that they were functional, but where was the art in the parks, right? I hope that we're going to talk about that and inserting some art in some of those parks. But it also reminds me, especially the sea lion and the tile, the tile mural. that there you also have to fund maintenance for those things. And so I'm wondering in the agreements, you know, when we accept art pieces, if there's a maintenance and funding line item for the pieces that we're accepting and also the licensing agreements for those. I believe that the city owns the license for the Sea Lion or maybe it's the Sausalito Foundation owns the licensing agreement for the Sea Lion. So I think maybe that's a question for our city attorney on the licensing agreement. So... You know, there's always every piece of art in town, there's a story behind all of those pieces. So they're cherished parts of our community. Thanks for taking the time to take this on. I support the new, the new method with those two Those two concerns is how do we fund How do we fund the ongoing maintenance for the pieces that we accept? And then do we have the clear licensing issues as part of the agreement when we accept a piece? So thank you. Thanks so much for you guys for working on this. |
| 02:37:15.67 | Mayor Woodside | I'm... |
| 02:37:16.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. THE FAMILY. |
| 02:37:16.43 | Unknown | question. MR KIRBY, I'm sorry. |
| 02:37:18.03 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:37:18.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:37:18.59 | Mayor Woodside | I have a question and it's kind of a hypothetical but maybe it's a real possibility soon. Mm-hmm. Assuming a group of residents is raising money to build a, or propose that a statue or other monument to Joseph James be erected in place somewhere in the marineship, and for those who don't know, Joseph James was the African American musician and shipyard worker who broke the color barrier on for African Americans in the unions at the time. So the historical society's done many many tributes and reports about him, and I know there are people here who would be more than willing to put up some money for an appropriate monument in his honor. So, with that as a background, what if the first step was to come to you and say, we'd like to do a statue, we've raised this amount of money, and here's the location. |
| 02:38:00.14 | Unknown | and, |
| 02:38:24.98 | Mayor Woodside | Could you explain how you would envision the process to proceed after that? |
| 02:38:31.71 | Unknown | So the application that we've proposed for applicants is relatively, I think, relatively straightforward as these things go. Brian, as you all know, I don't know who will, hopefully he will be at Parks and Rec for as long as I'm at Parks and Rec, is very approachable and has had many of these informal conversations with people, I don't understand your process. This just sounds like it's kind of a nightmare. And how many pieces of art have you accepted in the last 20 years? So now we'll have a really clear set of guidance, I think. And again, we shouldn't speak for Brian because he's not here, but based on past experience, what I could say is that I think he'd be willing to work with people. I'd certainly be willing to work with people. if they wanted to float ideas, And if we wanted to go to staff and find out if those things were feasible, for example, I don't know what we can put where. Is somebody suggesting a place that is not city-owned, for example? And I've already been told by a couple of folks who've heard about our proposal or were at our meeting that they're ready to submit. I think we could begin accepting applications as early as July 1st. if, you know, assuming that we can get approval tonight with the modifications that are being suggested. So I think there's a lot of room for informal process. People could come to the Parks and Rec Commission meetings and raise this as an item not on the agenda and ask us to look into it. |
| 02:39:58.04 | Mayor Woodside | You've answered what would have been my second question about when do you anticipate being open for business in that. regard with an application and you think July 1, that's right around the corner. |
| 02:40:07.98 | Unknown | That's what Brian told me and he's out for a bit now, but he told me that when he knew he was doing that and that was his goal. |
| 02:40:15.24 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, thank you very much. Other questions? |
| 02:40:17.60 | Chris Zapata | and |
| 02:40:17.82 | Mayor Woodside | you |
| 02:40:17.85 | Chris Zapata | Yes, I have an additional question. very dynamic art is much more temporary than a multi-year commitment. So how does this process work for art that might be displayed for a week, a month, a season, or a year. |
| 02:40:34.86 | Unknown | So there's a portion of the application that asks questions about the durability of the art. In other words, what is the lifespan of the art? And to the question about maintenance, there are questions about maintenance costs. So if it's a temporary piece of art, I think the agreement would provide that the donor would have funding remove that art and to maintain it if it's if it's a more delicate piece of art if it's nature related or something and needs some maintenance we would want to know in advance who is going to be responsible for that is it the city If it's the city, does the city get a fund of money to take care of that? Are we going to allow other, for example, nonprofits to help maintain art? But that's one of the questions on the application is what is the lifespan of this art? |
| 02:41:19.99 | Chris Zapata | you're here. And the Parks and Rec Commission, Will it be active on this subject as a regular agenda item then it sounds like? |
| 02:41:28.39 | Unknown | Yeah, I mean, we have our meetings are quarterly, as you know, but we've already this year had one special meeting. We have a wonderful Parks and Rec Commission right now. It's a really engaged and energized group of folks. Michelle is still here. Michelle, I forgot to thank our working group, but we didn't just come up with this out of the blue. We had a working group that consisted of two commissioners Michelle McCalla, who's in the audience, and Bruce Woodward, And then we had a bunch of artists and people from local nonprofits dealing with art. I think there's potentially the possibility that we could get overwhelmed with applications. It doesn't feel like it's going to be that. And we have the ability to call special meetings. And since we are putting this out to the public as something that we think we can do quickly, we would really just need a quorum for our meetings and to call a meeting with enough public notice under the Brown Act to comply with that. So I... Again, I think everybody's eager to move forward. This has been highlighted for us as a priority by at least some of the council members, and we are listening to you. |
| 02:42:32.89 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. And council member, if I may address a particular concern about temporary artwork. With regards to permanent or basically permanent artwork, like sculptures, buildings, you know, painting of large permanent murals, the case law is relatively clear that, you know, the city's decision to accept or not accept those kinds of improvements is typically considered government speech. But if you're having a scenario where you are actively soliciting temporary art installations on a rotating basis in a particular location that increasingly starts looking like you're you know running a museum or creating some sort of forum for displaying of artwork and in those scenarios it may become harder for the city to say oh this is really government speech we get to select what kind of artwork goes here because we are the ones who are speaking. It'll be harder for the city to credibly assert that, and courts may ultimately disagree that you're not creating a forum. And so in terms of public artwork, I think the city should be careful in terms of doing short-term temporary displays. I do think that this kind of policy is more intended and better for |
| 02:43:43.68 | Unknown | the |
| 02:43:46.34 | Sergio Rudin | you know, longer duration kind of installations. |
| 02:43:50.29 | Chris Zapata | Thank you very much for that warning. time to make the safe harbor, not safe harbor, where are you comfortable as a minimum display |
| 02:43:59.47 | Sergio Rudin | Um, Off the top of my head, I don't have an answer to that one today. can I give back to you? |
| 02:44:10.34 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:44:10.64 | Mayor Woodside | For sure. |
| 02:44:12.15 | Chris Zapata | Thank you very much. |
| 02:44:12.55 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:44:12.94 | Chris Zapata | Okay, thank you, Mayor. |
| 02:44:14.24 | Mayor Woodside | So, public comments. |
| 02:44:23.11 | Unknown | Good evening. I'm Carolyn Revell, as you know. I'm delighted that you're grappling with this issue. I know it's been talked about for a long time. I just have a couple of comments. One, I know that in the past you had a chairman of the Park and Rec Commission, Raylene Gorham, who was herself an artist, and I don't know if currently the Park and Rec Commission has an artist on the commission, but I think it would be ideal that since they're the first step here, that you appoint members to the Commission you include an artist and secondly the issue that Commissioner Hoffman raised of maintenance is critical in my experience as a planner in Bethesda Maryland where we had a robust program optional method developers could build more densely in return for giving us public art, and we got lots of public art, but then the question was over the next few years, who maintained it? And it's my job as a planner. I remember going around and finding sculpture that was, you know, paint coming off or tiles coming off. Who maintains is a critical question. And I don't know if in the proposal, whether, I'm not quite sure, is there provision for the maintenance? Is the artist maintaining it or not? One, piece of sculpture here, gravity sculpture in Tiffany Park. At one point, Sausalito Beautiful several years ago with the Women's Club tried to restore that, but it still is not well maintained. And that would be an example locally. So that's a critical factor. Thank you. |
| 02:45:49.85 | Mayor Woodside | Other members of the public? online. |
| 02:45:54.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, we have Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 02:45:58.91 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. Bushmaker. |
| 02:46:00.33 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:46:00.35 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 02:46:00.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:46:00.38 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening again. I should have just come to the session tonight since I'm speaking. Since I was on the council in 2000 when this old policy was enacted, |
| 02:46:00.65 | Unknown | Good evening. |
| 02:46:10.67 | Sandra Bushmaker | The reason we had an advisory group was to First of all, for community outreach, And secondly, is to vet some of the very issues you're talking about, such as values. Does this art piece fit the values of Sausalito. And the, the advisory group was designed to give advice. And as I said, it was an ability to. to vet some of these issues that you've been raising. Just put that in your mix before you ask the advisory committee group, the advisory group concept in the process of uh, approving or disapproving. And I also agree that maintenance of these art pieces is critical. And there needs to be a mechanism to make sure that we don't end up with dilapidated pieces of art that were once beautiful. Thank you. |
| 02:47:08.08 | Mayor Woodside | Any other public comments? |
| 02:47:10.97 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 02:47:10.99 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, next we have Alice Merrill. |
| 02:47:13.91 | Mayor Woodside | is Merrill. |
| 02:47:16.01 | Alice Merrill | Well, hello. Here I am again. I was in Halifax many years ago with my father. And I saw all the painting on the walls and it was so cool. And I thought, wow, I wish we could have something like that because it was historical in nature and it was lively and had water elements. And it was just really fun. I don't have any pictures, but. I remember thinking, wouldn't it be fun to have paintings on walls instead of just a piece that sits there. And then the other thing that I would love is to see the stairs maybe across from the fountain. have tiles the way they have that staircase in San Francisco that has, um, that has tiles that everybody goes to see. It's so pretty. And so those are my two ideas. Thank you. |
| 02:48:11.67 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Anyone else? |
| 02:48:13.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 02:48:14.66 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, bring it back for, I'm gonna ask the vice mayor to jump in, |
| 02:48:21.14 | Jill Hoffman | I didn't have questions because I was lucky enough to be present at the park and rec meeting where I saw a robust discussion and also I'm sorry that Director Vitelli can't be here, but he did a great job speaking to why this matters. And. I really appreciate The amount of time and thought that was put into this, and I think we are, the fact that we haven't had a public art piece in Sausalito for three decades speaks to the bureaucracy associated with our current practices, and this is a really great path forward for us to start embracing creating, supporting... new public art in our community with a deep and rich history of the arts of the arts festival we've got the ICB we've got Jean Varda the Varda mosaic. So I'm comfortable with whatever amendments my colleagues want to make from the dais but I would just love to make a motion to approve the resolution and see if there are friendly amendments. |
| 02:49:17.45 | Chris Zapata | Second that. |
| 02:49:18.36 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, there's a motion and a second. |
| 02:49:20.30 | Scott Thornburg | I have a couple of friendly amendments. |
| 02:49:22.07 | Mayor Woodside | Go ahead. |
| 02:49:22.85 | Scott Thornburg | One is to include a maintenance plan in the application. Right now, the policy says that the city assumes routine maintenance responsibility after installation unless otherwise specified. I'd like to have the applicant include a maintenance plan in the application if there's maintenance beyond routine maintenance required. |
| 02:49:49.12 | Unknown | That's number one. MR PRICE. |
| 02:49:50.88 | Jill Hoffman | I mean, okay, I don't think that's going to bother. I mean, does anyone think that would be particularly cumbersome for an artist? Well, it's to include a part of it. |
| 02:49:57.39 | Scott Thornburg | Well, it's to include a plan. It doesn't mean that the plan could be the city takes on the maintenance. |
| 02:50:03.16 | Unknown | So it's just to include a plan. |
| 02:50:04.82 | Mayor Woodside | I would be concerned about requiring it at the initial application, because my hypothetical about Joseph James, it starts with a concept, and then there's an iterative process with the idea that you get through and address it. So it has to be addressed. I take your point. It's just at the front end, it's going to discourage people who say, I don't know, I just have this idea. And oh, by the way, I can raise $50,000, and I've got an artist in mind. |
| 02:50:14.62 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:50:35.23 | Mayor Woodside | And here's a first drawing of the sculpture or the painted walls. uh, |
| 02:50:42.82 | Scott Thornburg | Well, then I could say that a maintenance plan be included prior to final city council review. |
| 02:50:50.61 | Mayor Woodside | I didn't. I wasn't the maker, it sounds good to me. |
| 02:50:54.77 | Jill Hoffman | I just, if you, okay, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. |
| 02:50:57.85 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. We're going to want to insist upon that anyway or have it addressed one way or the other. |
| 02:51:03.22 | Scott Thornburg | Yeah. And it could be there's an endowment to provide for maintenance, or whatever it may be. The other thing is I did take seriously Carolyn's recommendation that we include as we appoint future Um, and the park and rec commissioners that we give consideration to including an artist on the Parks and Recreation Commission. |
| 02:51:31.94 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know if that's part of the question. |
| 02:51:31.96 | Unknown | I don't know if that's part of this motion, but. I'll just speak to that. I think there is a current requirement that there be two members who are artists. Okay, great. I'm a musical artist, which at the time that I was appointed, I took to mean artist because that's just the way I think of things. |
| 02:51:37.68 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:51:37.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:51:38.08 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 02:51:47.52 | Unknown | anything. |
| 02:51:47.80 | Unknown | But I think that the current commission would, I mean, I certainly support us having more involvement with art. I'll note that Raylene Gorham, who was mentioned, was one of the people on our working group. And we don't have any intention of trying to do this ourselves. We really think that by having this public comment period, we're really going to find the people that are interested. They're going to come to us. And so hopefully by the time it gets to you, I mean, I view our job is to make your job easier. And so by the time it gets to you, you're going to know, I think, what the issues are. And we're going to have already the people that are experts involved. Or I think Brian or staff will know enough to say, hey, we need to get a landscape architect involved here. We need another artist. |
| 02:52:34.28 | Scott Thornburg | I'm fine if we already have a, a criterion for our parks and rec to have two artists, I'm good with that. So those were my only two recommended amendments. Thank you. |
| 02:52:45.40 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:52:45.42 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 02:52:45.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:52:45.47 | Scott Thornburg | Okay, I accept those. |
| 02:52:46.72 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:52:46.82 | Chris Zapata | My own is that we do review all the art, let's say every five years or at some other pace. |
| 02:52:52.39 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, some inventory. |
| 02:52:52.87 | Chris Zapata | I know. And unless it's affirmatively reauthorized that that then it's not and there should be some steps. |
| 02:53:00.62 | Unknown | Bye. I agree with that. |
| 02:53:01.51 | Chris Zapata | So every five years that would be put through the process to be reaffirmed. |
| 02:53:05.75 | Unknown | So that's your motion. Yeah, I accept that as well. And you accept the amendment? |
| 02:53:05.89 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 02:53:09.99 | Jill Hoffman | Can I add, may I |
| 02:53:10.25 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:53:13.01 | Jill Hoffman | I THINK THE CITY IS |
| 02:53:14.17 | Chris Zapata | I think the city attorney was about to just say something, Jill, I just wanna make sure. |
| 02:53:17.53 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry, yeah, go ahead. Hi. |
| 02:53:19.45 | Sergio Rudin | I was going to suggest some revisions to the policy based on the council comments for consideration since you are adopting a resolution and a written document. I was hoping to introduce some suggested revisions to the record, but I will defer to the council to make sure you guys have finished discussion before I do that. |
| 02:53:36.48 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, so Jill questions and comments and then we'll hear from Sergio and then see if that affects the motion in any way. Thank you |
| 02:53:44.98 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. Yeah, it was Ian. Actually, I was trying to figure out where this would fit in, but I think it's Ian's point of every five years... You look at the public art, but also the maintenance... what the maintenance status is and all the pieces, right? We just did the sea lion, right? Really, really needed the Varda sculpture, the tile really needed. a lot of maintenance. recently. And I think that's done. You know, it needs upkeep, like the art in the John Liberton, the three sales. you know, needed a lot of maintenance recently. So, And I don't know that we have a maintenance schedule really for the art. Um, and Carolyn just mentioned, Carolyn Vell just mentioned the Tiffany park, you know, so I think every five years, uh, inventory of the art and the maintenance is a really good idea if not more. So anyway. |
| 02:54:39.74 | Mayor Woodside | OK. |
| 02:54:39.96 | Jill Hoffman | what's in the budget, right? |
| 02:54:41.26 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 02:54:41.58 | Mayor Woodside | Sergio, did you want to make some suggestions? |
| 02:54:44.42 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, so before you this evening, there's a resolution which repeals the existing resolution on public art and would have you guys adopt the policy document that is set forth as attachment one. My suggested revision is to step five of the procedures on page three that as a second sentence we add, The city council may accept reject or request modifications to the proposed artwork included, but not limited to location method of installation, duration, other particulars, and may also refer changes to staff or commission for review. A maintenance plan shall be included for council review. And then since we have two step fives, I would recommend we change that to step six, installation and inventory. And at the end of that indicate an inventory shall be provided to the city council by city staff for review every five years. |
| 02:55:43.46 | Chris Zapata | My suggestion on the five years was a little different. And it is nobody likes to become the enemy of a piece of art. It's a perilous thing to do. So it's really that we reaffirm. the art in town through this process. That means it goes to that staff first looks at it and says yeah, it's all good except maybe one piece we want to get rid of because it's falling apart or it's no longer relevant. And that that go to Parks and Rec for their feedback on that list and that that recommendation then comes to the city council and reaffirm. all the art that's currently there with this one change. That should be baked in and absent that, the art becomes, absent an affirmative reauthorization, it becomes unauthorized to keep. It was right to follow my drift. It's certainly. |
| 02:56:31.96 | Mayor Woodside | Certainly the first part I understand. You're asking that we visit this and affirm. Affirm. Affirm. Then the question then is what happens if it's not affirmed? And that may be it's removed, when is it removed, how is it removed, and we'll have to deal with that. |
| 02:56:37.87 | Chris Zapata | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:56:47.32 | Chris Zapata | We'll deal with that, but that just puts the onus on us to reaffirm rather than |
| 02:56:48.52 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah, but that just puts |
| 02:56:52.77 | Chris Zapata | the onus on us to attack and remove. |
| 02:56:55.98 | Mayor Woodside | see the concept. |
| 02:56:57.04 | Sergio Rudin | I see the concept. There are. So as part of this process, step one is initially the applicant and it may be the artist themselves. It may be a donor. They're supposed to sign a standardized agreement covering intellectual property rights, the waivers of artists moral rights and basically like a licensing over the artwork. The other one is there's supposed to be a standardized agreement, which I of course have not drafted, but would probably be coming back to council for review at a later time, covering ownership, installation responsibilities, and maintenance obligations. Now I anticipate that if for significant works of art, right, if it costs $250,000 and a donation is going to be funded by some sort of foundation, I could see them requiring as part of a donation with the city, they want something in the contract saying it's going to be up for 25 years. So. |
| 02:57:49.10 | Chris Zapata | We can always change the number of years. Five was the minimum. Review period. I'm really just saying that we reaffirm all this art every five years. |
| 02:58:00.34 | Mayor Woodside | you Including some that might have a prior agreement that it will stay for 20 years or 25 years. |
| 02:58:07.68 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, if that's the case, then that agreement's going to be binding. But reviewing even that agreement, that agreement might have other things like we promised to maintain it and we find out they're not. So you know how it is with our leases. If we don't look at it, there's a new city council, things are forgotten. It's an opportunity to check back in, make sure this stuff is being maintained. |
| 02:58:09.30 | Mayor Woodside | on the list. |
| 02:58:27.25 | Chris Zapata | THAT IT'S STILL RELEVANT. Reflecting on our cultural values, it's still vital after all it'll occupy a piece of territory so there might be an opportunity to switch it out with a new piece of art and this will help give us a rhythm that's baked into our system, just like our budget process, to make sure that the art stays vital and relevant. |
| 02:58:49.19 | Jill Hoffman | Councilman Verhoeven has her hand raised. Thank you. |
| 02:58:50.66 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:58:50.69 | Chris Zapata | Okay. |
| 02:58:50.91 | Jill Hoffman | MAKING THEM. |
| 02:58:51.15 | Jill Hoffman | WHILE. |
| 02:58:52.95 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:58:53.10 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:58:53.29 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 02:58:53.32 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:58:53.36 | Jill Hoffman | My point was just, we might want to re-home some art, right? Or we might want to swap some art out with another You know, another institution or something. I, we wouldn't get rid of somebody's art was my point to Ian's point. It was, we might want to swap it with somebody else or trade it with somebody or, or sell it even. Right. So. We wouldn't be opposed to someone's piece of art. We may just want to Anyway, dispose, you know, trade it or sell it or something. Re-home it. |
| 02:59:24.76 | Chris Zapata | Sergio, you would have to wordsmith that, but it is something like the This process will report to the city council at least every five years. |
| 02:59:34.90 | Scott Thornburg | May I suggest that this comes back to us on consent, with Sergio's wordsmithing of the policy, so that we're not doing too much wordsmithing from the dais. Brilliant job on what you already drafted and read to us, Sergio. Thank you for that. |
| 02:59:35.04 | Chris Zapata | Man, |
| 02:59:39.21 | Chris Zapata | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:59:52.10 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah. And thank you for giving me extra time. |
| 02:59:54.99 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, before we call the roll on this, I just wanna make a comment that this is really a testament to, to Brian, to the fine people on the commission who took this up as an idea. and rather quickly came up with something that will truly streamline the process, which we are trying to do that in many other areas, and this will pay dividends. Then they might be visible before we know it. So thank you for all your great work on that. |
| 03:00:30.19 | Scott Thornburg | So before you call the question, to be clear, the question is the motion as framed. with direction to the city attorney to bring this item back on consent, incorporating the remaining edits requested by the city council. |
| 03:00:48.07 | Jill Hoffman | CONFIRMED. |
| 03:00:48.43 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:00:48.95 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:00:49.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes. |
| 03:00:49.91 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay, so roll call please. |
| 03:00:54.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Cox. Yes. Council member Hoffman. Yes. Council member Sobieski. Yes. Vice mayor Blaustein. Yes. Mayor Woodside. |
| 03:00:59.41 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:00:59.43 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. |
| 03:01:02.67 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:01:02.69 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Thank you. |
| 03:01:08.97 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 03:01:09.03 | Mayor Woodside | I know there's more. |
| 03:01:14.32 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:01:14.33 | Chris Zapata | THE END OF |
| 03:01:26.11 | Jill Hoffman | Wow, that's great. |
| 03:01:26.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:01:26.99 | Unknown | Congratulations. |
| 03:01:27.71 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:01:28.78 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:01:33.99 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, we are now back to the budget, which is the perennial topic, and the audience is thin, the hour is late, but I think, Mr. City Manager, you're ready to go, right? |
| 03:01:50.53 | Chris Zapata | Yes, sir. Showtime, mayor and council and public and staff. Tonight's the beginning of four public meetings to develop a budget by July the 1st. Finance and I have been working and will continue to work with departments to develop and refine expenses and revenues before final adoption of a budget and in its final format it will be a balanced budget. BUT AGAIN, EVEN A BALANCED BUDGET ADOPTED BY THE COUNCIL ARE ESTIMATES AND PROJECTIONS. I want to talk about some preliminary assumptions that we made that you may want to change tonight. The first one is the council has a policy of 25% reserve of the general fund. That stands at $5,864,998 now. We are not talking about any of that to make that clear. Our numbers also do not request use of our section 115 trust, even though our pension obligation this year is $3,787,872. Those are two things that we believe there needs to be more discussion about if you're going to work with those. But we did not use any of those two pots to try to develop some scenarios for you. We are also incorporating the general fund transfer discussion that we had last meeting, so that there is money set aside in the budget for things that are related to those funds, but also a fair share back to the general fund for its services, as well as putting money aside for future expenses that relate to capital improvements. |
| 03:03:34.04 | Chris Zapata | I WANT TO JUST SAY THAT, YOU KNOW, EVEN THOUGH WE START IN JANUARY, BUDGET IS A YEAR ROUND PROCESS. AND SO, YOU KNOW, WE'RE DOING A LOT OF THAT WORK IN A VERY INTENSE WAY AT THIS TIME. WE ARE WORKING WITH DEPARTMENTS. WE STARTED WITH THE LARGE DEPARTMENTS TO DO A LINE ITEM, BY LINE ITEM REVIEW OF CITY EXPENSES AND LOOKING AT REVENUES AS WELL. WE DID THAT WITH THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT, AND NOW WITH KEVIN MCGOWEN BACK WE'LL DO IT WITH THE PUBLIC WORS THAT WE ARE PRESENTING TO YOU TONIGHT. AND IN THIS STARTING POINT, WHAT WE SEE IS THERE'S A DELTA, AND IN EVERY BUDGET, THERE IS ALWAYS, WHEN YOU BEGIN, MORE EXPENSES THAN REVENUE. SO ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I WANT TO BE VERY, VERY CLEAR ON IS THIS IS NOT THE FINAL BUDGET. IT'S THE BEGINNING OF A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE BUDGET. AND, YOU KNOW, THE MEETINGS THAT YOU HAVE COMING THE 19TH OF MAY, THE FIRST COUNCIL MEETING IN JUNE, AND THE SECOND COUNCIL MEETING IN JUNE TO ADOPT ARE INTENDED TO GIVE YOU AND THE PUBLIC THE TIME TO REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS THAT WE END UP ADOPTING IN SAUSALIDO. IN OUR SCENARIOS, AND ANGELINE WILL PROVIDE MORE DETAILED INFORMATION, BUT I WANT TO JUST CUT TO THE CHASE ON TWO SCENARIOS THAT WE PUT OUT FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION TO GIVE US SOME DIRECTION ON. ONE IS A STATIC OR A BASELINE BUDGET WHICH INVOLVES No new positions, but it involves the transfer of some money budgeted for information technology to fund an IT position on a full-time basis, and that would be absorbed within the existing budget of the IT is what we expect to happen. So there is no new position, but there is a, pardon me, there is no new budget impact, but there is a transfer and creation of that IT position that I believe is essential as we start to face more and more technology challenges, cyber threats, et cetera, and so that one is right for me. A second scenario is an enhanced budget, which involves five positions that would allow you to do a lot of the work that we're doing now and more of it and that Consideration has been done in full consultation with the departments as well as with our new incoming city manager She understands what the workload is And therefore she has said to me. I think some of these things are essential for the city to have success as it goes forward cuts if we don't CUTS. WHERE WE END UP THIS YEAR, I DON'T KNOW, BUT I KNOW THAT IF WE'RE LOOKING AT OUR PROJECTED NUMBERS, WE'RE LOOKING AT CUTS IF WE DON'T DO SOMETHING THAT INVOLVES SOME TYPE OF FUND TRANSFER. I ALSO WANT TO SAY THAT IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT I'VE HEARD THIS CONVERSATION ABOUT A STRUCTURAL ISSUE IN THE CITY. OUR PAST FOUR YEARS OF GENERAL FUND BUDGETS HAVE ENDED IN THE BLACK AND SIGNIFICANTLY SO IN SOME YEARS. AND THAT'S HOW OUR PAST FOUR YEARS OF GENERAL FUND BUDGETS HAVE ENDED IN THE BLACK, AND SIGNIFICANTLY SO IN SOME YEARS, AND THAT'S HOW YOU WERE ABLE TO FUND THIS $17 MILLION INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM THAT THE COMMUNITY IS BENEFITTING FROM RIGHT NOW. AND THAT INVESTMENT OF SOME UNASSIGNED FUND BALANCE ALONG WITH MEASURE L WILL PAY DIVIDENCE FOR A LONG TIME, BUT THERE'S A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF CATCH UP TO DO SO. I APPLAUD YOU FOR THE CITY OF THE CITY. segmenting some of that money for that capital improvement program. And we have a line item by line item summation of what's left in the unassigned fund balance, what is left in some other funds. And Angelina is going to run through all of that, along with some basic information on each of the departments. |
| 03:07:52.99 | Mayor Woodside | She approaches, you just mentioned, the unassigned fund balance. As you look at next year's budget, Were we to use some of those unassigned funds in order to pay for these additional staff positions? Is that an alternative? |
| 03:08:16.14 | Chris Zapata | That is potentially an alternative. And again, I want to make a distinction. Unassigned funds are one-time monies. Positions are ongoing expenses. And to the extent you want to use those as a policy on a limited basis to transition until that day you get more revenues or decide you want to cut expenses, they're there for you to use at that amount We would advocate using all of it But it's there for the council to consider as a resource to meet some needs that you believe are important |
| 03:08:46.80 | Mayor Woodside | And is it correct that generally your approach would be to only use unassigned fund balance for one time only expenses such as an infrastructure project? |
| 03:08:57.72 | Chris Zapata | which is what you did last year, yes, that's correct. But again, I understand this is an interesting time in our world and certainly in local government and what is happening around us and what could happen and what doesn't happen. We're gonna do our best to project, but you also, if you want to, Make sure that the momentum that you've created keeps going. You may want to consider using one-time monies for that purposes until you can figure out new revenue streams, which you've talked about for the last three years. |
| 03:09:29.12 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Angeline, welcome. |
| 03:09:32.19 | Angeline Loeffler | Welcome. Good evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and Council Member. And thank you, the City Manager for the detailed instructions on the introductions on this one. So I will dive directly, excuse my voice. I was having a little bit of issues with my voice though. I will speak loud as I speak into the microphone. So please let me know if you have a hard time hearing me. Next slide, please. So quick outlines of these, the tonight's presentations, we're gonna quick look at the key objectives as the city manager has already briefly discussed and also look through the timeline of these, the adoption of the budgets. And also we're gonna be looking at some of those, the historical trends of our general funds in the past five, six years. And also then we'll dive into the review of the FY26 and 27 proposed general funds, the budgets. And then we'll dive into the differences between a baseline budget versus enhanced budget options. And after that, we're gonna finish with the going through the review of each of the departments, the budgets, and in a summary of each of the departments' budgets. Next slide, please. |
| 03:10:58.68 | Angeline Loeffler | The key takeaway from this particular presentation tonight is actually looking through the general funds, the proposed budgets. And also this year's general budget proposal is designed to support our strategic goals while ensuring the responsibility of financial management. And purpose of today's presentation is to provide the highlight of major considerations and clarify how the proposed allocation align with our organization's needs. Next slide, please. As the city manager already have briefly mentioned that these are some of those timelines that we're looking into, and we will hope to bring you back at the May 19th of the preliminary general via the funds budgets, and as we get the directions from the councils today. And we will bring back the draft of the budgets on on June 2nd of the 2026, and the schedules to do the adoption of the FY26 and 27 budgets on June 16th. Next slide, please. Now we're just going to look at the quick dive into the historical of the general fund trends. And as you can probably see that on the charts in the top portions, showing that since the 2021 exception of the FY21, you will notice all of those budgets, budgeted amounts, approved the budget amounts started with the deficit. However, every one of those years followed by the 2021 shows that we finished the year with the good surpluses and in FY25, we actually finished the surplus of 1.6 million. These are the good, the contributing factors that is keeping the city of South Salute Financial health which is building on our idea and also be able to provide the capital improvement projects and as well as providing the additional budget appropriation for the one-time fundings. I will actually dive into a little bit more detail in a later slides. And outside of these, through the 2025, you will see the trend of the 26th and 27th. The revenue is flattening out, which is causing the deficits, the results on the upcoming years in that sense. So I just want to bring that onto your attention that we have been doing pretty well with the other revenue sources, but it's beginning to flatten out for the next couple of years. Next slide, please. Here are the key expense areas that we're looking at, the personnel budgets and pensions and professional services. Those are some of the major component of our operating budgets. And as you can see, the highest percentages is the increases within the personnel budgets. And from the FY24 through to 27 projection, in average of we have been increasing 10% of our personnel budget in each given years. as well as the pensions, the unfunded accrual liabilities, is also been increasing for the idea 10 actually it's Because of the FY26 and 27, the increase is only like represents about 9% because of the CalPERS did so well on the last year's performances. But prior to that one was averages of the 20, ranges between 20 to 15% on each given years. And then we're expecting that CalPERS, the unfunded liability will continue to rise for the next 10 years. and we're expecting that CalPERS, the unfunded liability, will continue to rise for the next 10 years. And we're expecting that the FY28, we're expecting that the unfunded liability will be exceeding the over 4 million. And the one other thing that I do wanted to point out from this one is the overall Yeah. The difference increases in the overall from the FY26 to 27 is between those two categories, personnel and the pension is made up to about 1.6 million of increases just in those two categories. Next slide, please. In developing of the idea proposed FY 26, the general fund operating budgets, the finance departments reviewed the department's budget requested with the city managers last week. And as the city manager mentioned, these are the ongoing, the working in progress as we will be continuing to meet with the other major departments to kind of fine tuning the numbers as we're getting closer to the idea of presenting of the draft budgets. And also in developing of these numbers, we have incorporated their trendings and the review of the audited amounts to make sure that we are reflected and being conservative and consistent in projecting of the FY27 budgets. And also we also incorporate the assumptions related with the trending of the retirements and the patients' plans as well too. |
| 03:16:24.62 | Unknown | attention. |
| 03:16:30.27 | Angeline Loeffler | and departments projected the proposed items are also ongoing rate of the review. The fund review of a parking and MLK and Thailand's funds are reviewed at the fund level to really assess how much of the general fund transfer is the eligible for the upcoming years. And that will be actually attached to the one of the, all of the attachments of these major fundings of the details projections are attached as a part of the attachments. Next slide, please. And now here is the overview of the projected FY27, the proposed general fund budgets. As you can see, 1.8 million of the shore based in between the revenue and the projected expenditures. And I just wanna bring the one, the attentions to is the FY26 budget's revenue versus FY27, the projected revenues. As you can see, it's really kind of flattened out that we are not really increasing in the revenue, but at the same time, the cost of the operating costs is continues to rise in a personnel and a benefits cost as well as insurances and if any other, the operating costs, material and supplies and insurance costs. And out of that 1.8, as I mentioned previously, the 1.6 is actually coming from the personnel and the pension costs. As you can see, the majority of that 1.8 is made up by the pensions and the personnel costs. Next slide, please. |
| 03:18:18.78 | Angeline Loeffler | General fund is the, is a provides the most of the, the essential services for the staffing and the services and programs for the cities. And staff presentation is focused on, just on the general funds for tonight. And then we're providing you with the two separate options for the council members considerations for the, one is a baseline budgets and the other one is enhanced budgets. Next slide please. The baseline budget is as the city manager has already briefly discussed, that there's no service reductions and there's no increases in the staffings, exception of the creating of one of the IT personnel positions. And outside of that one, it remains pretty constant through the service levels as the current years. Next slide, please. Enhanced budget option is actually including predominantly cost by the additional staffing request. As stated on there, that the risk manager's positions and the capital planning project manager and administrative aides and the community development director's positions and also another position for the permit concierge positions was requested by the departments. These are actually making up for the additional the idea the funding, the request, which is 1.8 to raise it up to 2.7 on the enhanced, the budget options. Next slide, please. This is the brief overview of the what is our, the unassigned fund balance as of the, at this point is 4.1 million is the, the still remaining outside of the, the 25% reserve policy. So these are the unassigned funding that is, the can be used for the one time additional budget appropriations, and as well as one time use of the balance, the budgets. Next slide, please. In addition to the unassigned fund balances, we do have additional other proprietary funds. These are the balances as of right now for the available for the for the transfer over to the general fund. And if you see on the current available fund for the City Hall parking lot, MLK, and the Bank of America, those are the amounts are already reflected on the proposed, the fund transfer after all the expenses has been accounted for on each of the fund levels, including the CIP cost in there. And on other columns, you'll see those are the restrictive funds and Thailand funds, storm drain, library funds, gas tax, police grant and stair funds. So those are all based on audited amounts of what is available at this point. Next slide please. Now I'm gonna be diving into each of the departments, the quick overview of each department. So City Council, there's very little changes from the current year to the next years. Next slide, please. |
| 03:21:50.12 | Angeline Loeffler | So city manager is actually, I had to break it down, administrative departments into the different department city managers and the HR and also city clerks. So as you can see, the budget amounts listed in here is overall of the administrations of the amounts of the budget proposed on that one. 396 for the administrative department is the increase, we're projecting increase on the expenses. It's mainly causing it from the firehouse projects, remaining of the firehouse project costing, as well as there's additional election cost, upcoming election cost has been also projected in there, which was not in on our current budgets, and as well as some of those other small items of the computer refresh required by the IT, the standards, and also there were some significant increases in cafeteria plants as well too. Next slide, please. And again, city clerk's offices, the budgeted amounts you see is the same thing as the roll up amounts for the, under the administrative departments though. There isn't a whole lot of changes onto that one. So I just wanna draw the attention to the full time, the permanent position counts, which there's currently there's three staff members under the city clerk's office. Next slide, please. Now, the human resources department, which is still within the part of the administrative departments, only changes that we are actually requesting is one new position being requested, which is administrative aid, which is part of the enhanced budget options. So this will be the if the new position is granted, of course, that will fall into the part of the enhanced budget options. Next slide, please. Legal services, as you can see, the legal services, the departments has the slight reductions as because of the new general transfer policies, the finance departments work with the city manager to reallocating some of those costs to some of those proprietary funds, which is resulting in the reductions of the legal services in the general funds, but overall the entire budgets, there will not be any changes onto the legal services. Next slide please. The finance department has the no changes in the staffing is the finance department's requesting one of the reclassification of one of the senior accounting the technician to the management analyst which has no impacts on the finance budgets as the, this is actually part of the spinoff of the, our hybrid positions for the IT and a senior accounting tax in that cases. And then because of that one, there was additional out of class pay has been incorporated in that particular position, which is, that's not impact in the upgrading of the, these positions to the management analyst. So as a result, there's no changes in the staffing in the finance department. It remains that as a five. Next slide, please. And here's the information technology. We are adding the new position, personnel positions, one position is IT manager slash liaison, IT liaison. Once again, this position is created in a way that it absorbs within the existing IT budget by the reduction of some of those marine IT functions as we're having full-time onboarding the IT personnel in that sense. And also there is no impacts to the IT budgets in that sense and then just to, To give you the background of that one is the IT budget is marine IT contract is not significantly impacted, different from the current year, but I would expect that as going forwards with this positions, and as our IT, the manager, assume the position and get more comfortable and acquainted with the position, we will see more of the reduction of the marine IT contract amounts will continue to go down. |
| 03:26:30.97 | Angeline Loeffler | Next slide, please. and resiliencies and sustainability departments. There's no changes in personnel budgets and we will see some, the overall reduction in the department budgets as we have the reallocating 50% of the resilient and sustainability salaries and wages to Thailand funds as they are split between those as it's a qualifying justifying the expenses. That is where you see the other reductions is gonna be shown on this department. |
| 03:27:10.12 | Angeline Loeffler | Next slide, please. The community and development departments is comprised of the three separate department, which is the planning and zoning, and economic developments, and the building department. So I kind of decide to consolidate those departments into the one budget's components in there. Next slide, please. So in here you can see the planning and zoning departments will have a slight reductions, and as well as economic developments will have a little bit of increases on that one. Mainly caused by the personnel cost on that one, and the building department has the increases in the budgets a little bit more of the material amount is due to the, one of the other chief building official was not previously budgeted, included in the current year's budgets, which is appears to be increased in our FY27 budgets. and there's no staffing changes outside of the two, the new positions being requested for the community development directors, and as well as the permit technicians, two positions. And these positions are not reflected in the personnel costs at this point. Next slide, please. And these non-departments has the increases of over 200,000. It's mainly caused by the The general funds claim liability reserve accounts for the 750,000 that we have to allocate it. It was not included in the previous budgets, which is main cause of the increases on 228,000. However, even with the adding the 750,000, we had a reduction in the insurance, the premiums with the PRISM, which is kind of offset some of those expenses down. So we only resulted with only the 228,000 of increases at this point. Next slide, please. Police departments has the 25, actually that is actually my typo on that one, the total, the permanent full-time position counts. Currently with the police department is actually 26. And the idea, The main increases cost the contributing that $760,000 is, is mainly from the personnel budgets that was not reflected, some of those vacancies was filled in in FY26. However, those amount were not budgeted within the FY26. That's why it appears to have the huge amount of increases, but it was just not be allocated in the FY26 budgets. And also there were some increases in the professional services, and there's huge increases on the unfunded accrual liability of the 240,000s are part of the contributing factors for the police departments. Next slide please. Public Works, and you can see that there is the one of the requests for the positions for the reclassifications of the senior civil engineers to the assistant Public Works Director, which was already built onto the proposed expense amounts, because those are relatively minor costs to upgrade those positions, so it's actually already been included. It's not part of the enhanced, the budget options. And the main cost of these, the public works, the increases on that 372,000 is coming from the personnel budget, once again. It's because of the, there's no changes in the, full-time department of petitions. However, with not having the sewer operations, public works, a lot of the sewer, the personnel was allocated, a lot of their salary was allocated to sewer operations. Now, not having the sewer operations, we have to move those personnel allocations to other departments. Most of them came back to the public works and some are in to the other areas of like, for example, of the capital improvements, the 140 accounts. But majority of them has to come back to the public work, which is causing the huge amount of increases in the personnel budgets. |
| 03:32:05.13 | Angeline Loeffler | And also another factor was in their increases was the repair and maintenance has the increases over 127,000 at this point. So that is another contributing factor to the increases in the public works budgets. |
| 03:32:10.65 | Unknown | you |
| 03:32:20.94 | Angeline Loeffler | Next slide, please. And engineering departments has the reduction is almost 220,000. It's mainly some of those, actually the reallocations went into the CIPs. Based on the discussion with the public works director, some of those amounts were, we did the significant reallocation of how the personnel budget should be allocated, which is causing the engineering departments, the personnel budgets to go down by the over 200,000 by allocating to the other fundings on the non-general fundings. |
| 03:33:02.51 | Angeline Loeffler | And also there is the reduction in 100,000 in the professional services for the upcoming years, which is part of the contributing of the factors of the huge reductions. Next slide, please. The landscaping has the very small changes. There's not much changes in the landscaping maintenance departments and majority of them remain pretty consistent in that sense. So there's not much of the changes and overall we have a small reductions that we're seeing. Next slide, please. the recreation departments has the increases of the 115,000, which is mainly caused by, once again, increases in the personnel costs. It's a regular, the annual increases along with some of those benefits. And also there's a one, the additional increases on the special event, the operating costs, which is part of the 115,000 of increases in the recreation budgets. |
| 03:34:09.72 | Angeline Loeffler | Next slide, please. And lastly, the library has about 68,000, once again 68,000 is mainly coming from the personnel, the regular annual increases of the budgets. And there's no other significant, and also this particular areas of the libraries for the, on the FY26 budgeted amounts was the, the personnel budget was significantly understated for, So as we're coming into the FY26 budgeted amounts was the personnel budget was significantly understated for us. So as we're coming into the FY27 to fully account for the full positions, which is cost the six to 8,000 of increases of the library budgets. I think that will, next slide please, that will conclude my presentations and I'll open up for any questions. |
| 03:35:03.28 | Mayor Woodside | Questions? |
| 03:35:08.29 | Mayor Woodside | Apparently there are a lot of questions. So let's make sure there are questions, please. Let me start with you, Member Cox. |
| 03:35:16.88 | Scott Thornburg | All right, thank you. Early on in the presentation, you said that the CalPERS unfunded accrued liability is expected to continue rising over the next 10 years. But when we had the presentation from Barrow and Wells, it showed it rising and then coming down. and that it did not show it rising for 10 years. That's not, so where did that 10 year rising pension costs come from. |
| 03:35:48.03 | Angeline Loeffler | Let me make that corrections on that one. So what I meant by the rising for the next 10 years is the hour baseline of the above the 3.5 million. So next 10 years we're expecting that it's gonna be above the 3.5 million. |
| 03:36:03.76 | Scott Thornburg | okay, but we have our pension trust that will flatten that increase. And so, And the actual increase in unfunded liability only lasts for another four years. |
| 03:36:14.34 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 03:36:14.41 | Chris Zapata | Right. |
| 03:36:16.53 | Scott Thornburg | years before it reaches its zenith and then it starts to go down. |
| 03:36:21.11 | Chris Zapata | Council member Cox, let me respond to that. |
| 03:36:21.46 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 03:36:23.81 | Chris Zapata | Because you're correct. We have done analysis of our pension costs and not in just in 2022, but before that, and they show a pension hump that we see, and that pension hump starts to go down after 2032. So that 10-year horizon that's referenced, I think we might be talking apples to oranges, but the pension costs of 3 million that are 3.7 may rise to 4.2, 4.5 for the next four or five years, and then they will come down. And the reason they come down is because the pension will be impacted by the PEPRA Act of 2013, where all of the new retirees who aren't as benefited as well as the classic retirees will start to see some actuarial variation downward with less rich benefits, And so that's going to happen. THE CLASSIC RETIREES WILL START TO SEE SOME ACTUARIAL VARIATION DOWNWARD WITH LESS RICH BENEFITS. AND SO THAT'S GOING TO MEAN THAT THE CITY IS GOING TO BE LOOKING AT LOWER COSTS FIVE, SIX, SEVEN YEARS OUT. AND YOU NEED THAT MONEY AND THE PENSION TRUST TO DEAL WITH THE HUMPS THAT YOU'RE GOING TO SEE IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. THE ONLY THING THAT COULD CHANGE THAT IS SOME CATASTROPHE. AND CALPERS, YOU KNOW, GETS ZERO PERCENT ON ITS RETURN FOR THE NE zero percent on its return for the next five years and they might do something different but the projections we've made show the hump for a five, six year period and not 10 years. |
| 03:37:42.44 | Scott Thornburg | So is it correct to say that the unfunded accrued liability, which is expected to continue rising, will not actually continue will be will be offset by by the planned application of our pension trust starting next year. |
| 03:38:00.28 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. YEAH, THAT'S THE COUNCIL'S PREROGATIVE. YOU COULD TAKE OUT MONEY THIS YEAR IF YOU WANTED TO. I HAVEN'T HEARD THAT, SO WE DIDN'T PRESUME THAT. BUT THE IDEA WAS IS WHEN YOU START TO SEE INCREASES IN 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, YOU'LL HAVE $4 MILLION FROM WHICH TO DRAW FROM TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU SMOOTH THAT COST AS OPPOSED TO DEAL WITH SPIKES THAT THEN AFFECT YOUR BUDGET ON AN ONGOING BASIS. |
| 03:38:26.67 | Scott Thornburg | My biggest question is the next question, which has to do with the overview of the proposed general fund budget. Your slide shows that revenues are flat. They go from 23 to 22 to 21 to 22 million, whereas expenses are constantly evolving. 21 to 22 to 23 to 24. How is that not structural? We have. actual projected revenues and actual projected expenses and they are continuing to grow apart. So how is that not a structural |
| 03:39:09.96 | Chris Zapata | Let me respond to that because I made the comment early in the presentation. Projected is one thing. Actual is another thing. And so when we project budgets, we mostly assume worst-case scenarios, and we're conservative on revenues. We are aggressive on expenses, and so therefore you start with the gap. But when you get theTED NUMBERS, INCLUDING LAST YEAR, WHICH WAS 1.6 MILLION. SO TO SAY IT'S STRUCTURAL WHEN FOUR YEARS IN A ROW YOU'VE HAD SURPLUSES, I THINK IS A QUESTION. RIGHT NOW WE'RE STARTING WITH A HOLE THAT WE NEED TO FIX, BUT WHETHER THAT'S HOW IT'S GOING TO END UP, THAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN. |
| 03:39:53.77 | Scott Thornburg | To follow on to that, you're proposing in the enhanced budget that we add five positions, which takes our deficit from $1.8 to $2.7 million. We only have enough money in our unassigned fund balance of $4.4 million to accommodate that one time. And again, when we're adding positions, that is Structural, that is permanent, that's a constant. And so how is it that adding these positions doesn't actually result in a structural challenge. |
| 03:40:28.78 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, if you add the positions, you will face that. If you don't add the position, then the work product or the work that you do is going to have to be windowed down because you have to deal with existing staff. And if you deal with existing staff, that's going to mean things will get slower. But if you want to take a bridging strategy that I call and use that money one time, one time,ALL AND USE THAT MONEY ONE TIME, ONE TIME, THEN YOU COULD SEE IF IN FACT YOUR REVENUE PICTURE BRIGHTENS NEXT YEAR. IF YOU BRING REVENUE THINGS TO THE TABLE TO CREATE ONGOING REVENUE, THEN YOU'RE BUYING YOURSELF 18 MONTHS ESSENTIALLY TO DO THAT. AND THEN YOU CAN RESET AT THAT TIME OR YOU CAN SAY, WE DON'T WANT TO DO THAT. WE DON'T WANT TO USE OUR ONE-TIME FUNDS FOR ONGOING EXPENSES, EVEN IF IT IS A BRIDGE. |
| 03:41:15.64 | Scott Thornburg | Is it possible for staff to come back to us not only with what our existing revenues and expenses are, but with your plan to enhance revenues, such as? you and I, city manager, had a discussion about finalizing the impact fee study and actually assessing appropriate impact fees to lots of new development that we are planning. So is it possible in our next budget present our next three budget presentations to include a discussion of near term opportunities for enhanced revenue, such as the charter that we are considering, such as in, in, uh, uh, recalibrated impact fees. |
| 03:42:03.60 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, it's possible, yes. Just be cautious with impact fees. Typically those are used for improvements to physical things, streets, parks, libraries, street lights, roads, storm drains, etc. In terms of paying for positions, that may be a different question that I'd have to talk to some people about before I come back. But we could certainly do that analysis. |
| 03:42:29.02 | Scott Thornburg | Understood, but one of the positions, for example, is a permit technician, which is absolutely critical as we're considering 300 new units at 1 and 3 Harbor Drive, as an example. Sure, understood. OK, next question. we list as additional available funds, and indeed we offset in many of our department budgets reliance on a funds outside of the general fund, such as the Tidelands Fund, such as the uh, I don't know what the other ones were that were... Oh, such as our Sea Level Rise grant. How... is by relying on those restricted funds, which can only be used for certain restricted purposes, are we not really hiding a challenge in our general fund. |
| 03:43:26.07 | Chris Zapata | LET ME RESPOND TO THAT. LET ME BE REALLY CLEAR. Thank you. I've heard that there was a plan to spend Thailand's money for certain things. I've never seen the plan I've only seen the fund grow and the Delta between the revenues we receive off Thailand leases and so on and so forth has created a 1.5 million dollar fund balance And now you hire a resilience and sustainability manager who works on Thailand's projects most of the time and to not fund that POSITION WITH THAT MONEY in my mind if you want to make that a general fund expense and you make that practice that we had last year or the year before then you're straining the general fund in a way that i don't think is fair to the general fund and the title ends fund is there to be used for title ends purposes of which that position is one if there's a plan uh that we now have that says you know we're going to spend 1.5 million on certain things IS THERE TO BE USED FOR TITLE LANDS PURPOSES OF WHICH THAT POSITION IS ONE IF THERE'S A PLAN THAT WE NOW HAVE THAT SAYS YOU KNOW WE'RE GOING TO SPEND 1.5 MILLION ON CERTAIN THINGS AND WE WOULD INCORPORATE THAT INTO A TRANSFER POLICY BUT RIGHT NOW I JUST THINK IT WOULD BE DETRIMENTAL TO WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE AND UNFAIR TO THE OPERATING GENERAL FUND BUDGET IF YOU DON'T USE TITLE LANDS MONEY |
| 03:44:33.00 | Scott Thornburg | I totally agree with allocating some of that position to tidelands I'm concerned that the state of the state is not going to be a good thing. I'm concerned that the state of the state is not going to be a good thing. I'm concerned that the state of the state is not going to be a good thing. I'm concerned that the state that again, we are hiding a structural issue by relying on a limited resource, such as the Tidelands Fund, which only has 1.5 million, as an ongoing mechanism to accommodate Um, our 3% per year increase for every position we have on our staff. |
| 03:45:12.86 | Chris Zapata | Let me respectfully disagree with you. You're not hiding anything. You're allocating it appropriately. If you have expenses that are title ends eligible, you should spend title ends money on them. For example, in the budget this year is a bocce ball court. wouldn't do that with the general fund, but can do it with Tidelands. In the budget is a parking lot redo on parking lot one, which is essential to the Tidelands in that area. So you should use Tidelands money for that. The job that the sustainability and resiliency manager does every year should be paid for in portion by Tidelands, which you just said. But the net revenue that comes into the Tidelands has caused it to grow to $1.5 million. dollars. And so you're you're THIGHLANDS, WHICH YOU JUST SAID, BUT THE NET REVENUE THAT COMES INTO THE THIGHLANDS HAS CAUSED IT TO GROW TO $1.5 MILLION. SO YOU'RE SETTING UP A SCENARIO WHERE YOU'RE SITTING ON A BUNCH OF MONEY WHILE THERE ARE A BUNCH OF NEEDS AND YOU'RE STRAINING THE GENERAL FUND WITH THAT TYPE OF HOLDBACK OF SPENDING THOSE FUNDS BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE THAT WE'RE BEING UNWISE TO DO SO. Thank you. I think you're wise to do so, you're intentional to do so. |
| 03:46:16.68 | Scott Thornburg | My question was simply whether it's sustainable to do so. |
| 03:46:19.72 | Chris Zapata | MY ANSWER TO THAT WOULD BE ABSOLUTELY. THE THYLAND FUND BRINGS IN $700,000 A YEAR. The expenses are far less than that. You're growing it. You should be investing it. |
| 03:46:30.99 | Angeline Loeffler | If you, if I may add one thing on that one is if you look at the attachment aids on which is Thailand funds details for the FY24. So as you can see, Trent is we've been kind of the other getting a net surpluses. Wait, attachment aids. |
| 03:46:46.31 | Scott Thornburg | Attachment 8 is the parking fund details. Thank you. |
| 03:46:49.26 | Angeline Loeffler | I'm sorry, Attachment 6, I apologize. So Attachment 6 shows the net service amounts for the Thailand Fund each year is $300,000 to $400,000. And also looking at the, you had a concern about the resilience and sustainability, the salary allocations, that is going to come out about $130,000. Not even $130,000, it's next year's is slightly higher because we have two personnels, the salaries that count for. So it's gonna be around $100,000 in each given year to give you the background information. |
| 03:46:51.66 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 03:47:26.84 | Scott Thornburg | Understood, thank you for that clarification. OK, couple more questions. In the... in the city manager administrative department, we have a variance of $400,000, which you attributed to the firehouse. And I'm not clear how The firehouse comes out of the city manager budget. |
| 03:47:52.73 | Angeline Loeffler | That's a city managers. The idea that department is actually comprised of the overall of the administrative departments, which is the idea that combines the city clerks, city managers, and HR. So the all three units are false under the administrative units. and the major of that one, 300,000, is coming from the firehouse project. We still have about 200,000 carried over from the current year to next year for the scanning of those document contracts, which is 200,000 right in the get-go on that one, and as well as also adding into the additional intern hire, which is we're projecting about additional 25,000 and also. |
| 03:48:36.96 | Chris Zapata | AND ALSO THANKS FOR CLARIFYING THAT ANGELINE AND THANKS FOR THE QUESTION COUNCIL MEMBER AND AND TO THE POINT OF THAT'S NOT AN ONGOING EXPENSE. WE'VE SPENT 20 YEARS NOT YOU KNOW PUTTING OUR RECORDS IN PROPER ORDER THIS YEAR YOU'RE DOING THAT ONCE YOU'RE DONE WITH THAT YOU WON'T BE MAKING THAT TYPE OF INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE SO THAT SHOULD COME DOWN. |
| 03:48:55.79 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. In three slides in a row, the variance is 396,484. Three slides in a row. the city manager the city clerk and the human resources. |
| 03:49:08.94 | Angeline Loeffler | all under the one departments. We treat as all three, the city clerks, HR, and the city managers are under the one department, administrative departments, So that's right. It's a duplication step. |
| 03:49:22.42 | Scott Thornburg | So the total deficit. Thank you. so the total deficit in that department is 1.2 million no four three hundred |
| 03:49:28.51 | Angeline Loeffler | 400,000 times three? No, 300, that's just the duplication of each slice. So within those three departments overall, the deficit is 396,000. You're saying three. |
| 03:49:42.16 | Mayor Woodside | I think what I'm understanding is that there are three departments and the total of all three is 369. |
| 03:49:51.28 | Scott Thornburg | Yes, so I think that should be clarified on the slides because this looks like the city manager is in a deficit of 396, the city clerk is in a deficit of 396, and HR is in a deficit of 396, the way that these slides are. |
| 03:50:03.58 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:50:04.27 | Angeline Loeffler | Bye. |
| 03:50:04.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:50:04.44 | Angeline Loeffler | in the state. |
| 03:50:04.83 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:50:04.84 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 03:50:04.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:50:04.98 | Angeline Loeffler | I thought I made that the administrative departments and apprentices will make it clear, but I apologize. Okay. |
| 03:50:06.09 | Scott Thornburg | Yeah. |
| 03:50:12.12 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you for that clarification. Okay, I did that. |
| 03:50:19.46 | Chris Zapata | And while you're looking through your notes, it's important to note that when you start with rough numbers in the first meeting, there will be recalculations. There will be errors. There will be clarifications that we will come back with. And, you know, I'll give you an example. Some of the budget documents thatING TO GET BIKE REVENUE THIS YEAR BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE THAT PROGRAM ANYMORE. SO WE NEED TO TAKE IT OUT. SOME OTHER EXAMPLES ARE WE HAVE WHAT I CALL NEW EXPENSES THAT WE CAN CATEGORIZE BETTER. BUT WE ESSENTIALLY CREATED A NEW POSITION IN THE DOROTHY GIBSON DEAL THAT WE NOW HAVE TO PAY FOR. THAT PROVIDES SOMEONE AT THE WINDOW FOUR DAYS A WEEK. THERE'S A COST OF THAT. IT'S NOT GREAT, BUT THERE'S A COST OF THAT. ALL THOSE THINGS NEED TO BE EXPLAINED A LITTLE BIT BETTER ON OUR PART. WE WILL STRIVE TO DO SO. |
| 03:51:23.16 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. With respect to the engineering, sorry, the Public Works Department, you said that we have a variance of 372,000 that's no longer paid by the Sausalito-Marin City Sanitary District, but I thought that the positions that we're servicing that were devoted to our collection system went to work for Sausalito Marin City Sanitary. Why are we still paying for collection positions related to the sewer when we no longer have to manage a collections or a treatment system. |
| 03:52:05.42 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, let me answer that one. That's predominantly the supervisor who was in the sewer fund, and he stayed with us. He didn't go to the sewer district. And so the sewer department could no longer afford or pay for his position, and so the general fund does. And that's something that when you have minimal staff in public works and you have somebody that can be here 24-7 or close by or is responsive like Mr. Guasco is, who was funded in the sewer enterprise at one time, but now is funded in the city's general fund. That's one of the predominant drivers of that cost. |
| 03:52:43.64 | Scott Thornburg | But a lot of his work related to So why is the city still required to inspect sewer laterals when we have a separate, a separate, |
| 03:52:56.75 | Chris Zapata | No, he's not expecting. He's in charge of other things now. He doesn't work in sewer capacity in any way other than maybe historical conversations with the district, but now he's in charge of maintenance and our custodians, special projects, et cetera. So he was absorbed in the general fund that way, but he's not doing sewer work. |
| 03:53:22.72 | Scott Thornburg | Okay, so but we're seeking we're asking for new position in the Public Works Department So why do we need to get a new position if he's now doing different work? |
| 03:53:30.40 | Chris Zapata | So. |
| 03:53:34.79 | Chris Zapata | It's not a new position. I think it's a reclassification of one of the existing higher level persons to assistant as opposed to leaving them in that position. That's, I think, a step toward creating succession planning, keeping people, someone that does good work. We should talk about what we can do to use their talents in a way that makes sense to the organization. So, yeah, that's not a new position. That's a promotion. TO TALK ABOUT WHAT WE CAN DO TO USE THEIR TALENTS IN A WAY THAT MAKES SENSE TO THE ORGANIZATION. SO, YEAH, THAT'S NOT A NEW POSITION. THAT'S A PROMOTION, A RECLASSIFICATION OF AN EXISTING POSITION TO A HIGHER LEVEL. AND I THINK YOU NEED SOMEONE LIKE THAT, GIVEN THE RESPONSIBILITIES IN THAT DEPARTMENT. |
| 03:54:14.00 | Scott Thornburg | Okay, my last question had to do with the police. It was announced that we had positions that were filled but were not allocated in 2026. I thought we were way short on our positions in the police department and that one of our new positions didn't, pan out, that were back out on the street recruiting. So I'm not understanding the 700. $1,000 or whatever it is. I printed this out and some of my pages cut out on the PowerPoint presentation. |
| 03:54:47.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:48.75 | Scott Thornburg | I can't see what the variance is on the police, but I thought we were, |
| 03:54:50.89 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:54:52.44 | Scott Thornburg | not fully staffed. in addition to the two not funded, I thought there were positions that we were having a hard time filling. Thank you. |
| 03:55:01.03 | Chris Zapata | And that's true. but we still have to budget for the positions to make sure that if we do fill them, that the money's there so that we don't have to come back to you and say, you know, we don't have money for these positions. |
| 03:55:12.16 | Scott Thornburg | But the announcement was that there were positions that were not allocated in 2026. And I thought we were very clear that there were two positions that were unfilled, and that So I don't understand how we had positions, not two positions, not allocated in 2026. |
| 03:55:29.18 | Chris Zapata | Let us look into that. Okay. |
| 03:55:31.86 | Scott Thornburg | Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you for answering my questions. Obviously, this is shocking to be looking at a recommended $2.7 million deficit. And so I just really want to try and drill down and understand what's being recommended and why we are where we are. So thank you for indulging me. |
| 03:55:49.19 | Mayor Woodside | Vice Mayor, you said you had a lot of questions. |
| 03:55:51.31 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 03:55:51.32 | Jill Hoffman | Well, |
| 03:55:51.56 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:55:51.96 | Jill Hoffman | I think |
| 03:55:52.74 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 03:55:52.84 | Jill Hoffman | Councilmember Cox covered some of them so I won't go over them again but I am really interested In the breakdown of the enhanced budget option, because there is a almost $1 million discrepancy and it's accounting for five positions. I went through Transparency California to sort of guess what each of those positions are around $200,000 for CDD, around $83,000 for administrative aid, around 125 for a permit tax. around 180 for a project manager, so it's about 600,000. before the risk manager position. So I have a couple of questions on that. First of all, right now, don't we have a consulting firm that is acting as our risk manager? |
| 03:56:33.73 | Chris Zapata | You do. |
| 03:56:34.66 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so is the intent to hire an in-house risk manager? |
| 03:56:35.03 | Chris Zapata | So it's a great day. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE SHOULD PROBABLY HAVE MORE DETAIL ON. BUT LET ME JUST SAY THIS. YOU BUDGETED FOR A RISK MANAGER POSITION LAST YEAR. IF YOU CREATE A COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR POSITION AND A FULL-TIME ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER POSITION, THEN YOU MAY NOT NEED A RISK MANAGER POSITION BECAUSE THAT PERSON THAT'S IN THAT POSITION CAN THEN DO THAT. BUT THAT'S THE ASK IS THAT WE DO THAT. |
| 03:57:02.35 | Jill Hoffman | But I would, oh sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, city manager, please keep going if you're here. |
| 03:57:05.66 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, and so if you ask me what we're doing right now is working, I can say that it is. We have a contract risk manager. It's much less costly than a full-time, fully loaded risk manager, but we were given that as a request. It doesn't mean you have to do it, but that's one of the things that's been requested. So I could take something and say, not going to make it to the council, not going to make the light of day. Take that out. So we're being very transparent in showing you. SO I COULD TAKE SOMETHING AND SAY, NOT GOING TO MAKE IT TO THE COUNCIL, NOT GOING TO MAKE THE LIGHT OF DAY, TAKE THAT OUT. SO WE'RE BEING VERY TRANSPARENT AND SHOWING YOU WHAT WE'VE HEARD FROM THE DEPARTMENTS, WHAT WE BELIEVE MIGHT MAKE SOME SENSE, BUT IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOU. |
| 03:57:16.81 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:57:42.93 | Chris Zapata | and what you want to do. |
| 03:57:44.05 | Jill Hoffman | But I don't see a breakdown of the cost of each of those positions. So I'd like to ask if you could. I mean, I had to look up what those were using existing wages from Transparency California. But perhaps when you come back, if you could give an itemized cost for each of the requests so that we can more appropriately determine what we can budget. And then I'm also in thinking about that, knowing that we use a consultant for a risk manager, might there be other places where we could utilize part-time employees or consultants to save on pension costs or on FTE costs? |
| 03:57:59.10 | Unknown | So that we can. |
| 03:58:14.20 | Chris Zapata | So the pendulum swings back and forth. At one time, we don't want consultants. We want institutional knowledge. We want people employed by the city. And when you do that, there's a cost to that. And then when you hire a bunch of consultants, there are some trade-offs there as well. So what I'm hearing you say is let's go back to maybe using consultants more if they're cheaper. |
| 03:58:33.59 | Jill Hoffman | I would say in an effort to approach cost saving in the most efficient way possible while still meeting the requests of all of our departments, it may require us to consider approaches that aren't the same traditional FTE approaches. but I wouldn't say, that we're trying to switch the pendulum back. The consulting costs, the issue with the consulting costs, in addition to the lack of institutional knowledge, was that they were hugely expensive, up to a million dollars for consulting fees. So I don't think this is the same request. |
| 03:58:59.65 | Chris Zapata | Well, they still are expensive. They're not going down. |
| 03:59:01.87 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:59:01.92 | Chris Zapata | Yeah. Yeah. Sure. |
| 03:59:03.43 | Jill Hoffman | Sure, but for something like an administrative aid or a part-time you know, administrative support that's different than a consultant firm that's helping us with something Up until recently, we had a, that was a consultant that was very high paid because we could not find an FTE. But I would like to see if possible, could staff return with cost opportunities for, one, the full-time employee cost for each of these roles, the potential cost for if we were going to use FTE |
| 03:59:21.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:59:31.39 | Jill Hoffman | a consultant or a part-time. And then in looking at the concierge permit tech position, Um, Could we consider a white glove service fee? So if folks were going to have a dedicated concierge, there would be something to pay for it. |
| 03:59:45.26 | Chris Zapata | Yes, cities do that, expedited plan review, expedited service, and they put a fee on that that helps offset the costs. And going back to your question about consultants to help with administrative stuff, that was the part of the program that we started to put together by bringing on our person at the front desk, by adding halftime people, by developing this intern program so that we have more coverage and more resources to help departments. But I know that your numbers on the five positions include, for example, benefits, retirement costs. |
| 03:59:50.93 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 04:00:20.44 | Jill Hoffman | I'm right. Of course. |
| 04:00:22.03 | Chris Zapata | So when you said 200,000 for a CDB. |
| 04:00:23.67 | Jill Hoffman | No, but I pulled those including pension costs. I looked on transparency.org for all of the costs for the full salary including pension costs. Includes salary, additional costs, and pension costs from 2024 and 2025. It's all public. |
| 04:00:30.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:00:33.83 | Chris Zapata | It's all public. Well, I'll tell you what's public in Sausalito as well, and let me be very respectful. I know what I SAW THE NUMBER THAT WAS PROPOSED IN THOSE FIVE POSITIONS, THAT DIDN'T STRIKE ME AS BEING OUT OF ORDER. BUT WE WILL DRILL DOWN AND GET YOU SPECIFICS TO HELP MAKE THAT CLEARER. |
| 04:01:06.88 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, because if we're, if I'm just alarmed by the significant, of course, as Councilmember Cox is by the significant deficit, but I know There are solutions to fill these, to solve these problems that don't require us operating at a level of service that's not appropriate for our community and our new city manager's needs as well. |
| 04:01:26.66 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, understood. |
| 04:01:27.84 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay, all right, thank you. Those are all my questions. |
| 04:01:30.95 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay, if I may on those, the salary information, I do have the full, the projected out, the workforce planning for those five positions. It came up to be with the salaries and wages and benefits and all of those packages together we came up with, the idea is $873,000 for those five positions. |
| 04:01:52.68 | Chris Zapata | We'll highlight that in the next part of the presentation. Yeah, that'd be helpful to see. |
| 04:01:54.27 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, that'd be helpful to see. |
| 04:01:58.15 | Mayor Woodside | I don't see a hand, but Jill, did you have questions? |
| 04:02:04.68 | Jill Hoffman | No, in light of the questions that are already asked, I don't have any follow up. I do support, though, further detail on the positions and options for addressing the asks from the departments and what we're trying to achieve and alternatives at the next city council meeting. |
| 04:02:20.04 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:02:20.07 | Chris Zapata | Mr. Sobieski. |
| 04:02:20.95 | Jill Hoffman | the next time we address this thing. |
| 04:02:20.98 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 04:02:21.10 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah. |
| 04:02:23.28 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Yeah, I have a couple of questions. So thanks, Angeline. Just to dive into attachment eight on the parking fund. I just sort of went deep on the parking fund. So a couple of things like, Where is parking citations here? |
| 04:02:42.92 | Angeline Loeffler | Parking citation is actually in the part of the, Oh, parking citation is actually under the police departments. |
| 04:02:54.07 | Chris Zapata | So the parking fund doesn't include parking citations. |
| 04:02:58.39 | Angeline Loeffler | No, however, that we did actually add in a new line items for the delinquent parking citation collections for the upcoming years. |
| 04:03:08.03 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, that's how I noticed that we didn't have citations. |
| 04:03:08.08 | Angeline Loeffler | Yeah, that's how I knew. have citations. Right, so I think that might be something that it's the, I really appreciate you bringing that to our attention is yes the parking citation should be really under the parking funds but currently it's recorded under the police department's |
| 04:03:23.52 | Chris Zapata | Let me help with that because I think I understand the question. The parking citations which are collected, there isn't a line item that shows the collection amount. My sense of that is that's included in fines, fees, et cetera, that we put in another category of the budget. So what I'm hearing you say, Councilmember Sobieski, is not that be in the parking budget to show it as a revenue. |
| 04:03:50.88 | Chris Zapata | I was truly just asking questions, so I wasn't saying anything yet. Later, I might say something like that. Thank you. Could you kindly put back up the slide historical of general fund budget versus actual? It was like slide four that's in our packet as the years 2021 actual versus budget. |
| 04:04:18.18 | Chris Zapata | So I think this slide deserves some I would send this slide out on currents. I think everybody needs to see this slide. it's, we are wrestling with our budget. I think everyone's always wrestled with our budget. And this shows part of why it's very hard to figure out what nomenclature even to use. So I had a sales guy once who always beat his sales forecast because he sandbagged his numbers. every single year. the city of Sausalito basically projects a deficit. and every single year it has a surplus. Now, I'm just... I don't know that it serves anyone to have conservative numbers because it's just throws a wild card into trying to guess what we've got here. Uh, So in terms of direct, so this is leading to a question, I guess, we had a If we just look at the last three years of revenue, 2023, we forecasted $20 million, $20.6 million in revenue, and the actual was $23 million. In 2024, we forecasted 19.3 and the actual was 21.5. 2025, we forecast 19.7. The actual was 23.1. So with three years in a row of missing our revenue target. admittedly in a positive direction, great, but we missed it by between 10 and 25%, 10 and 20%. Why should I have any confidence in the budget protection on our revenue this year? |
| 04:06:04.12 | Chris Zapata | you Well, let me give you an answer because I was here with you in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024. Some of those surpluses that you were pointing to resulted from people overstating the impact of the pandemic. It was bad. There was some assistance from the federal government. There was some stimulus money that allowed people to spend. And so the impact to cities, in particular... ASSISTANCE FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. THERE WAS SOME STIMULUS MONEY THAT ALLOWED PEOPLE TO SPEND. AND SO THE IMPACT TO CITIES, IN PARTICULAR, WAS NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD HAVE BEEN. SO THIS LAST YEAR, WE BUILT A BUDGET THAT ASSUMED MORE OF A REALITY IN THAT WE DIDN'T BUDGET AT THE TOP STEP FOR FULL EMPLOYMENT. WE HAD THAT DISCUSSION IN PUBLIC AND SOME OF YOU DIDN'T LIKE IT BUT I THOUGHT IT WAS MORE ACCURATE SO THAT WE PROJECTED EXPENSES BETTER BUT ON THE REVENUE SIDE YOU KNOW THERE IS WHAT I CALL some headwinds, some turbulence that are in front of us. And if we're aggressive, that could be a philosophy of the councilor, we could be more aggressive than we are. And that's what we're trying to do right now. We're trying to look at all of our revenue streams and look at these trends and see if we're missing something. And that's why I would caution you about jumping too deeply into what we're doing now. This is a starting point, it's not where we're gonna end up. |
| 04:07:38.42 | Chris Zapata | I mean, I understand this starting point. But I'm trying to know if this is like my sales manager who always under sandbagged and then they got better. through the course of the year or it's reality. What I'm getting at, Chris, is It's not about the deficit or the surpluses here, the five years of surpluses that are on this chart. My question is really about the three years of revenue forecasting and about how the finance department forecast revenue, because again, in 2023, uh, revenue forecast was 20.6, actual was 23. That's a 10% miss to the upside. 24-20 was 19.3 to 21.6. That's about an 8% miss to the upside. 2025 forecast 19.7. The actual was 23.1. So it's like whatever, 15%. more revenue than was forecast. Here, the reason why we are concerned about the projected deficit is that Is it like every other year where we project the deficit and it turns out a year later after we do the audit we find out we have a surplus because we end up with a lot more revenue or is this 21? point five million dollar year-end estimate that's in the next slide. for revenue is that based on Actuals, and we're already in May. So we should have our numbers for Q1, Q2, and Q3. And can you show Q1, Q2, and Q3 for this fiscal year and compare it to Q1, Q2, and Q3 of the prior fiscal year so that we can actually see that the actuals for those quarters are down relative to the previous year? |
| 04:08:56.57 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 04:08:56.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:09:15.95 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 04:09:16.02 | Chris Zapata | Yes. |
| 04:09:16.68 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 04:09:16.70 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 04:09:16.83 | Chris Zapata | on. |
| 04:09:17.03 | Chris Zapata | tonight. |
| 04:09:18.89 | Angeline Loeffler | Right, and then also I do wanna bring your attention on this, some of those are our biggest player on the revenue, property taxes has been gradually decreasing for the idea. So on the idea, FY24 and 25 shows that actually we received the property taxes, secure property tax higher than what we budgeted for. But the current year, we are projecting about 300,000 less than what we budgeted for. That seems to be going in trend with the FY27 as well too, based on the report that I have received from the county. |
| 04:09:57.52 | Chris Zapata | Okay, so that I don't understand. I thought property tax is very stable. I don't think our property values have gone down. So how is it our property tax receipts are going down? |
| 04:10:06.29 | Angeline Loeffler | That is one thing that I do need to do a little bit more deep dive in there. As of the April of the report that we received from the county, it looks like that we projected the secure property tax of a 5.9 in our budget. But based on the county's reports, we're expected to get about 5.6 for this current year's. |
| 04:10:26.07 | Chris Zapata | but how could that be? |
| 04:10:27.47 | Angeline Loeffler | Right, so that is something I just received the reports, but that seems to be where we're getting the information. So I need to do a little bit more deep dive into those. that could be part of it is we are getting a little bit more on the property transfer taxes, but that is not really offsetting enough of our secure property taxes. So the trend actually is in the idea that our major sales tax revenue has been going down as well too. That is another contributing factor of the revenue being not where we are expected to be for the where we have a budget for the FY26. And that seems to be kind of trending into the FY27 as well. |
| 04:11:14.77 | Chris Zapata | I'm sorry to belabor the point, but I still don't get the property tax thing. My property tax bill never goes down, so I don't understand how property tax receipts have gone down. That's not a trivial difference. $300,000 is a lot. |
| 04:11:22.70 | Angeline Loeffler | Right. |
| 04:11:22.97 | Unknown | I understand. |
| 04:11:30.64 | Chris Zapata | and not understanding why we're having The implications here of this presentation aren't like, we're not doing this as an exercise to then four weeks from now have a totally different picture. So it feels like that number shouldn't have been presented until it's been run to ground to be accurate. And if it's inaccurate, |
| 04:11:49.18 | Chris Zapata | Well, let me help you with that, Council Member Sobieski. |
| 04:11:49.20 | Chris Zapata | Well, I really- |
| 04:11:52.98 | Chris Zapata | WE WILL LOOK AT IT AGAIN, AND WE WILL COME BACK TO MAKE SURE THAT IT'S CORRECT. BUT THE PROJECTIONS WE'VE BEEN GETTING FROM OUR CONSULTANT AND THE COUNTY FOR PROPERTY TEX HAVE BEEN FAIRLY ACCURATE FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS. SO WHY WOULD THEY BE INACCURATE THIS COMING YEAR? BECAUSE THEY'RE SAYING THEY'RE FLAT OR DOWN. WE'LL ASK THE QUESTION. BUT WHEN WE SAY WE DON'T KNOW WHAT THOSE NUMBERS ARE OR HAVE BEEN, WE USE THE NUMBERS THAT WE GET FROM THE COUNTY AND FROM OUR CONSULTANT, AND THEY'VE BEEN PRETTY CLOSE. Maybe this year they're off and we'll find out why. |
| 04:12:25.41 | Mayor Woodside | Can I offer just one thought? Because we all look at residential real estate as being pretty stable in property tax. But look what's happening in the commercial real estate community. Properties are selling for millions less |
| 04:12:38.86 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:12:39.72 | Mayor Woodside | And that may be the explanation, but to the city manager, you basically are relying on projections you get from the county tax collector. |
| 04:12:48.38 | Chris Zapata | Our consultant HDL relies on those projections that they get. Thank you. |
| 04:12:52.76 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. seeing no more questions from the dais. I'm not asked questions, I'll have a comment later. Any public comments? |
| 04:13:08.29 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none online. |
| 04:13:09.49 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, back to the dais for, the city manager's asking us for direction. So. |
| 04:13:18.21 | Unknown | I have a couple of comments. |
| 04:13:20.31 | Mayor Woodside | Sure. |
| 04:13:20.64 | Unknown | but if I could just. |
| 04:13:21.96 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:13:21.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:13:21.99 | Mayor Woodside | frame one issue we need to address before we leave is what direction |
| 04:13:22.01 | Unknown | Right. |
| 04:13:27.82 | Mayor Woodside | We wish to give to the city manager when things come back to us regarding the difference between the two scenarios, the added staff or not. or some variation on that. I think that's a critical thing we can't overlook. I'm just trying to make sure we don't. |
| 04:13:41.32 | Scott Thornburg | Yes. |
| 04:13:43.96 | Mayor Woodside | And, uh, Ms. Cox. |
| 04:13:45.75 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. I'll start off by saying I support hiring a new community development economic community, I am tired. Community Development Department, Economic Development advisor position. so that our acting city manager can I support the hiring of an admin. How that is allocated, I'm not sure. So those are two full-time positions that I would advocate hiring in the city. I support the hiring of an admin. How that is allocated, I'm not sure. deference to both the city manager and the incoming city manager recommendations and |
| 04:14:30.45 | Mayor Woodside | And those are included in your, what do you call it? Enhanced budget. |
| 04:14:35.23 | Chris Zapata | Enhanced. There's more than those two, but if those are the only two, then that enhanced budget would come down. |
| 04:14:38.45 | Scott Thornburg | Bye. |
| 04:14:38.49 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:14:38.60 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. Yeah, that's what I'm recommending. Preliminarily, until we see more numbers and are able to vet these numbers, I'm comfortable right now with increasing the projected deficit for the addition of those two positions. If things change, we can always do a mid-year adjustment as the year progresses and as the new city manager gets more familiar with how best to leverage our existing employees to accommodate need. I do support the IT transition, which has a zero net cost to the city. I wanted to address, I love council member- |
| 04:15:24.03 | Mayor Woodside | Cancel that. Thank you. Thank you. Mind if just for a moment if we can focus on that recommendation for a moment I support that |
| 04:15:26.28 | Scott Thornburg | Go ahead. |
| 04:15:33.21 | Jill Hoffman | I support it, but I also would like us to explore the additional requested positions. I think we would do well to have another permit technician slash concierge, and we could potentially pay for that via expediting fees. So I would also like to request that. |
| 04:15:48.91 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 04:15:49.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:15:49.94 | Scott Thornburg | I would endorse that if it was at least partially paying for itself. You know, I was concerned to see our park and rec costs go up because I had understand that department and particularly for special events because I had understood that's department was largely funding itself especially with respect to special events so I just wanted to give us more time to get our head around where all these negatives are coming from but I do support that if it's at least partially self it's cost based cost and I think |
| 04:16:25.93 | Unknown | you |
| 04:16:26.01 | Jill Hoffman | And I think there's a chance that maybe the PBID would, if we had a discussion, would be willing to contribute to that position as well. I don't know. |
| 04:16:33.05 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, so let me be clear on the parks and recreation is Program their budgets roughly a little over a million and they generate about six hundred and thousand a year in revenue. So For all the things that you're doing you're subsidizing that operation by four hundred thousand dollars, which is great Credit to Brian and his team and all of that, but it's never been self-sustaining and it never is in most cities |
| 04:17:02.25 | Scott Thornburg | Understood. I just know that we are increasing Jazz by the Bay by a month. So if we're paying extra to increase that service, I would recommend against that when we're facing a $2.7 million potential deficit. |
| 04:17:18.06 | Chris Zapata | you. there's a lot of ancillary benefits that come from programming. |
| 04:17:22.21 | Scott Thornburg | Maybe so. Again, these slides are so overview, it's really difficult for us to give specific direction regarding the department budgets. |
| 04:17:30.27 | Mayor Woodside | but since we do have a sort of consolidated presentation yeah and the city manager wants to know what he should come back with I'm hearing at least those two positions and a possible third yep correct with some support for it anything else |
| 04:17:34.90 | Scott Thornburg | Yeah. |
| 04:17:39.32 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:17:39.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:17:45.44 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:17:48.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:17:48.79 | Scott Thornburg | Mm-hmm. |
| 04:17:54.42 | Scott Thornburg | In terms of the five recommended, we're at two impossible. |
| 04:17:57.59 | Jill Hoffman | I'd like to see the itemized costs so we can understand and find a path as a council to provide for those departments. It doesn't have to be FTE positions, but if we know the cost for a part-time or suggestions for other cost options. Yeah. to make the decisions. |
| 04:18:09.14 | Mayor Woodside | So it's not like they're being ruled out entirely, but they're not being recommended for, is that understood? |
| 04:18:14.27 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:18:14.30 | Scott Thornburg | recommended for exactly what the |
| 04:18:17.86 | Chris Zapata | That's very helpful. That's very helpful. |
| 04:18:19.97 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah. |
| 04:18:20.00 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 04:18:20.11 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:18:20.26 | Scott Thornburg | The next thing we have to think about as we're considering using part-time or consultants uh... for some of our needs is eighty three three nine so i'm sure the city attorney is aware that eighty three three nine was enacted became effective this year anytime that we seek to hire an outside professional to perform a task within the job description of a represented employee, we have to give notice to the bargaining unit but at least 45 days before we go out for RFP for that. So I wanna be sure that as we are developing our strategy for how best to meet our um, work needs that we are factoring into account and including in our timeline this 45 day advance notice to the bargaining unit anytime that we are, and I deliver seminars to various folks on this requirement, so many, Agencies are now baking into their Um, professional procurement policy this process. Just wanted to throw that out there. |
| 04:19:33.31 | Jill Hoffman | Can I weigh in with something? I support, by the way. |
| 04:19:33.33 | Scott Thornburg | Oh. |
| 04:19:36.04 | Mayor Woodside | Sure, I didn't see your hand or I would have called upon you earlier, Jill, I'm sorry. |
| 04:19:39.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. It was up, but I principally agree with the approach. |
| 04:19:44.68 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 04:19:44.90 | Jill Hoffman | But one thing I think we're not looking at is how we can and some of the seminars and I'm going to give a report on this later, but some of the seminars that the city leaders |
| 04:19:45.09 | Unknown | you |
| 04:19:54.37 | Jill Hoffman | is always about AI. and using artificial intelligence for taskers, especially the low level taskers. And some of these permit tech things and some of the secretarial work that we were talking about earlier. can be covered and by just simple AI programs. Right. And so, I'm thinking that we're not leveraging that enough. And when we're talking about some of these positions. Anyway, I'm thinking when we're talking about expanding our staff, are we not leveraging technology in a way that would help us cover some of these things instead of not hiring people, but if we're talking about part-time people, I think we may be able to cover some of this. So I'm just wondering. |
| 04:20:41.54 | Mayor Woodside | So that's for a future consideration? Essentially, you're asking that they look at it? |
| 04:20:46.08 | Jill Hoffman | to refine it. I think that's a question for maybe our new, you know, our assistant city manager to look at or somebody, maybe our new IT guy. our new IT person is to look at AI for covering some of our scheduling and low level Love taskers. |
| 04:21:05.11 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 04:21:05.13 | Jill Hoffman | I love that idea. |
| 04:21:06.04 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 04:21:06.71 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, so that's a suggestion, not a direction at this moment, as I understand it. If I can just offer a comment, I enjoy hearing the difference in interpreting whether we have a structural deficit or whether we've actually had years of surplus. And the conclusion there is, no, we don't have a structural deficit. My view of this is twofold. One, chronically, this city does not have the revenues to do what the city needs. That's to my way of looking at it. I don't call it a structural deficit. I call it a lack of revenue sufficient to support some very important needs. That's a picture big problem going forward so we've got underway various proposals and things in the works that will take staff time to see where we how we can enhance that and I know that was probably in your one big top priority going forward so I think we all should keep that in mind the other thing that concerns me is the recent trend and revenues is not good so what is that is it a short-term cycle is a long-term cycle we have impacts felt here in this county of things like immigration the big beautiful bill which is not so beautiful we have reduction in commercial real estate taxes we have all kinds of things happening as a result of things we do not control and the concern I think for all of us is the trend |
| 04:21:42.74 | Sergio Rudin | way of, |
| 04:22:48.13 | Mayor Woodside | It may get worse before it gets better. I don't want to be an alarmist, but The Anderson School for 70 years has been pretty good at predicting California economy. And right now they're saying we can't predict a whole lot because so much is in flux. So it's a worry and I think we all have to be careful that whatever we do we try to get if we're going to add positions that part of the purpose is to enhance the revenue picture going forward either to support that particular position or Revenues that can be used for other other things. So I just want to say that's my perspective. I don't think we have a structural chronic deficit except when it comes to our revenues versus our needs. So I'm not sure if I'm not sure Thank you. That's all I wanna say at this point. And I wanna commend the city manager for bringing this to us. Last year we had individual department presentations which were helpful and we could drill down maybe more specifically. but it also was time consuming and I'm not sure we kept track in our minds of what our budget was, this was an effort to consolidate it. And I want to commend the staff for going along with that program and bringing it to us in this manner, but it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. |
| 04:24:14.11 | Scott Thornburg | Mayor, I had started to make comments, and then we stopped so that we could vote about the two people. |
| 04:24:20.51 | Mayor Woodside | I'm sorry. I thought we, I thought we, do we need a vote on that? |
| 04:24:21.49 | Scott Thornburg | Yeah. Well, we just, we aligned on that, but I just had a couple other additional comments. |
| 04:24:27.73 | Mayor Woodside | Oh, yeah, I didn't mean to interrupt that. |
| 04:24:28.35 | Scott Thornburg | I didn't mean to. Okay, that's all right. |
| 04:24:30.33 | Mayor Woodside | So just so it's clear, city manager, the direction on the two and maybe a third on the enhanced Okay. |
| 04:24:38.75 | Scott Thornburg | Okay? Thank you. One of the things mentioned was $750,000 for the up. risk pool. And my understanding was that we didn't use all of that money. And so I'm not sure we need to budget a full 750,000 for the upcoming year. |
| 04:24:56.01 | Chris Zapata | I need to correct the budget one of the things that we did this past year is we adopted a budget in three months one of the things that was not included in that budget was that seven hundred fifty thousand dollar pot so it's put in there this year and that reflects an increased cost it's partially offset by the |
| 04:25:15.96 | Scott Thornburg | I got it, I did not realize it had not been included last year. |
| 04:25:18.47 | Chris Zapata | And that was our fault, my fault for not catching that, but that's what I came to find out. So that's why there seems to be an increase there when, and in fact, we had lower claims costs last year because we're doing better on risk management. But we still need to put that money in in case we have something happen this coming year. |
| 04:25:41.98 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. So then my only other comment is the mechanisms The interns, I fully support continuing the intern program. We've identified some amazing talent. through our interns. program. And then I would like to hear more about potential revenues generated by impact fees finishing the we finished Part one, we need to finish. of our Nexus study. We need to give direction to staff regarding We want to charge what impacts we want to include in our impact fees, and then also the potential revenue through transfer tax revenues via the charter, if we decide to move forward with the charter. So I'd like to include some of those things as we move forward with our discussion. And those are my comments. Thank you. |
| 04:26:37.46 | Mayor Woodside | Any other comments? |
| 04:26:38.56 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, I guess I have to reiterate. If we project a budget deficit every year, eventually we might be right. But the reality is that year in and year out. the city of South Slater's finance department and the exercise we go through has predicted a budget deficit. And after the year's books are closed and we do an audit, six to 12 months later, we come up with a statement of having had a surplus. But by the time we're talking about that surplus, we're in the midst of talking about the next year's budget, which is budgeted forecast to be a deficit So this explains why people have been talking about a deficit forever and deficit spending, because every year we project a deficit, and every year we end up with a surplus. So it is kind of maddening, and it's understandable people are confused. It could very well be. this time is different it could be that as you're pointing out mayor the revenues are down in a way that matches what the projection is and the expenses are high. But I just want to point out that this is the sort of, tension and stress that we go through every single year since I've been on the council. DEFICIT, ACTUALLY $2 MILLION SURPLUS. The following year, a $1.2 million surplus, a $3.5 million surplus, a $2.7 million surplus, and then a $1.6 million surplus. especially when we're trying to make critical decisions about investments in people and up-leveling the services, spendings actually pay for themselves in a different way. Like, like city manager Zapata was saying, when you do those three concerts in September, people are parking, people are paying for parking. It's hidden, but it's actually probably a profitable thing. It's just hard to keep track of. We, could very well be cutting off our nose to spite our face by facing these projections based on numbers that don't have a lot of merit and end up not seizing the opportunity to make investments that end up enhancing our situation. So I'm not saying that's for sure the case. We do have the war in Iran We do have A LOT OF HEADWINDS. BUT WE ALSO HAVE A RESURGENT SAN FRANCISCO. When I talked to Wayne, the parking guy, and asked him about the parking revenue projections, he was like, you know, it seems really busy to me. is what he says. How confident are we in the parking revenue projections? And I don't actually believe that we're that confident in them. It doesn't help to have projections that aren't It helps, the more accurate they are, it helps. So what I would ask as part of this exercise, it'd be useful to see the Q1, Q2, Q3 actual revenues, since they should be reported to us, and then compare them to the previous year. So let's see the slowdown, and let's try to see where the slowdown is. Property tax, sales tax, parking revenue? Something else, special fees? It's hard for us then to sense if the slowdown in revenue is because commercial real estate is down, that's a different story than if say parking revenue and sales tax is way down. That feels different to me for a couple reasons we could go into. But we can't, if our role is to provide some guidance and all we have is this kind of macro level stuff, I don't know that I can provide any useful guidance. except to say the only numbers we can really be sure of in this exercise, that this sheet shows, the only thing we can be sure of is the audited financial statements, and those have been black for every year since 2021 and before. So if we do have a structural deficit, it will show up for sure. We'll be sure about it next year. Thank you. right now we're projecting it. And so I do want to note some caution about leaping You know, we want to be careful, but I just want to I just want to highlight that for my colleagues and myself. |
| 04:30:32.97 | Scott Thornburg | Can I just say I started this item as stressed out as a council member as I have probably ever been. And I'm ending, coming up, I'm ending my second term, eight years. And so I want to thank my colleagues for helping to address some of the concerns by coming up with some productive path forward. And, you know, we'll see where we land. But this has been a really helpful discussion. |
| 04:31:00.29 | Mayor Woodside | So if there's nothing further on this item and- |
| 04:31:03.06 | Jill Hoffman | I didn't get to make any comments yet. Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 04:31:04.09 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 04:31:04.10 | Mayor Woodside | Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 04:31:05.79 | Jill Hoffman | That's okay. |
| 04:31:06.94 | Mayor Woodside | Kick me. |
| 04:31:07.34 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I understand. No, I'm sorry. Just to say I appreciate the comments of our colleagues, and I know that this was quite a daunting agenda item given the |
| 04:31:11.09 | Mayor Woodside | I understand. No, I'm sorry. |
| 04:31:24.22 | Jill Hoffman | perceived deficit, but thank you, Council Member Sobieski, for pointing out some cause for optimism, which I certainly greatly appreciated. I also am a firm believer in finding a path that will allow us to still have the needs of every department met, whether that's through creative impact fees, through charging for a concierge or expedited service, through pursuing new revenue options. I think it's always better to or considering non-FTEs and using AI as council member Hoffman suggested, which is a great path for us, but I think the, goal is that we do get the highest possible level of service for our residents. So I think we've given clear direction to staff about our path forward for doing that. And I will look forward to seeing what you come back with and I appreciate the finance director and the city manager's extensive time spent preparing for this evening's meeting and We'll continue the discussion at our next hearing |
| 04:32:23.67 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Let's move on to, I think, the last business item. |
| 04:32:29.54 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 04:32:29.58 | Jill Hoffman | but we have to say, |
| 04:32:30.03 | Chris Zapata | take public comment on the first one too. |
| 04:32:32.04 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. if it's still required. |
| 04:32:34.76 | Scott Thornburg | Yeah, we still have to take on buyer. |
| 04:32:37.48 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, so let's first go to the one that we are not actually gonna hear tonight, but since it was listed, the city attorney has recommended we take public comment on item five, E. Are there any public comments on 5e? |
| 04:32:58.11 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none online. Oh. |
| 04:32:59.55 | Mayor Woodside | All right, thank you. Let's move on then to 5F. We do have a staff report which I certainly have read, but Mr. Mandich, do you want to summarize it for us and for the public? Yes. |
| 04:33:14.97 | Kevin McGowan | Good evening, council members. This should be quite brief, just a quick staff report. And yeah, big time switching gears from big picture to very little picture. So yes, what we have today in front of us is an appeal of an ADU denial at 27 Central Avenue. Next slide, please. |
| 04:33:30.97 | Chris Zapata | We're gone Thursday. Where are we here? Thank you. |
| 04:33:32.96 | Kevin McGowan | Um, |
| 04:33:33.48 | Chris Zapata | No, man. Thank you. I'm going to be... |
| 04:33:34.99 | Scott Thornburg | Why do we need a staff report? |
| 04:33:37.19 | Mayor Woodside | I asked him just to summarize it. |
| 04:33:39.76 | Kevin McGowan | Oh, this is just a couple of slides. This is it, yeah, very brief. So yeah, just to reiterate what's in the staff report. Staff received a application on December 29th for an attached ADU. Project was officially filed on January 8th once the fees were paid. City has 15 business days to determine if application is complete once filed. A notice of incomplete was sent timely on January 26th after the application was filed on January 8th. |
| 04:33:39.86 | Mayor Woodside | Oh, this is... |
| 04:34:05.95 | Kevin McGowan | Applicant did dispute that NOI and claimed that the project was automatically approved. This is false. Applicant, after that response from the applicant and due to the timeline of the 60 days, the ADU application was denied on February 12th. as the city has 60 calendar days to act on a complete application. However, this application was never deemed complete or determined to be complete and denial was issued within 60 days of the claim submittal by the applicant. So by all accounts, the denial was issued in every way you look at it within the timeline required. |
| 04:34:36.70 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. |
| 04:34:36.92 | Mayor Woodside | And could the city attorney just briefly describe why this is before us? |
| 04:34:41.17 | Sergio Rudin | So under new state law provisions effective January of this year, an applicant has the right to submit a written appeal to the city council with respect to any denial of an 80 or JD application. So that is what's before you this evening. The denial is supposed to be heard without a public hearing. And so And additionally, the council's role is primarily to review the denial for compliance with applicable state law. |
| 04:35:11.61 | Mayor Woodside | And from your perspective, does the denial here comply with applicable state law? |
| 04:35:16.42 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. |
| 04:35:19.63 | Mayor Woodside | Any other questions at this point? |
| 04:35:25.13 | Kevin McGowan | Yeah, I mean, |
| 04:35:25.89 | Mayor Woodside | up to you guys. Yeah. Okay. Any public comments? |
| 04:35:31.12 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none online. |
| 04:35:32.94 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, it being 10 o'clock. The proper motion is to adopt a resolution denying the appeal of ADU application at 27 Central Avenue, Project ID 2025-00260. |
| 04:35:53.80 | Scott Thornburg | May I just ask... What is the authority by which we are able to take action on an appeal that has been rescinded? |
| 04:36:03.97 | Kevin McGowan | This is a separate project. This is the second appeal. This is 27 Central, not 4265. |
| 04:36:05.69 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:36:05.88 | Scott Thornburg | This is... |
| 04:36:06.25 | Unknown | This is... |
| 04:36:06.66 | Scott Thornburg | This is 27 Central. |
| 04:36:07.84 | Unknown | not 4269 okay okay |
| 04:36:10.00 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 04:36:10.01 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 04:36:10.03 | Kevin McGowan | Sorry. That's okay. It's late. If you just want to go to the next slide, just really quick to show you what the issue is here. It's primarily a height issue. They're proposing an attached ADU on the third floor here. We have a strict 25-foot height limit for attached ADUs. That's measured from the peak of the structure down to the grade. As you can see in both these images, that is 32 feet. So an attached ADU at this height, which is what this is, expanding into balconies on both sides and a dormer, is just not permitted. And there's some other issues with setbacks and access, but we don't need to get into that. |
| 04:36:11.85 | Robert McCullough | Okay. |
| 04:36:11.87 | Chris Zapata | It's late. |
| 04:36:43.88 | Kevin McGowan | I have a few more slides if you'd like to see, but it sounds like we're all fine. I don't know if city attorney wants to add anything or if we just need to take a vote. |
| 04:36:52.94 | Sergio Rudin | No further comments from me. |
| 04:36:54.43 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 04:36:54.48 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 04:36:54.68 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. |
| 04:36:54.97 | Mayor Woodside | So I'll move the adoption of the resolution denying the appeal of ADU application at 27 Central Avenue, Project 2025-00260. |
| 04:37:07.61 | Scott Thornburg | second, |
| 04:37:09.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 04:37:09.42 | Mayor Woodside | roll call |
| 04:37:11.64 | Walfred Solorzano | Council member Cox yes, council member Hoffman Yes, council member Sobieski Vice mayor Blaustein yes mayor Woodside |
| 04:37:20.74 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. So that concludes the listed business items. We do have council member reports and other council business. Does anyone have a strong desire to comment about any of these at this hour? |
| 04:37:35.94 | Scott Thornburg | I do not. No. |
| 04:37:37.72 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. Ms. Hoffman, you okay if we adjourn? |
| 04:37:43.84 | Unknown | I'm fine. Public comment on these items. |
| 04:37:45.01 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Okay, so since we did not actually bring up any of them, however, are there any public comments on any of these? |
| 04:37:53.44 | Walfred Solorzano | 6A to 60. Seeing none online. |
| 04:37:57.07 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, 6A to 6D, no, seeing none, all right. The meeting is adjourned. |
| 04:38:04.43 | Alice Merrill | Awesome. |
| 04:38:05.02 | Scott Thornburg | Thank you. |
| 04:38:10.69 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:38:14.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:38:16.36 | Unknown | No, that's why he's a coach with a lot. Thank you. |
Alice Rogers — In Favor: Alice Rogers, former Sausalito council-member and mayor, commended Forbes' waterfront planning work at the Port of San Francisco, calling her a 'gem' and ideal partner for MarinShip challenges. ▶ 📄
Diane Oshima — In Favor: Diane Oshima, former colleague at the Port of San Francisco, praised Forbes' dedication to public service, strategic and operational skills, and ability to build teams. ▶ 📄
Sandra Bushmaker — Neutral: Sandra Bushmaker, former council-member and mayor, welcomed Forbes to Sausalito and warned that everything in the town is 'controversial,' setting expectations for the role. ▶ 📄