| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.03 | Mayor Woodside | Day June the 2nd election day. I will call this meeting to order and request that a roll call be taken. |
| 00:00:07.02 | Walfred Solorzano | Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. Today's meeting of June 2nd, 2026 is being held at 420 Litho Street. City Council Council Chambers. It is also being broadcast live via Zoom on the city's website and cable TV channel 27. |
| 00:00:23.02 | Mayor Woodside | And can you call the roll, please? Thank you. |
| 00:00:25.63 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Here. Councilmember Hoffman here. Councilmember Sobieski. |
| 00:00:32.53 | Mayor Woodside | We understand he's on his way and we'll report later when he arrives. |
| 00:00:38.61 | Walfred Solorzano | Vice Mayor Blaustein. here. Mayor Woodside. |
| 00:00:42.86 | Mayor Woodside | Here. Welcome, Melissa. You're calling from somewhere in the Mediterranean, I understand it. |
| 00:00:49.14 | Melissa Blaustein | That's true. |
| 00:00:50.32 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. And it's the wee hours of the morning. |
| 00:00:53.68 | Melissa Blaustein | That's also true. And there's also a chance that my Wi-Fi will |
| 00:00:54.84 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 00:00:57.24 | Melissa Blaustein | come and go. So if I turn off my screen, it's not because I'm, it's just because of a wifi issue. So, |
| 00:01:02.92 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:01:02.98 | Melissa Blaustein | Hopefully you guys can see. |
| 00:01:02.99 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you for making the effort from all that far away. We are now poised to go into closed session. |
| 00:01:07.67 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:01:07.70 | Michael Rex | Of course. |
| 00:01:08.07 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:01:11.97 | Mayor Woodside | um and and melissa i know you know there's a separate um way to enter the closed session. |
| 00:01:17.50 | Melissa Blaustein | I have that Zoom link. |
| 00:01:18.60 | Mayor Woodside | Amen. Okay, great. so we're going into closed session on four items items c1 through c4 on the posted agenda item c1 is conference with labor negotiator pursuant to government code section 54957.6 regarding the employee organization seiu The second item is conference with legal counsel, one item of anticipated litigation pursuant to government code section 54956.9 D two. The third item is, again, conference with labor negotiator, this time for the unrepresented employees, as authorized by Government Code Section 54957.6. And finally, item C4, conference with real property negotiators pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.8. The property in question is space under Excelsior lane adjacent to seven five excuse me seven one five bridgeway sausalito uh before we go into closed session i have one public comment on the closed session uh filled out a card thank you uh manuel freddie rivera |
| 00:02:02.86 | Unknown | All right. Yeah. |
| 00:02:37.19 | Freddie Rivera | All right. Well, thank you so much. My name is Freddie Rivera. I'm the union representative assigned to this beautiful city. And I only, you know. I only have one goal working with this city and, uh, I'm sure all of the council members do as well. You know, it's just to do our best on the behalf of the city, both for its workers and its citizens. You know, we're at the tail end of negotiations and we have made tremendous progress, I want to say. And I just ask that, you know, the council reviews the most recent advancements and just decides to continue to fight for its workers, continue to adjust, uh, you know, wages to combat a turbulent economy. And, uh, you know, continue to protect benefits that make the reason why people want to come work to Sausalito. That's really all. I have for you guys today. So thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 00:03:30.51 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Are there any other public comments before we go into closed session? |
| 00:03:34.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none online. |
| 00:03:36.22 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Yes, and the record can reflect at 335, Council Member Sobieski, Arrive. Thank you. We're now going into closed session. |
| 00:03:54.39 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:03:58.27 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. It's a good one. Thank you. Thank you. Don't ask for attention. |
| 00:04:05.39 | Cass Green | Thank you. |
| 00:04:06.25 | Michelle McCullough | That's why it is not. So come ask for things. Thank you. I know. Thank you. you for the rest of the day. Thank you. Fuck. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. This is bad. |
| 00:04:39.67 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:04:39.97 | Fred Moore | Say it all. |
| 00:04:42.54 | Michelle McCullough | All those words. Thank you. |
| 00:04:47.12 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. I'm Jill. Thank you. |
| 00:04:51.28 | Michelle McCullough | It's gonna be odd, dude. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know if you have a call. Thank you. |
| 00:05:00.69 | Lorna Newland | Yeah, no, I read it. |
| 00:05:01.79 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:05:02.30 | Lorna Newland | Yeah. |
| 00:05:03.78 | Michelle McCullough | We are. and the process. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:05:09.45 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:05:10.43 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:05:11.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:12.61 | Michelle McCullough | No. Yeah. |
| 00:05:17.86 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:05:20.17 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. That's not a picture. Thank you. We have some close bill. |
| 00:05:22.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Oh. Thank you. |
| 00:05:24.93 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 00:05:25.80 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:05:29.16 | Michelle McCullough | That's all. There's somebody who's got you. Yeah. There's the moms. There's the monitors. . |
| 00:05:36.26 | Unknown | Good. Good. |
| 00:05:38.68 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:05:45.68 | Police Chief | Thank you. Thanks for Jason. Go. |
| 00:05:48.50 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. I can take a part of it. I can't get your understanding of what you posted. Thank you. I was going to be like, oh, it's good. |
| 00:05:58.91 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, it's four minutes after five. Sorry for the short delay, but our technical difficulties we think have been resolved. And I'd like to call this regular meeting to order. |
| 00:06:23.09 | Adrian Brinton | Let's see. |
| 00:06:24.88 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:06:31.18 | Mayor Woodside | And we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance to be led by Michelle McCullough, who's the newly appointed Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce. |
| 00:06:46.97 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:06:48.04 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:06:48.83 | Michelle McCullough | Bye. |
| 00:06:49.03 | Michelle McCullough | business |
| 00:06:49.79 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:06:49.91 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:06:49.93 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:06:49.98 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:06:50.50 | Michelle McCullough | Thank you. |
| 00:06:52.25 | Michelle McCullough | I pledge allegiance. |
| 00:06:52.42 | Unknown | I pledge allegiance to the flag. of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:07:07.73 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Michelle. We'll now have a roll call. We do have one member attending remotely. So if you could call the roll, Madam Clerk. |
| 00:07:18.09 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Here. Councilmember Hoffman? Here. Councilmember Sobieski? Here. Vice Mayor Blaustein? |
| 00:07:22.70 | Mayor Woodside | here. |
| 00:07:25.01 | Melissa Blaustein | And I will note there is no one under the age, over the age of 18 in the room with me. |
| 00:07:32.25 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor Woodside. |
| 00:07:33.01 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. |
| 00:07:33.50 | Mayor Woodside | I'm here. Thank you. We did have a closed session that began at 3.30. We have nothing to report other than we discussed the items on the posted agenda, but we have nothing to report out at this time. And now I'm just going to ask Council members, if we're okay with tonight's agenda, do we have approval? I think because we have an absent, excuse me, a remote attending member, we need to call a roll. approval of the agenda. So moved. Is there a second? |
| 00:08:07.28 | Unknown | Second. |
| 00:08:08.36 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, motion second. |
| 00:08:14.45 | Lorna Newland | that's the approval of the agenda. It's, yeah. |
| 00:08:20.15 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 00:08:20.68 | Joan Cox | I'm sure. |
| 00:08:20.86 | Walfred Solorzano | of approval. |
| 00:08:21.66 | Mayor Woodside | We've got two motions to approve and a second. So I think we can call the roll. |
| 00:08:24.12 | Walfred Solorzano | Okay. Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? Yes. Councilmember Sobieski? Yes. Vice Mayor Blaustein? Yes. Mayor Woodside? Yes. |
| 00:08:29.13 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. |
| 00:08:35.12 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Thank you. We do have a couple of presentations up front. First, I would like to call upon Cass Green to approach the podium. And by way of explanation, last Thursday, the Chamber of Commerce hosted an event, and there were five local entrepreneurial women presenting. and in conjunction with that event, Cass unveiled a new website that is to be, to go live tomorrow. So Cass, if you wouldn't mind sharing the news. |
| 00:09:13.06 | Cass Green | Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation to present Oh, it's coming through there. That's what's going on. So what you see is the landing page of the website with this cool video. The website allows you to discover Sausalito, and I'm just going to go through this quickly. You'll have a chance to be able to go into it yourself later. There are events, there's explore, there's do business, which has vacancies, and you can submit your property if it's vacant. And I'm going to mute myself. And then about downtown Sausalito. So this, let me go this way. this is the homepage where you can sit down, dine, shop, stay, We have eight different guides to Sausalito, and I'll show you a couple of those. And then we have upcoming events. And something about the the Downtown Sausalito Association. And so go show you dying. So we go to discover and then to Dines. It's our homepage. And there's several blogs on dining in Sausalito. So we'll go to fine dining. Well, first off, you can also search So there's a map. The site is attached to a map for all the businesses in Sausalito, all the parks, all the public art, So you can search for just Thank you. say Italian, It shows you the different people that offer Italian, They click on Poggio. There's information about Poggio photographs. uh, Thank you. and the information about Poggio and where it's located. If I go to The one of the blogs, this is fine dining in Sausalito. So we go to Fine Dining. And they're write-ups on the fine dining establishments in Sausalito. The writing is beautiful. It was done by John Haidt, who's the guy that did this. And a lot of the photographs are John's. I don't know. So that shows you the blog on the fine dining in Sausalito. We can go to shop. And all the businesses are listed. And almost all of the businesses got us data and photos, which was great. So we've got a shop. I'm not sure. And you can search shop. different categories, their blogs on shopping in Sausalito. And then you can, you can say, I want unique offerings. And we've got Burlwood, Games People Play. These are things that are different from most sites. Holiday Hook House. And again, the location, and you can go straight to Games People Play, their photos. And also go to their website if you want to. So it's really robust. There are 93 businesses in downtown Sausalito that are represented by the site. We can also do explore and we'll go to music. Yeah. And I'll do events in a second too. The Dock of the Bay, you know, this is writing about how beautiful jazz and blues plays is and what a great event it is to come to. And the different photographs. And. Let's see, it will go to events. This is great. There's a vague and event calendar. as all the different events in Sausalito over the next several months. And we also have Uh, major events. |
| 00:13:27.33 | Cass Green | And major events, there's Dogs by the Bay, if you guys remember that. There's a great video, it's not up yet on Dogs by the Bay, but it's a really good video. Jazz and Blues, 4th of July, Toast to Sausalito, Ian, you'll love this, this is Ian with my grandchildren. at Holiday by Holiday by the Bay. So it's a great, also there's do business. You can, This is all written by the EDAC people, Alex Wuwe. who wrote up information about why you should do business in Sausalito. So it's a great, this talks about the new formula retail rules. So people can know that there's a new era in Sausalito for doing business. You can come down here and look at the available space. And those are all listed. for the different available space. And also that has links to their brokers. The one I wanna really show off is trails. And, uh, you about here this is uh Sausalito day hikes bikes and trails so i just we chose three Marin headlands Angel Island and um Tennessee Valley as very accessible hikes uh so Here we're at the Marin Headlands one. This is the best part. If you want to know how special, steep it is. You can twirl all around. Uh, then you go to different. Hawk Hill, so this information about Hawk Hill, the best time to go to Hawk Hill, The people that helped develop this site that developed this site think that this tab will bring people to the site. They think it's going to be an incredibly powerful tool. and, of the So that's, I don't want to take up too much of your time. You'll be able to look at it in the future. Uh... You don't see sites like this in most towns. It's a very spectacular site. And I just want to mention that this was a team effort The due business is Monica Finnegan and Alec Wuwe. With EDAC, So they had prepared those materials for EDAC, and we just brought them into this. Um, Adrian Britton did lots of work in helping me to build that building. the business network, and we went door to door to every business, hitting them up for information. Brian Vitale shared photographs and text. A lot of the pictures you'll see on this site come right out of the city of Sausalito site. So we're not duplicating, we're just building, and it's a real team. As I already mentioned, John Haidt, made it beautiful. And Pam from Kimber also did a lot of texts for us. and we're hiring people to continue. Jack Sherwood and his wife, Renna, are doing the calendar and they'll be doing the calendar, keeping it up to date forever. Uh, Monica, we've retained also to keep the available business up to date. We're going to hire somebody to keep the content. And the we're going to do videos, probably a new video about every three to six months. And then I have to really thank Geocentric, which is the software platform that this is all based on. They have been they only charge us $16,000. The reason this site is great is because that's a great site, but also all the volunteer hours that went into making this site happen. Um, so that's the site and we're very proud of it. We're very excited. Um, And I think it's going to really mean a lot to Sausalito. I want to tell you about future plans too. Once we, once we feel solid about what we're doing. We're gonna expand the businesses to outside downtown. We can do that because the, while we, We can't spend tax money on businesses outside the district. but we will be charging them to be part of the site. And so that'll help. support it. So we, our plan is to expand this throughout Sausalito, but we're going to start with Caledonia and Old Town. And then we're just trying to be very careful as we move forward, but it should, uh, And geometrics isn't charging us more money to expand it. So they're just been a great partner. |
| 00:17:56.22 | Mayor Woodside | I think I'm just going to say wow, and thank you, Cass. Cass is the chair of the Um, |
| 00:18:02.68 | Cass Green | Downtown Sausalito Association. |
| 00:18:03.96 | Mayor Woodside | also known as the PBID, |
| 00:18:07.15 | Cass Green | Yep, yep. |
| 00:18:07.83 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. and the Business Improvement District. And Cass, you as a volunteer, like others deserve a lot of credit for bringing the community together to produce something that could be useful to everybody in town, to visitors, to those who are looking to do business here, et cetera. So thank you so much for what you've done and we look forward to a smooth launch tomorrow. |
| 00:18:30.56 | Cass Green | Thank you. Thank you very much for allowing me to show it off. |
| 00:18:34.05 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, thank you. |
| 00:18:35.10 | Cass Green | Okay. |
| 00:18:36.36 | Mayor Woodside | Jill has a question |
| 00:18:37.93 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, great, beautiful, beautiful site. Beautiful job. Thank you. And the pictures look great and the content looks great. So I'm excited to see it. So well done. Well, thank you. You and your team. Thank you very much. |
| 00:18:48.70 | Mayor Woodside | Ian, you were photographed, so you've got to have something to say. |
| 00:18:53.47 | Ian Sobieski | I saw you at the panel held by the Chamber of Commerce at the Trident last week. I know there's a new head of the chamber and it was your first time actually what's your plans in terms of, and you were talking about businesses outside the district. How are the two organizations going to help each other and help Sausalito? |
| 00:19:10.75 | Cass Green | Yeah, great question. Aaron, the president of the chamber right now, and I have met several times. And so for including the businesses outside, There'll be one price for chamber members and it'll be lower than the price for non chamber members. People inside the district pay nothing for this. But because they're already paid for it with the property taxes. And then when we extend farther, if you're a member of the chamber, it's going to be a nominal fee. I mean, $100 to $200 a year because the economies of scale are huge here. So it's a nominal fee for businesses to be involved. If they're chamber members, It'll be like, say, 200 if they're outside and not in the chamber. It'll be three or four hundred. |
| 00:19:56.59 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you again. We really appreciate it. Now I'm going to turn to the city manager for a brief report. THE INTERIM CITY. |
| 00:20:06.04 | Brendan Phipps | manager. Sorry, Brandon. Thank you, mayor. And very happy to be here this evening. Really honored to be sitting in this seat. Just a few items to include in the city manager report. I want to start with a brief community note consistent with the resolution, the council adopted at your may 19 meeting. The progress pride flag is flying at city hall this month in recognition of June as LGBTQ plus pride month in Sausalito. So we're glad to join our neighbors across Marin County of that in that gesture of community inclusion. Turning to our affordable housing work. As Council is aware, the City has been advancing a joint request for proposals for the development of two city-owned sites under Housing Element Program 8, Site 84, the MLK Jr. Park property, and Site 75, the Corporation Yard. I'm pleased to report that the proposal deadline has recently closed, and the City received two responses prior to that deadline. Staff will now convene a staff-led evaluation committee to review and score the proposals against the criteria set forth in the rfp in collaboration with our task force and working group we will then bring our initial findings and recommendations to the council for your consideration the received proposals will also be posted to the program eight web page on the city's website consistent with our commitment to transparency throughout this process staff looks forward to making future progress on this item and we'll keep community and council informed as the evaluation proceeds I also want to provide a brief community update regarding the structure fire at 2365 Bridgeway Boulevard, which occurred in the early morning hours of May 22nd. Southern Marin Fire District crews responded quickly and contained the fire to the second floor of the residence. All occupants were safely evacuated and no injuries reported, though unfortunately one dog did not survive. The fire is believed to have been accidental, and a cause of origin investigation remains ongoing. On the city side, our building official has been in contact with the property owner, and staff is actively working with both the owner and the affected tenants to facilitate an efficient re-permitting and re-tenanting of the facility. Our goal is to really help get these residents back on a path to stability as quickly as possible. A brief update as well on the city's objective design and development standards, the odds. As council will recall, the ordinance received a successful first reading at a prior council meeting. Staff anticipates bringing this item back for a second reading and final adoption at the June 16th council meeting. This is an important milestone, of course, for the city's housing compliance. And we look forward to final action on that. Finally, I want to note that later this evening, you'll be hearing from me on two significant items. In addition to our finance director, of course, that are on tonight's agenda. Firstly, the city's consideration of charter city status and the fiscal year 2627 budget. So both are consequential matters for the city. And I look forward to walking the council and the public through staff's analysis and recommendation on both. That concludes my report. I'm happy to take any questions before we move |
| 00:23:15.96 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, well thank you very much. Are there any questions of Mr. Phipps? I've seen none. We'll now move on to public communications on matters that are not on tonight's agenda. So if I may just ask for a show of hands, how many of you plan on speaking on matters not on the agenda? So I see a handful. So we should be able to get through this reasonably well and just be advised because this is not on the agenda. We are, able to listen to you and we will listen to you, but we are unable to have any extended discussion or action. but we will listen. So with that, I've been handed a stack of speaker requests. So if you haven't yet filled one of these out, please do so. And I'll call you in the order that I pull them off. First, we have Carolyn Revell. to be followed by William Arnsburg. Carolyn, welcome. |
| 00:24:13.44 | Carolyn Revell | Good evening. Carolyn Revelle speaking tonight on behalf of the Downtown Sausalito Association. We request that you add to an upcoming agenda for a council meeting. an item that DSA has been working on with SWA, the landscape architectural firm, a redesign of the Princess Street-Ridgeway intersection to accommodate the state's daylighting mandate in AB 413, requiring no parking within 20 feet of the intersection. The redesign would not only address that concern, but by creating two expanded sidewalk bulb outs would allow for attractive planters and seating to help activate the entrance to downtown. This would be a public-private partnership using both city and DSA funding, and would be the first step in a streetscape redesign for downtown Bridgeway. Thank you very much. |
| 00:25:01.15 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Caroline. William Arnsberg followed by Sharna Brockett. |
| 00:25:07.02 | William Arnsburg | Thank you. Good evening. My name is William Arzberg. I'm a resident of Tamale Street. I'm standing here tonight to follow up on the formal community letter. Our neighborhood submitted on May 5th, as well as my presentation to this chamber two weeks ago. At the last meeting, there was a verbal directive to the city clerk to follow up with the Department of Public Works regarding a multi-way stop sign at Tamales and Wateray Streets and place this item on a future city council agenda. I'm here tonight to follow up on that request and ask the city for a formal status update and public timeline. The urgency of this issue cannot be overstated since the opening of MLK Campus. This intersection has become a high-volume school zone, serving as a primary artery for communities, children, and families. The safety hazards here are fully documented. The parametrics walk audit from April 22nd. Officially cited poor sight lines at this crossing. Wendy Cowans of the Marin Safe Routes to Schools explicitly noted that while students from Marin City depend on this intersection daily, it features no traffic controls. This is an active danger. In the last six months, we've had a variety of different near misses. The blind spots created by topography mean drivers cannot see a child until it is too late. Under California MUTCD sections 28.06 and TB.07, this council has the direct engineering mandate to intervene when obscure sight lines put children in a school zone at risk. We have the technical data, we have the community's consensus, and we ask tonight for an update on the DPW directive is an immediate action to protect |
| 00:26:30.03 | Mayor Woodside | students. Thanks. Well, thank you. And since we can't really take it up officially in public, I would like to make sure you have met, if you haven't yet met, Kevin McGowan. He's at the back of the room, if you could raise your hand, Kevin. And perhaps before you leave, you could make direct contact with him. And some of your questions, I think, might be answered tonight. And then, of course, we will consider bringing this matter back for any action that we can take in that regard. So thank you very much. Next speaker is Sharna Brockett, followed by Adrienne Britton. |
| 00:27:05.30 | Sharna Brockett | Thank you so much. So I just want to say that I'm one of the organizers for the AIM initiative. And as you know, we were able to obtain, we had over 15 volunteer Sausalito residents who worked over Memorial Day weekend, and we were able to, in 10 days, get 1,000 signatures. So we're very proud of that. We need 550 to qualify to get it on the ballot, and we're pretty sure that we have that with 1,000 signatures. And I just wanna say the Marin IJ editorial board put it well that this success reflects the promise of what AEM can bring to the marinship, and we couldn't agree more. And I just want to tell you, we talked to a lot of people during that time, and we heard over and over from residents, finally, it's about time, where do I sign? So, and you know, a lot of things resonated with them. A lot of them had, for example, tried to buy bread from the two bakeries down there. I think it was Portside Bakery and Chibo and during COVID and they were, that was stopped because that's against this law that, that this 40 year old law that we're trying to change. And so it just doesn't make sense anymore. And they, that really resonated with them. And so I just want to say, you know, I agree again with what the Marin IJ editorial board said at the conclusion of their recent article that maybe it's time to focus on what can happen at Marinship instead of what can't happen. And so we're excited to have Sausalito voters of today decide that hopefully in November. Thanks so much. |
| 00:28:42.53 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Adrian Brinton, followed by Kenneth Henry. |
| 00:28:46.68 | Adrian Brinton | Thank you. |
| 00:28:50.83 | Adrian Brinton | Good evening, Council and staff. Thank you for taking my comment. I'm also going to make a comment about the AIM initiative and our process of gathering these thousand signatures. It was a very intense effort, and as the previous speaker said, we heard a ton of great feedback about what we were seeing. We also heard people asking questions, and there's definitely going to be a healthy debate over the summer and into the fall about this issue. people have questions we're going from really 40 years of doing very little and we're asking us to now do something. And that's a change. And we look forward to that healthy debate. We want to encourage a civil debate. We've seen signs that, you know, sometimes that doesn't happen. And I think as a community, we need to come together and make it unacceptable to have a debate that is not based in fact. Let's talk about the issues. This is too important for Sausalito. to be making the decision based on incorrect information. And I look for everyone supporting that. We also have a lot of ways that we can encourage the things that we want to see. We've done that previously by stopping things and hoping the things we want flourish. But actually we have a lot of other ways that we can do it. We want to protect industrial work in the marinship There's a fear of having conflicting uses. There's a right to farm ordinance in the county that protects agricultural uses from being pushed out by housing and other uses near them. We could do that with restaurants in the marineship, have them come in and have an ordinance that makes the industrial use primary. We can use community development agreements to guide the development of different parcels when they come up. We can look at a malt style land trust to protect artists in the marine ship. We have a ton of things we can do, and as a group, creative and engaged community that we are. Let's put our energy into that stuff now, instead of into fighting whether we do something or doing nothing. Thank you very much. |
| 00:30:46.81 | Mayor Woodside | Next speaker is Kenneth Henry followed by Fred Moore. |
| 00:30:55.72 | Kenneth Henry | City Council Mayor Woodside, Vice Mayor Blaustein, Council Member Hoffman, Cox, and Sobieski, thank you for your service. I've been fortunate enough. I've been the City Sausalito Building Inspector for two decades. I've had the benefit of dealing with public safety in this community, dealing with creating new homes, working on the new amnesty, homes, the ADUs, the 729 units. We need to start to develop Um, it's part of the Community Development Department. And now we have a finally a permanent building official. And I'd have to say since COVID, our department is running very well. And currently we're up for collective bargaining and a lot of the back and forth has been about cost of living adjustments in healthcare. And I'm just here to say that it's been 15 years since I've had a pay raise. I have reached my top level five years after beginning year. And the advancements in cost of living adjustments has been a real benefit to my living growth. My being able to get to work every day And I got to tell you a little bit about the people I work with in community development, the staff, the, the, now the direct, the, Department heads. We have had a huge turnover. I'd have to say in 15 years, we've had eight different building officials all contract and at least 11 or 12 permit technicians In 15 years. This is the center of the interaction with the public We need to have the consistency. And we just lost our last permit technician. We hired another technician. I see great value in the people who are currently in our department. Since COVID, we have seen a high degree in the community development department's ability to perform. So I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to say this service community, and please consider our community. are, bargaining agreement. Thank you. |
| 00:33:10.03 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 00:33:10.23 | Kenneth Henry | Thank you. |
| 00:33:10.35 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Thank you. Fred Moore, followed by Alice Merrill. |
| 00:33:18.96 | Fred Moore | Good evening. Thank you for the time you devoted earlier this year to discuss strategic planning goals for Sausalito. One topic discussed was the economic constraints placed on the marineship by the 40-year-old voter initiative known as Ordinance 1022. You did not reach a consensus on a path forward, but you did highlight shared concerns. Limitations of 1022, the lack of substantial economic activity in the marineship for 40 years, and the importance of robust public engagement. A diverse group of Saucedo residents came together to protect their maritime heritage and revitalize the marineship and we drafted the arts industrial maritime preservation and improvement initiative known as AIM. For 40 years ordinance 1022 has required a citywide vote for any new use or any change in the intensity of an existing use instead of fostering needed investment. The citywide voting process has contributed to the friendship's deterioration. Converting an empty building in the friendship to an art studio should not require a citywide vote. Aim returns Sausalito to the same planning framework used throughout California. This established public and statutory process requires planning review, planning commission hearings, city council oversight, environmental analysis, and open public debate. These safeguards are typical norm throughout California. In addition, Sauce Leader retains powerful tools of accountability, including the right to reform and referendum and recall. In 10 short days, our group of volunteers gathered over 1,000 signatures. One consistent theme among the people were, where do I sign? And it's about time something changes in the Marineship. If voters are... To approve AIM in November, we believe the marineship can become a place where fishermen, bakers, artists, and metal workers can sell what they catch, make, and create, and where coffee shops and waterfront access will help enhance the community. We hope you visit our website, ThossitoThrive.org, and vote yes on AIM in November. Thank you. |
| 00:35:17.37 | Mayor Woodside | Alice Merrill followed by Michelle McCullough. |
| 00:35:28.37 | Alice Merrill | Well, good evening. I'm just going to say a couple of silly things. I just turned 80. Um, and if stuff. A few days ago, So that makes me a pretty old resident, Sausalito. I've been here a while. I'd just like to say that Sausalito has had ups and downs. It's had wonderful councils. It's had not so wonderful councils It's had people who were on for 27 years and people are on for three and you know, um, and And lots and lots of different people pushing and pulling and wanting different things. What I have noticed... The big thing, when it was in what I call the good times... was things talked about, things were, had, there were city meetings. You are calling this a city meeting to talk about The Charter city. This is not a city meeting. This is the city council meeting. This is not a place where people are coming together to talk about a subject. It's very specific here, I mean, it's very rigid. And so why aren't we having Why aren't we having communication about people having parties at their houses, people down at the IDESST Hall. There's places, there are ways to have communication, talking to each other, where we ask questions, we listen to the answers. I know that people have said that's what we need to do. We need to listen to each other. So let's, but. You're, you know, this doesn't feel right to me. A real city meeting isn't a city council meeting. It's a meeting where you come in and you see your neighbors and you sit down and everybody's there and you might have coffee, you know? It's very frustrating. Right now, it feels like it's your way or the highway. So I have more. Thank you. |
| 00:37:31.93 | Mayor Woodside | Just to note, your last comments related to the item that will be heard tonight on the agenda. And perhaps some of your questions will be answered. then. So Michelle McCullough followed by Michael Rex. And that's Michael's, the last speaker card that I have. Are there any more? Are there any online? There's some online. So they've related birthday, Alice. |
| 00:37:57.41 | Michelle McCullough | I believe. Good evening, city council members. Thank you for listening to my comment. My name is Michelle McCalla. Ten-year resident, Mayor Woodside, thank you for the warm welcome as a new executive director of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce. Cass has left, but I look forward to working with the Downtown Sausalito Association. Beautiful video. But my comment is as a private citizen. I'll make this quick since my neighbor already commented on my safety concern on Tomala Street. So I'm also a Tomala Street resident, and I don't need to repeat what he just said, but I will follow up with Mr. Gowan on action because I live at 153 Tomales we constantly see kids whipping around watery in Tomales Street when I was a kid law enforcement came to school and we watched a film called red asphalt in the 80s and 90s I don't think one remembers that I don't mean to scare children but I do think children need to understand the consequences of writing recklessly so maybe Law enforcement, police could... go to the school if we know the kids are going to MLK Academy. But I do think that we should work with teachers and children to educate them on the dangers until the city takes action in terms of traffic mitigation. My second comment is also a safety concern, and I'm speaking on behalf of my lovely neighbors, the Martins, Douglas and Francette Martin. Francette is a retired teacher from Lycée Francais, and she has a beautiful large oak tree in front of her home, 141 Tomales, right next door to me. Unfortunately, this is the second time And the last time was this last Sunday. I sent photos to illustrate the safety concern. Large moving trucks drive down Tamales Street, which is already too narrow because cars parked on Tamales make it narrow. And with more residents moving to the north side of town with all of these housing plans we have, more cars are going to park on that street. Here's what happens. You can see the photo. The car doesn't clear the large oak tree. The oak tree gets scraped up. You can go right there. There's metal remnants of the large moving truck that literally fell apart. like, just think about it. fell apart on the street. I've never seen that before. It's very dangerous. I mean, I really need the city to come out and just prune that tree. Also, the top branches are a fire hazard. They're hitting the electrical wires pretty soon. But please, please, on behalf of the Martins, don't take that beautiful oak tree down. They will lose all of their privacy. All of us on Tamala Street are facing Whiskey Springs. So I will follow up with Mr. McGowan, but I really do hope that we can address that large oak tree on Tamala Street. Thank you so much. |
| 00:40:38.69 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Michael Rex is the last speaker in the room, and we do have others online. So, Michael? |
| 00:40:46.33 | Michael Rex | Yes, hi. I'm here representing the Richardson Bay Maritime Association. We're a 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is to preserve our working waterfront maritime heritage. We've been in operation for over 30 years. As a member of the board and following 20 years as being its president, I'd like to invite you, everyone present and listening tonight, to a public conversation, just like Alice Merrill's suggesting. Thursday night at the Spinnaker Banquet Hall. It starts at 5.30. We'll go to 8.00. We're going to start with showing two videos about our working waterfront, followed by panel discussions. Mike Sarray, international journalist, will be the moderator And then we'll have an open mic where anybody can stand up and ask a question or make a statement for one minute. We expect the room will hold 150 people, so there'll be plenty of room for all. And Alice, we're going to be serving coffee. Yes, thank you. |
| 00:41:49.73 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Michael. And just so that the public is aware, it may be that a majority of council members would like to attend and we've instructed the clerk to out of abundance of caution to issue a notice of special meeting for that night. So while we will not have an agenda, We will not be officially conducting a meeting because a majority of council members may be present while matters of city business are discussed. We want to make sure we're compliant with the law. Thank you. |
| 00:42:21.71 | Michael Rex | Thank you. Also, I should point out that because we're a 501c3, we'll be making no political endorsements or proposals. It's simply we're hosting an opportunity to have a public discussion about the future of our marine ship and waterfront. |
| 00:42:41.37 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. I'll ask the clerk to recognize people who are online. I think someone's filling out an additional card. We'll take you up momentarily, but online. Okay. I GUESS WE CAN DO THAT NOW. |
| 00:42:56.84 | Sergio Rudin | And Mayor, if I may comment briefly about the need to call a special meeting, there is an exemption in the Brown Act. for the attendance of the majority of members of the city council at an open and publicized meeting organized to address the topic of local community concern by an organization other than the city. Provided that the majority of council members do not discuss amongst themselves other than as part of the scheduled program city council. business basically. So if that's what's occurring, I don't know that we need to notice it as a special meeting unless you would like to for publicity reasons. |
| 00:43:31.28 | Mayor Woodside | Well, I mostly want to do it so that none of us gets in trouble and the public is aware that council members may be present, may want to participate in the give and take. And if that's the case, I just don't want anyone to think that we're doing this somehow behind closed doors. |
| 00:43:49.31 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I mean, I will say that if you do post it, you know, call it post a notice of a special meeting, then you do need to have an agenda. And there does need to be a public comment period on whatever you put on the agenda. So There are some pragmatic issues with that as well. |
| 00:44:04.76 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, I stand corrected. We will post an agenda. But I do think it's important because there may be, I've heard that there will be... I guess I'm on the panel. I think two of my colleagues wish to attend and may want to ask questions and participate more actively than simply as bystanders. So having said that, we'll We'll consult with you, Sergio, and make sure we get the correct notice out. |
| 00:44:30.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:44:30.64 | Mayor Woodside | to make sure that the |
| 00:44:30.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:44:30.97 | Joan Cox | Sergio, you and I, |
| 00:44:31.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:44:32.10 | Ian Sobieski | Mr. Mayor, I... Just want to be cognizant that this is a 501c3 run by Michael Rex and a board. And we're co-opting it to turn it into a city council meeting. Well, which is... |
| 00:44:42.99 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:44:43.97 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. could be i just feel like it should be in some cooperation with them and i'm not even sure if given what the city attorney just said If all of us, if I don't say anything and, and you're the only one speaking there shouldn't be any issue. |
| 00:44:58.73 | Joan Cox | But I think more than one person would like to speak, Councilmember. So and Sergio, you and I exchanged for- |
| 00:45:04.32 | Ian Sobieski | exchange why are we turning this private for 501c3 event into a similar |
| 00:45:08.28 | Mayor Woodside | Oh, word. |
| 00:45:08.70 | Ian Sobieski | All right. |
| 00:45:08.72 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah. |
| 00:45:08.74 | Ian Sobieski | Okay. |
| 00:45:09.55 | Joan Cox | Can I make my comment? |
| 00:45:11.64 | Mayor Woodside | Can I just say that we will provide a notice. We're not co-opting the meeting. We're doing it to make sure we have coverage under the Brown Act to enable council members, any council member, to participate more fully in the discussion. This would be very similar to the workshops that were held twice at MLK concerning the RFP that the interim city manager reported on receiving proposals. It's the same thing. We do not want to co-opt the meeting of a 501c3. That's not our intent. And I do believe that Mr. Rex has opened the invitation to all, including members of the council. So. I think that's what we have to do. under the Brown Act. I know it's frustrating. |
| 00:46:03.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:46:03.40 | Joan Cox | Well, Mayor, may I comment? |
| 00:46:05.56 | Mayor Woodside | You may comment, sure. |
| 00:46:06.77 | Joan Cox | Thank you, Sergio. I don't know if you recall, you and I had a written exchange following a state of the city address. Um, maybe a year ago, and there was a recent case handed down that said In just that type of social situation, it still had to be noticed. So I'll forward that correspondence back to you. But there was recent case law that sort of countermanded our common sense and how we had previously treated events of this nature. |
| 00:46:34.36 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, and I believe what you were referring to is the AG's opinion of 2024 dealing with the state of the city being held by a chamber of commerce, which was not open to the public. And because of that, it didn't fit some of these exemptions in the Brown Act. So, but I do think that's a little different than the scenario here. |
| 00:46:53.78 | Mayor Woodside | Well, let's, I've certainly, Sergio, we'll talk to you to make sure we get it right. |
| 00:46:54.04 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you. I |
| 00:46:58.97 | Mayor Woodside | But our intent is not to co-opt any meeting of a 501c3. um let's move on we do have additional public comments uh there was a speaker card filled out did Andy, do you want to speak? Yep. And just identify yourself. I'm sorry the card didn't make its way all the way up here. |
| 00:47:22.46 | Andy | Um, My name is Andy, um, Sausalito resident, and I just wanted to make a, a public comment, um, in remarks to a few comments that were already made about the aim initiative and just wanted to make a public comment saying that, uh. Coordinates 1022 is not about restriction. It is about participation. It ensures that significant changes to the marinship are shaped not only by the market forces or shifts in council leadership, but by the residents themselves. The new AIM initiative suggests that as 1022 currently stands, the requirements for a majority vote of the people is a nuisance something to be bypassed in order to enable flexibility or economic activity abolishing Voter oversight does not create flexibility. It shifts decision-making authority from the community. a simple majority of the city council a change in who holds decision making authority can be just as land use change itself. So just wanted to throw that out there. Thank you very much. |
| 00:48:42.75 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, thank you. Before we move on to online comments, anyone else in the audience? Seeing none, online comments, please. |
| 00:48:52.60 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 00:48:57.11 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening, Council. Well, obviously, the AIM initiative has been brought up and the RBMA hearing on Friday or Thursday evening has been brought up as well. I wanted to discuss Council campaigning. as elected officials. I did a little research and I found out that elected officials may provide neutral input and may take positions on voter initiatives as individuals under their First Amendment rights. However, City staff and officials cannot campaign one way or another, and that's the Vargas case versus City of Salinas, 2009-46 Cal 4th won. Taking sides is campaigning. 73 Cal Calopinion, Attorney General, 255, 1990. So I bring this to your attention because I'm hoping that we don't run into campaigning by city council members. Certainly as individuals, you may campaign, but let's make it very clear whether you're talking in your capacity as an individual or whether you're talking in your capacity as a Councilmember I think that's it. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:50:22.83 | Walfred Solorzano | Bye. |
| 00:50:23.07 | Mayor Woodside | Other online comments? |
| 00:50:23.12 | Walfred Solorzano | other ways. Thank you. Next we have Babette McDougall. |
| 00:50:32.94 | Babette McDougall | Thank you very much. Am I heard? Can you hear me? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Blaustein, for nodding. And I can see the clock. Oh, my gosh. It's a new thing for me. All right. Listen, I want to weigh in because I want to acknowledge that this is probably the first city council meeting that we've had that sort of resembles a Sausalito City Council meeting in a very long time. And I realized that. implementing the timer has something to do with it, kind of puts a damper on things. The other thing that we have to think about is how do we exchange as not just in a governing formalized fashion directed according to Brown and others, but also reminding ourselves that we are sitting here because we are residents. You are residents too. And Mr. Sobieski really illustrated that the time he said something on the dais and then jumped up and made a statement at the lectern. As a private citizen, that really grabbed my attention. So going forward, Alice Merrill makes an excellent point. And countering that to say campaigning. Just what are we doing when we all get carried away? Well, As my grid neighbor says, Sandra Bushmaker, we are neighbors. We do care, but we do have to be mindful of the rules. And that's where we really need to drill down a little more. So again, I'd like to encourage us to drop Rosenberg and return to Roberts. And I would like to encourage, because that opens the dialogues. Rosenberg deliberately silences the citizen voice. Deliberately. That's why it's a little pamphlet instead of an inch thick book. |
| 00:52:07.44 | Unknown | that. |
| 00:52:10.09 | Babette McDougall | I mean, it's just that simple. So I just want to record that we don't have a parliamentarian. We rely, I think, excessively and unreasonably upon our city attorney. I thought he rendered good advice about Brown. But day after day, when we have these meetings, it's not up to the city attorney to be the parliamentarian. So again, I invite you to consider talking to the Saucyutel Women's Club. And thanks for not chopping me off on the knees like you normally do. I yield. |
| 00:52:39.79 | Mayor Woodside | Well, we've had your two minutes. Thank you. And just... As the person chairing the meeting right now, we are open to the public always. The rules that we've adopted do not stifle public participation. To the contrary, we encourage it. The rules encourage it, and we will continue to do so. Having said that, there are other public comments online. |
| 00:53:05.36 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 00:53:06.37 | Mayor Woodside | Seeing none. Okay. We have two business items. And again, thank you to all those who attended. And thank you for your comments. |
| 00:53:20.29 | Kevin McGowan | to. |
| 00:53:23.26 | Mayor Woodside | You're correct. I, um, you know, it's more wishful thinking. It's more anxious to get on with the business items. We do have a consent calendar. Um, it's rather robust tonight. And first, if I may ask, uh, for a, um, If there are any questions, regarding the consent calendar from the dais, seeing none. We can have public comment now on the consent calendar. And just in case you're not aware, these items can typically be taken in one vote, approving all at the same time. These are typically items that have either previously been discussed on their merits or are non-controversial and can be taken on a single consent vote. But you're free as members of the public to comment on any or all the items at this time. Any comments on the consent calendar? Seeing none in the room. Oh, Michael Rex, I think, um, He stepped out. |
| 00:54:29.26 | Michelle McCullough | Oh, we can. |
| 00:54:31.69 | Mayor Woodside | Michael was here. |
| 00:54:35.81 | Mayor Woodside | Is Michael gone? |
| 00:54:48.29 | Mayor Woodside | In our zeal to have public comments, Carolyn, thank you for going outside to get Michael. Michael, would you like to comment on a consent item? |
| 00:54:59.28 | Michael Rex | Oh, we are there already. Yes, we are. Thank you. I was collaborating with the last speaker. Yes, I think I'm worried that we're planning with the AIMS initiative. I'm not sure voters will want to approve something they can't visualize. And I also think we should get started on imagining what the future of the marine ship could be sooner rather than later. Thank you. And so how do we do that in an affordable and efficient, a quick manner that I think this AIA program has been around for decades is is a perfect approach. The we can get experts from top in their field from the in our whole country coming to Sausalito without charge for their time. And if we can put them up in a hotel and give them dinner, and help them with their transportation, that and a $5,000 administration fee for somewhere between 15 and 25,000, we could have a study here. I'm hoping that the council will appoint a steering committee. And we need to be thinking carefully of who should be on that to represent the community. Because obviously, experts from the outside don't know all the issues here that are so cogent. But I encourage you to be the applicant and let's get this application in right away. The team could be here in early September and we can have a conceptual vision for our waterfront, our marineship area before the November election. Thank you. |
| 00:56:46.76 | Mayor Woodside | Just for the record, I think, Mr. Rex, you were speaking to consent item 3H, which is the AIA Architects Foundation Design Assistance Team, otherwise known as DAT, which is the subject of a report, a staff report prepared by Mr. Phipps. Okay, one more comment, Adrian Britton. |
| 00:57:11.14 | Adrian Brinton | Thank you. Good evening, council and staff, just to follow on that same consent calendar item. We fully support a planning initiative in the marineship. We think it's a very important thing, and I know there have been many planning efforts in the marineship, but I appreciate Mr. X's tenacity to come back. And start another one now, but the great thing now with AIM is that within passing in November, the planning can actually happen and won't run into a brick wall at the end of it. So super, super important. We very, very much support doing a parallel planning effort over the summer. And thank you again for the people making it happen. |
| 00:57:50.41 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Any other comments on the consent calendar? |
| 00:57:56.40 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Babette McDougall. |
| 00:57:57.85 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. McDougal? |
| 00:58:01.60 | Babette McDougall | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, here we had two comments from the room, citizens, that address themselves as if we're in public comment generally as opposed to consent calendars specifically. But I think the reason why we had the comments that we had is that, I read through every item in the consent calendar, looked at the stuff. And it really does paint one broad, but rather specific picture. And that is, we're bringing on teams of people that help us visualize our physical future. This is so important. And the one thing I will say about, well, first of all, whoever put this together Probably it's the first time I've seen something that really makes sense for a consent calendar. because you either kind of like it all or you don't like any of it. Well, going forward, we have to have information on how to choose our future. We happen to have the future choice standing in front of us now. So whether we're looking looking at building up the marine ship because something might pass by way of popular vote, or whether we're looking at just trying to get something done that's been on the plan for over a year. We do need to have help because this is a small, confined, restricted geographic location. So I really beg you. to remember that we are already maxed out by the 101 north and southbound traffic that would much rather come through our town because it's sweet. It really is. It's much more fun than sitting up there on bumper to bumper Highway 101 And we already have to make way. So your projects on consent tonight speak to that kind of future. density, residential density compounds this problem that we have already. that we seek to welcome with open arms. this density issue, will change forever the character of this enclave. Thank you. I yield back my time. |
| 00:59:59.84 | Mayor Woodside | Any other comments online? |
| 01:00:02.59 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none. |
| 01:00:03.50 | Mayor Woodside | Very well, thank you. That concludes public comment on the consent calendars or a motion to approve the consent calendar. |
| 01:00:09.59 | Melissa Blaustein | I move we approve the consent calendar, Mayor. |
| 01:00:13.36 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Melissa, all the way from the Mediterranean. There's a motion, is there a second? Okay. |
| 01:00:20.60 | Joan Cox | Mayor, I'd like to just make one brief comment on the consent calendar. |
| 01:00:23.60 | Mayor Woodside | You may. |
| 01:00:24.04 | Joan Cox | Thank you. on item 3-H, I just would like to endorse the recommendation of Michael Rex that the mayor approve a steering committee forthwith, that that be done. by the mayor as opposed to it being formed outside in the community. I think that's something the city should oversee. |
| 01:00:43.53 | Jill Hoffman | I would. If I could speak to that, I think that that should be it. something that would be formed after we have the we have a contract and are selected and that that would be something that um Michael Rex is shaking his head something after the contract is selected we know who the architects are and we could have their input and also the input from our um CDD director and our staff and so I don't think that's something really that the mayor should appoint I think that should be something that the staff should input on and we're not taking any more public comment thank you so much Mike Mr Rex for raising your hand but I think that should be delayed I don't think we should decide that tonight |
| 01:01:19.54 | Mayor Woodside | So just to comment on the process. I'm certainly, desirous of appointing, if you will, an ad hoc group, to make recommendations concerning what goes in the application. As I understand the application, it must include identification either by name or title. of a steering committee. And I have no intention of appointing that steering committee. I think it has to be something that meets with our approval as a council. So it may take a little time, but I'm not anxious to take a lot of time to try to get this process through to a conclusion promptly. My understanding also is that Wow. This organization takes applications just about at any time. the time. right now I'm understanding is very ripe for us to apply. Apparently the group is meeting very soon in Southern California, and we could have a preliminary application at least to get things rolling with them quickly if we can bring this quickly to at least a conclusion to submit the application. So I know I've spoken too much on something that's consent, but I want to make sure we're clear. There can be confusion when you use a phrase steering committee ad hoc committee. E.g. etc., but clearly this has to be approved by the Council. It's not up to any individual Council member to take ownership, if you will, other than as a one of five. So Um, Having said that, we have a motion in a second, we need a roll call. |
| 01:03:09.03 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? Yes. Councilmember Sobieski? Vice Mayor Blaustein? Yes. Mayor Woodside? |
| 01:03:17.60 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Thank you. |
| 01:03:17.63 | Walfred Solorzano | Yeah. |
| 01:03:19.98 | Mayor Woodside | So now we've concluded the consent calendar. Thank you, Ian, for keeping us properly on the agenda. Um, We do have two business items. Well, let's see, I guess one is a public hearing item, a formal public hearing item that is required regarding any possibility of going to the voters for a city charter. This aspect tonight is a public hearing. And we will have discussion. Certainly we'll have a staff report. And we'll be able to discuss the steps that may be taken from this time forward. But let's first hear. |
| 01:04:01.03 | Ian Sobieski | from... Mr. Mayor, could I just... |
| 01:04:01.68 | Mayor Woodside | Mr. Merrick, could I? Yes. |
| 01:04:03.65 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Because we touched on, there were several questions about this Tamales Street stop sign and the, police going to the school. Yeah, we have the police chief and we have Mr. McGowan here and we have the city manager. Would it be appropriate as a amend an addendum to his city manager report to simply get the word on those two things from McGowan and and the chief about. |
| 01:04:25.96 | Mayor Woodside | So you're asking for a report on |
| 01:04:26.94 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Instead of asking for it to be on future agenda items and then having to have to be agendized, I'm wondering if there's a quick answer. And if there isn't, I'll put it on future agenda items, but I would put it. |
| 01:04:29.13 | Mayor Woodside | Instead of like, |
| 01:04:36.24 | Mayor Woodside | I would put it to the interim city manager and Mr. McGowan. If there's a quick response, I think the public would appreciate it, and so would we. If it's terribly complicated, we may have to set it for a future agenda. |
| 01:04:48.03 | Brendan Phipps | I think we're happy to support that. Director McGowan, thank you for stepping up. |
| 01:04:48.50 | Mayor Woodside | I'm sorry. Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:04:52.87 | Kevin McGowan | Good evening, council members. I'm Kevin McGowan, Public Works Director. As far as the intersection of Tamales and Watery, we need to go through a warrant study in order to determine whether it needs to have a all-ways stop in all directions. So we've reached out to our traffic consultant to give us a proposal to go ahead and move forward with that. We should receive a response within a day or so of their costs for doing that warrant study I'm anticipating we will move forward with that and either bring it back to you after that he is finished in order to install one or three stop signs at that intersection depending upon what the one study says And as far as the tree itself, this is brand new to us today, but we are working on it. Our maintenance staff will secure the services of a arborist to take a look at the tree itself to determine if when if we can cut some of these limbs that it won't damage the tree significantly so that it dies. But we want to get a arborist to take a look at it first before we take action. Hopefully that addresses your concerns. |
| 01:05:59.83 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Okay. |
| 01:06:04.44 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:06:06.58 | Mayor Woodside | Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 01:06:11.70 | Mayor Woodside | Chief. You're on. |
| 01:06:14.53 | Police Chief | Good evening. So it's the first time hearing about the e-bike issue on Tomales. So we spoke. We're definitely going to go to the school, do some outreach, and figure out if they are residents and are going to the school, and we'll go from there. |
| 01:06:34.87 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you very much. Okay, back now to the... public hearing. And we do have a staff report. So I think our interim city manager and city attorney will be participating in providing us a staff report. |
| 01:06:53.45 | Brendan Phipps | You're correct, Mayor. And we have a presentation to support as well. Good evening. I am Brendan Phipps, Interim City Manager. I'll be presenting on this item. Tonight marks the first of two required public hearings on a proposal to place a charter city measure on the November 2026 statewide ballot. I'll be giving a high level framework this evening and City Attorney Rudin, naturally, please feel free to jump in, clarify or expand on any points as you see fit throughout the presentation. Our goal tonight is really to give the council and the community a clear and accessible overview |
| 01:07:19.15 | Unknown | I understand. |
| 01:07:27.38 | Brendan Phipps | what the charter is, what it does, what it does not do. and what actions are requested this evening by staff. I will attempt to keep it efficient, leaving ample time for council questions and public comments. So with that, next slide. So why are we here? what would becoming a charter city actually mean for the city? At its core, the charter city status gives Sausalito expanded home rule authority under the California Constitution. That's the ability to govern our own municipal affairs and, in many areas, supersede conflicting state law. more local decisions made locally. There are four primary benefits that staff has identified. First is enhanced local control over our municipal affairs, which is the foundation of the whole charter framework. Second, fiscal flexibility. Charter authority is a prerequisite for implementing a real property transfer tax above levels available to general law cities. With voter approval, this would generate new general fund revenue for a variety of city purposes. Third, land use and community preservation. The proposed charter asserts maximum local authority over land use, zoning, and development decisions. That's consistent with Sausalito's longstanding commitment to preserving its community character and stewardship therein. And fourth, procurement and governance flexibility. Charter cities can structure contracting elections and administrative procedures in ways that save time and cost while maintaining council accountability. Next slide, please. So before getting into the details, it's worth taking a moment just to set some expectations, both what a charter does and what it does not do. on the does side. The charter establishes Sausalito as a charter city under the California Constitution. It enables a real property transfer tax subject to voter approval. It asserts local authority over land use, zoning, housing, fire, and life safety, and public contracting. It preserves our council manager form of government and our five-member council, and it provides for the continuation of all existing ordinances, contracts, and boards and commissions. On the does not side, and this is important for public understanding, the charter does not allow non-residents to serve on the council. It does not create a separately elected mayor or change how the council sets its mayor through annual rotation. And it does not exempt Sausalito from certain state laws that courts have determined address matters of statewide concern. So, for example, the Brown Act, CPRA, CEQA, the Housing Accountability Act, and SB 35. Next slide, please. Turning to the charter itself, the full draft is included in your packet this evening, and it's a focused document organized into nine articles. Article one and two, establish charter city status and retain our council manager form of government with a five member council. Article three declares fire protection, emergency medical response, and life safety as municipal affairs under local control. Article 4 addresses public contracting, granting council authority to set bid thresholds and procurement procedures by ordinance, building in flexibility without requiring independent charter amendments. Article 5 authorizes the real property transfer tax with a proposed ceiling of $5 per $1,000 of property value. I'll cover some of the mechanics of that in a moment. Article six aligns city elections with statewide general elections and preserves our initiative referendum and recall rights. Article seven declares land use, zoning and housing policy as municipal affairs, maximizing local development authority. and Article 8 and 9, authorized advisory boards and commissions, and included standard severability and amendment procedures. Next slide, please. So if council provides direction this evening to proceed, here's the required process and timeline state law requires two notice to public hearings separated by 30 days. Tonight is number one. The second is scheduled for July 7. Following the second hearing, council must wait at least 21 days before voting on ballot placement. That vote is preliminarily calendared for August 4. If placed on the ballot, the measure would go before Sausalito voters at the statewide general election on November 3 of this year, where it would require majority approval. A post-election filing with the Secretary of State is what formally effectuates the charter powers. Staff also notes that if the transfer tax is included and the charter is approved, we would... that, uh, recommend an implementing ordinance that's pre-drafted and ready to adopt promptly after the election. So in summary tonight. July 7th, second public hearing. August 4th, placing the item on the ballot in November 3, the election itself, and then filing with the Secretary of State. Next slide. Thank you. A brief word on the legal framework here and of course, leaning on city attorney as appropriate to provide context charter cities in California prevail over conflicting state laws on municipal affairs that include areas like contracting elections, taxation, and land use procedures. However, and this is a key point, State laws that courts have determined govern matters of statewide concern continue to apply. That includes, again, Brown Act, CPRA, the Privacy Rights Act, CEQA, and the majority of housing accountability statutes. I just clarified the certain major ones in particular. Charter city status is well established in California. Of our 478 cities, 121 are charter cities. That includes cities you might know, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento. One legal point worth noting is that council sponsored charter measures are not subject to the single subject rule, as long as provisions relate to the subject of the charter itself, which this proposal does from staff's perspective. And Attorney Rudin, I just want to give you a chance to welcome any additional framing on the Home Rule Doctrine or the statewide concern boundary before we move on. |
| 01:13:46.83 | Sergio Rudin | No, I think that this has been a very good introduction. You know, the issue of whether or not something is a municipal affair or a matter of statewide concerns such that state law governs is often determined by case law. And it is very often context specific and with the courts examining the findings of the state legislature. So it does vary. from subject to subject. |
| 01:14:15.11 | Brendan Phipps | Thank you, Attorney Rudin. Next slide, please. |
| 01:14:20.19 | Brendan Phipps | Returning to the transfer tax, which is likely to be of significant interest to counsel and the public, the proposed charter establishes a ceiling. a maximum rate of $5 per $1,000 of property value. That's structured as a general tax. The charter itself does not set the operative rate. It sets the ceiling. The council would then adopt the actual rate by ordinance or at or below that cap, and this preserves council flexibility. Rates can be adjusted downwards by ordinance at any time. Going above the cap, however, would require a new ballot measure. Revenue would flow to the general fund without earmarks consistent with its classification as a general tax. The reason the charter uses a ceiling rather than a fixed rate is deliberate, and we've touched on that a bit just on this slide. Embedding specific tiers in charter text creates some rigidity, and it requires another election just to adjust it. So setting the rate by ordinance, again, gives council some flexibility. One important point is the transfer tax provision is included in the current draft, but council does have the option this evening to direct staff to pursue their charter with or without that specific component or to separate it as a future standalone measure as separate from this direction that we might receive this evening. So that's one of the key direction items tonight that I'd like council's feedback on. Next slide, please. On the financial side, both costs and potential revenue, process costs, legal work, public outreach, and election-related expenses are estimated in the low to mid six-figure range. Comparable California cities that have gone through this process Paso Robles, for example, Fountain Valley, for example, have managed costs efficiently Funds are generally available within the existing city attorney and city manager budgets, but if we do move forward, staff will be tracking expenses closely to ensure that any required budget appropriations are brought to council promptly for consideration. The charter itself imposes no new ongoing costs, traditional costs for staff training and municipal code updates post adoption are expected to be relatively modest on the revenue side. If the transfer tax is voter approved, it would generate new general fund revenue with exact amounts depending on property, transaction, volume, and values. Staff will develop detailed projections with our finance director, Angelina Loeffler, in advance of the second hearing. And importantly, consolidating this measure with the November three general election is a substantially cost reducing action in and of itself relative to running a statewide excuse me, a standalone special election. Next slide, please. So Article 7, addresses housing and land use. This is an area, of course, of particular importance to our community. The charter declares land use regulation, zoning and housing policy, development standards and design review as municipal affairs under local control. It also establishes the council's authority to regulate zoning, set certain design standards and adopt a general plan. And it codifies the requirement for a planning commission. I want to be direct about what this does and does not change with respect to state housing law. Many of the major state housing statutes has mentioned housing element law, housing accountability act, density bonus law, SB 35. They've been adjudicated by courts as matters of statewide concern. and continue to apply to charter cities. So becoming a charter city does not necessarily exempt the city from those laws. What the charter statute does provide, however, is certain standing, the legal footnote to challenge other state housing mandates that may not be appropriately tailored to address a genuine statewide concern. Next slide, please. |
| 01:18:19.70 | Brendan Phipps | Article 4 covers public contracting and procurement. This is an area where charter flexibility can provide some real operational benefit. Currently, Sausalito follows state law defaults for competitive bidding and procurement. The charter shifts those details to a locally adopted ordinance, giving the council the ability again to... to update bid thresholds, competitive processes and exceptions. This is without amending the charter. Importantly, the charter's continuation revision means the city would follow existing procurement standards under the public contract code until and unless the council amends them by ordinance. Staff also anticipates the city would continue to follow applicable prevailing wage requirements to preserve eligibility for state grant funding, which is a practical priority. Next slide, please. Before going to our engagement plan and next steps, just some practical considerations the council should be aware of regarding transition moving from general law to charter, requires some organizational adjustment. staff training. Municipal code updates are planned for the post adoption period. statewide concern and uncertainty. The boundary between municipal affairs and statewide concern is not always a solid line. It evolves through court decisions over time, in addition to a dynamic policy environment. The council should expect occasional ambiguity. particularly in contexts relating to housing and labor relations, where that policy environment is most dynamic. Our city attorney will be an important ongoing resource in navigating that boundary as is per usual. Community engagement experience from comparable California cities is clear. Community engagement and education are some of the most important factors in the success of a charter measure. We take that seriously and will address our engagement plan. On the next slide. Next slide, please. So consistent with council's direction tonight, staff proposes a robust community engagement program between now and the November election if council chooses to move forward. We will conduct community workshops and informational meetings, both before and between the two required public hearings to give Sausalito residents multiple opportunities to learn and engage. And I'll just clarify that and say, we've identified two dates that are suitable for certain community workshops. We're going to work with the agenda setting committee and the working group members to bring those forward. Currently we're looking at a date in mid June as well as in early July and we'll make sure to keep the community updated. Outreach materials will be written in plain language, explained clearly what the charter does and does not do, and how the transfer tax would work and how governance would and would not change. We will maintain also a dedicated project webpage throughout the process with hearing notices, draft documents, timelines, and staff contact information. Staff is committed to accessible, transparent public outreach, and we welcome council input tonight on any additional engagement strategies you'd like us to consider or incorporate. Next slide, please. So we're requesting four actions. from the council this evening. Action one is to receive the presentation on the proposed charter. Action two is to provide direction to staff on whether council wishes to proceed with the charter city process and any modifications to the proposed charter that council would like staff to incorporate. If proceeding, we'd also like direction from council on whether to include the transfer tax in the charter or to pursue it as a separate measure at a later date. Action three. direct staff to post and publish notice for the second public hearing, currently scheduled for July 7. consistent with the 21 day notice requirement under government code section three, four, four, five, eight. And action four is to direct staff to conduct community engagement activities, including workshops, informational meetings prior to the second public hearing and any following after second. If the council proceeds the formal vote on ballot placement would occur at the August four regular meeting. Next slide, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, Councilmembers, for your time and attention to this important matter. Staff and City Attorney are here to answer any questions you might have, and we look forward to your direction. |
| 01:22:44.20 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, so before we have public comments i'll ask council members if you have questions and i would encourage each of you to ask questions. There will be time to comment and such after we've heard from the public. So first of all, are there questions? |
| 01:23:11.34 | Mayor Woodside | I have one question for counsel. to adopt a charter, this can only be done at certain particular elections. Is that correct, Mr. Rudin? |
| 01:23:28.11 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, it can only be done at a general municipal election, which is held every two years. It's the election to appoint our regular terms for council members. |
| 01:23:38.88 | Mayor Woodside | So, The next. opportunity is this November, and the soonest one could put something on the ballot after that would be November of 2028. Is that correct? |
| 01:23:55.90 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, that's correct. |
| 01:23:57.66 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. Um, so procedurally, um, At this point, there is a draft charter. I know something about it because We did have a council working group, Ms. Cox and myself, I will say this, Joan did the lion's share of the relief. a clear grafting. but we did work together to present something as an idea at this point we wanted to get the ball rolling But my question to you, Mr. Rudin, is at any point prior to placing on the ballot, Could the provisions of this charter be changed after hearing from the public? |
| 01:24:46.39 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, I think so. Thank you. |
| 01:24:48.81 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. So other questions? |
| 01:24:56.48 | Mayor Woodside | Seeing none. |
| 01:24:57.82 | Ian Sobieski | I guess I'll ask some questions. Sure. Surprised by the lack of questions. There are a lot of questions asked, but I know very little about the legal distinctions of this charter city stuff. But one of the main things that caught my attention is this tax proposal. So I'm not sure who can answer this question, but one of the things you're asking for us is whether the tax proposal would be included in the charter or as a separate measure. And I don't understand what you mean. Is it a separate ballot measure? Is it a measure at another time? or what? |
| 01:25:28.09 | Sergio Rudin | So, What I would say, yeah, the city manager did mention that we, and I mean, by we, I mean the city attorney and the city manager both would like direction from the council. as to whether or not you want to include a specific real property transfer tax proposal in the charter itself. Um, typically in my experience, I have not seen that done. Um, And one of the reasons I suspect for that is... that If you include specific tax language in the charter, anytime you want to change it, it requires a separate charter amendment. Typically with most charters, they will set forth the power to tax and any limitations on the power to tax. So if you wanted to say include a cap, saying the city cannot pass a real transfer tax more than a certain amount. Those kinds of provisions are not atypical. but of provision language stating that... You know, there is hereby approved a general tax on the transfer of real property in certain amount, Um, You know, I have not seen Um, language in other charters that is similar to that, which is currently included in your draft. So. |
| 01:26:49.53 | Ian Sobieski | So let me understand it correctly. What one could do is have a draft that would authorize the city council. to assign a. transfer tax up to a cap. And if that charter passed the voters, then a future city council by a resolution or ordinance could specify the tax rate? |
| 01:27:12.33 | Sergio Rudin | So with regards to taxes, all taxes in California typically require voter approval. Um, I do not normally see a specific tax measure embedded in a charter. I'm not going to say that it can't be done. But uh, There's a couple of practical and policy questions that come about from doing such a thing. One is charters are more difficult to change than tax measures. in terms of, um, your ability to amend a charter. You can only do it at a general municipal election. General law taxes also can only be proposed or amended at a general municipal election. But special taxes, which have a higher voter approval threshold, I think are not subject to that same restriction. Um, |
| 01:28:09.40 | Sergio Rudin | One other sort of concern is if you include a specific tax proposal, Um, voters may look at the charter as a vote on that tax measure than whether or not they want to be a charter city specifically. So you're combining two issues. |
| 01:28:29.02 | Ian Sobieski | I got that. I'm sorry, Mr. City Attorney. I'm just confused with something probably that's so obvious to you. You don't appreciate how simple it is. I don't understand if the measure passes that authorizes the city council and or authorizes an up to one half percent real property transfer tax, say that passes the voters, then is the city council able at a regular meeting later in the subsequent years to adjust that tax anywhere from 0.1% to 0.3% up to 0.5% and back down to 0.3%? Or do you have to go to the voters? |
| 01:29:01.32 | Sergio Rudin | So typically with a tax measure, the most tax measures will say the voters approve a tax rate of X percent. And if the person who drafted the measure is smart, they'll also include another provision in the tax measure that says the council can lower it below the rate the voters approve. So the voters, Typically always set a cap. The language that is in the charter before you today has the voters approving a transfer tax at 5% and then an authorization for the council to reduce that below that 5%, if so, um, you know, deemed appropriate by the council. So, |
| 01:29:42.73 | Ian Sobieski | I think you mean one half of 1%, right? Not 5%. |
| 01:29:46.90 | Sergio Rudin | Well, so... The one half of 1% so The documentary Transfer Tax Act has a limitation of imposing It imposes a 55 cents per $500 evaluation transfer tax by the county, and it also authorizes a city to adopt a transfer, a general law city to adopt the transfer tax at half that rate. Charter cities are not subject to that limitation, so they can propose a much higher rate for a documentary transfer tax, and many of them do. |
| 01:30:24.30 | Ian Sobieski | Yes, okay. But at least in the draft I saw, it was $5 per 1,000, so that's one half of 1%. read that correctly. Maybe I should Uh, well, I'm pretty sure that's right. And it's maybe at this point, the other question I had then is, uh, that this tax could be lowered in the future by city council, could it then be raised back up to its previous amount, or is it a one-way street? |
| 01:30:51.69 | Sergio Rudin | No, I do believe that the language that is being proposed before you is not a one-way street. it is a cap and therefore if the Um, council lowers it by ordinance, it can raise it back up to the cap by ordinance as well. |
| 01:31:10.65 | Ian Sobieski | All right. So this is a real property transfer tax, which applies to all real property. Uh, just to make sure I understand what real property means. It's of course houses. Is it also commercial buildings? Is it sailboats and cars? |
| 01:31:25.81 | Sergio Rudin | So it is just real property. So it's not sailboats and cars, which are typically referred to as personal property. It is just, you know, real estate. |
| 01:31:38.24 | Ian Sobieski | And this says, I guess, real estate transfer tax. Could in the formulation of the charter, there be more specificity? So could you, for instance, exempt personal residences, but charge just commercial properties? |
| 01:31:54.27 | Sergio Rudin | Um, Yes, the Council could decide to do that, at least under the Section 2 of Article 5 of the proposed Charter. Um, the council may adjust by ordinance, the operative, the transfer tax without further notice. So yes, you can set different rates for different kinds of real property if you so choose. |
| 01:32:21.38 | Ian Sobieski | Would that be done by the city council after it passes or could it be done as part of the charter effort itself? |
| 01:32:27.03 | Sergio Rudin | So without one, you can do both. The council can give direction to change the language in the charter. Alternatively, you know, if there's a different tax, If the council says we just want the charter to be a different, you know, a standalone charter that just says we have the power to tax. At some point in the future, you would have a different real property transfer tax measure, and you can put whatever you want in it. You can also, adjust the language that's in the charter now and specify that there are different limitations on the power to impose a real property transfer tax. on residential properties. So those are both options. And then... if you use the current language after the if this passes, Presumably, then the council by ordinance can adjust the rates. |
| 01:33:20.78 | Ian Sobieski | And then another area of A question I have about the freedom to craft the charter in terms of this tax provision, could you treat a property differently depending on how long it's been held? So if you had a commercial property, for example, that's been held for 50 years, could you tax that property at a different rate than one that's been held for 10 years? |
| 01:33:41.36 | Sergio Rudin | No, because of the way that a real property transfer tax works. It is only collected on sale. There is some case law as well dealing with the collection of real property transfer tax based on change of corporate ownership. So there is some implementing regulations that some public agencies have. adopted, but in general, If real property isn't changing hands, the public agency isn't collecting a real property transfer tax. |
| 01:34:11.06 | Ian Sobieski | So, but I thought in the drafting we did, we are having a freedom to establish different thresholds of rates, depending on what the size of the transfer is. So a different rate above a million versus a different rate above 2 million. That we could do, it sounds like. |
| 01:34:25.41 | Sergio Rudin | Yes. |
| 01:34:25.93 | Ian Sobieski | but we just |
| 01:34:26.42 | Sergio Rudin | You're levying it on certain transfers, but not others. So you certainly can adopt that sort of thing. |
| 01:34:32.17 | Ian Sobieski | Could you repeat the answer? I couldn't hear your answer. Sorry. |
| 01:34:34.91 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, what you're choosing to do is just levy a real property transfer tax on just certain kinds of transfers. in that case. |
| 01:34:42.89 | Ian Sobieski | Right. But, and so, but the certain kind of transfer couldn't apply to the duration with which someone had held the property here is what you're previously said. So you couldn't have a standard of properties that have been held for 40 years or have a really low tax basis for one reason or another. |
| 01:35:00.02 | Sergio Rudin | So what you're suggesting is you would like a real property transfer tax that is imposed only on the sale of a property that has been held for more than 40 years? |
| 01:35:10.70 | Ian Sobieski | I'm trying to learn. I don't want any taxes. I'd like to be zero tax if I could get away with it. But my, uh, my, I'm just trying to learn because this is all new to me and I'm, you know, need to learn before I can have an opinion. Uh, well, what I just want to know is what the freedom is. For a commercial property, for instance, you can depreciate. Sometimes commercial property is a zero. Or because of Prop 13, if they're held a long time, maybe they're not paying any tax. I could imagine a fairness case of treating such a property different than something that's been paying high taxes in real terms for a long time because of the circumstances of when they acquired it. So, discern. or classify properties differently in terms of how we might have a transfer tax. |
| 01:35:57.76 | Sergio Rudin | So let me, um, Let me rephrase this. So a real property transfer tax is often referred to as a documentary transfer tax. It is a tax on the document. It is not a tax on the property. So when there is a sale, there is a contract, there is a deed. It is a tax on the actual deed, the act. of preparing and recording the deed that transfers the ownership of the property. So it's not actually a tax on the property. So. Because it's a tax on a document, it would be very unusual to have that tax be based on how long the property is held. |
| 01:36:40.02 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:36:40.04 | Joan Cox | Okay. |
| 01:36:40.09 | Sergio Rudin | Thank you, Mayor. |
| 01:36:40.41 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:36:42.36 | Mayor Woodside | Other questions? |
| 01:36:43.70 | Joan Cox | Yes. Just a clarifying question. |
| 01:36:46.69 | Mayor Woodside | Sure. |
| 01:36:47.34 | Joan Cox | um, along these same lines. Is it true that If the charter passes, there is not any automatic transfer tax imposed. It would require A subsequent action by ordinance by the city council. The charter only establishes the maximum rate at which the council could subsequently set a transfer tax, is that right? |
| 01:37:17.01 | Sergio Rudin | So this is one of the ambiguities that I think the, I would like further direction on from the council because section one of the current draft says there's hereby approved a general tax on the transfer of real property in the city. for general governmental purposes at a rate not to exceed $5 per 1000. And I think that there may be some potential confusion with this exact language as to whether or not that approves and immediate transfer tax at our eight of five. Um, |
| 01:37:49.71 | Joan Cox | The presentation says, Charter currently proposes a maximum transfer tax rate of $5 per thousand requires majority voter approval of the charter Council then sets the operative rate by ordinance, up to but not exceeding the cap. |
| 01:38:05.44 | Sergio Rudin | And if that is the intent, there may be some minor tweaks to language of Section 1 and Section 2. Um, know to make clear that it will not be imposed unless the council does in fact pass an ordinance |
| 01:38:20.63 | Joan Cox | Okay, I think that was the intention of the Um, Thank you. |
| 01:38:25.07 | Kenneth Henry | I agree. |
| 01:38:25.82 | Joan Cox | Yeah. So, Um, And for the reasons you enunciated about the one subject rule, was to not actually impose it, but to empower people. the imposition. Thank you. |
| 01:38:43.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:38:45.74 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. Hoffman. |
| 01:38:47.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And, Attorney, Rudin, you would agree that General Law City's or generally they're governed by the California government code which covers municipal affairs, including zoning elections, personal personnel taxation established by the state. And some of the benefits include simplified governance, predictability and lower legal costs. And the cons include limited autonomy, restricted revenue options and state policies. They may not address local deeds. And that's just a general summary. of the general law city, which Sausalito currently is. And I don't think that summary was included in the presentation or the staff report, but that's just a general summary of what Sausalito currently is as a general law city. You would agree with that? |
| 01:39:37.75 | Sergio Rudin | Uh, Yes. Sausalito is a general law city. There are certainly some advantages likely of being a general law city. And those do include that you do have the framework of state law to guide you. |
| 01:39:54.40 | Jill Hoffman | And some of that framework is that we do have protections if we follow state law against lawsuits based on our laws. set forth on a more complex uh, charter city. part of the risk in that is that we are setting off on a course that we're setting our own local regulations on municipal matters, including the option to do our own zoning, elections, personnel and taxation, which we just talked about on the taxation. um whether or not they conflict with the state and hopefully they don't conflict with the state constitution. The benefits include more local control ability to establish local taxes, local preference policies. and alternative bidding processes. The cons include a complex, governance potential legal conflicts with the laws. And any change in the charter then has to go back to a legal vote which can take up to two years, which we also just discussed. So anytime we want to change our charter, or how we do business, it's got to go back to a vote. You would agree with that? |
| 01:41:09.33 | Sergio Rudin | I'll agree that yes, all charter amendments need to be approved by voters. State law guides that process and requires that it only happen at the election for council members every two years. Um, I'm sorry, didn't follow the rest of the question. |
| 01:41:24.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:41:24.52 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sorry. Didn't follow the rest I mean, this seems to me to be... I mean, it's not same, it is. A fundamental change in the way Sausalito's position |
| 01:41:35.79 | Mayor Woodside | Good morning. Time to end the debate. |
| 01:41:38.05 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I have a question. Yeah, it's a fundamental question. of why that's not more specifically called out in the staff report of, the fundamental change and background of how Sausalito does business and the risks involved in And the. expenses that we're going to have to incur as such a small city and how we're going to do business. I mean, this is why most cities, when you're talking about this kind of a fundamental change It's a long process. of, and thoughtful process. of how you're going to adapt to this thing. |
| 01:42:18.68 | Mayor Woodside | you know, |
| 01:42:19.54 | Jill Hoffman | This is our city attorney. He's well aware as a city attorney advising |
| 01:42:24.37 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. to the next one. Ms. Hoffman, we have plenty of time to debate. This is question time. |
| 01:42:27.17 | Jill Hoffman | I'M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO This is not a debate. I'm asking him in his position as our city attorney, which would be my first question, which is my first question to him. His advice to us of how long most cities take with this process. The Cal cities, as I'm on the governance policy committee for Cal cities, the normal timeline is about a year to go through this process. Atherton, Fullerton, these cities who go through this process It's about 12 months. to go through it from state, start to if you even get close to the finish line. On this type of a fundamental change on how you do business as a city from general law, we're trying to do it in less than a month. AND I'M WONDERING, as a partner in a law firm, is that his advice, really his advice to our city to go down this road in this kind of an abbreviated process of less than a month |
| 01:43:19.92 | Sergio Rudin | So I will say in terms of the process and how many meetings you have and how much public input you want to do. The state law sets the floor. of, a minimum of two public hearings before you can consider placing it on the ballot with a 21 day waiting period. from the second public hearing. Um, So again, I think Ultimately, that's a big policy decision for the council as to how how much and how frequently to solicit public feedback. With regards to your other question, I think, yes, there is a big difference in terms of um, you know, there being a, there's a big difference between general law cities and charter cities fundamentally. Uh, California Constitution says a general law city may only make regulations and ordinances that are not in conflict with the general laws. So your source of authority is inherently limited to what the state allows you to regulate on. With regards to charter cities, you know, With respect to municipal affairs, they are allowed to supersede all laws inconsistent therewith with regards to the state. Now, of course... as a you know, the courts have and the legislature has. increasingly limited charter city authority in a number of key aspects. with regards to public agency liability. I don't think that there's a significant difference in terms of public agency liability for claims and litigation because the Tort Claim Act is a process that governs claims against public agencies for both general law and charter cities. |
| 01:45:10.07 | Mayor Woodside | Any more questions? |
| 01:45:13.58 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:45:14.25 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, I would like to hear from the public. I guess we have one speaker card. |
| 01:45:25.05 | Mayor Woodside | I don't see Melissa. I know she was having internet issues from time to time and said she might not be seen. And there she is. Okay. I just have to turn it off occasionally to buffer. |
| 01:45:33.84 | Melissa Blaustein | I just have to turn it off occasionally to buffer the internet. I apologize for that. I wish I could keep it on the whole time. That's limited. |
| 01:45:40.95 | Mayor Woodside | Are you able to hear us? |
| 01:45:42.97 | Melissa Blaustein | Yes, I can hear you. |
| 01:45:44.17 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, great. So Alice Merrill. has filled out a speaker card. I will note that we have received a number, a rather large number of public comments, which are in the record at this point written. So, Ms. Merrill. |
| 01:46:03.20 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. I'm the only person who wants to say anything. |
| 01:46:07.34 | Mayor Woodside | At this moment, your There's a long list of people who've said a lot in writing. |
| 01:46:14.12 | Alice Merrill | I know. |
| 01:46:14.71 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 01:46:14.77 | Alice Merrill | Thank you for fixing my clock. |
| 01:46:14.83 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 01:46:19.69 | Alice Merrill | You're always starting me with no time. So one question, this Joint fire thing. That means we're not in the fire, Marin, West, you know, so that's a question. Yeah. Um, It sounds reasonable. It isn't to me, but you could make it sound reasonable. Except why is it only big cities? Why are not little cities doing this? Because it doesn't make sense. Because it's just, we're small. We don't need this huge bureaucracy. T. We can do with help from the state. The thing about the, when I read the $5 or whatever it is on the, you know, I read something completely different than you're saying. It wasn't clear at all. to me about how you decide this. And when you say it's taxable or when it transfer. It sounds like when it goes into effect, but it's not. It's when you say it's confusing. Why are you pushing this so darn hard? Well, who are you trying to do? Who? To be? I just... I don't get it. Okay, every single one of the letters that came in to you guys was do not do this. So here you are. You have me saying don't do this. Here you have maybe a few more people. Every letter said do not do this. Why are you proceeding? If you're so excited about it, wait until 2028. See if it's still la-di- Glitter and Wonderful. And think about it then, after people have had a chance to think about it. I just, I don't get it. I don't get what it is that you are so determined to be, to take over this town with your votes. It's driving me nuts. Thank you. |
| 01:48:20.85 | Mayor Woodside | Public comments? |
| 01:48:22.98 | Walfred Solorzano | You have Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 01:48:25.53 | Mayor Woodside | So online, Ms. Bushmaker. |
| 01:48:27.77 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. This is not ready for prime time, folks. This is not ready. Just listen to the questions that have been asked and the confusion that has been raised. Can you imagine what the citizen who is not paying attention is going to try to understand what's going on? This is a fundamental change in Sausalito. Reading and absorbing this amount of information, we do not have enough time to do this. I don't understand why we're doing this now. I do believe that combining The charter city with the AIM initiative centralizes power in Sausalito in three people. I don't like that. I do not like that. The citizens have to have some say in land use. The citizens have to have some say in the matters that are covered under the charter city. |
| 01:49:25.23 | Sandra Bushmaker | We have a very important election coming up in November. I do not want to see citizens of Sausalito distracted with this charter city business when we have national issues that are critical in this country right now, unless your motivation is to put it on the ballot so that there isn't enough time for citizens to get engaged. I hope that is not the case. |
| 01:49:52.65 | Mayor Woodside | Any other comments on mine? |
| 01:49:54.26 | Sandra Bushmaker | I'm not finished. I'm not finished. |
| 01:49:55.79 | Mayor Woodside | I'm sorry. |
| 01:49:57.21 | Sandra Bushmaker | Oh, my turn is up. |
| 01:49:58.32 | Mayor Woodside | You did pause and I misunderstood that for your being finished. |
| 01:50:02.26 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yeah, I just quickly wanted to say the low six-figure cost of doing this thing does not necessarily... cover the costs of the staff time, And potential litigation and clarifying whether something is a local issue or a local rule issue versus a state concern. I think we're setting ourselves up for litigation. The tax questions alone have been overwhelming. Thank you. |
| 01:50:29.31 | Mayor Woodside | Other comments online? |
| 01:50:32.31 | Walfred Solorzano | Next we have Nick. |
| 01:50:34.56 | Mayor Woodside | Nick, could you identify yourself with your last name? |
| 01:50:38.59 | Vicki Nichols | Nick Roby. 100 South Street. Why now? That's my question. I do think and agree with Alice Merrill, it should be a larger shouldn't be sandwiched in a city council meeting, that people... should know about. This is important. It's a big change. Um, We've been a city since like 1932. Prior to that, we were a town You probably all know that, but just in case you don't. But anyway, that's sort of my question. And it really should be a discussion for the town. I consider us still a town, not a city, by the way. And. Uh. Anyway, I just think we need to Get it more out there and not be sandwiched inside a city council meeting that people won't even hear about. Yeah. That's all. I yield back my time as other people think. |
| 01:51:49.61 | Mayor Woodside | Any other comments online? |
| 01:51:52.05 | Vicki Nichols | Next we have Babette McDougall. |
| 01:51:53.36 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. McDougal? |
| 01:51:56.20 | Babette McDougall | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I have two items, so I hope I don't exceed the two minutes. Number one, I think we have a point of order. Now, Rosenberg does not allow citizens... to raise a point of order. If you don't believe that they silenced the citizen voice via Rosenberg, just check it out yourself. But there is a point of order. I have to ask because it wasn't made known to me until while you were in the course of this discussion of your own QA on the dais. With Ms. Blaustein losing connectivity via the internet, that means she is not continuously in the presence of this meeting. |
| 01:52:30.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:52:30.57 | Mayor Woodside | She has been continuously in the presence of the meeting. Her screen simply was not visible to us. |
| 01:52:31.16 | Babette McDougall | I believe we have a... Bye. our timer. |
| 01:52:37.46 | Mayor Woodside | She reassured us after her screen came back on. So sorry to interrupt Ms. McDougall, Yeah. |
| 01:52:45.76 | Babette McDougall | That's it. |
| 01:52:45.96 | Mayor Woodside | The meeting is in order. Ms. Blatton, I believe it might be an illegal meeting. |
| 01:52:48.54 | Babette McDougall | I believe it might be an illegal meeting, sir. She herself admitted that she needed to reboot the Internet connection. I heard her say it. |
| 01:52:58.84 | Unknown | And therefore- |
| 01:52:59.38 | Babette McDougall | She's down. Okay. I mean, unless you know something more about telecom than the rest of us, but that's a point of order. We don't have to debate it now. But I would like to say something about the item that we're talking about. First of all, I'd like to address the comments by our acting city attorney. I believe we mean to say that a double negative equals a positive. So that means that when you say not, not, it means that people who are not residents of Sausalito may be on the city council. |
| 01:53:26.98 | Mayor Woodside | That's not true. |
| 01:53:29.48 | Babette McDougall | I beg your pardon, sir. |
| 01:53:30.83 | Mayor Woodside | That is not true. |
| 01:53:33.45 | Babette McDougall | Oh, you mean the double negatives equals something other? |
| 01:53:36.37 | Mayor Woodside | I do. |
| 01:53:36.99 | Babette McDougall | Well, I've researched the subject myself and it turns out non-residents can serve on the Sausalito City Council. All right, that's what I read. I read that first time two years ago when this whole thing started to pop. Southland and elsewhere. We also know the awful, I mean, the truth of the matter is we need to look at the reality of what this will entail. And the fundamental truth is this, we are standing at a moment of tremendous change for our community. One way or the other, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is determined to see this town grow by leaps and bounds, orders of magnitude in the textual world. All right. Listen to me. We have to decide about our future. We can't quibble over nonsense. We do have to decide our future. We have them coming at us for a tier four. If you look up the largest transit hub in the world, it'll probably take. |
| 01:54:32.90 | Walfred Solorzano | Next, we have Jan Johnson. |
| 01:54:35.31 | Mayor Woodside | is Johnson. |
| 01:54:38.06 | Walfred Solorzano | unmute. |
| 01:54:38.97 | Jan Johnson | So... |
| 01:54:39.53 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:54:40.04 | Jan Johnson | Thank you. |
| 01:54:40.05 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:54:40.07 | Jan Johnson | I WANT TO BE ABLE TO BE ABLE TO So I don't understand why Mr. Woodside and Ms. Cox have proposed that we do this. |
| 01:54:48.05 | Mayor Woodside | And I'll explain later and I'll be happy to, but sorry to interrupt, Ms. Johnson. |
| 01:54:52.24 | Jan Johnson | In Marin County only Sam Riffel's a charter city. San Rafael has 60,000 inhabitants plus. We have about 7,000. And as... First, I can tell becoming a South charter city will allow city council to one increase our taxes. and two, pay themselves, and three, rezone at will. It seems strange that this is happening on the same day you're talking about financial deficit deficits. Social government historically seems unable to supervise and balance its spending and live within our means. 33% of us or more are 65% 65 years old or older. And as we're facing our dotage, we'll rely on the sale of our homes to fund our elder and end of life care. This means you're taking money away from us. as well. Homes are not affordable in Sausalito. The minimum price quoted on the internet is about $600,000. and your $5 per thousand dollars of real estate will add $3,000 to the price of a home. I am opposed. And if you want to continue to do this, it should be done later after at least a year of information seeking and citizen involvement. Thank you. |
| 01:56:21.45 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Anyone else? |
| 01:56:24.76 | Walfred Solorzano | Ding, then. |
| 01:56:25.57 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, I'm gonna start off the comments from the dais just to be clear where I'm coming from. I know a lot of people who made statements. I'm sorry, I had to interrupt because some of the statements that were made about this proposed charter. Um, uh, or inaccurate. Um, Where I'm coming from is. the state of California, the legislature, has overreached historically a number of times. And because we are a general law city, We are stuck with whatever the legislature and the governor sign. Period. End of story. Where I'm coming from, having litigated two cases successfully, on behalf of charter counties. And being familiar with something that I know is not everyday Uh, taught or understood the difference between a charter city and a general law city. A general law city is subject to the laws that the legislature passes and the governor signs Again, period, end of story. There are small cities in the Bay Area that are charter cities. Albany, Emeryville. to name two, Piedmont, Alameda. Some of these are a little bit bigger than us, some are smaller, but here's the key. They wanted to preserve home removal particularly over land use. And it's a tough, it's a tough road. If you're general city, you're stuck. So when, as the one speaker said, MTC tells us we have to build another 700, 800, 900 homes, and we don't know where we're going to build it, we're stuck. We are stuck. So I'm coming from is I'm an advocate for local government and local control and to maximize the ability of the city to stand up the state from time to time when it overreaches. That's why I advocate generally. consideration of a charter city status. It must go to the voters. It can't be approved by the council alone. And to the extent we have started this conversation now, I'm thankful. It did come up in 2024. There was a subcommittee established to look into it and report back. Never happened. And You know, I was elected, I looked at it, and I believe we should consider it. It's too bad we didn't start earlier. I agree. But the key has to do with our ability to take charge of a few things ourselves. That's where I'm coming from. Secondly, there's been a lot of discussion about taxes. To me, that is an issue that clearly is controversial, might detract from the basics. And I'm not prepared to make a judgment right now But I know African, a small city on a pencil, a very wealthy city. seriously considered charter city status and when it came to deal with the tax issue They decide to drop it entire thing. Here we might If you will sever that. and consider maybe putting on the ballot those powers that we truly want and I believe as a community deserve. It is local control. It's not a power grab by council members. It's ability to stand up to the state at appropriate times. I personally believe the density bonus law has not achieved affordable housing, and that charter counties, charter cities could mount potentially a successful challenge to the density bonus law, because what does it do? It doubles. the density that we locally have approved. What does it do? It doubles the height limit. We're already seeing that. And we, as a general law city, have no ability to challenge it. So I just want to be clear where I'm coming from. I think the process may not yield a vote to put it on the ballot this November. We should let the process unfold and my time is up. Anyone else wish to comment? |
| 02:00:56.65 | Melissa Blaustein | I have my hand up, Mayor. |
| 02:00:57.98 | Mayor Woodside | Hi, Melissa. Thank you. Sorry. |
| 02:00:59.89 | Melissa Blaustein | Hi. Hey. So I just want to start by saying I appreciate the articulation of where this idea came from, and I absolutely appreciate and respect the amount of time that you and Councilmember Cox put into this. for what your from your perspective would be for the benefit of the city and for local control, because, indeed, there is absolutely significant concern around what the state can and can't do, and there are a lot of benefits to charter cities there's a lot of. you know, really good potential. And so I just want to acknowledge that where you're coming from is clearly from a place of wanting to be able to establish more local control that you've put in a lot of time and effort, and I really appreciate that. That being said, two years ago, when this issue came up in 2024, my concern was the same, which was a lot about staff time and community engagement. And I think that this is a really critical, important conversation. But I absolutely don't think it's one that we should rush into a month prior to the ballot so that we can do it this year. That's not to say that I don't think it's something we can start conversation around that we can look at, Even I, as an elected official, am not fully informed on all of the pieces of the proposed charter or the general law city charter. I think there's a lot to discuss here. And I think the feedback that we received from a number of residents is to say, Look, we see that people who understand what charter cities make available, they see the value in it. But I my perspective at this point is I would really like us to slow down. And since there is clearly interest from several members of the Council in looking at what a charter city might do for us, we can open up that conversation. But given that there's already going to be likely Another ballot initiative there's an election for two city council members. And we have a new city manager joining us in just about a month. Adding this on to all of the work that we're trying to achieve before the end of the year and indeed within the next month, in addition to resuming the RFP review for the MLK properties and the amount of staff time and public engagement required there. I'm just really I think that This deserves conversation it deserves further discussion it deserves more engagement and i'd like to see us come to an agreement around how we come up with a timeline that will be respectful of. Staff time and also involve engagement from members of the public, as well as those from the Council who have already given their time to considering it so. That's where I stand with it now. I don't think that we have the capacity this summer to put on those two required public workshops, for example, given what our staff is already undertaking. But again, I really appreciate where this was coming from and the effort that was put in. |
| 02:03:44.54 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Ms. Posting. Other comments? Show him. |
| 02:03:50.58 | Joan Cox | Thank you. I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. So right now there are 120 charter cities across California out of a total of 483 cities. So roughly one third of California cities are charter cities. The shift grants each municipality its own local constitution, providing supreme authority over municipal municipal affairs. Small California cities that have transitioned into charter cities include Bellflower, Alameda. Piedmont, Delmar. Signal Hill. and Exeter. And as the mayor mentioned, These municipalities adopted local charters to secure greater autonomy from the state and optimize local rules. regarding public contracts, elections, and revenue. Right now, our citizens have very little say over land use. Unfortunately, neither do individual public agencies. Most land use decisions are being taken over by the state of California. State legislators, many of whom are not local and who hand down decisions in a one-size-fits-all manner that do not necessarily accommodate the needs of smaller cities such as ours. I agree with the comments regarding public education I think it's important that the general public understand what a charter does and does not do, and specifically what this charter would. and would not do. So we are planning to hold public meetings outside of these public hearings to better educate the general public. The charter does not authorize city officials to pay themselves. The amount paid to city officials will remain subject to the general laws of the state of California. It does not authorize non Sausalito residents to hold office on the city council. And it does not change the transfer tax for homes that sell for one point five million dollars or less. So the reasons I'm supporting bringing this charter to the voters for decision is first and foremost, it strengthens local control. The charter affirms Sausalito's authority, giving us greater ability to govern our own fairs, especially on critical issues like land use, housing, and public safety, rather than relying solely on a one-size-fits-all state rule. It protects public safety. It prioritizes local authority over Fire Protection, Emergency Response, and Hazard Mitigation. It preserves our community character. by enabling objective design standards and local planning tools. It strengthens civic participation explicitly supporting volunteerism, advisory bodies, and community engagement, recognizing that Sausalito's strength comes from an active and involved public. And those are some of the main reasons I support bringing this charter to our voters. Thanks. |
| 02:06:55.52 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. Hoffman. |
| 02:06:56.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So we did look at this a couple of years ago and we didn't bring it for Councilman Cox and I did. We looked at it two years ago. And we We didn't bring it forward because we decided that it didn't merit the On balance, it didn't merit bring it forward, and primarily because it didn't give us any protection. You don't have any additional protection under density bonus laws as a charter city, and that's settled law. And so as our acting city manager told us, and actually our mayor and I have talked about this, and he and I are actually in agreement that we would like to have more control in Sausalito. And I'm not opposed to exploring this on a longer time frame, but I don't believe that we've had enough time to look at what the draft charter looks like and whether or not this draft charter is ready to go on the ballot. I do not believe that it is. This is an absolute fundamental change in the way that we do business. The comps that were just mentioned by the mayor and Councilmember Cox, Alameda has a population of 77,000 people and an annual budget of $361 million. And so it's not a fair comparison to a small town like Sausalito. Maybe Atherton, who decided not to go forward, is a small town. Emeryville, absolutely not a fair comp also to Osolito. So these are bigger cities. that may be able to handle and absorb the added the added expenses of a general law city I don't know if SOSLITA or SOSLITA would be able able to absorb the added expenses of a general law city and the added administrative costs of general law city. But that's what we would look at in that time frame. of a longer runway and also the specificity of what we need in our charter to address what we're trying to achieve. And I don't know that we've done the specifics of what this trans the proposed transfer tax would actually do. But I do know that any change we would need to make, we would have to go back to the ballot. And I don't want to have to go back to the ballot every time and every tweak we do to a hastily drafted charter. So You know, what I'm saying is maybe to a charter, but no right now. And certainly not no on an accelerated timeline such as this. We need to talk to our residents as we're thinking about this. Certainly not in the middle of summer on the absolute minimum legal timeline. Our residents deserve better than this. And this is not the way to go about this. This is not the way to do our duty to our residents and what we've, what we've promised them that we're going to do as council members. And I feel like this is a break in faith to them and what were our duty to them as council members. And I strongly object to us going forward on this timeline. We didn't do what we said we were going to do. The first workshop didn't go forward. So we're already behind the line on this. |
| 02:10:04.92 | Mayor Woodside | Mr. Sobieski. |
| 02:10:07.11 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, thanks. This was... New to me when I first heard it, not the concept, the person who was sitting in this chair for several years, Janelle Kelman, always advocated for a charter city as a fundamental. empowerment tool for Sausalito, but I'm not a lawyer. So the legal arguments always and still do befuddle me. Um, I do note my colleagues all voted unanimously to begin the timeline of these public meetings. And one thing I note in Sausalito is. a lot of reaction to the topics. Like we say we wanna talk about things over coffee and otherwise, but then even when a process is laid out to talk about something over many meetings, there seems to be a lot of energy to shut it down. Like I'm against it, I'm afraid of where this might go. So sure, I won it, maybe we'll talk about it in the future, but let's not, but now it's rushed or the format isn't right, let's do it in the future, let's do it in the future. Well, the future, is now and it's I am not at all sure about to move this forward to the ballot. But, very ethos of the community engagement that alice merrill talked about that that everyone plods and speaks about requires meetings. So when are we going to do it? Like, We actually approved the layout of structures of public meetings and these, and my thought was that seems like a real structure to have this dialogue um i'm still confused and uncertain so i'm i wouldn't know if i would vote on this as a resident in favor um But I did think that it seems appropriate to have the, you know, this structure of talking about it, um, affirmed. So for me, the thing that I note, um, that I don't want to miss the chance to emphasize and it's on the tax issue. I'm against taxes, right? But... My report from the field is that what none of us are really doing is attending to the most important thing. Sausalito has a huge deferred infrastructure bill. We are pretty good with our OPEX and the next item is going to be about OPEX. But, you know, this is our budget. You've seen this before. These are the M&Ms. Each M&M is a million dollars, right? Right. These two together is the cost just to make our roads a grade B, right? So that's grade B. Right. That's B. If you want to fix our stairs, That's what it costs. If you want to... fix our storm drains. That's what you got. So this is our infrastructure liability. This is what we've got to fix. This is our entire annual budget for everything. no amount of cutting and you got rid of the entire library, laid everybody off. That's how much money you'd save. That's how much money we need to fix the infrastructure. At a strategic meeting, we set out a goal and figure out how we're gonna add $10 million a year to our annual budget. And so far, this is how much money we think about how to add to our annual budget. Zero. So what appealed to me about this idea, even though I'm opposed to taxes, is it's the only idea I've heard that could add $1 million a year to our budget. Just one. Is that enough to solve our infrastructure problem? No, but it's progress. So I think we should have economic growth because that's not new taxes. That would be a discussion for another time. But I just want to highlight for everybody, when we're arguing about the failures of other people's ideas, we're ignoring The idea we're not paying attention to. which is how do we solve this problem for our community? Because if we don't, Gravity is not able to be outlawed by any lawyers. Things fall down and things flood and things burn. We can see the consequences of years of nitpicking other people's ideas instead of engaging to make them better. So my call to action and why I'm going to support continued discussion of this is not because i'm in favor of any of the particulars but i'm in favor of the actual dialogue and engagement please go to the public meetings that are going to be held asking ask any or anyone, the lawyers, Joan Cox, the people that know about this stuff, to get the answers to your questions. Could he critiques based on the answers that you received because you may have them and they may be right and i'm not at all about for yes to put it on the ballot yet, but I do believe. That if we want to be a community to talk about things we should actually vote in favor of talking about things. |
| 02:14:36.39 | Jill Hoffman | So you're voting in favor of a charter city just for the tax because you want to have the tax thing on the ballot. So my issue is if you want a tax thing on the ballot, then let's just put a tax issue on the ballot because this is going to have... These the costs. associated with changing from a general law city to a charter city are exponential that we haven't even explored or talked about. |
| 02:15:07.03 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you, Joe. Can I? But since she asked, she, she, she. said about my position, I'm just going to clarify. |
| 02:15:11.22 | Jill Hoffman | This is for discussion. |
| 02:15:13.55 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. I'm not in favor of taxes. Okay, sorry. |
| 02:15:17.78 | Jill Hoffman | So I just want to clarify that your position and supporting going forward with a charter city at this point is based solely on the fact that you like the tax section and you want to put it on the ballot for the tax issue. |
| 02:15:37.78 | Mayor Woodside | So, |
| 02:15:37.85 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. Can I respond? |
| 02:15:39.62 | Mayor Woodside | I think you should respond because she has directly asked you or tried to describe your position. So, yeah. whatever you want to say in response to that. |
| 02:15:48.60 | Jill Hoffman | I think that was his exact |
| 02:15:51.01 | Mayor Woodside | Let him respond, please. |
| 02:15:53.12 | Ian Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 02:15:53.24 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:15:53.31 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah. So thank you, Joe. No, I don't like taxes. I think we should actually figure out a way to have enough economic growth that we could start cutting our taxes, cutting our sales tax, for instance, which is one of the highest Marin County. It'd be great to get rid of our business license tax on residents, especially on residents who have home businesses like Wendy Richards. It'd be great to cut taxes. But as I said, we have a balanced budget. or maybe one that in this projected year might be slightly unbalanced, but If we're going to cut taxes, we need to make up that money someplace. So I'm not at all in favor of taxes. I think economic growth is the way to do it. We have a more bustling town. We'd have more vibrant community. We'd have more entrepreneurs, more artists, more fabricators. More restaurateurs. they would be generating tax revenue without any raising in taxes. So I'm not in favor of taxes. And I appreciate your giving me the opportunity to make that very clear. What I am in favor of though is almost process, which is that we voted unanimously to have five meetings on the subject of charter cities. So as you say, it's been a dialogue going on and I'm not in favor of putting it on the ballot at this time, but I am in favor of further discussion. And one thing I'm just highlighting for people is something that's so often missed is that they're talking about the critique of this or that, which are fair critiques. but I'm sounding the alarm from over here and I'm gonna do it as much as I can, which is that it's very easy to shoot, take pot shots at other people's ideas. And sometimes those pot shots are accurate and appropriate to land. But we have a problem. We have this bill. And if we are always going to be talking about how we're going to pay that bill, then we're not actually taking responsibility as we should for the whole problem that we have volunteered to try to serve. So I'll put it this way. If we can't figure out any other way to solve this problem, If we wrote down short term rentals, if we vote down building a new hotel, if we vote down changing a zoning to allow a restaurant, if we vote down economic growth, there's literally nothing left except taxes. And if we put those down to then the only alternative is a version of what happened in Miami. three years ago. a condo association that elected its board that had their life savings in their park condo apartments. for years voted for policies that they felt were wise. And at the end of the day, that building collapsed and killed many of them, killed many of the very people that voted for the austerity that they felt was wise because they didn't, attend to the reality of what they're facing. I don't like the gotcha of you're in favor of taxes and this and that. I'm in favor of us all really engaging in good faith to solve our problems. |
| 02:18:34.83 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so the So the infrastructure Oh, okay. |
| 02:18:39.41 | Mayor Woodside | Sorry, go ahead. Melissa, you have your hand up and then I will make one comment at the appropriate time. Melissa. |
| 02:18:42.76 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:18:43.14 | Melissa Blaustein | Thank you. I just- |
| 02:18:47.42 | Melissa Blaustein | Sure, thank you and thanks for everyone's comments. I appreciate your perspective Council member Sobieski and I do think that we should absolutely have the discussion and the workshops, I'm only worried about the timeline. So just to be clear, I don't I don't I absolutely don't want to shoot down anyone's good ideas. As I mentioned, I think there's a lot of merit in what's being discussed and in what Councilmember Cox and Mayor Woodside brought forward. I'm just really worried about staff bandwidth and what we have coming up and getting this all done in a month when it's something that, I think warrants long engagement and many conversations. So I would really like us to agree to move forward and perhaps in some way meet in the middle by saying, we'll wait to engage with this until after. the new city manager has been in place for X number of months and we have sort of more of our bearings and there's more staff bandwidth because I really believe this deserves strong conversation and engagement. I think it is a great idea. I think there is a lot of potential benefit. I think there's a lot of really important work that's been done and will continue here and it requires the dialogue, so I don't want to shoot down the dialogue and I don't want to shoot down the idea of those workshops, but I don't I just don't want I'm not comfortable with rushing it all to get it onto the ballot. this year. That's just where I'm coming from with my perspective. So I'm just trying to find a way where maybe we can all get to a place based on the discussion this evening and the values, but also some of the public comment we received and what our staff bandwidth is. to spend more focus on those bigger Karen Hollweg, picture issues as well, and sorry Council members so we ask you, as we consider this so that's that would just be my only plea and just trying to clarify sort of. Karen Hollweg, No one I don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't have the conversation. And I agree that we did say that we would discuss it. I just would like us to have Ample time to discuss it and to review it and to make sure if we do put it on the ballot. It's what we as a community think belongs there. So we don't have to go back and change it every two years. |
| 02:20:51.59 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Ms. Blaustein. If I can just make two comments about that from my perspective, The clock is ticking. And here's what I mean by that. The next time we will face MTC, HCD, and a housing element, it's probably 2028 29 And I'm thrilled that the discussion is starting now. because at the rate we're going, We're not likely... We can have something ready for prime time this November based on the public comments. I get that. And I'm persuaded by Ms. Blaustein that we have a lot on our plate. And when I say we, the whole city does. The whole city's attention on elections of various sorts that are coming up. are going to take a lot of energy on the part of everyone who lives here and votes here and staff and our new city manager. So I'm concerned about trying to get this on the ballot this year. but I don't want to see us just drop it. because it's too important. And to answer a specific question, Ms. Hoffman said, oh, just go to the ballot and raise, if you wanna raise a tax, raise a tax. We are a general law city, we cannot do that. We cannot do that. The government code is clear. The tax rate for the documentary transfer tax is fixed for a general law city. You're done. That's why we should, if we are interested in possibly going to the ballot, if we have no other choice, Mr. Sobieski, We need to have the authority to do so. And we give that authority to ourselves if we approve a charter that allows us to do so. At this moment, I'm not advocating for or against a documentary tax for tax, but I do think it is a tool that many charter cities have successfully looked at in order to provide for their infrastructure needs, for example. So anyway, I've said too much. I clearly understand that because we have so much on our plate, I would predict that it's not going to head to the ballot in This November. However, I would hate to see us just drop the whole thing. I think we should have some workshops. I think we should answer questions from the public. I do think that we have a smart population. People will look at this, hopefully objectively at some point and say, yes, there are pros, yes, there are cons, here's where I fall, here's where I come down on the issue. But at this point, it's a pretty esoteric, arcane thing to think about a charter city It's beyond the grasp of most people. I get that. I see it all the time, particularly with respect to that issue. Okay, my time's up. |
| 02:24:02.95 | Mayor Woodside | Ms Hoffman. |
| 02:24:03.68 | Jill Hoffman | I don't disagree that a longer runway in exploration of this would not benefit the city. I think you're right about that. I think our next housing element, we're going to start, I think it's due in 2031. So I agree 2028 would probably be the next time, and that would be the next election that we would look at for putting this on the ballot. So, and I think we should keep engaging in this and looking at whether or not we want to do a charter city and not drop it. And if we want to continue down this road, we should continue that this road. I just don't think we're at a point where we can think about putting on the ballot this fall, as I, for the reasons I've already stated. |
| 02:24:55.45 | Mayor Woodside | Other comments? |
| 02:25:00.31 | Melissa Blaustein | I'm just wondering if we can maybe agree then to the to what I had suggested with regards to hosting the workshops after a few months after the city manager has arrived, but we can agendize them so that we know we're not dropping it but just not but just giving space to. completing the budget, onboarding the new city manager, getting the new hires going. And then planning to have it like by Q4 of this year, we'll host the workshops or something like that. So we can get on the same page about it so that it is not just completely dropped, but we're also aware that we have more of a runway. |
| 02:25:31.66 | Mayor Woodside | or are you suggesting a workshop in July. |
| 02:25:37.00 | Melissa Blaustein | No, I was thinking in Q4, like after. like for later I don't know. I'm open to ideas about it. I don't want to drop it, but I definitely don't want to rush it. And I think it's going to take, we need some time to finish the budget and to have onboarding of our new city manager. and to figure out our priorities, but I don't want to drop it. So I think if we commit to doing it by Q4 or by a period of time, then we can, Karen Hollweg, Not ignore the hard work that you and Councilmember Cox have have already put forward and you know respect the process. |
| 02:26:13.56 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. Is that emotion? |
| 02:26:22.24 | Melissa Blaustein | I don't know. I would welcome a motion. It's 4.30 a.m. here, so I don't know that I'm in the right mind to make the motion myself. Someone else might need to do that. |
| 02:26:31.52 | Mayor Woodside | Well, we're trying to, by discussion, arrive at a consensus so we can give direction to staff. What I'm hearing from you, Ms. Blaustein, and it may reflect the majority of the council at this point, is that, We don't want to have workshops proceeding right now while we're trying to do all these other things and before the city manager, the new city manager is here. Obviously, the city manager will have a significant role to play in all of this going forward. And it's not to take away from the good work that Mr. Phipps has done. He's done an excellent job trying to keep up with everything. But it is a little overwhelming for the people on the dais to try to get all of this done in a way that... enables the public to fully understand it. before something is voted on. So if you were to make a motion that we defer the workshops until Q4, as you put it, that would be... Well, I would say, let's say after September 1, which would be the latter part. Pardon? I think, Joan, you want to speak? |
| 02:27:47.32 | Melissa Blaustein | Well, so... Thank you. Mayor. |
| 02:27:49.70 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. |
| 02:27:50.65 | Melissa Blaustein | I would agree with that motion, by the way, and I'm happy to second it. But go ahead, Jonah. |
| 02:27:55.03 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. |
| 02:27:55.45 | Melissa Blaustein | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:27:56.74 | Joan Cox | It just seems as though you're reversing your position, because earlier tonight you talked about moving forward with the workshops that we have have identified. If we wait until Q4, we are not putting it on the, we're making a decision tonight not to put it on the ballot in November. |
| 02:28:12.41 | Mayor Woodside | I'm conscious of the views of others on the dais besides myself. |
| 02:28:21.10 | Joan Cox | Well, there are three people have spoken in favor of proceeding at least to the first workshop. |
| 02:28:27.31 | Mayor Woodside | So we could have a workshop in, Let's see, what was the date, Mr. Phipps? We had a couple dates. |
| 02:28:36.04 | Brendan Phipps | It's a great day. Yeah, we had. Thank you for the opportunity. We had considered two dates. First was June 17. That's a Wednesday. The second was July 1, also a Wednesday. Thank you. |
| 02:28:46.03 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:28:46.05 | Brendan Phipps | Okay. you |
| 02:28:47.06 | Mayor Woodside | So we could schedule a workshop. and keep this moving. I'm pessimistic that we're going to have direction from the Council to put it on the ballot. in this November. And I know Initially, I thought I'm highly of the idea of moving forward with a charter and moving forward quickly. I was frustrated from the outside watching the issue come up in 2024 and nothing happened. And to me, it's overdue. But the reality is if the public is not sufficiently informed and feel like their views have been heard. we're doing the whole thing to failure. And, uh, That's not my goal. The end goal is to get somewhere where we have more local authority. |
| 02:29:38.24 | Jill Hoffman | I think Sorry, I think that I think the direction of reengaging in the fourth quarter when people are here and they don't have a negative view of this effort, would be a much better pathway to success on this effort. I think that as the vice mayors laid it out, I think that's the better pathway to success and a positive effort and the council aligned in getting us to a successful effort. And so I think that's the path we should that we should follow. And I think if you've articulated a motion, |
| 02:30:20.93 | Mayor Woodside | Well, I was sort of searching for someone to make a motion. I'll make the motion. |
| 02:30:24.21 | Jill Hoffman | I'll make the motion. I put a motion on the table that we table this issue of the charter city and that we go forward with some workshops, public workshops in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year with a view toward putting it on the ballot, or consideration of putting it on the ballot thereafter. which would happen to be. |
| 02:30:49.08 | Mayor Woodside | Which would have to be 2028. |
| 02:30:51.51 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, in 2028 at the next general election. Okay. |
| 02:30:53.65 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, is there a second? |
| 02:30:54.33 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Second. |
| 02:30:55.85 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:30:57.10 | Mayor Woodside | I heard a second. I think that was you, Melissa. |
| 02:30:59.88 | Joan Cox | Just clarify that the motion is to commence public workshops in November 2020. 26, sorry, in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a view toward placing this on the ballot in November 2028, should the council ultimately decide to do so after the public engagement. Yes. |
| 02:31:23.94 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, the motion is clear. There's a second. Um, We could debate this forever, but let's ask for a roll call. |
| 02:31:33.60 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? Yes. Yes. Council member Sobieski? Yes. Vice mayor Blaustein? Yes. Mayor Woodside? |
| 02:31:39.74 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 02:31:39.79 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. |
| 02:31:43.84 | Mayor Woodside | Yes. Okay. We now have a very important item, the budget, Is our. 30 seconds. OK, a five minute personal privilege break, and then we'll resume with the budget. Thank you. |
| 02:32:08.53 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you for hanging in there. We're now back in session. We're moving on to our budget item. And Mr. Interim City Manager. |
| 02:32:19.11 | Brendan Phipps | you |
| 02:32:19.80 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 02:32:19.87 | Brendan Phipps | Yes. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I just wanted to give a high-level overview of the item for you relating to the 25-26 budget status update. um prior to angeline's presentation so as the council recalls at your april 7 meeting you approved a supplemental budget appropriation of six hundred and twelve thousand three hundred and seventy eight dollars to address a range of one time and unforeseen costs that had emerged during the fiscal year and at that time staff also identified an additional projected shortfall of approximately eight hundred and twenty nine thousand and was directed to return with updated year-end projections. So that's what you're going to see from Director Loeffler tonight. The good news is that the picture has improved meaningfully since the last time this was brought before Council through a combination of departmental expenditure refinements and reclassification of approximately $226,000 in climate tech project costs from the general fund to capital improvement projects. The projected year-end shortfall has been reduced from $829,000 to approximately $475,000. So this is a $354,000 improvement. Tonight's presentation also addresses the sewer fund reconciliation. Staff has completed a preliminary analysis following this transfer of sewer operations to the Marin city sanitary district and director Loeffler will walk through the numbers and the options available to the council for closing out that fund. Uh, the council's action tonight is to receive and file these updated projections in addition to providing any direction to staff as appropriate ahead of our fiscal year close on June 30th. And with that, Director Loeffler, the floor is yours. |
| 02:34:05.66 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you, Brendan. Good evening, dear Mayor and Vice Mayor Sweeney-Wantley and Council Members. |
| 02:34:16.29 | Angeline Loeffler | So I like to kind of start these presentations with their going through their quick go the I'm going to probably not going to go through too much on the next slide, please. agenda items yes and the background i think the uh the our interim city manager has already gave us a full description of the backgrounds and also i will be providing you with the updated the the fiscal year 25 26 budget informations and along with that one i wanted to present you with the key changes in the year and the estimations amounts and as well as the updating of the sewer funds, the preliminary reconciliation, how it would impact the general funds at the end of the year for the current years. Next slide, please. So this is the area that actually we have already briefly gone over that we have the additional 612,000 was already appropriated in the earlier this year to cover the one time cost of that one. And then we still had 829,000 of the shortfall outside of the additional one time budget appropriations, we will be going over to kind of give you a little updates on those, what happened to that 829,000. Next slide, please. So here's a quick overview of the updated amounts that we have actually narrowed down to our, the shortfall amounts quite significantly with the department's efforts in reducing the cost. And also, we classify the climate tech projects to the CIP projects, which was originally recorded under the general fund. So we have managed to move the cost to the CIP to help with closing the gap of the general funds. And as a result, the city is anticipating of the projected estimate of 474,000. So as of the current year, if I would direct you to the table below, on the third columns actually indicating what is currently through the May 10th of the 2025, what is the status of the revenue collective versus expenses. So as you can see, we have like the short by the, the revenue is short by 1.2 million. However, we are expecting to have the surplus amounts for the remainder of the year, which is column next to it, is FY26, estimated for the May 11th through the June 30th. We're expecting to have the revenue is exceeding the expenses by $732,000, which brings down to our overall shortfall, the projected shortfall at the end of the year by $474,000. Next slide, please. Some of the key contributing factors are involved with the cost. There's a couple areas that a cost increases of $43,000 of the election cost, which was not They are presented on the previous budget appropriations and as well as the 74,000 of the updated, the open GAP implementations, which is including all of those abundance of bundles of bringing the updated transparency tools, as well as the inflated related increases affecting the ongoing operating expenses, which has caused a lot of the increases in expenses. Reduction in expenses of the classification of $226,000 of their climate tax, which was originally they recorded under the police departments and public works has been moved over to the CIP. projects, which is reduced the general funds expenditures. Next slide, please. |
| 02:38:30.43 | Michelle McCullough | and |
| 02:38:32.96 | Angeline Loeffler | On April 21st of the, uh, the, the staff has presented the, uh, FY 26 year in balancing plan, which is proposed using the, uh, proceed from the, uh, sewer operations to offset the shortfall. Although the sewer fund reconciliation is still in progress, initial review have indicated the revenue received from the, uh. The South Salido Marine City Sanitary districts are insufficient to cover the general fund shortfall so i will actually going into a little bit more details on that one Next slide, please. This was a fundamental computations that was actually the presented in the part of the store of operations transfers. The cash on hand was actually, was the modified after I had an initial provided with the preliminary one was, there was a 300,000 short, which was part of the expenses that has incurred prior to the transitions of these sewer fund operations. So cash on hands and a 4.2 million, and along with all the interest was included, the bear onto some of those accounts came up to be 4.7 total cash on hands. And then all the liability paid out during the transfer was 5.8. And that also includes the two millions of the pension and OPEP liability that accrued under the sewer funds alone on that one. So with all that computations, we have received from the districts 3.4 millions of the accommodating all of those expenses as well as the paying off the bonds along with the pension and OPEB expenses, which is leave us with about 300,000 in the balance on the store funds. But I wanted to make the emphasis on this one is, the actually complete reconciliation has not been done. This is strictly based on the cash on hands at the specific dates of the times of the sewer operations on that one. So that is not given the considerations of the actual fund balance on the sewer account, which takes a little bit more to kind of dive into, and there's a lot of expenses that I need to kind of unwind in a way. And also because it involves with the two separate fiscal years of these transfers on it between the actual payment made and actually payments being fully paid not until the August of the following fiscal year. So it involves with the two fiscal years unwinding of the reconciliation. So I'm hoping to bring back with the actual amounts, looking at the full reconciliations, considering the thumb balance of the sewer funds, which may be slightly different than what I'm presenting you based on tonight is based on the cash on hand at the time of the transfer. Next slide, please. |
| 02:41:55.58 | Angeline Loeffler | With that said, I wanted to kind of give you the updates on what was still being incurred on the sewer fund accounts, which actually has. We did have a number of the public works, the employees were actually allocated, had their salaries and benefits was allocated to the sewer fund, which was continuously occurring even after the August and October of the full transfer, which is causing, as you see, the large amounts of salaries and benefits for the public works, the departments. There's about 14 employees who are actually their salaries was allocated under the sewer fund should have been the idea taken out shortly after the add of sewer transfer so that was actually a continuation of the expenses were went in there and as well as i had it broken down to some of those the other cost is really comes down with the uh the other causes are mainly caused by some of those after the transfer, the additional costs that we had to pay out. So those are the costs that was incurred under the sewer funds, which comes out to be about $943,000. of the balance of the expenses that incur and taking out that $300,000 of the net proceeds from the district leaves with the $643,000 still left, has overspend. In order for us to close the sewer funds at the end of the year, we have to make sure that we transfer the funds from the general funds to really offset those expenses, or we have to reallocate all of those employees' benefits, salaries and benefits back to the general funds, which will create bigger, the shortfall amounts for the general funds as well, too. Next slide, please. |
| 02:44:03.35 | Angeline Loeffler | With that, I have the other here to present you with some options to consider for the councils. Tonight is the, we do, as I mentioned briefly on a couple of slides ago, that we had over two millions of the pension funds that was part of the 3.4 million that we have received from the district, which is still sitting in our sewer funds at the moment. So these are the funds that we can actually put it into the section 115, which is turn around, we can do a bigger. the withdrawals, and then we can actually cover the showfall. That is the one ways that we can actually utilize these pension funds still sitting in the sewer funds at the moment. Next slide, please. |
| 02:44:54.45 | Angeline Loeffler | just one more thing add on to the previous slide is that 2 million is outside of what's currently in our Section 115, which is the 4.4 million for the pension and 2 million for the OPEP. So these amounts are up and above of those amounts. Just wanted to point that out. Next slide, please. And also I wanted to bring your attention on an updated of the our unassigned fund balances. Thank you. Based on the discussions with the public works directors, Kevin McGowan, and there's over 1 million of unused... and our funds CIP funds now putting back into the unassigned funds. And with that, I kind of did the recomputation of the updated unassigned fund balance. As you can see, the unassigned fund balance is updated to 5.4 million from the 4.1 million from the previously presented. |
| 02:45:58.85 | Angeline Loeffler | Next slide, I think that will conclude the idea of my presentations for tonight and I'm here to go to any questions you may have. |
| 02:46:08.85 | Mayor Woodside | questions. |
| 02:46:14.17 | Mayor Woodside | none. I have a couple that Jill go ahead. |
| 02:46:19.28 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question about the the sewer, the OPEB and pension system, um, the pension lines from the sewer fund. Um, because we're transferring those guys from Sausalito. I think those... you know, those categories or those employees were, were transferred from the sauce leader, I mean, Sausalito employees over to the Marin City... sewer district. how come those, or why didn't those OPEB and I THINK I'M GOING TO BE ABLE TO OPEB and pension. I don't, I'm not getting why. why we would have, funds left in you know, left in the pension and why they wouldn't just transfer with the employee. |
| 02:47:07.39 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay. Thank you for the question. The way that the OPEB and a pension was computed for that amount was based on a number of employees who were assigned to the sewer funds, which was only one of the employees was transferred to district, and then remaining 14 employees are still with the city of Sausalito, which is all the public works departments, the maintenance worker and public works supervisor, Pat Goscow's, and also a portion of the public works directors also being paid through the sewer fund as a part of the allocations of those payrolls, which is directed with that the total amount is a pension towards two that our employees currently resides with the city of Sausalito. |
| 02:47:57.70 | Jill Hoffman | So, so we over contributed to those amounts that we don't need those amounts for those employees. They're still with Sausalito. |
| 02:48:03.06 | Angeline Loeffler | So we've got, |
| 02:48:07.52 | Angeline Loeffler | No, sorry, I'm sorry. |
| 02:48:08.04 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry, I'm just not understanding why those are not. connected to an employee, those amounts. |
| 02:48:14.86 | Angeline Loeffler | So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The way that we actually computed the pension and OPEP liability is actually based on each of the funding, Let's say, giving me one example of the one employee is a maintenance worker. His time is 40% allocated to the sewer, and the other 60% is charged to the public works, other non-sewer related. Then we have to split those pension costs between 40% to the sewer funding and the other remaining 60% to the general funds. That's why we had a separation of those, the pensions. So the 2 million is actually the OPEP's accrues under the sewer funds that we've been actually incurred versus, so only the 40% of those pensions. So that's why it's still part of the city's liabilities as long as we have those employees in our payrolls. |
| 02:49:13.67 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 02:49:13.90 | Angeline Loeffler | you |
| 02:49:13.95 | Sergio Rudin | I can also supplement that answer. Thank you. |
| 02:49:17.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:49:17.47 | Sergio Rudin | When an employee works for multiple CalPERS agencies, the service credit accumulates across all of them. |
| 02:49:17.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:49:24.52 | Sergio Rudin | But the pension contributions are actually calculated and tracked separately based on each agency specific contract. with CalPERS. As a public agency has an employee for a certain number of years, they're usually liable for that amount of service credit for that particular employee. |
| 02:49:46.91 | Jill Hoffman | So we overcompensate or oversaved? over-contributed, is that what happened? |
| 02:49:53.38 | Sergio Rudin | I'm not sure whether that's the case, but I am aware that per our negotiation with the sanitary district for the transfer, of the sewer system. one of the deal points did include that the city was to use existing sewer revenues to prepay its portion of Um, accrued pension liability for the employees that were servicing that sewer function. so As part of transferring the system, my understanding is the city should have prepaid. out of existing funds, all of the liabilities based on our current actuarial knowledge that should have accumulated with that employee. |
| 02:50:34.15 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 02:50:39.00 | Jill Hoffman | OK. just I'm just making sure that somebody is not going to come back later and say, Hey, by the way, where's my 1.5 million pension and my 443,000 OPEP? |
| 02:50:49.67 | Angeline Loeffler | No, actually those are funds are basically for our employees. So we've been, those, the accrual has been done through as the city of Sausalito's various fundings on that one. So that 2 million was specifically allocated and then also all of those UL and additional pension liability that we have accrued as the part of the overall on the actual actual reports. So that is 2 million is part of our overall liabilities. |
| 02:51:19.24 | Jill Hoffman | So the plan that I'm looking at here on slide number nine is that we're going to use those funds to cover general fund shortfall. So general fund deficits, we're going to use that money to cover that $2 million to cover general fund deficit. |
| 02:51:24.38 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 02:51:37.16 | Angeline Loeffler | you |
| 02:51:37.19 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:51:37.33 | Angeline Loeffler | Not all of those, I think that we still have, we have a threshold of how much we can pull out based on our actual expenses. So for the current year that the UAL liability for the pensions was 3.4 million, which is far exceeding that 1.5 million of pensions and as well as the OPEP liability. So we can pull out, if the council's direction is pull out all of those amounts to cover the UAL expenses that we have as a part of the covering the general funds, which is free up the more of the general funds to do other cover the shortfalls. |
| 02:52:19.26 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, but that's a really long and convoluted answer to my question, but that's a yes. That was a yes. Yes. Okay. And this is another question. because we're constantly talking about our our pension. liability and the burgeoning and the risk that we have with pension, our our pension risk. Um, Is it possible for us to leave this $2 million in our pension fund to help smooth out? Absolutely. Because it's part of... you know, to, for us to shift money into our pension fund. And since the money's already there, |
| 02:52:51.90 | Angeline Loeffler | The money's already there. Mm-hmm. |
| 02:52:53.60 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:52:54.09 | Angeline Loeffler | We can add all of these into our current existing section 115 trust fund. Yes. |
| 02:53:00.79 | Jill Hoffman | So that's one, when we're talking about, when we're talking about strategies, right? In order to, shore up, um, this general fund shortfall due to the 2025, 26 issues that we had. Um, You know, that's another strategy is to leave this money in the you know, in the OPEB. pension trust funds, right? In the OPEB pension, in the pension fund, in the trust fund, in the 115 trust, right? Just leave it there. against the future volatility that we always talk about, right? |
| 02:53:37.56 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes, but one other thing that I do want to add on is there's the reason that we want to use that route was the Section 115 Trust Fund is a restricted fund. We can only use for the specific purposes, but unassigned fund balance is basically we are dedicated to use however we want it to use. So in that case, I always encourage the cities to use restrictive funds at all possible. That way, in any future events, if we have the additional |
| 02:53:37.91 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:54:10.85 | Angeline Loeffler | the pension funds to be add on we can always pull it from the unrestricted unassigned fund balance to add on, but we can only use for the pension funding for the Pacific pension reimbursements only. |
| 02:54:24.15 | Jill Hoffman | And so. So that, okay, so that leads me to my next question. If they're restricted, how is it that we're able to put them in our general fund? Is it because they're coming from Southern Marin |
| 02:54:37.79 | Angeline Loeffler | We're getting the reimbursements of what we paid out, which is currently, there's the FY26, we paid the 3.4 million of the UAL payments, which is city could entirely pull the from the patient trust funds to get the reimbursements for the city's expenses. |
| 02:54:56.01 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so it's because these are, even though these are pension and OPPO, they're coming from a different source and they haven't made it into our trust fund yet? |
| 02:55:03.57 | Angeline Loeffler | Not yet. Yes, that is point. |
| 02:55:05.38 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, that is point-hour sore funds, yes. That's why they're not restricted yet, but once they go in there... Thank you. |
| 02:55:09.61 | Angeline Loeffler | But it's still considered as a restrictive funds. We are not, I cannot use the... |
| 02:55:09.75 | Jill Hoffman | It's so |
| 02:55:15.13 | Angeline Loeffler | These two millions for the cover the shortfall on the sewer or the general fund, unless we make the elections to withdraw. to it. Thank you. |
| 02:55:24.48 | Jill Hoffman | to do that. |
| 02:55:24.82 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 02:55:24.83 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:55:24.85 | Angeline Loeffler | reimburse the hour, the pension cost or OPEP cost. |
| 02:55:30.96 | Jill Hoffman | But if we're doing that, to cover our shortfall. in fiscal year 2420 or 2526, as you're stating on slide nine then aren't we doing that I mean aren't we using restricted funds for something that's not what they were set aside for like i'm not sure |
| 02:55:51.95 | Angeline Loeffler | it requires a little bit of accounting creative in that sense. I know I made it a little bit too quick on that one. So basically, we have to free up the general, so basically we're moving the patient, two million, into the Section 115. |
| 02:55:51.99 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:56:08.62 | Angeline Loeffler | and then we will be withdrawing it from the Section 115 to get us the reimbursement on to the general funds, and then that general funds will transfer over to the sewer funds to cover the shortfall. So we can't directly pull that money from there because general funds has 3.4 million of the UAL payment. We can only use it to they have reimbursed under the general funds, not under the sewer funds. |
| 02:56:40.26 | Jill Hoffman | OK, I'm going to have to. Draw a diagram on that one. Okay. Thanks for the explanation though. I appreciate that. |
| 02:56:47.33 | Unknown | and the other side of the |
| 02:56:47.39 | Carolyn Revell | explanation. |
| 02:56:57.75 | Jill Hoffman | Amen. |
| 02:56:59.49 | Mayor Woodside | Sure. I have an overall question with respect to this fiscal year. After all the adjustments, some of which we approved previously, you're still projecting a $475,000 Shortfall? |
| 02:57:17.00 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes, we do. |
| 02:57:18.79 | Mayor Woodside | but, How is it that we haven't, there's no recommendation or is there a recommendation so that we end the year Balance. |
| 02:57:34.26 | Angeline Loeffler | There, I mean, there is the possibility that we do have the idea that maybe for the remainder years that we may turn things a little bit better in that cases. However, because of all of those, the added, the inflation costs and whatnot, even with the department's efforts to reduce the cost. And I think it's. there will be a shortfall and deficit at the end of the year about the 430,000. So based on the slides that was actually, on the slide of one of the previous slides was on the slide four, which is indicated how much we have spent so far and what we expected to spend on the remainder of the periods. It actually shows because as you can see, the third column shows that we already overspent 1.2 million beyond our revenue that we received through these points. So that is kind of leading into the other, we are leading into the 474 deficits at the end of the year, in spite of how well we are turning estimated to turning back, turning around in the remainder of the period, which is 732,000 exceeding the revenue, exceeding the expenditures. So that's where I kind of did the demonstrations of the, we were expected to see 474,000 of the still short, at the end of the year. |
| 02:59:05.74 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, I'm getting the answer from my colleague here, but I'll ask it in public. So how are we covering the deficit? |
| 02:59:16.16 | Angeline Loeffler | We, as I mentioned, so there was the two options that we can actually use unassigned fund balance to cover the 474,000, or we can actually utilize the patient's amounts and do the withdrawal from that two millions of that from the sewer, the districts that we have received, part of the getting the reimbursements to the general funds to cover that 474,000. |
| 02:59:43.22 | Mayor Woodside | So those are the two options. Do you have, do you recommend one over the other? |
| 02:59:48.98 | Angeline Loeffler | My recommendation is using the restrictive funds so we can actually use the withdrawal from the pension of that two million, part of the two millions to cover the 474,000. And on top of it, we did, because of the over a million put back into the unassigned balances from the unused, the CIP, the project fundings, and that also has the additional 1.2 million of increases in the unassigned fund balances. That is also another option that definitely, but my recommendation is use the restrictive fund first. |
| 03:00:24.55 | Mayor Woodside | And then you described earlier, but it was hard to follow, several accounting steps that you need to take. Could you just repeat those? |
| 03:00:26.59 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 03:00:33.98 | Joan Cox | Yes, absolutely. may I ask that she put those in writing for us that she put, because I was struggling to follow the dialogue between council member Hoffman and, |
| 03:00:40.36 | Unknown | THAT SHE PUT IN THE |
| 03:00:41.09 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 03:00:48.55 | Joan Cox | Angeline and I think it would be better if she could put create a planned path because if we violate the trust, we're in big trouble. And so we can't use restricted funds for any purpose other than their intended use. |
| 03:01:07.70 | Mayor Woodside | And my understanding is, although it may sound like we're directly using a restricted fund, and I'm not sure I'm following, but there are steps that you believe would insulate us from |
| 03:01:21.03 | Michelle McCullough | You know. |
| 03:01:24.15 | Mayor Woodside | It liability if you will or vulnerability for inappropriate use of a restricted fund. |
| 03:01:30.41 | Michelle McCullough | Correct. |
| 03:01:30.82 | Mayor Woodside | it's difficult to follow. So my question would be, and I take Ms. Cox's point, I think we want to see this in writing. before we can approve it. We want the city attorney to review it to make sure we're on solid legal ground. |
| 03:01:47.02 | Joan Cox | possibly Badawi Maybe have our auditor review this proposed transaction. |
| 03:01:53.84 | Mayor Woodside | I think that's a good idea. We certainly don't want to repeat the 24, 25 year where we had specific departments spending, even though they were authorized to spend, monies weren't appropriately transferred in time. to make it to the end of the fiscal year. end This isn't exactly the same, But that's a big number. $475,000 is a big number. We can't, in my view, we should not, in the year out of balance. The question is how do we cover the shortfall? So if you could quickly describe just so we can hear it from you now, and then I think we're going to need to see it in writing. |
| 03:02:36.29 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:02:39.99 | Angeline Loeffler | Okay. So the first thing is we will be doing is we will not be taking the idea to two millions, untouched until we we will be drawing the fundings from the 4.4 millions on our currently in our trust accounts to cover these the shortfall amounts and once that's completed because the we have enough of the other fund that we paid our pension cost that's enough to cover these 474,000 so we will be drawing the 474,000 from the current existing balance of 4.4 million. Then we turn around and put that 2 million put it into our trust fund as a part of the pension liabilities. So we're actually using existing funding to withdraw, to get our self reimbursements. So that's why I mentioned it's several steps. We are using the existing, the section trust funds to cover the basis that as a part of the reimbursement of the UL that we have already paid to the CalPERS at the July of the 2025. |
| 03:03:58.83 | Mayor Woodside | Those payments were made from our general fund. |
| 03:04:01.51 | Angeline Loeffler | Correct. Yeah. We're getting |
| 03:04:02.05 | Mayor Woodside | And therefore- It may be appropriate in your view to reimburse us for general funds that were used to pay pension obligations. |
| 03:04:11.40 | Angeline Loeffler | for the current year. |
| 03:04:12.35 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. I think I understand the rationale a little bit, but we really need to see this. And we want to make sure it's reviewed by legal counsel and our auditors. |
| 03:04:19.62 | Angeline Loeffler | Absolutely. |
| 03:04:19.97 | Jan Johnson | our island. |
| 03:04:20.40 | Angeline Loeffler | or something. |
| 03:04:21.46 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:04:21.48 | Jan Johnson | What do you think? |
| 03:04:22.49 | Mayor Woodside | We'll do that. Make sense? Okay. Um, |
| 03:04:32.70 | Mayor Woodside | I think for now we've exhausted our questions, but we do want to hear from the public if there are public comments. |
| 03:04:44.63 | Mayor Woodside | Carolyn Revell. |
| 03:04:48.80 | Mayor Woodside | And I... |
| 03:04:49.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:04:49.93 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. Okay. I think actually this relates to the next section in which you have CIP numbers. Should I wait till that? |
| 03:04:57.50 | Mayor Woodside | Yes, please. |
| 03:04:58.57 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 03:05:02.21 | Mayor Woodside | And Lorna, do you want to speak to this item? Please. Just identify yourself for the record so we know. |
| 03:05:12.27 | Lorna Newland | Lorna Newland, small business owner, resident for 33 years. I was just looking at the numbers and... I was trying to calculate it. It looks like the amount of revenue you're expecting in less than two months, a much higher percent. And so does this kind of revenue come in every month? I mean... When you look at that slides. that all of a sudden we're What six weeks away? from the end of the year. And So that's my only comment. It just doesn't seem to make sense that where it looks like right now that you're going to... have a windfall of 700,000 in six weeks to offset to come down to 474. So, I came in late to this, but that's my numbers. I've been treasurer of many nonprofits and like numbers. Thank you. Okay. |
| 03:06:16.46 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, thank you. Other comments from members? persons in the room, online comments. |
| 03:06:24.36 | Walfred Solorzano | We have Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 03:06:26.33 | Mayor Woodside | Ms. Bushmacker? |
| 03:06:27.89 | Sandra Bushmaker | Hi again. First of all, thank you for being super cautious with the 115 Trust in the ring. reimbursement issue. I think that's really important and I appreciate getting the attorneys imprimatur before taking that step. Secondly, it's, You know, here we are, 474 deficit. How is it that we're getting to the point where we're still overspending? This is what we just went through not that long ago. where our expenditures are exceeding our income. And that happened, if you recall, a few months ago when we had the departments overspending their budgeted amount. So I'd be very curious to know how we got here again with this deficit. Thank you. |
| 03:07:19.90 | Mayor Woodside | Other online comments? |
| 03:07:22.16 | Walfred Solorzano | Next we have Babette McDougall. |
| 03:07:25.04 | Mayor Woodside | is McGoo. |
| 03:07:27.32 | Babette McDougall | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I really do also appreciate the candor and the fresh approach that you all are taking tonight. So my hat is off to all you all. I want to say about this budget, I'm just looking at the fees for legal services. We seem to be spending more and more and more on legal services. Now, on the one hand, that seems to be the way of the United States of America right now, because it's our judiciary that seems to be defending our Constitution pretty much all by itself. So of course, that sort of speaks to the times in which we live right here in Sausalito. But at the same time, I say, What about all of these closed session items where we're always anticipating litigation and we're always handing out a contract to either the city attorney's law firm or even Miss Cox's law firm or somebody that you like very much and it's their law firm? And I don't understand why we're suing our own citizens when we know we've got bigger fish to fry. So I just wondered, why are we doing, is there a philosophy about these legal expenses? Are we counting on these legal expenses to defend Sausalito against our own constitutional rights, as is happening nationwide? Or why do we see this? Absolutely, year over year, and in fact, month over month, increase in our spending. And again, thank you so much. I yield back the balance of my time. |
| 03:08:46.99 | Mayor Woodside | Other comments online? |
| 03:08:48.52 | Babette McDougall | Seeing none. |
| 03:08:49.25 | Mayor Woodside | OK. And no more from members in the room. Okay. from the dais, what direction should we be giving tonight? |
| 03:09:04.01 | Joan Cox | So I think the direction is to continue with the matters in progress that were enunciated by our finance director during her presentation, such as, you know, the continuing audit of the various sewer fund amounts and various other matters in progress. And then with respect to covering the 470, the current projected $475,000 shortfall to prepare in writing. the planned transfers and the basis therefor to confirm there. acceptability pursuant to generally accepted accounting principles and to seek confirmation from our city attorney and from our auditor with the planned course of action. |
| 03:10:03.09 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, I agree with that. And then also the other analysis I would like to have is that against how that would affect if we just, left them in our OPEB. and our pension trust fund. and let them continue to accrue. You know, we look at, we're constantly looking at that balance, right? That bell curve and that investment and that accrual as against, um, leaving them in our unallocated funds, right? And so that we're always looking at that risk and would we rather just leave them in the trust fund and use our unallocated funds with all of that balance. So I agree that it may be the strategy to use as our finance director, but I want us to be able to at least make that judgment. So I understand. |
| 03:10:51.08 | Joan Cox | So, |
| 03:10:51.14 | Unknown | So I understand. |
| 03:10:51.93 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:10:52.00 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:10:52.03 | Joan Cox | I'm sorry. |
| 03:10:52.94 | Jill Hoffman | you. |
| 03:10:52.99 | Joan Cox | just |
| 03:10:53.57 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 03:10:53.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:10:53.84 | Joan Cox | My understanding is that these pension funds are devoted solely to sewer employees and that, So if we leave them in the trust fund, then I would want to be assured that we can make a transfer in a subsequent year. So we paid um, pension obligations from our general fund this year for sewer employees, but we no longer employ all of those sewer employees. So I would want to confirm that if we don't make that transfer this year, Can we make a transfer plan? in future years, given that we no longer operate a sewer enterprise. |
| 03:11:37.81 | Jill Hoffman | Here's our city attorney. Yeah, I just don't know. I mean, I don't know. and I want to be sure that We're not giving up something on that. uh, unknowingly an unintended consequence of that anyway, or a benefit that we might have. So anyway, here's our city attorney. He might have something to say. |
| 03:11:54.75 | Sergio Rudin | Yeah, I think the council has raised some very good points, and I think that the course of action that the council has directed is appropriate. I will just note that looking at the MOU with the sewer district for the fiscal transfer process, the MOU spells out that the city will use available funds from its sewer enterprise funds. At that time, it was estimated to be 4.5 million to pre-fund. future pension of former employees with sewer enterprise, which was calculated at a $1.5 million, 1.6 actually, Um, accrual and then also to fund certain OPEB benefits for former employees of the sewer enterprise fund and the MOU specifies that the city is not to seek any shortfalls in terms of its accrual liability from the district. Um, I think we do need to ensure that we use the funds for the sewer enterprise funds as laid out in the in the MOU. because the MOU does further spell out that any leftover balances are going to be transferred to the sewer district. Um, You know, I think we had negotiated those points importantly to try and protect the city and to use the city's available funding for the city's liabilities. |
| 03:13:15.75 | Mayor Woodside | So you said earlier that the course of action that Ms. Cox and Ms. Hoffman, I believe, are in agreement on is appropriate. |
| 03:13:23.70 | Sergio Rudin | Yes, yes. I think it would be very helpful for me also to understand the proposed flow of funds in order to give an opinion. |
| 03:13:30.00 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. And, um, I'm looking at Melissa, do you have any... comments on this or do you agree with that? |
| 03:13:38.17 | Melissa Blaustein | Karen Hollweg, No I agree with I agree with I think Council member Cox did an excellent job of enunciating direction and I, but I think it will be very helpful to have a written explanation of the the. Thank you. The path with the OPEB and basically the detailed responses to Councilmember Hoffman's questions as we do the research going forward. But I thought that was great direction from Councilmember Cox, so I'm comfortable with all of it. |
| 03:14:02.35 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. Mr. Sobieski. Nothing to add, he says. I take it you're okay with the direction. Well, maybe you're not. |
| 03:14:14.04 | Ian Sobieski | Sorry, I know you're not feeling that. All right, no, I guess I will say something because Sandra Bushmaker made a comment that deserves to be responded to when she said that, how do we keep spending more than we take in? Like last year. Well, actually last year, we took in more than we spent. What happened last year is that There were some budget adjustments that were directed by the city council that weren't then reflected by an appropriate resolution. That's what the auditor found. So actually last year, I'll say again, we took in more money than we spent this year. What staff is saying here with the last assessment is it's looking like we might have a shortfall. but we don't know because we're actually pretty bad at predicting how things will be. It could be bigger, it could be smaller. I don't know. So the reason I've been so quiet is, I frankly find a lot of this to be necessary to make the legal construction that we've authorized the appropriate dollars to be go from here to there. But in terms of how we're doing it as an organization, I'm going to believe it when the books are actually closed for the quarter. And we're close enough to being, in balance that I could imagine that when the quarter is closed, we could actually have a a balanced budget without needing to make any adjustments, I could also see the situation getting worse. It's hard to know for sure. So to me, I don't know that there's a lot to sweat at the moment. It's really about, and I'm more inclined to take it from the unassigned fund balance because it's just on an accounting mechanism to tie this through until we actually see our actuals. So, but as with the last several topics, we've been talking about this, we've been burning a lot of calories and bringing our hands around predict projections. When, as we've seen from staff, We're actually really terrible at making projections every single fiscal year for the last five fiscal years, we predicted a deficit and every single fiscal year for the fast past five fiscal years, the audit finally showed that we had a surplus. So. There are things that we need to wrestle with, but stressing about what the next step is, isn't where my concern primarily is. kind of a little bit, a lot more bigger picture. This is an accounting issue that we're facing here today, as I've shown with my little huge can of deferred infrastructure liabilities. I think we have bigger financial issues to address that I hope we will one day. |
| 03:16:28.35 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. So I hope Mr. Interim City Manager, the directions clear as to what we need to do before coming back in two weeks. |
| 03:16:39.40 | Brendan Phipps | Yes, thank you, Mayor, for the question, and I look forward to working with Director Loeffler and Attorney Rudin on getting to the bottom of some of this analysis, in addition to providing imagery which, you know, articulates the flows of funds appropriately. |
| 03:16:50.74 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Now we have additional budget related matters to address tonight. Do you wanna introduce those please? |
| 03:16:59.47 | Brendan Phipps | Yes, we do, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for the opportunity once again. Again, like the last item, before I turn it over to Finance Director Loeffler, I just want to walk through the draft budget in detail. And just to clarify, this is in connection with the approval of the next year's budget. This is just a brief framing. So staff has been working through the FY26-27 budget process for several months. The council reviewed preliminary general fund revenue and expenditure information at the May 19 meeting, and tonight we're returning with a more complete picture. Incorporating updated property tax projections, clarified pension UAL information, and capital improvement program that has been reviewed and found consistent with the general plan by the city's planning commission and refined figures across all city divisions. The draft general fund budget reflects projected revenue of approximately $23.2 million against proposed expenditures of approximately $23.9 million before new positions, which is a gap of approximately $632,000 on a baseline basis. Steph has worked to close that gap through a combination of revenue refinance including the strategic use of the city's section 115 pension trust and OPEB trust funds to smooth near-term liability cost tonight the council's direction is needed on three substantial policy questions first is staffing staff is bringing forward for requested positions for council consideration, a community development director, a permit concierge, administrative aid one, and an IT manager liaison. These positions carry a combined cost of approximately $646,000. Council will need to decide if any of these positions to include in the adopted budget. Second, the extent to which council will utilize section 115 trust funds, both for OPEB expense reimbursement and for pension UAL smoothing as a deliberate tool to manage this year's shortfall without drawing directly on operational reserves. Thirdly and relatedly, |
| 03:18:05.92 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:18:29.11 | Unknown | And that's it. |
| 03:19:00.21 | Brendan Phipps | To what extent the council's comfortable drawing on the city's unassigned general fund balance to bridge any remaining structural gap. The updated unassigned balance of net of reserves and designations is approximately 5.5 million. Staff is not recommending a specific drawdown amount tonight. That's a policy call for the council, but we do want to ensure that council has a clear picture of what's available and what the trade offs are. So direction received this evening will allow us to finalize the budget document for adoption at your June 19 meeting, which remains the part deadline for our fiscal year. Of course, notwithstanding the potential special meeting that we've scheduled for June 30th. With that, I'll turn it over to director. |
| 03:19:42.97 | Mayor Woodside | LONG. |
| 03:19:43.04 | Brendan Phipps | or the full restore. |
| 03:19:43.39 | Mayor Woodside | Before you do just a specific question. Can you give us a ballpark on the gap that needs to be closed? |
| 03:19:53.08 | Brendan Phipps | Is this with respect to the current shortfall amount that we're asking council to consider? I'm talking about the next fiscal year. |
| 03:20:04.25 | Mayor Woodside | guess. |
| 03:20:04.28 | Brendan Phipps | Thank you. For the next fiscal year, certainly. At current, without any new positions, we're looking at a gap of approximately 632,000. And I'll turn to a finance director to articulate what the shortfall might look like with the new positions included. |
| 03:20:19.82 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, thank you. |
| 03:20:21.95 | Angeline Loeffler | All right, good evening again. Okay. |
| 03:20:28.48 | Angeline Loeffler | So on the presentation outlines shows the, the first two items are actually addressing some of those questions that arise in the last council meetings. I just wanted to kind of address those questions. And after that one, I will dive into the updated FY 2026 and 27 and along with the quick overview of the CIP budgets as well. Next slide, please. |
| 03:21:01.30 | Angeline Loeffler | So I think most of these items are on the added. This particular slide is the hour, the interim, the city manager has already gone over. So we are coming back with the updated staffing positions and as well as updated budgeted amounts. Next slide, please. And this was the question that was arise on the last council meeting that the why our property tax was the value coming in as a lower than the what was budgeted for. So based on the information that we have received from the county, which is date is May 26th, and it appears that our valuations, estimated valuations, was actually dropped from the $5.2 billion to $5 billion, which is causing our property tax value, what we have received, is reduced by $117,000. That's what is causing it. And there's another factor, too, that the analysis was actually will be on the next slide as well so next slide please So this is actually the past five years of the property taxes trends that we have received. As you can see at the total amounts for the past five, six years is a continuation of increases, exception of the FY26, which was the reduced by the about 17,000, which was the actual indications of the actual changes in the property evaluations. So on the starting of the FY25, county has been giving us property taxes in two separate checks. Part of it is the ERAP rebates versus the secure property taxes. And it that the previous to the fy25 all of those taxes the rebate was included as a part of our secure property taxes but effective fy25 it's kind of broken down into the two separate items and it described it in in the idea the tables on there so we have received the FY25 of $315,000 of the ERAF, the rebate, which was part of the secure property taxes that we may have overpaid on some of those ERAF deductions and the county turnaround in giving us the rebates back into the city on those amounts, which is total up to the 5%. they add up to the reasonable amounts and are comparable to the prior years of the secure property tax amount. So this was the attempt to explain what happened with our property taxes, and as a result, we did not have the significant drops of the property taxes outside of the FY26, which has the evaluations was actually changed and dropped based on the county's reports, which is causing the slight drop of the FY26. And the one thing that I have noticed on the county's de-esclamination was whatever the showfall that was expected on the FY26, county is expecting to add those back into the FY27. So that is part of the reason that we're looking at the FY27 is back on the track of the incline of the property taxes that we're expected to receive from the counties. Next slide, please. |
| 03:24:52.14 | Angeline Loeffler | And this is the another, the council member Cox, the questions, there's a little, the 2044, some of those little spikes of those charts. And so I did reach out to the NHA who actually prepared these analysis. And it turned out this is the look, because of the, the anomaly, which is the often, and if we were to use the updated data information, that information may not be existing. So that was one of those data anomaly that when they actually prepare those reports, so it is really not impacting, so it is demonstrating. So that is, even then, that anomaly is not really coming up really high-end screens, the following years drops significantly. That shows that the data, there was some anomaly on a data set, which is something that is the analyzed, is when it could happen when we're looking at the large vast of their projections of the data sets. Next slide, please. Now I want to dive into this updated budget. I wanted to apologize. There was a minor typos on the first bloods. We are withdrawing the $175,000, not $75,000. That is 50% of the OPEP expenses incurred during the FY26, which is we're getting the reimbursements, and as well as the $270,000, which brings down the FY27 pension URL down to $3.5 from the $3.78. So those are the two proposed withdrawals that the staff is asking, and as well as based on the further discussions with our the new section 115 trust the the administrator schuster and then also discussing possible of our all of those 17 million still in in the cash that we have that what will be the possible additional investment incomes that we can generate through that ones and that was the sch, Schuster was comfortably recommending, we may be able to generate additional 150,000 on investment incomes, interest is. So that was add on to the the idea our additional revenue sources for the idea of projection of FY27. Next slide, please. |
| 03:27:28.08 | Angeline Loeffler | Now I'm coming down with the idea. Now we're coming back with the four positions versus three positions from the last meetings. We added on the permit concierge of the positions, the cost in there, which is about almost $120,000. And STEP did reach out to the outside, the consultants, to kind of see what other cities might have in that nature and what will cost the cost to get the and the what is the nature of that positions might be and as well as the potential projections of the getting that the the petition to be fully they are funded through the additional revenue. Right now, based on what we have looked at it in the CDD operations, we have about 350,000 of the permit revenues that we generate. In order to cover the fully funded that particular positions, we need to increase the permit related fees that we're charging by 34%, which is quite significant. And also, I think our HR manager actually did reach out to one of the outside consultants and looking into a little bit more of the neighborhood or across California, the other cities may have these particular roles and how it's impacting the business operations. So based on that information that the HR manager gathered, there is no immediate resemblance of what we're trying to achieve for that particular position. There's no known positions within the Northern California cities. However, there are some cities down in Southern California which is very large, the metros and large cities and they use those as part of the customer providing additional customer services not necessarily for the revenue generating positions in that nature. Next slide, please. |
| 03:29:38.62 | Angeline Loeffler | And this is actually the overall of the budget is based on those changes that we have previously gone through on a previous slide. So you can see that without those positions, we're looking at about 632,000 of the still short on the FY27. And if we're to include all of those four positions, we're looking at 1.2 million, 1.3 million of the shorts on the for the and if we're to include all of those four positions, we're looking at a 1.2 million, 1.3 million of the shorts on the, for the proposed FY27 budgets. And the new positions costs are coming up to be about 645,000, which is including the IT positions, which can be fully funded within the IT budget without having to increase from the IT budgets as well too. Next slide, please. And this is the recap of the updated of the unassigned fund balances, which is including the unused, the CIP, the fundings back into the unassigned fund balances, which will lead to the 5.5, almost 5.5 million, which is increased of the 1.2 million from the previous projections. Next slide, please. And here's the brief overview of the CIP projects. And CIP project is the, was the, is the 4.9 million based on the information, all the active and planned projects that was received from the, our public works directors. And just wanted to also point out, there's no general funds are being used for the CIP projects for the upcoming years. Next slide, please. And here's a breakdown of all of these funding sources for the CIP projects for the upcoming years. As you can see, there's no additional general funds are being added onto it, and then there was a lot of the, and each of those fundings are specifically designed to do based on the capital projects that was assigned in there. Next slide, please. And step recommendation is the, uh, is that the city council received the proposed fiscal years of 25 26 draft budget to provide the policy directions to finalize the fy 27 budget staff specifically request the council's guidance regarding the incorporating of the other proposed the staffing positions including the community development directors permit concierge administrative aid one and it manager slash liaison and use of the section 115 trust funds and reimbursement of the oped expenses and the pension fund smoothing contribution to address the projected budget showfall and use of the unassigned general fund balance to balance the budgets. Direction from the city council will allow the staff to prepare the final, the FY 2526 budget for adoptions at the June 19 at the city council meeting. That will conclude the idea of presentations and And. |
| 03:32:57.86 | Mayor Woodside | There may be some questions. So Ms. Cox, I think, wants to ask a few. |
| 03:33:03.01 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Can you scroll back up in your... Presentation to the UAL slide. Thank you. |
| 03:33:14.33 | Unknown | Yep, down. |
| 03:33:18.22 | Unknown | Down, down. down. You're going up. Thank you. |
| 03:33:29.17 | Joan Cox | Okay, that's the slide. We gave direction, I thought, at our last meeting not to draw down our trust. for smoothing this year. So why... are you proposing that we draw down from our trust? Why ignore that direction? |
| 03:33:47.50 | Angeline Loeffler | Oh, dear, thank you for the questions. And it's not really ignoring it. I was given the additional directions during the last finance committee meetings that we should be recommended to draw those down. So that was the direction was given to me at the last finance committee meetings on the. Yeah, the May 21st. |
| 03:34:08.18 | Joan Cox | Thank you. But the Finance Committee is an advisory body, and they are advisory to the City Council, and the City Council gave direction not to do that. So, at a minimum, should you not characterize this as This is a recommendation from the Finance Committee for consideration by the City Council rather than proposte. presenting it as a fait accompli. Please? |
| 03:34:37.73 | Angeline Loeffler | Yes. Okay. Yes, I should have done it that way. All right, thank you. |
| 03:34:39.71 | Joan Cox | Correct. right thank you next because that's something for this council to decide this evening Correct. Yes. Thank you. Next slide, please. I have a couple other questions. um, same thing with the permit concierge. So you identify that to fully, so. When we discussed permit concierge, we discussed it possibly being self funding through cost recovery. But you have identified here that to fully fund this role would require a 34 percent increase in permit related revenues. The only way for us to Thank you. increase permit revenue permit related revenues on a cost recovery basis is to perform a nexus study. Is that right? Correct, yes. And so we cannot fund this position unless we perform... a nexus study to demonstrate that we are able to recover whatever portion from our from the customers who utilize that service, correct? Correct. Okay. And so why Are you including the cost of this technician in the recommended expenditure by the city when we don't currently have a means to recover any portion of that position. Wasn't that also direction from our last council meeting that we were approving three positions, not four? |
| 03:36:19.28 | Angeline Loeffler | I think that I was under the assumptions that we were supposed to come back with the permit conceals as a part of the petition and proposed. And this is the way that I was under the impressions that we will need to provide with the full cost breakdown. And then also these numbers are not really final. And as the staff is requesting the city council's guidelines so this is an effort to really kind of lay out all the cost factors for the asking for directions from the councils |
| 03:36:52.50 | Joan Cox | But again, this is presented as a, this is what it's going to cost, as opposed to, here's what the council directed, these three positions, and here's a fourth position. However, we can't right now, accomplish any cost recovery, we would have to, you know, to perform a nexus study and it would be a significant expense. Was that your understanding of the council direction that we were We wanted to see the budget for three, and we could consider a fourth based on possible cost recovery. |
| 03:37:24.32 | Angeline Loeffler | yes that was my understanding how yes i guess it was the poor presentations in that nature but i thought i just put together all the cost factors all together rather than separating and so i THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:37:36.98 | Joan Cox | Okay. Understand. All right. And can we go to the next slide for my last comment? Joan, can I ask a follow-up on that? Just because it's on that topic. |
| 03:37:44.42 | Melissa Blaustein | back of the frontiers. |
| 03:37:44.42 | Mayor Woodside | I think you were the proponent of the permit technician. |
| 03:37:49.57 | Melissa Blaustein | Yeah, well, it's the idea was to have a permit concierge. So the idea was that it would be a white glove service. So there would be additional charge. So the hope would be that a significant portion of the funding would be able to be paid by the service itself. It looks like this is just using a cost assessment based on a percent of increased revenues without considering the fee for the service itself, which is what the direction was that we were going to ask about was finding a path so that at least a significant portion of this would be able to be paid for. by the cost of the, the cost of the position and giving us a cost analysis for that. I don't agree Councilmember Cox that we, that we said we only want the three positions. That wasn't my recollection. My recollection was we were going to get. guidance on what, what this would cost and how we would be able to pay for some of it. So I think that I can understand why Angelina put this here. But, The direction was to consider what the white glove cost would be and how much of the position could be covered by charging a fee per permitting, for example, and I don't know why that would require. a nexus study. |
| 03:38:56.19 | Joan Cox | Because we can't do cost recovery. Well, this is not comment time, so. Um, Did you investigate? what Potential cost recovery could occur from a white glove concierge permit service. |
| 03:39:11.70 | Angeline Loeffler | I think that's what we did with working with our HR managers to kind of reach out to the other cities. Has the similar type of the services and what will be the cost of the cost recovery fact. But we were not able to, because with the time constraint, we were not able to identify any city with this type of white glove services. That's why we were not able to get down to the actual cost recovery plans at that point. |
| 03:39:38.87 | Melissa Blaustein | But Angelene, isn't it very similar to and couldn't we look into the same cost as an expediting fee, for example, which I know cities like San Francisco have offered? |
| 03:39:50.10 | Joan Cox | I think I may want to... I see the interim city manager nodding his head yes. |
| 03:39:50.32 | Melissa Blaustein | I think I may want to... |
| 03:39:55.27 | Joan Cox | And I was just asking. |
| 03:39:55.74 | Melissa Blaustein | I was just asking Angeline, But yeah, okay, Brandon, go ahead. No way in Brandon, please. |
| 03:40:01.51 | Brendan Phipps | Thank you, Vice Mayor. In connection with this potential position, I think most certainly if the city is going to commit to providing a superior and expedited service, it bears, you know, logical, reasonable that there would be an additional fee associated with that white glove service. In that respect, I do believe, and putting on my community development director hat, that this position could be partially funded or fully funded, However, there are certain unknowns that we have not had the time to really dig into with respect to, for example, an analysis of how an additional fee will actually be demanded or let's say even utilized by project applicants. Will this or will this not impact the total number of permits that the city receives? And what is the difference or reduction in permits that go through our typical process that may now, if we do approve this position, go through the permit expediter process without a reasonable and consistent case study available, Again, we weren't able to identify one based on HR directors work with an external consultant that that only provides more questions. So we're doing our best to at least provide the bookends for council to consider. I think it would be very reasonable for council to adopt an increased fee for the service if that's the direction the council wants to go. But I'm not able to make a commitment to say that this will be fully cost recovery. Um, I would feel comfortable stating that it may be partially funded. |
| 03:41:39.03 | Joan Cox | Will staff have time between now and our next meeting? in two weeks when we have to adopt our budget to gather adequate data to substantiate cost recovery ability within this position. |
| 03:41:56.50 | Brendan Phipps | I would... appreciate the opportunity to take a swing at it, if you will, council member. I can't guarantee that we will be able to arrive at a definitive answer, but I can guarantee that we will try. |
| 03:42:09.66 | Joan Cox | Alternatively, is this something that we could consider approving as part of our mid-year adjustment in the event that you're able to gather adequate data by that time? |
| 03:42:19.97 | Brendan Phipps | Absolutely. I think that that's a question for council. If council desires to perhaps address this at mid-year budget, I think that would be Very much appropriate and IB supportive. |
| 03:42:30.99 | Joan Cox | OK, I had one further question, if we can turn to the next slide. uh, |
| 03:42:37.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:42:37.08 | Joan Cox | No, go back up. Sorry. I thought we had gone back. There we go. |
| 03:42:39.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:42:39.90 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:42:40.42 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:42:41.62 | Joan Cox | the |
| 03:42:43.53 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:42:45.39 | Joan Cox | I would like to see the general, the unassigned fund balance slide. |
| 03:42:52.42 | Joan Cox | No, it's down. It's the one right after... |
| 03:42:56.56 | Unknown | air. |
| 03:42:56.59 | Joan Cox | There we go. |
| 03:42:56.83 | Kenneth Henry | Thank you. |
| 03:42:57.91 | Joan Cox | Okay. um, Angeline, you talked about returning to the general fund as part of unassigned fund balance that portion of the $17 million that was not yet spent. Right? Yes. Um, However, the city council gave direction to spend that 17 million on infrastructure improvements. So even though we weren't able to spend all of it in one year, The city council has not rescinded the direction to invest those monies into our infrastructure, correct? Bye. |
| 03:43:34.96 | Angeline Loeffler | you |
| 03:43:35.08 | Joan Cox | We have not reversed our direction to spend |
| 03:43:35.52 | Angeline Loeffler | We have not. |
| 03:43:39.98 | Joan Cox | 17 million on various infrastructure improvements. Is that a correct statement? |
| 03:43:45.63 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 03:43:45.66 | Babette McDougall | Correct. |
| 03:43:45.88 | Angeline Loeffler | Thank you. |
| 03:43:45.90 | Joan Cox | And so while you are right now returning to unassigned fund balance, the amount of that 17 million not yet spent, we still intend to spend the balance of those monies on infrastructure improvements, correct? I will presume so, yes. Okay, and so to put, to show that as part of unassigned fund balance, those monies are not truly unassigned, are they? |
| 03:44:15.85 | Angeline Loeffler | I was under the impression that based on the conversation with our public works directors, that those the idea was the idea, one million was no intention of spends at that point. That's why he asked to put those back into the source of the fundings. |
| 03:44:30.30 | Joan Cox | So are you under the impression that that 1 million will never be spent that we're reduced so, The city council has not said don't spend this 1 million on infrastructure improvements. Right? |
| 03:44:45.42 | Angeline Loeffler | I was not aware of that, no. |
| 03:44:47.44 | Joan Cox | Okay. So, but for some reason you think the public works director has instructed that we're not going to spend that $1 million on infrastructure improvements? |
| 03:44:56.74 | Angeline Loeffler | That was the information that I have received from the Public Works Director. So based on the, they're looking through all the activities of all the STIP projects, and that was what was a leftover. I wasn't aware of whether all the project was not completed, but I think that was, my understanding was that was one million was a saving from the projects from the previous years, which was no longer in the needs. |
| 03:45:23.96 | Joan Cox | Okay, can you please confirm that of the 17 million allocated towards infrastructure improvements, we have achieved a savings of over $1 million. And those monies are being returned to the an assigned fund balance |
| 03:45:40.38 | Angeline Loeffler | I will confirm. |
| 03:45:41.44 | Joan Cox | Or if that is not the case, can you figure find out why those monies are being |
| 03:45:44.36 | Angeline Loeffler | to help. |
| 03:45:44.97 | Babette McDougall | Thank you. |
| 03:45:44.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:45:48.56 | Joan Cox | back into the unassigned fund balance. Latu. All right, thank you. Those were my questions, Mayor. |
| 03:45:55.03 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. Questions? |
| 03:46:04.76 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Questions on her. |
| 03:46:06.60 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. Yes, let's have public comment. And then we can bring it back for discussion. |
| 03:46:19.93 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 03:46:20.09 | Andy | Thank you. |
| 03:46:23.06 | Carolyn Revell | You've been waiting. Well, I'm trying very hard to keep my head understand all of this fascinating. Um, So I'm Carolyn Revelle speaking now on behalf of Sausalito Beautiful. We are pleased that the staff, like the Planning Commission, recommends three proposed projects for inclusion in the 26-27 budget. FP 023, a city parks master plan, FP 026, Cloudview Park access improvements, and GC 004, street tree replacement and installation. Regarding a parks master plan, we believe it makes sense to look at all the parks holistically before committing to any improvements in parks to determine the best use of resources. Two recent initiatives should be helpful here providing background. Sausalito Beautiful has conducted an inventory of existing facilities and conditions, and the Parks and Rec Commission has commissioned a survey that should feed into this work if you hire a consultant. Regarding Cloudview Park, a generous Sausalito Beautiful donor has provided funds to renovate Cloudview Park We're delighted with that gift, as I hope you are, but we think it should be coordinated with the general plan before implemented. And finally, street tree replacement. We will allow completion of the program to remove the disease Valerie Pears on Princess Street. Such a green infrastructure project will dovetail with the improvements I mentioned earlier at the Princess Street intersection that the DSA is proposing. And it continues a successful partnership with Sausalito Beautiful that occurred along downtown Bridgeway, where the city paid for 12 trees and Sausalito Beautiful commissioned and paid for the tree grades. So we hope that that can be a continued partnership project. We urge the council to, in the middle of your discussions, continue to support these three infrastructure, green infrastructure type projects. Thank you. |
| 03:48:19.46 | Mayor Woodside | And before you depart, is it your read that they are included? |
| 03:48:24.12 | Carolyn Revell | They are in the staff report. |
| 03:48:26.58 | Mayor Woodside | Who are you? |
| 03:48:27.17 | Carolyn Revell | solution. |
| 03:48:27.46 | Mayor Woodside | for Inclusion. |
| 03:48:28.45 | Carolyn Revell | Yes, I don't know where you will end up tonight, but they are in the staff report as included. |
| 03:48:32.54 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:48:32.72 | Carolyn Revell | I just wanted to check on that. |
| 03:48:33.97 | Mayor Woodside | Yeah. |
| 03:48:34.17 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 03:48:34.38 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:48:34.46 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 03:48:34.50 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:48:34.56 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 03:48:34.58 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you. |
| 03:48:38.93 | Mayor Woodside | They're Public comments. |
| 03:48:40.69 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none online. |
| 03:48:41.87 | Mayor Woodside | Okay. So back to the dais for discussion. Um, Mr. Sobieski. |
| 03:48:49.53 | Ian Sobieski | Yeah, I'll just, I don't, we had a finance committee meeting. It was robust between. NEU. schuler schuster's the uh consultant finance director we looked at all the numbers we can |
| 03:48:59.42 | Michael Rex | Sure. |
| 03:49:04.01 | Ian Sobieski | dive into it if we want to have this discussion, but we did make our recommendations on both the draws and the had a fair bit of intellectual scaffolding behind them. So we can dive in if you'd like. uh, to all the details. I'm not sure I would do a great job at it now, but I'll do my best. Um, but that was our recommendation and those recommendations were adopted by staff. Um, of course they're always subject to city council member approval. So, uh, but that's, I think that was the thought of why we have a finance committee. Um, |
| 03:49:34.15 | Mayor Woodside | The other aspect that did appear on the slide that was probably pertinent to the recommendation that we made had to do with Schuster's estimate of income. increased income. from various investments. So that's that's part of the total. |
| 03:49:53.93 | Joan Cox | Yeah, I noted that. So typically when there's a finance committee meeting, there are minutes or there's some report or something because... with the You know, we have no... |
| 03:50:08.62 | Mayor Woodside | I understand. I'm... kind of at a loss to explain what, what didn't happen in this case, I think. The recommendation that appeared on the slide was consistent with my recollection of what happened at that meeting. It was a long meeting. It was robust. We looked at all the sort of long-term implications. It didn't, in our view, hurt the long term at all. It just gave us an opportunity to provide some funding from those sources this year. |
| 03:50:40.99 | Joan Cox | So I would not be able to go along with that recommendation without watching finance committee meeting or you know i don't think it's fair And I think at a minimum, the staff report should have had a link to the, recording and announced that this was a recommendation provided by the finance committee meeting so that those of us who are very interested in these matters could have had the benefit of reviewing that and understanding the basis for that revised recommendations. |
| 03:51:16.43 | Ian Sobieski | Well, I agree with that. For sure. So, yeah. So, I would like the opportunity. |
| 03:51:20.83 | Joan Cox | So I would like the opportunity to do that and weigh in on this recommendation at our next hearing. That means to me. |
| 03:51:27.35 | Ian Sobieski | I don't know that we need to decide anything now. I mean, we're going to have our final budget in two weeks. We'll have better numbers. some better actuals, you have the recommendation it was recorded, you can watch the robust discussion, or we could ask staff for that. |
| 03:51:42.77 | Joan Cox | I have great respect for Schuster and for the members of the finance committee. |
| 03:51:44.12 | Ian Sobieski | She was so good. |
| 03:51:47.43 | Ian Sobieski | Or we could ask staff to do their best to try to summarize what was said, but it might be worth just watching it. |
| 03:51:47.80 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:51:54.02 | Joan Cox | Yeah, we'll just watch it. |
| 03:51:54.46 | Ian Sobieski | It's a small item, but I support Ms. Ravel's items on the CIP, if that's appropriate to say right now, I think, because we're affirming the CIP, right? And I don't know if this Princess Street thing, you mentioned Ms. Ravel at the beginning, uh the sidewalk treatment is appropriate for the cip for this year but I would ask, since I think it's probably a very small number, to just have Director McGowan speak with, Miserable and use his own judgment about whether it's appropriate to include in this year or not. |
| 03:52:25.63 | Joan Cox | I agree. And then with respect to the Permit technician. Oh, and I see the Melissa has her hand raised. So with respect to the permit technician, I endorse the interim city manager's request to gather what data he can between now and our next meeting to try to support that position my feeling is that, you know, we are honoring a request from our future city manager to add some positions. This was not one of those positions. I see the value in the position, particularly if we can uh, finance it. But I am very, very concerned about digging the hole we are already facing from the three positions we are considering in deference to our new city manager. from digging that hole deeper. I can't help but treat this like this is my checkbook and I'm going into the red in a major way. and an unsustainable way. that includes you know, pensions and all kinds of benefits, you know, I guess the question I had for Angelina is whether these are the burdened costs of these positions or whether these are just the salaries. So she's saying it's the fully burdened cost for these positions. So I'm just very leery as the, as council member Sobieski said, we're, historically not great at projecting what our numbers will look like. And so they could be better, but they could also be worse. And so I'm very leery about adding four new positions with a new city manager who is seems amazing, but who's We shall see how things go. so I just tend to be more conservative, and I would want to understand whether we need a nexus study in order to accomplish the projected cost. recovery. And then I am looking forward to. more information about the return to our unassigned fund balance of monies that had been allocated towards infrastructure improvements. I for sure... want to carry out our promise to our residents that we're going to fulfill all of the infrastructure improvement projects that we promised within that 17 million. If we've accomplished savings of a million, great. But if we're taking something off the table without council approving that, I would just want to be sure the council has the opportunity to weigh in on that. |
| 03:55:09.45 | Mayor Woodside | I certainly agree with that. direction perhaps you're seeking Mr. Phipps is do we cover the costs of additional whatever we agree upon in terms of additional staff with unassigned fund balance. I would just urge you to look at before making that final recommendation, to take a look at some of the funds again, like the Tidelands Fund, et cetera, to make sure that we're not missing an opportunity to cover some of the costs from existing funds that have a significant balance. I'm sure you've already done that exercise, and I would just urge you to continue to do so. Happy to, Mayor. Thank you. this off. |
| 03:55:57.30 | Melissa Blaustein | Mayor Woodside, can I- |
| 03:55:59.08 | Mayor Woodside | Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 03:56:00.84 | Melissa Blaustein | It's okay. |
| 03:56:01.38 | Mayor Woodside | Sorry, I have to look up. And I know that's OK. |
| 03:56:03.15 | Melissa Blaustein | I know that's okay. I didn't want to interrupt anyone. And I appreciate the discussion. And I, Just the reason that I keep pushing for and in my conversations with the future city manager, there was enthusiasm for an additional permit tech that would be somewhat of a concierge for new business and also for just more permit processing. And the reason that I keep pushing for and putting emphasis on this position not only because we have consistently said one of our goals is improving the fast tracking for permits so that we can be more of a business friendly community, but also because it's a revenue generating position and it's a revenue generating opportunity. And I'm thinking more in the long term about how do we solve some of our larger problems with regards to infrastructure. And yes, I know that this is a concern and I'm also very wary of increasing our potential for structural deficit, but I take, Councilmember Sobieski's comments about big picture thinking and our M&Ms and solving the problems of infrastructure and how do we go past all of our bigger multimillion dollar problems very seriously. And when I think about the best path to solving those problems, it's through revenue generation and through economic development. And that's why I feel like there is real value in creating a position that could potentially fund itself through a white glove service. obviously we need to know how much it would cost and what the cost saving benefits would be. I'm not a huge fan of, needing to conduct an extensive nexus study in order to consider a position so hopefully we can find a case study that the city man interim city manager can find for us to justify. creating that position. and finding a path and perhaps partnering with the Chamber of Commerce or with the Downtown Sausalito Association to pay for some of those costs as well. Um, because I do think it will certainly add value and also having another. set of hands in the Community Development Department is really helpful for its success and in continuing to be able to be one of our big revenue generating departments. I appreciate Carolyn Revell's comments with regards to the CIP and affirming the CIP and mentioning those critical projects, especially, you know, continuing to improve our parks. So I definitely agree with that. And I really appreciated Council Member Cox calling out the million dollars just to say, is this a million dollars that we just don't need? Or how did we come to this decision? I think this is a really critical point and something we need to work on together. |
| 03:58:23.67 | Unknown | Bye. Thank you. |
| 03:58:27.08 | Melissa Blaustein | I have full confidence in Director McGowan and that he was able to find a path where we were under budget for our CIPs, but I do want to see that illustrated before we make bigger picture decisions about our budget. But overall, I really appreciate staff's hard work on this. Thank you to Angeline and to the finance department and to the interim city manager for getting us to this point, and I'm confident that we will be able to pass our budget at our next meeting. |
| 03:58:52.69 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, Ms. Hoppin. |
| 03:58:54.95 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yeah. And thanks for all the hard work from Angeline and the whole staff to get us where we are here now. I think this is our third budget meeting. and to the finance committee for the hard work you guys did. I was on the finance committee meeting for several years, and I know that's a mind-bending exercise. So here's the same issue, right, that we've had. When you look at adding... four employees and another 645,000 annually to what what looks like is going to be a deficit budget and a structural deficit, right? So you're adding, you're adding man. maybe conservatively another million dollars to Thank you. not adding to, but a total of a million dollars to a deficit budget. uh, you know, conservatively, how do you look at that and how do you avoid that? And when you talk about employees, you know, Um, it's very hard to pivot from that once you add in and hire an employee. And so what's our plan or what's our pivot, what's our off ramp from that. If it's, if we don't bounce back and if the economy doesn't improve and if we don't you know how do we manage our way Um, away from the decision to hire employees, because that's a very, That's a commitment, right? That's not a, one-time expense, that's an ongoing commitment to the employee and to the staff. So, That's my question. That's I think we've asked that question a couple of times, but we haven't had an answer. So what's you know, what's the what's the solution from the staff who's proposing this, OK, great. But the real answer is what do we do when we're committing to this? And we know that we're committing to a structural deficit. at least the facts as we're being presented here today. And that's all we have. Okay, now what do we do? What's the fix in six months or a year when it's not a rosy picture and it doesn't look like we're going to be able to work our way out of this in the year or two and we only have a $4 million or $5 million unallocated fund um, cushion. And we're going to go through that in four years. So that's that's not really a good fiscal decision for the city to make. And that that's what I'm looking at as a council member. And so But those are the concerns that I have. And what I would want to know is what we've just been talking about, right? Can we get to a place where the permit concierge pays somewhat for himself? The IT manager, I think the answer there is, we're going to shift an employee that we already have over to IT manager. I think that's our plan. So there's really not, there may not be a cost with that associated because we're shifting an employee that we already have maybe over to that. Is the cost there an actual cost? So I don't know. Let's talk about that. That looks like to me that's $152,000. We pay for somebody now. We pay for a contract now to be our IT people, so is that a cost? I don't know, let's talk about that. So I would like to have real specific information about those two we've already asked about administrative aid can we do some of that with ai do we have to hire a full new person for an administrative aid there's a lot of a like there's a ton of ai aids that you can use for administrative scheduling and aids like can we access some of that we've asked that question i haven't really had an answer to that The Community Development Director. Yeah, I'm sorry. We got to have that. I get that. I support that. We absolutely have to have a community development director. That's 260,000. that we're going to have to find money for. But how do we you know, how do we absorb that into an already stressed budget? So tell me that answer. Right. Tell me that answer. Um, and where, when, when push comes to shove at mid year, if we're, if it's not a rosy picture. Give me your strategy. Where are we going to start cutting? I mean, and we've talked about this, right? But give me the strategy now so I can have confidence in making that decision. Where are we going to start slashing, not slashing, but where are we going to actually start making the tough decisions? with our budget so that I can have this council can have confidence in making these tough allocations that are recommendations from people that I, have confidence in, but I want to make responsible decisions for the fiscal, um, health of our city based on what I see as a short runway with our unallocated funds based on what looks like it's going to be close to a million dollar deficit budget. So that's my short feedback. So thank you so much for your hard work. |
| 04:03:43.50 | Mayor Woodside | Just add a couple comments. Sorry, if I may add just a couple of comments. Normally from a policy perspective, we should not be using one-time funds as in unallocated funds for long-term ongoing expenses. I think the better practice, the better policy over the long haul is to take Unassigned funds. apply them to individual projects that don't have a long term. So it kind of runs against my own experience and principles to be doing this without a view to what the benefit may be. And in this case, the specific positions, I can see the benefit to each one. I think there may be efficiencies going forward. And if it contributes to the generation ultimately of additional revenue, we may have an answer sometime during the course of the year. We're putting a lot of faith in the new city manager coming and being able to look at this, manage it properly, so that we are not looking at a long-term continued deficit for those positions. but lawyers like to say the jury is not even formed yet, and certainly it's still out. So we don't have a... We don't have an answer yet to the questions that I think we all have. But it's not, in my view, a winging a prayer. These are very specific positions. I think we can see the benefits. I think having a city manager with an assistant city manager that doesn't have multi-task like community development director is going to help us much more efficiently make decisions, issue permits, go forward with the kind of economic development that Ian so, Um, I guess put a lot of faith in for helping us solve some of our fiscal concerns over the long run. So having said that, I'm supportive. of moving forward on this basis, but we do it with a cautionary tale, a cautionary light. And we're going to have to watch this very carefully as we go forward. So those are my comments. Mr. Sobieski, Monette, I think. Okay. |
| 04:06:11.33 | Joan Cox | Can we just ask our director and our interim city manager whether they need any more information from us this evening? |
| 04:06:21.13 | Brendan Phipps | I appreciate the question. I think that you've been clear. I'm happy to move forward. I'll follow up with counsel if there's any clarifications needed. |
| 04:06:28.69 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you very much, Mr. Phipps. We look forward two weeks from now. If not sooner, we'll be seeing reports that will be posted for all of us in the public to see. And we wish you good luck. Okay, we now have item six, council member reports and other council business. I hope there are not too many reports right now or other things that we have to address. Anything, Mr. Sobieski? We should have a detailed finance committee report and we apologize for not having that previously. Ms. Cox, anything to add? |
| 04:07:03.99 | Joan Cox | Sure, I attended a legislative, an MCC-MC legislative committee meeting a week ago Monday. And one of the most alarming proposals that the League of California Cities is... opposing is AB 2443, which would eliminate CEQA requirements for low-income housing, including compliance with local objective design standards. And so. by including Um, affordable units, you can now, if this bill passes, avoid CEQA and Sausalito's objective design standards. So the league is opposing this, but it's just another example of how important it is to do whatever we can to maintain local control. |
| 04:08:02.85 | Mayor Woodside | Thank you, and I, since we are hopeful that we will have the objective standards back for second reading and adoption at our next meeting. Either the timing couldn't be better or worse, depending on your point of view. |
| 04:08:16.54 | Unknown | Exactly. |
| 04:08:18.97 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, Ms. Hoffman. Okay, I also want to report that I did it to him in council meeting, one very important item on the agenda that unfortunately Ms. Cox and I were unsuccessful moving forward is I had supported um jones appointment to either be the primary representative from rin or the alternate to was to abag and um i think no matter whether we have an official appointment there clearly this is something that we as a council need to watch going forward to make sure our views are heard and understood by abag because what we learned at the meeting before from mtc staff is that every city can count on having a higher rena number in the next cycle |
| 04:08:44.75 | Unknown | to a |
| 04:09:13.80 | Mayor Woodside | That's what we were told. Well, we need to be working now to make sure We're not overwhelmed as we pretty much have been in the last cycle. So that concludes my report. Anything else? Any future agenda items to discuss at this moment? |
| 04:09:35.06 | Mayor Woodside | Okay, either we're tired and can't think of any or there aren't any. And units from boards, commissions, committees, anything to review, I see none. Or other reports of significance, seeing none. Public comment on items that we've just reported on, 6A through 6D. Any public comment? |
| 04:09:57.18 | Walfred Solorzano | Seeing none online. |
| 04:09:58.31 | Mayor Woodside | very well. Um, there are no appointments for tonight. Um, So if there's nothing further, we are adjourned at, according to the clock, 9.20. Thank you. |