Town Council - Regular Meeting

Today is Wednesday, April 15. And I'm calling to order the town of Fairfax regular meeting for the month of April. And we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. Before we do a roll call and approval of the agenda, I'm going to move the moment of silence up this evening. I'm going to take a moment to bring our community together in remembrance of four remarkable women, young women we lost one year ago. In our small community, connections run deep and many of us have kids similar in age to Sienna, Jocelyn, Olive, and Ada. Our paths crossed in classrooms, on athletic fields, and at community gatherings. Each of these girls was deeply loved and every family carries a grief that our entire community shares. We know healing is not linear and we're still very much in the middle of it. There is a continuity in memory and love in the way these women shaped their families, their friends and this community. And we hope that over time, even in the face of such profound loss, healing finds its way in. And that alongside grief, there remains room for meaning, connection and love. We remember not only the tragedy of these losses, but the light they brought into the world's their kindness their friendships their energy and the promise they carried there is no severing our love our community's love for ada olive jocelyn and sienna as such we are committed to creating a permanent place for remembrance The town of Fairfax is planning a memorial with rose bushes and a plaque in a quiet sitting area just outside the women's club here, a space where anyone can come to sit, reflect and remember them always. We honor the four lives that continue to matter, continue to shape us, and continue to be part of this community. I invite you now to join me in a moment of silence for Ada Kepley, Olive Koren, Jocelyn Osborne, and Sienna Katz. In this moment, we hold space for their families, for their friends, and for one another.

Thank you.

And for the families that are with us this evening, we will reach out to you about the details of the memorial. And if you'd like to participate in the planning, we welcome your thoughts and your ideas related to the plants and the plaque and as much as you'd like to be a part of it. Okay.

Thank you.

calling to order as i did uh christine will you please uh take a roll call yes mayor council member flash here council member gear and galley here council member kohler here vice mayor acre here mayor hellman i'm here and can i get oh before i uh do the provilly agenda um Janet, can you help me with the findings in the closed session? Direction was given to staff. Okay, that's it?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, thank you. Can I get a motion for the approval of the agenda, please?

I'll move approval of the agenda.

A second.

Can I get a motion?

Council Member Blash? Yes. Council Member Garangeli? Yes. Council Member Kohler?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Ager. Aye. Mayor Hellman.

Yes. Moving on with the land acknowledgement, the town of Fairfax acknowledges that we are located on unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people of present-day Marin County. We honor with gratitude the land itself and all of its ancestors, past, present, and emerging. As far as meeting protocol, the mayor or presiding officer shall maintain order at the meeting. Council members share responsibility for modeling respectful professional conduct to effectively facilitate the meeting and encourage meaningful civic participation. All participants, including council members, staff members, and members of the public are expected to engage respectfully These standards apply equally to all viewpoints and forms of participation. To ensure all voices can be heard, disruptive behavior or other actions that interfere with the orderly conduct of the meeting is not permitted during public comment or counsel deliberations. Participants are asked to silence their electronic devices.

Okay.

Moving on to announcements. Any of my colleagues have announcements they would like to share?

Just that the ribbon cutting for the tot lot is Friday at noon.

Yes. I'm looking forward to that very, very much. And when is take back day? The 25th? The 25th. Yes. Han is hosting a take back day. I don't have the details in front of me, but essentially what pharmaceuticals, electronics. Right? Shredding paper. I do have it.

Oh, great. Yes. So the take back day is the April 25th from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. E-waste, medications, document shredding will happen there. And you can also pick up free compost. Please bring your own bucket.

Okay. I know there's also chipper days happening this month. I'm signed up. You can go to the town website to find when they're coming to your... Neighborhood. All right. Town manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor. I hope everyone saw the very positive article about Fairfax on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle this Saturday, the 11th. I did also want to mention the tot lot ribbon cutting at noon on Friday, just outside our door here. We talked about the take back day. And Chipper Days, the registration link is on our town newsletter. And also, we had an evacuation drill survey in the town newsletter, and we're now planning a driveway drill for this spring. So please, anyone who's not already subscribed to the town newsletter, go ahead and subscribe there. That's a great source of all of that information. Sad news, the giant sequoia tree at Doc Ager Park is diseased and must eventually be removed for safety. We provided a special news post today with more information, including the two arborist reviews. And we've worked with wild care and biologists to make sure that no birds or animals are harmed when that removal does have to be done. No date has been set for that removal yet. There's been questions about the stairway and bridge at Bridge Court that is scheduled for some pedestrian trail improvements using Measure A funding and DPW crew will be working on that in the next few months. There is also a stairway near Forest, and that has received some minor repairs, but the replacement estimate for that stairway is over $100,000, so just something to be aware of. I want to thank everyone who participated in the March 20th coffee with the mayor at Stillwater slash Bofax coffee. And I wanted to mention finally that the final park. signs are designed. This is approximately what they will look like. And our DPW director, Kristen Arnold, has sent those to the county sign shop. We now have an estimate. So the next steps are to have those made and installed. So shouldn't be long now.

Thank you. great thank you and thank you for getting that um email out to the whole community related to the sequoia that was um a good move thank you um all right do does anyone have a future agenda a topic they would like to raise

I do. It's something that I've been kind of working on for about a year now is getting speed limits reduced on certain streets in our town. The state law changed and allowed us to reduce speed limits five miles an hour, so from 25 to 20. There's a number of streets in town where 25 is just a little too fast, especially the downtown area. And I've noticed I'm all over cities and towns in Marin County and Sonoma County, and a number of them are reducing their speed limits from 25 to 20. You'll see the new signs, 20 miles per hour posted everywhere from Cordoba to Santa Fe to Novato. So I think we've got to get that on an agenda and talk about making our streets safer. Thank you.

Okay, I know we're having the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee report out. Is that coming in May? Is that right? Yes, I believe we have that scheduled for May 6th, and that was a topic. Can we co-join that topic then? Would that be acceptable?

Sure, sure. I'll put together a memo with some photos.

Okay, sounds good. right now we are at the time for uh public expression open time this is the time for the public to address the council on matters not on the agenda each speaker is limited to two minutes the council cannot take action or discuss items not on the agenda if there are more speakers after 30 minutes open time will continue to the end of the agenda

Good evening, Council. Kevin Curtis, San Anselmo. The reason I came tonight is for two reasons, really briefly. The first reason is to congratulate three of the council members for their write-ups in tonight's council member reports because they were fabulous. And I really appreciated myself being able to read a little bit more about what those council members saw in their meetings that they attended in the month, and I would highly encourage a progression of that moving forward, but that's not the reason. The reason why is that a year from now, in April, will be the mid-cycle of the... six cycle housing element the renal occasions for ninety four fairfax will be strictly judged by each cd at that time and What we have going on in Fairfax here is being behind in the very low and low categories at this time. With the project at School Street Plaza, one of the big ones that may be on the books to be finalized within time for next year, that's only 49 units in a low income category. So what I'm proposing, and this has to do with the meetings that you had, Stephanie and Frank, excuse me, Mayor and Ms. Rager, at the MCC, Marin Council of Mayors, and the subregions statements regarding the RHNA subregions for the ABAC. So I think we have an opportunity to bring the 80 units that were converted or are being converted here at the Sherwood Oaks apartment complex into the arena as a cooperative memorandum of understanding with the county. And I think that model can also happen in San Anselmo as well with the Sworich Park development, which is unincorporated, as well as over here with the Town and Country Club, anything that could happen in that area. And I'd like maybe a future agenda item to go ahead and allow staff and maybe myself to work with Jeff to do some of that work on the back end to investigate that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. I'm Gail Koren.

Hi.

You can move the – it's flexible, Mike. There you go. I'm Gail Koren, Olive Koren's grandmother, and I just want to say we've had a lot of things going on. Between the school and CHP and everything else, you are the only people, including Sen and Selma, that stepped up and came to us and offered to do something in their memory. And I want to say I really appreciate it. And as in Jewish, the word is mensch, and you are mensches. Thank you.

Hi, good evening. My name is Peg Minicozzi, and I'm the mom of Sienna Katz. I'm also the principal at Manor School, and I want to echo what Gail shared. It was just such a demonstration of integrity and grace to invite us here tonight. We've been through a tremendous tragedy, and just being invited to a town council meeting makes us feel i think comforted and part of this community um i moved here in 2014 and my daughter and i lived in deer park while i was the principal at manor and um i just always remember saying to her you are so lucky to grow up in this kind of community and be a part of Fairfax and San Anselmo. And I just want to say that tonight is showing some of its best. So thank you, Mayor Hellman, for inviting us. And just simple things like this really mean a lot to us. So thank you.

Hi, my name is Christy Osborne-Batanides and my daughter was Jocelyn Osborne. And I want to echo exactly what they have said as well. To be seen and to be heard and to be acknowledged feels very comforting. And to talk about putting a memorial for our children with their names and to put their names out there means a lot because as Gail said, the school district has no intent in doing that and even acknowledging our children. And I feel like that that's a very empty memorial if their names can't even be said. So thank you to the Fairfax town council for this tonight, for the moment of silence and acknowledging our children and for San Anselmo as well. Thank you.

Hi, Todd Greenberg. I am a resident of Fairfax, and I'm concerned, very, very concerned about the false portrayal of the meeting records, many different meeting records, written records and video records. At the last meeting, the town's official record when Councilman Ghirangeli was speaking, has been edited out so the public or others reviewing the tape cannot see what was said. I'm not an expert in the laws regarding this, but this bears investigation. This needs to stop. I'm requesting that you cease and desist from editing the town's official meeting record. I've just been interrupted. All of us who were at the last meeting witnessed Mayor Hellman interrupting both Councilman Ager and Councilman Garangeli. So I'm asking you to cease and desist. I've provided three written cease and desist, three cure and correct demands, one of which had a cease and desist component. The first two have been responded to by the town attorney from March 1st and 3rd. The March 13th has not been responded to a month later. There's Brown Act violations that I allege. There's non-publication and availability of public documents, including those related to Measure J in the folder that I inspected on video at Town Hall. during the rebuttal period inspection time, the arguments were not there during the rebuttal period inspection time, only the rebuttal arguments, not the primary arguments. There's more to say, but I've been interrupted and I don't expect that you'll give me my time back. So I'm going to sign off.

Any other members of the public wish to speak in the room?

Go ahead.

Hello, council. Well, let's see. The previous speaker mentioned the video record. The video record was posted almost immediately. I was really impressed with that. That is later that same day. And I was here during the interruption, and the video captured most of that interruption, if you haven't listened to it. So I would have to contend that the last recounting was not completely accurate. The first speaker, I would like to stand with that speaker about the idea that Sherwood Oaks should actually be part of Fairfax's low-income component and that the town should should attempt to do whatever transferring of of those credits to our town because not only is it in fairfax but the uh mayor at the time or the council member uh cortana was instrumental in in speaking at that hearing um i also about the speakers regarding the memorial for the for the children we lost there i i go through that side of West Marin all the time. And there's one time I don't think about them. So I think it's really fantastic that you're doing that. And then on the subject with Frank, Frank pointed out the speed limits really need to come down. People go whizzing down Bolinas Road, Dominga, and it's very threatening. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there any hands raised on the Zoom?

We have two raised hands on Zoom. The first speaker is PJ, followed by Jody. PJ, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Hi, sorry, this is actually Megan. I am a manor parent and also a Fairfax homeowner. I first wanted to send my thoughts and love to the families here tonight. I think the memorial is such a wonderful thing that can be done for this community. I also wanted to just raise awareness about the parcel tax that's coming up in June, Measure H. For anyone who would like more information, you can go to keeprvsdschoolsopen.org or follow us on Instagram at hsrvsd. For more information, this is really crucial for us to keep all of our schools open and functioning. We are at risk of two elementary schools closing. If anyone would like to join the families on the grass right now, they are getting pizza takeout from Gearing Galleys. If you mention Measure H, a portion of that proceeds will go toward the parcel tax effort campaign. Okay, thanks everyone.

The next speaker is Jody. Jody, you are now unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Good evening. Jody Timms, Cascade Drive. I too just, it's hard not to be moved, but appreciate Stephanie, the mayor and the council for the support for the young women whose lives were lost and their families. I wish they were still in the room. I'm assuming they've left, but... It's very brave of them to come and I'm just very touched by what we've done as a town and how much it's meant to them. So thank you very much for that. I look forward to that little sacred spot outside the Women's Club. Two other things I wanted to mention. One, speaking of council member reports, I read those every month. I really look forward to seeing what you all are doing and how you're being accountable. We have one council member who rarely posts any report and I just like to encourage him to do so, to please put down what he's doing on behalf of the town. so that we're all informed and understand his role. And the last thing I just want to mention is that the Climate Action Committee, along with San Anselmo's Climate Action Commission, is having an EV and e-bike show once again this year at the Redwood Shopping Center on May 3rd. And we encourage everybody to come out and and consider at some point switching to EVs, if you haven't done so, or an e-bike, so that we can address the climate and environmental issues that Artemis so lovely brought home to us in the beautiful images of our Earth. and rising. So the other thing is we also had a really nice event with Marin Water at the library. Unfortunately, we had two people attend, but it was a good event. So thank you.

There are no more speakers on Zoom.

Can I just ask, I don't know what the Redwood Shopping Center is. Red Hill. Okay. I heard Redwood. Thank you.

Okay, moving on. Or there's no more, oh, okay. Well, we did already have in person, are you?

Well, I think we're still within our 30 minutes.

Sure, go ahead, Mr. Bell.

I'd like to add that as you go and celebrate various months, I've been pointing out for several years that for some reason the Arab American month, which is this month, never gets mentioned. And again, this year, it's the same story. And one of these, I forget which of the two is mentioned, is kind of out there, not known to most people. But I think especially in today's climate, especially if you're interested in what's happening environmentally, what's going on in the Middle East, aided by the U.S., is causing more environmental damage than anything that we're doing here. And as we know, that goes on. I think recognizing Arab American Month would be a good step to show that we're not slighting our Arab American neighbors here in Fairfax or anywhere else. Thank you.

All right, we're closing open time for public expression and moving on to the regular agenda. We have a public review, updated draft budget for the fiscal year 2026-2027. We have Jeff, Michael Vivret, our finance director. I presume you'll be presenting today.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. So two weeks ago, we had the first preview of the 26-27 budget at our budget workshop on April 2nd. Based on the comments that we received at the workshop and subsequent updates to the information that we used to prepare the budget draft, we have assembled an updated draft of the budget, which we distributed last Friday for this meeting. This document was assembled from budget requests submitted by departments that had initial projections and initial projections from outside sources. Management trimmed approximately $1.2 million from these requests to prepare a budget that's balanced and meets the desired reserve levels and preserves essential programs. Many of these projections were used, are based on sources that may be only preliminary in their own projections, so this budget is a work in process. We will fine tune the numbers and projections as more information becomes available and present revised budget documents over the next few months. The next version will be the proposed budget, which will be at our May 6th meeting packet And we'll incorporate input from this hearing and updates from projections that we've used that were used in this version. Next slide, please. So let's start with an overview of the budget. Went back. That's it. Okay. So the biggest source of revenues for the town are the property taxes. And this year we expect to receive about $9 million in property taxes, which is about 56.8% of the projected general fund sources of funds. This includes our share of the basic 1% tax that you're charged on property. property tax bill and that's about 6.5 million dollars and various other property taxes including storm runoff and pension obligation tax um mike are are you looking at the we're looking at the first slide which is different this use of our slides one that one that's the one yeah this is the one that we're looking thank you thanks so uh sales tax that's the second one down on the uh is our next biggest source. The projections that we get from Avenue project a slight decrease in our Bradley Burns tax. That's the 1% tax of this year. and a slight decrease from the district tax, or slight increase from the district tax, which is Measure C, over what we budgeted last year. And this may change as the economy changes in response to different events such as we're seeing nowadays. The sales tax provides 14% of the total revenue for the general fund. Next is service charges, such as permits, recreation fees, and dispatch charges. And that represents about 5% of our general fund revenues. Followed by Measure F, that's the special purpose tax, and there are transfers over to the general fund from that account. And that accounts for about 6.5% of the general.

Mike, just looking at the slide. Michael, service charges on the slide say 6.5% and measure F says 5. And you just said it the opposite, which is right.

Yes. What's on the slide is correct.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry for the interruption.

No problem. Thank you. And then other taxes and fees provide about 16.6% of the revenues. Finally, we have a drawdown on the surplus revenues that we have from the prior year of about $91,750, which is about 1.1% of our total sources. We're projecting that we will begin the fiscal year with a slight surplus of 25.6%, which is above our required reserve of 25%. Next slide. So this is our use of funds slide, and these are the appropriations that we have. And in this budget, we have about $16 million of appropriations. The biggest use of funds is for public safety, which is about 61.6% of the budget. Of that, police make up about $5.5 million, and fire is about $4.3 million. Council and administration account for 11.6% of the budget, and this includes the town manager, town clerk, personnel, attorney, treasurer, audit, elections, finance, and environmental departments. Planning and building is about 8.3% of the appropriations this year. Public works is about 6.9%. Parks and facilities and recreation and community services is 4.7%. And finally, non-departmental is about 7% of the appropriations for this year.

Michael, on the slide, it says 2.7 for parks and facilities.

I've combined that with recreation and community services. Thank you. Slide four. So by category, the appropriations for salaries and benefits is about 43% of the expenditures, 43.8%. Our contract with Ross Valley Fire Department is about 26.9% of our appropriations. And other operating expenses is about 18.9%. Then we have contract services, and that makes up about 9% of the budget. This includes contractors with building, plan checkers, public works engineers, the town attorney, and others. Next slide. So this slide shows that our appropriations for this year for the general fund have increased by about 5.5%. So that may be of concern, but when we drill down on it, we find that most of that is from public safety expenditures, which are up by about 10.2%, including fire, which shows a 16.5% increase, or about $604,000. And then police, which has a 5.6% increase, or about $292,000. In total, all other appropriations and departments are down by about $54,000 from last year's budget. Here's an overview of the general funds. Next slide. So general funds, that group of funds is made up of about eight different funds. The general fund, O1, is the main one for spending of discretionary monies that we have. Then we also have a couple of funds that collect revenues from specific sources, such as building and planning fees, and the retirement fund. And then we also have several reserve funds for the maintenance of and replacement of town assets, such as vehicles, facilities, and roads. We project that we're going to start the year in the general fund balance of about $4 million. That's the first column on the left. That's rounding up to $4 million. On July 1st, three months from now, that's our projection. This compares with a starting balance for fiscal year 25 of, well, actually 26 of about $4.7 million last year. And this represents a reserve of about 27.2%, which is the average of appropriations over the fund balance. The council has a minimum reserve policy of 25%, and we project that we will end with an ending reserve balance of about 25.6%. Let's see, I lost my place. So as you can see, we project that we have revenues of about $14.6 million, appropriations of about $16 million, and net transfers of about $1.3 million, with an ending projected fund balance of $4.1 million, which is an increase to the general fund of about $91,750, if everything goes according to plan. Of note this year on this slide, we notice in the middle column that we have $75,000 from Fund 3 for the purchase of a new police car, $35,000 from Fund 5 for facilities improvements, and $80,000 for the office equipment fund, of which about $50,000 is slated for security upgrades. In addition, we are adding an approximated $400,000 to the Road Improvement Fund, which will hold funds designated for road-related capital projects. And this would include revenues designated for road purposes from such sources as road impact fees and street opening fees. But it also includes general fund monies that are budgeted for road purposes. This system has the advantage of assuring that funds that are budgeted for road purposes will remain designated, even if the project is delayed. I think that that brings you. Oh.

We're sharing mics here. So the next slide shows, we just wanted to make sure you could find the different topics within the larger budget. And so this shows you the departments and the pages on which you can find their funds. And then I will go to the next slide. So for the budget workshop, we did a much longer meeting. That was basically a full day of you hearing from not only the finance director, but also the different department directors on their draft budget and then the reductions that would have to be made if we had no sales tax, which is what I asked them to project today. that budget A was the budget that we're focusing on for this meeting and that we're planning to ask you to adopt, and budget B was a 10% reduction so that people would really understand what might have to be done, not what is proposed. So on this slide, what you see is that in the, draft budget before you, which is budget A. It preserves the police department's increases based on the MOUs that we've signed with the police union, their COLAs, the benefits, and then a minor increase in supplies for them. If we had to do a 10% reduction, PD would have to cut four full-time equivalent positions, so four full-time positions and special event support, other things. But I'm just trying to get you kind of a feeling for this today rather than take notes. you know hours explaining it and um in the rightmost column then you see the amounts that would be saved if those reductions happen and so um all told these um Add up to over a million dollars that would need to be saved if we did not have that sales tax so in the planning and building department. The budget a that is before you preserves their current work that includes. efficient processing of planning and building permits, doing inspections, also doing long range planning. The planning department has been involved very heavily with the BPAC, which is the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee, and they have been able to get grants to fund some of the work that they're doing. If they had to cut by 10%, they would lose a position. There are currently two positions essentially open in that four-position department. due to retirements.

Heather, could you just clarify, because we've already gotten the BPAC grant, right? So what would be the grants that we would be foregoing?

Yeah, so we've also gotten grants for work on housing element and other element updates, and we wouldn't be able to pursue that in the future if we had to cut that position. That's a very good question. In the climate and environment department, that is a shared position. We only pay half of that position right now. And it does work, including the climate action plan goals and working on that together. That position also helps us comply with California recycling laws, which come with up to $10,000 per day fines if we fail to meet those. So that's an important part of that position. And that position historically is, and historically being about four years that it's been in existence, has generally brought in grants well above the salary that we pay for that. And this year is no exception. So there is a $100,000 grant. We need to make a $20,000 match for that. If we had to cut that $20,000 grant, we would not receive that $100,000 grant. And that grant for this year is for updating our HVAC systems electrifying our HVAC systems in the police department and town hall. So also something that the council and the Climate Action Committee have been very interested in. In the recreation area, this budget preserves the wonderful events and art programs that they do. classes, et cetera. You've probably heard about the MUDBUS, which is an artist in residence program that also got a grant. If they were to cut 10%, both of the positions in recreation are already part-time, so they would reduce, they would lose hours and have to cut the artist in residence program as well as other programs. Next slide, please. And then in the administration, this includes finance clerk, the manager, the attorney. These functions are required of any town. And if we were to reduce 10%, then we would have to cut two positions, one in finance and one in the clerk's department. And that would delay reporting and reduce outreach that we're proud of right now, including the newsletter, et cetera. Ross Valley Fire Department, we are a member of the JPA. So we don't have direct control over the budget. The separate board votes for that budget and we pay the bill when they send it. And so we're not able to cut that. And I want to just address one thing that I think some people have asked is if the sales tax is seven or 8%, why did you ask the staff to look at a 10% cut? This is why, because If you look at that pie again of allocations, what we spend our money on as a town, the biggest slice of that pie is police, and the second biggest is fire, and all the rest are quite small in comparison. So it makes a big difference. And then going on to public works and CIP, That you know those functions are extremely important, not only in just you know doing routine maintenance and patching and taking care of our parks and repairing our buildings. If we were to have to cut that department by 10%, we would lose one FTE. That would be one of the four maintenance workers that's currently in that department. And that would cause less response, slower response, and we would need more contractors to do some of the required work. And lastly, non-departmental, this includes a big section, if you look at that page, is the Marin General Services Authority, which has contracts for us and all of the cities and towns within Marin. for things like animal control, the TV service, all of those kinds of things, DC Electric that helps keep our streetlights on. And it also contains the litigation area. If we were to cut that, there isn't much we can cut. We're not at liberty to cut the MGSA Litigation is essentially beyond our control because people are suing the town, generally not the other way around. And so the only real opportunity for a cut there is we have a line in that non-departmental that in previous years was $500 for the Chamber of Commerce. And we put a placeholder of $5,000 in there this year. So if you choose to cut that, that is an option. So I just wanted to give you a flavor without taking too much time of what the workshop was like. And the budget workshop is also available online on our website if people want to delve into more of the details. And I'll turn it back to Michael.

Thank you, Heather. So the second major group of funds that we have is special revenue funds. And this group of funds represents seven different funds that we have, including the special police revenue from COPS, that's a state program that gives the town money to help support police functions, Fairfax Festival, Measure F, which is the special purpose parcel tax, gas tax, Measure A transportation funds, Measure A parks, and the federal stimulus funds that we received money from through ARPA. It was a one-time thing as a result of COVID, and we received about $1.8 million. We're using this for a park storm drain improvement project, which is starting later this fiscal year. Those funds, the special revenue funds, will bring in about $1.8 million among them. Most of that money is going to be used for transfers to the places where the projects actually are, either capital improvement projects or general fund departments that are for those purposes for which the special revenues were designated. But we also have about $182,000 of direct appropriations which will be spent within the special revenue funds, including $105,000 in Measure A funds and $77,000, which is for the Fairfax Festival estimated expenses. Next slide. So the next fund that I... we have in our budget is the debt service funds. This represents Measure K funds, which are three different funds that were set up when we issued road bonds back in 2000 to 2006, and those will be retired within the next couple of years. And we have the lease agreement fund, which we used to finance the PERS unfunded accrued liability in 2020, which saved the town approximately $4.2 million in interest charges that we would have paid to CalPERS had we not done that. In total, we're going to have appropriations here of about $1.1 million, offset by revenues of $9 million. $178,000. Only $214,000 of that is actually going to come in from outside the town. The other revenues represents the monies that the departments will contribute towards the payment of that fund because these PERS expenses are actually represented within the general fund departments for personnel that those relate to. Also on this slide, we have the fiduciary fund, which is funds that we administer for others. In this case, FOSC, F-O-S-C, which is the open space fund. And for that, we will appropriate up to $4,000 to that group, depending on how much they spend for their own fundraising activities. Next slide. The last slide that I have within the groups of funds that are being budgeted is the capital improvement funds. We have three different capital improvement funds. Within those funds, we have about $5.1 million of CIP expenditures on 27 different CIP projects allocated. The revenues for this fund come from grants that are either provided in advance, such as the ARPA funds, or through reimbursements, which means we have to spend the funds and then request reimbursement for those funds. And then we also have transfers from special revenue funds, such as gas tax, and transfers from the general fund. We estimate that the revenues that we'll get from reimbursements, et cetera, direct advance payment of grants, et cetera, will be about $1 million, and we'll have transfers in from other funds of about $1.6 million. Next slide. So this year, our capital improvement projects are about $5.1 million, which is slightly down from the budget that we had for last year. These monies are going to be spent on road projects of about approximately $542,000, which is primarily a slurry seal project that we have in mind. We have the fire station 21 improvements. That's $1.6 million, which was provided from a loan that the county made to the town to be able to do this project, which we will pay over a five-year period from the general fund starting this next fiscal year. And the storm drain project on Park Road, which is going to be approximately $1.9 million and is funded from monies that we've already received from ARPA with a deadline of the end of next year for being able to complete the project.

Isn't it a deadline of the end of this year?

I misspoke. It's the end of this calendar year. Yeah, thank you. It's in the next fiscal year, but in this calendar year, yes. So finally, last slide. Do you want to do this or do you want me to do this? okay finally we have here options for being able to generate the additional funding that that we might want to do to consider should we decide to do extra projects that to meet the needs of the community more roads whatever the projects that we might want to raise more money for These include sales tax increase. We have the option of being able to increase the sales tax by a quarter percent, and we're considering that at the moment. Increasing fees. To do increase of fees, last time we did a fee study, the council decided that they weren't going to charge all of the fee recommendations that were in the fee study at the time. And what that means is that we're not recovering our costs when we do plan inspections, other things like that, because the fees are not fully covering the expenses that we've got. If we decide we want to do this, we should consider doing a fee study, and we've budgeted for that in this year's budget. Third is a special tax for public safety. This would require a super majority of the people. We also make a note here that Measure F is going to be sunsetting, in 2031 down the road. So we want to keep that in mind when we are looking at our overall picture of revenue generation. Finally, we have road bond. This requires a two-thirds vote of the people. This was attempted and failed in 2024. But perhaps we can revive it with a different set of parameters that are more acceptable to the two-thirds majority that's needed. So with that, That's our presentation. We're open for questions and discussion.

Thank you so much. Great work. Any questions? Go ahead. Councilman flash. Yeah. Okay.

Um, so first off, let's see. So measure K is going to be retired. That's the prior road bond, right? In a couple of years. So that means people will probably be seeing a decrease in their tax bill. Right. And then the soonest that we could do another road bond would be 2028. Um, Um, and it would have to be a three quarters unless it was a citizen run initiative, right? And then it would be 51%. I think it's two thirds, not three. Sorry, two thirds. Sorry, two thirds. Otherwise it would be 51% if it was citizen run rather than brought by the town. Is that correct?

That's the voting threshold. Yes.

Yes, exactly. That's what I mean. All right. Um, I did want to note that just technically, K doesn't have to expire, right?

I mean, before that's done.

No, but I was just asking because I think that it will expire soon around the time that we would be able to run another road bond or whoever.

Based on what's in the budget, the last payment on two of them are August 2027, and one of them is already paid off.

But your point being it would be more palatable potentially to taxpayers because they won't be seeing K. Right.

Because that will be paid off. So it will, you know, it won't be on an addition to K. It would be a replacement for K to some extent. Technically, I just want to make sure.

Yeah. The questions you were asking as far as the 50 or the two thirds that like that can happen at any time.

Okay. I was of the impression we couldn't do it again until 2028, but okay. So that is not the case then, right? Somebody could do another road bond.

I would like confirmation, legal confirmation.

I would have to check with the tax people.

Okay. Okay, thanks. Okay. Just want to check on that because I know roads, you know, we get letters all the time. People really want the roads fixed. And, you know, a reminder again that a vast majority of the people of Fairfax voted yes on that measure, but we needed it to be 67 and it was 62. Okay. Okay, so the other questions, I am interested in the whole concept of slowing streets. And my understanding is that we would legally have to have a speed study to do so. And if we want to do that soon, is that something staff can do? Or can we budget for somebody who could do a speed study so that we could, I mean, I've noticed San Rafael has done a very extensive group of studies to establish which streets they can lower the speed limit on. San Anselmo has done some of that. Is that something we can budget for at this time?

We could get an estimate from a traffic engineer of what that would cost. I think it would be prudent to engage a traffic engineer to make sure that we're not causing an issue that we're not aware of, but we haven't. Right, right. So we don't have that budgeted now.

Okay, because I just hear that there's some concern that it be done soon. And if that would be in the next budget cycle, then it would be great if we could, you know, at least know how much it would cost us so we could possibly set aside funds for that if we have them. And then another thing that I just wanted to ask about is whether we can put... Measure A funding that we already have allocated towards fixing up the women's building and the garden around it towards the memorial, which I understand may be somewhat community funded, and maybe plan around that as a centerpiece of whatever we do. We didn't talk about this in the Measure A meeting, but it seems like that might be a good use of the Measure A funds that we allocated towards

you know enhancing our garden so i'm just curious if we can do that still at this time yes i want to interrupt and say the measure a committee met and made those recommendations so there is in the measure a work plan something like 55 000 for the garden for the women's clubs and i think we could work within that budget to do the rose garden as well as the other aspects. But in order to change the measure a work plan now, I don't think it's prudent. I think we could reconvene later and see what kind of costs are out there.

Okay. I think that's the questions that I have for now. Thank you.

Frank, do you have any questions?

Well, I do have some questions. I sure do. On the police budget, that fund 496, and that's let's see, that's the PERS called UAL Side Fund. And for the The police department this year, it's $901,000. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you mentioned that it's got more of a public safety fund that includes fire. But is it lumped into the police budget?

Our UAL is specific to the town employees. The fire department employees are not included in what we have for UAL. So they have in their own budget line items for UAL. So total UAL that we've got is about 81% for the police department. Because the public safety element of it, they retire earlier, they're going to live longer, their cost is higher.

So the regular retirement this year is $352,000. And previous is $901,000. It comes to $1,253,453. That's the retirement for this year.

And that's all for police. That's correct. That's all for police. All for police. Mostly because, Frank, the... the charge that we get from the state for uh public employee um for retirement is based on uh the amount that they estimate within that pool that they have to pay out for uh tier one employees tier two and pepra employees even though we don't have uh we only have one tier one employee that pool still contains all of the people who retired and they're as long as they're still drawing retirement we're still paying money into the fund for that and it's all allocated to us based on uh on salary it's a percentage of salary that we pay so when we add 1.25

$2,001,253,453. Onto the police budget, it really distorts it. That extra $901,000 this year.

We had a choice of being able to take all of that UAL and just put it into non-departmental. But I thought that that also distorted it because... When we had it originally, we were paying that UAL and allocating it at the departments. When we refinanced it, I thought it was appropriate to allocate the payment, which is lower because we got a better interest rate. And so ultimately, that amount will be $4 million less being allocated to the departments. But I thought it would be appropriate that it go to the departments based on the percentage that they were paying at the time before we refinanced.

But for the Ross Valley Fire Department, they've got a number of retirees also. And are we picking up some of that also through how we're paying Ross Valley Fire? Don't they get a percentage of our current retirement cost from the retirement tax?

You're right, Frank. They pay retirement, and our bill from the Ross Valley Fire Department includes not only the salaries that we pay, but also the retirement obligation that the town of Fairfax has.

And that retirement obligation comes from Fairfax's retirement tax?

No.

It doesn't? We do count that against the tax. The amount that we collect, if you look at the Fund 6, you'll see that I have included the fire department as part of what the retirement costs that we use the tax. amount that we collect from the pension tax for. So when we collect the pension tax, it goes into Fund 6. It's allocated. Part of that allocation is to pay the retirement that is identified in our contract cost. Currently. Yes. So you've identified that.

Just to be clear, on page 40 at the bottom of Ross Valley Fire, it shows the retirement unfunded liability, which is $503,788 and OPEB prior liability of about $20,000. But that is not part of what we refinance because that's separate in the JPA.

Right. So it is Quite confusing, so I apologize. But Fairfax employees' retirement is separate from retirement for Ross Valley Fire Department. We end up in different ways paying for those.

So I'm just trying to make sense of the back retirement that we have to make up. And we must have to make up back retirement for fire also.

that all gets passed through to us by the fire department they get all they get all of the they pay all of the their employees they have their percentage that they pay to the their employees based on the pool that they're in and their uil that they've got i think they refinanced that through a bond at some point no they didn't i asked this question okay so just to be clear it's part of the percentage that we get charged

to pay into the JPA.

The fire service.

So it's not anything that we would, you know, we would... work on for our unfunded liability. It's separate. It's part of the payment. I did ask a few months ago, did we ever look at the same thing that we did doing the PARS trust? And they said at the time they looked at it, the interest had gone way up. So it's not the right time to do it. And so they said they would keep a watch on it to see, because we pay a certain percentage, some like 23 point something percent into the JPA. And in that makeup is our payment towards the unfunded liability for the fire people that are part of our jail, even the ones before 1980. Does that make sense?

I just want to make sure that none of those people, backfire retirement costs are being charged to the police department.

No, they're not. They're separate. What other questions do you have?

Oh, you want me to go through the whole budget? I do. Oh, okay.

This is the time for questions.

So on the police budget, I was asking about having license plate readers in patrol cars And I know California Highway Patrol has license plate readers that they detect vehicles coming at them and going away from them. That's what their license plate readers do. And they find an awful lot of stolen cars. So I was wondering, you know, right now a bunch of cities are getting rid of Flock. That's one of the license plate readers that goes straight into the... Frank, you've got to ask a question. I said... My question is, is it possible that we could use Motorola, a different provider, and have license plate readers on maybe our sergeant's cars and one of the patrol vehicles?

Yes, I heard your question, Frank, and I spoke with the chief about that. So he will get some estimates on that. And another issue that I think you brought up at the time when you first brought this up, I think our last meeting was communication with the Department of Justice. And so in order to check any license plates, there would be some level of communication with the Department of Justice, not necessarily in the, you know, some of the issues that have come to light with FLOC may not be present with other providers, but there would definitely be that communication. So that's a policy question for you all on the council to grapple with whether you want to engage that.

My concern is the safety of our officers when they're making a stop that they know who they're pulling over. And I know they can always call in and give the plate out, but if they had a license plate reader, they'd know right off the bat if they happen to be behind a stolen car.

Any more questions?

I can see where I would go to someone else. I've got a

Okay, go ahead, Council Member Kohler. Just a few. I mean, I provided my comments beforehand, but one of the things I missed was when I looked at the elections page and the cost of the elections, it looked like we were only allocating for one election. Oh, that's right, because the first election is this fiscal year. Okay, got it.

All right, and then a couple of things that I asked is...

You know, on page 82 and 100. We have you guys allocated only 10,000 for the sidewalk grant program. Since we found a little more money as you were doing cleanup, I had asked that we put 20k 20,000 into the sidewalk grant program and you had responded to me that you weren't able to do that. But you would do that. Is that correct?

Yeah, so that's the plan for the May 6th version, keeping in mind that we continue to find both small amounts of revenue and small amounts of funding that we need to measure. So that's an area, if we don't have the money, we will bring that back down to $10,000.

Michael, is that the sidewalk R&R? Because I do see $20,000 in there.

No, you've seen 20K for the next year. And at least when I look at it, page 82, it's at 10K.

Well, it's 20K from 27 forward, but there's 10K in there. Right.

So what I was assured when I asked the question beforehand that it would go back to 20K for next fiscal year. Okay. And then another question, minor or small, on page 66, it talks about security upgrades at 10,000. And there's a note at the bottom that says 50,000. And you guys told me that it's supposed to be 10,000. Michael, just in his presentation, said the security upgrades are 50,000. So that's page 66. It sounds like it's either 50,000 or 10,000, but Michael's presentation said it was 50,000 just now.

I heard that too. And we'll circle back on that. I believe that's 10,000.

Okay, let's make sure we're clear on that and make sure we have enough money for that because that's pretty critical. We don't need to be one of those places that gets hacked. And then I had a couple of questions that I sent you guys on things. One of the crosswalks that looked like you were diverting funds and another area that I don't think we should repay that's not an arterial or collector and not an important street. So I'd already sent those questions to you if you could take a look at that. Thank you.

Council Member Garangeli, do you have any questions?

I have some comments. Coming from the small business community of Fairfax and the private sector, I think The people I talk to anyway, I think the questions sometimes are different. I think that you guys are doing a fine job with the way it's all set up in some respects, but the difference between the cost of doing... public government work versus the cost of doing private sector work is astronomical. We've just been talking even earlier today about a bridge project that we've been working on for 14 years, and hopefully it's going to start next year, the construction, once they get through it all. So everything has been a 24% increase in government employees over the last 10 years, and California has basically the same population. We have to be asking ourselves, why are these things costing this much money? We're always short of money, and we always will be, because we spend it at a five times higher clip than the average household. Whatever you do at your home will cost you five times less than what we do in the town of Fairfax. That's probably a low number. So my comment to the public is, and to this board here, the council is we have to become more efficient. We are outgrowing the pace of our town, the people that live in it, and it's not sustainable. Every business, everyone else in the world has to live within their means, but except the government. And we need to do something about that at some point. So that's my, my comment on it. Um, It's ridiculous. A home costs a million dollars, but moving some furniture around at the firehouse costs $1.6 million. That's not even the real estate. Anyway, it's outrageous, and that's the problem. That's the problem. It's not anyone who works here's fault, but the system is wrong, and we should be doing something to fix it. Thank you.

open to your suggestions as to what those might be, but Frank, any more questions?

Yes, I do. Please. Thank you. On the fire budget, for the payment, repaying the county loan, we had $315,000 at the first budget around, and it's gone up $51,000.

the 315,000 number was one that I had been working with all the way up until the point at which we made it a $1.6 million loan. And 315 was still up here.

Okay. So, so the one point, so that, that's, that's it. Is that what we'll pay an extra 51,000 each year for five years?

Approximately. It's a loan that I had originally that is based on a declining balance. So it's going to have equal payments until the loan finishes.

So what I'm seeing is that we're going to pay an extra, I'm saying not extra, we'll be paying $255,000 more for that loan. So is that 255,000, is that gonna, that's just the increase in the interest?

It's 100,000 of that is going to be the increase in the principal and the remainder will be additional interest.

I do have a question about capital improvements.

I'd like to maintain some order to this so can we just stick with Frank and then we'll go back to Mike and then to stick with the agenda estimated time for this item I do want to open public in looking at the the sheet that came with the current draft budget it talks about the census and in 2010 we had seventy four hundred and forty one people in Fairfax it says In 2020, we had 7,605, and in 2024, we have 7,476. Have we actually lost 150 people in town? Is our population going down?

These are numbers that are provided by the Department of Finance, and yes, they often decline. So we've lost, okay. Conceivably, if their method of counting people is the same.

On the capital improvement budget, we're going to have a slurry seal program, which is next on the agenda coming up. That's going to be half a million dollars for a number of streets. One of the worst streets in town is Center Boulevard between Pacheco and and past story it's really bad and i i don't know how we're going to be able to fix that but we've got to come up with with something because we're going to get sued if people are falling in these cracks and and potholes um that's that's one of the worst spots in town then number two is with all the work that's going to take place on belenus road this is an opportunity to get some more pavement if we have some funds for it but is there any way to get some additional funding for that It's not our capital improvement program. It's MMWD's capital improvement program, but we have an opportunity when they have their paving company come in, if we could add something to that at that time. Is there any funds available for anything like that, either there or Senator Wolvard?

I'll take the first part first and then the second part. So the first part, so slurry seal is to keep relatively good pavement from becoming bad pavement. And the reason that we focused on that is because keeping relatively good pavement is in pretty good shape with a slurry seal is maybe a tenth of the cost per mile of doing full rehab. So you end up yes, it is somewhat counterintuitive that you are not fixing the worst roads first because they're already so far gone. And if you think back to when we did the less than a mile a couple of years ago of full rehab, it was almost a million dollars. So a million dollars a mile. With three blocks. That's right. It was nowhere near a mile. That's right. It was very short.

From... Acacia to Manor, that section of scenic is not even a half a mile.

Yeah. So so. The. the financially efficient way of working on roads is to first try to make sure and keep your good ish roads from getting bad where it costs 10 times as much to fix them. So that's the slurry seal. And then as far as the Marin water project, we are working on some ideas to try to figure out whether we can have continuous, um, repavement over the full area, not just the area that they will cover with their funds. But we're, you know, it's pretty complicated. So that's something that will come back to you in the next month or two.

So there's really no schedule of fixing Center Boulevard between Pacheco and Pastore right now?

I'd have to look back at the schedule. There is a five-year schedule, but some of those worse roads are at the end because we're trying to build up funding for that. And we did float a bond measure that would have addressed most of the roads in town. It got 62%, but unfortunately in California, that's not enough.

Well, that was a bond they were going to pay as much as interest as they were to fix the roads.

And it was actually only for half of the roads. Yeah.

I have a question.

If, Frank, you're done, then we can move on to Mike. Okay, and then I'm going to open public comment after Mike.

Okay, thank you, Mayor. On the capital improvements, Michael, it says $5.1 million in capital improvement appropriations. We have $16 million we're spending in revenues. Does that include the $1.9 million in ARPA funds? Does that include the $1.6 million in the firehouse loan to $16 million?

The $1.6 million of fire fund, we deposited that to the CIP fund when we received it. So that's already part of the beginning balance. Okay.

So let me tell you where I'm going with this. So out of the, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I might be here, but I don't think I'm too far off. On the $5.1 million appropriations, 1.6 of it is borrowed money. Almost 2 million, 1.9 we'll call it. 1.9 is a grant, ARPA revenues. And I believe only $500,000 of it is out of our general fund. Is that possible? Is that what it is?

Pretty close.

So we have a $16 million general fund and we only spend $500,000 of that on our roads. That's my problem with nothing to do with your math or what you did. But the problem is the philosophy that our taxpayers, which property taxes is 76% of our revenues. They can't even get their roads fixed in front of their homes. of all that money they spend, we only spend $500,000. What's that percentage of $16 million? It's very little. So our capital improvements should be much higher, our appropriations, and we should be spending the taxpayers' money in Fairfax on the roads that we all use and we live in this town. And right now, we're borrowing out of that 5.1, $1.6 million, and we got a grant for 1.9. We're literally only spending $500,000 of our hard-earned taxpayer money to address our roads in this town. That's how I'm seeing it.

Well, I think there's also a couple of things. So there's 760,000 that we're saving in case of road collapses, which is what we had in the last couple of years. And I just want to say, if you read the whole budget, There is no other way to carve this baby up. And some of you ran against the road bond that the bottom line is if you look at all these bond measures, interest is a lot. And even when you guys did Measure K and it was never intended to deal with all the roads, We're still paying for that. Thank you very much. So, you know, you can make speeches, but I can make speeches too. You know, the slurry seal is something that will help us preserve some of the goodish roads. I love that term, but I think Mayor wants to go to public comment.

And I don't know that that's accurate because the funding for pavement is in different places, not just CIP, correct?

Well, yes. And we classify, you know, where do you stop as far as a road? Like, is a bridge a road? It is, but it's not in the road fund, as an example. Or a retaining wall that holds up a road is typically not in the road expenses. So I guess what I would just point everyone back to is given the environment that we're in with the money that we have, we are really trying to squeeze out every dollar for service to the community.

There is three presentations from pavement consultants. I would really recommend you watch those presentations, Mike. Because we learned a lot and there's a method, there's a scientific methodology to fixing the mediocre ones. If you just focus on the terrible ones, you're just swimming upstream. So none of us are pavement experts here. And we, you know, we had a failed bond measure. Larkspur did it. San Rafael's doing it. I mean, it's, it's the only funding vehicle. And until, you know, the community comes to term with that, we're going to be where we're going to be. So you can criticize all you want. And if you want to find $2 million, $3 million, what the consultants told us is that we need $40 million. So if you want to find $40 million out of a $15 million...

I'm glad my comments have sparked so much interest.

It's just nonsense, frankly.

Well, that's our opinion. Okay, we'll open public comment now. We have to live within our means since you pressed me on it. And yes, I think I've already found it, quite frankly.

You found $40 million?

No, I didn't say that.

Okay, well, let us know when you do. Thank you. Open public comment time. Thank you.

Could you flip to page 82, please, Michael, or whoever? That's the capital budget project summaries. And then halfway down that list is the Meadoway Bridge. And the explanation for the budgets for this fiscal year and next fiscal year, I thought at the last meeting the project was described as being $6.4 million. I see that it's listed now at $8.6 million with a $1.9 million this year and $722,000 for next year. It points to page 91 for that project for a descriptive. But when I turn to page 91, I just can't find the Meadoway Bridge. I see Azalea. Is there a page for the Meadoway project specifically? And then my question would be this. Out of the $8.6 million and last year's $1.9 and this upcoming fiscal budget year $722K, what percentage of those expenditures would be from the unrestricted funds, not including capital restricted or government reimbursals for the project? Thank you.

Hi, Jim. I get actually quite furious when we start talking about roads. As we know, I live up on Bay Road, and I don't know if anyone has ever come up there. I was the individual that they were building construction up the street, and we cut construction companies loose, cement trucks, overloaded trucks, ripped the road apart, cracked my retaining wall. and I had to turn into almost an unreasonable individual to get the town to fix the road in front of my house. It was $50,000 for about 100 yards or 75 yards. And even during that process, and I listened to the road pavement professionals, and the only reason I have some experience with this is my nephew's a road engineer that builds overpasses and things of that nature, and I had to fight the town I'm not just putting a bandaid on the fix of just carving off the original asphalt. We had to take up the deep asphalt because what we're doing is we're putting a bandaid on these problems. We talk about a million dollars for the road, but we're just ripping up the asphalt. We're not ripping up the old original road that's cracked. So we did that on my street. You paid $50,000. And now all of a sudden the road is already pulling apart. We talked about construction fabric. The construction fabric wasn't put on the road, so the road's pulling. In fact, so then we try to maintain it, and we don't even maintain the road. We don't even follow up and do maintenance on these roads. So now we have cracks, we get capillary saturation, and the road's ripping up, and it was only put in four years ago. Also, just on the cost in Marin, I don't want anyone to ever lose their job, but take a look at Marin County. Marin County, I know some people at work there, they're having major issues of overtime and the management and the inefficiencies there. People are making hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime with Marin County at the jail and some other places. And if you take a look at that, I do like the fact that we're taking a look at other towns because I've dealt with Public Works Department. I get 15 more seconds. Sorry. I've dealt with public works departments up and down this entire state. And I've seen public works departments and planning departments that are incredibly inefficient. And I just wonder where can we get some efficiencies here? Thank you. Because it doesn't seem efficient. Thank you.

Mark Bell, Fairfax. Telling an... a fellow council member that what they're saying is total nonsense. God, it seems to go against the first meeting that you were mayor at, Mayor Hellman. As far as the road bond, it was going to cover 22% and the interest was going to be way more than what the road bond was. You could have done a straight assessment Could have raised the sales tax a quarter percent, dedicated only to roads. Made a couple of cuts here and there. You would have had $3 million a year for six years, $18 million cash, no interest. You didn't want to hear about it.

On the good news, you have record property taxes coming in.

Record property taxes. Where does it all go? Why didn't you do, for example, two sales tax measures, one 3.25% like it was, and then 1.25% dedicated only for the roads? Yeah, you would have needed 67%, but you would have gotten it. So now you're jeopardizing the whole thing, going for a 1% sales tax that's only going into the general fund. Where has all that money gone in the past, one wonders? You raised taxes just a few months ago to fill a vacant police position, and now you're talking about cutting four police positions? What? I don't know. If you have a town manager, aren't you supposed to manage? Why don't you look at giving some tax relief to the people of Fairfax by exiting Flood Plan 9 because it's done nothing? That's another source of revenue that could go into roads that people would... more than happy to have go there.

Thank you.

Todd Greenberg, downtown Fairfax. I want to echo the last speaker's comments and again questioned the questionable presentations that go on here and the questionable editing and sculpting of the public record and gaslighting that continues. Risk is a four-letter word that many people don't seem to understand. This town is risking, repeatedly risking public funds and has no limitation process on its legal expenses. We're on track to spend over a million dollars per year, which isn't presented clearly in this budget. How are you to make budget decisions if you have to hunt and peck and guess at what the total legal billings are going to be or anticipated to be? Why not be up front in the presentation to the public? Why hide things in the non-departmental category? why this has been asked repeatedly at multiple meetings so on the budget item i want to focus on one additional point The town budget material should not function as a one-sided Measure J support messaging. The concern is not that staff may explain fiscal conditions. The concern is that the town's official April 2nd framing, now apparently tonight's continued framing, presents Measure J passage as the baseline and non-passage as the adverse or worst case scenario. This matters because once official staff reports, official presentations, and town paid departmental speakers all reinforce the same post versus failure narrative, the process stops looking neutral.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room wish to speak? Are there any hands raised, Christine?

We have to raise hands on zoom. The first speaker is PJ followed by Jane PJ, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

PJ Slauson, Thank you. Um, yeah, it's PJ Slauson, Shocking to hear PJ Slauson, Many, many of the comments. PJ Slauson, I don't know if people are just trying to obfuscate or just ignorant about how public governance works. I mean, comparing how private businesses run versus government agencies is like comparing apples to chocolate milk. Um, uh, Businesses generally set their prices at what they think will allow them to operate their business on an ongoing basis, but towns can't do that. I can't imagine a single business that would still be operating in this town if they had to be capped at charging their customers 60% of what they were charging in 1978 plus 2% per year. It's insane. And I agree that you know, funding the roads via bond measure is a terrible solution, but it was the only one we had. I would hope that many of the people who are pointing out the extraordinary interest expense in road bond measures would support funding it by straight taxes instead, which are much more financially efficient for the town and its residents because you're not paying the costs of raising the money itself or even pushing to repeal our completely anti-democratic Prop 13. It's We're hiring more people because we're losing experienced staff and you need more people, more inexperienced people to do the same job as experienced people. This is because wages have been stagnating for many decades now and much more severely in the public sector than in the private sector. So we're just losing experienced people and having to get more bodies to fill it up. I hope that we try and do our best to retain our staff, our experienced staff, to avoid that issue and keep costs down. Thank you.

Next speaker. The next speaker is Jane followed by Anna. Jane, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Thank you for taking my call. I don't know enough about the budget and expenses to speak on that, but I do know a great deal about common civility and good manners and responsible behavior. And for a sitting mayor to insult a fellow council member by saying their thoughts are ridiculous is shameful, terrifying to think that that is what our government and our town has come to. I'm ashamed of you. Goodbye.

The next speaker is Anna. Anna, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Hello there. So my name is Ana Medina and I'm from MazMaza. And I'm here because I would like to support the budget for the Chamber of Commerce. I'm supporting the $24,000 that they are asking. I think all the businesses around the area that are part of the Chamber are feeling the support that it was much needed on this budget. last year's. So, and it's really important to have funding to support the chamber and bring more business to the town. And that way we can be more, have more revenue and also paying our Our business licenses is crucial, something that I will say that right now the Chamber of Commerce was helping a lot on sending reminders and all of this. So it's my intention only to express my support to the Chamber of Commerce right now.

Thank you. And there are no more speakers on Zoom. Okay. Thank you.

Moving on. Are there any other comments anyone wants to make? Yeah.

So I just. Council Member Flash.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah. Sorry. She can't see both of us. So I did, you know, want to say, yeah, we should be courteous to other council members. I know it gets really impassioned up here. I see people yell over each other. The mayor is supposed to facilitate the meeting. And yes, we should not denigrate the comments of other people. I agree with that. What I wanted to say about the road bond quickly is that what people are not taking into account when they talk about the interest on the bond measure is the interest that nature and time takes on our roads, increasing the costs by sometimes up to tenfold. So I think that that is something that gets lost in this conversation is that every year you let the roads degrade. the more exponentially expensive it's going to be to fix them. So I just want people to keep that in mind, that it's not like they stay in a fixed position or a fixed state, and that state is going to always cost the same amount of money to fix. We're leaving future generations with a huger and huger bill as those roads degrade while we scramble around and try to get $5,000 or $10,000 here or there to fix the roads. So I just want people to keep that in mind when they talk about the interest. on road bonds. Everyone is looking for a way to fix our roads, and unfortunately we get woefully little money from the state, from the county, from the feds, to actually fix our roads. So it's a real struggle, and I think it's a struggle all across California that other communities have dealt with by road bonds and taxes. I did just want to mention something about the person who brought up the issue of legal costs. I find that complaining about legal costs is extremely disingenuous if you are also causing the legal cost to happen. And so I just want the public to be mindful that all of the public records, acts, requests, all of the cure and correct letters, All of the somewhat false Brown Act accusations that our staff has to field is really astonishing and largely generated by a small number of people and incurs a lot of legal costs. So if you want legal costs to go down, stop making legal costs happen. We complain about legal costs going up, and yet... I warn people that while passing an anti-camping ordinance might be desirable, it would cost a lot of money in legal fees. So if you want something, you might have to end up paying legal fees for that item that you wanted so badly. And we did, in fact, spend over $100,000 on that. We've had in the last year a referendum to repeal our safety element based on, I think, a misguided belief that it would somehow block development. Um, you know, that's legal fees. We had a lawsuit by a former mayor trying to block school street Plaza development. I mean, whether you agree with that or not, that's more legal fees that the town has to field. We had a recall attempt. There was some, um, you know, legal involvement in, you know, just fielding that. Um, You know, we have people ignore town building codes, sign regulations, permitting laws, and then they sue when they're called on it. You know, so if you want to see lower legal fees, stop causing legal expenses. That's the message that I have. So that's all I want to say for now. But, you know, some of the complaints, I just really want people to think twice about, like, what they're asking for, what they're saying. I did finally also want to say that I would love to see more funding for the Chamber and for our Park and Rec Department if we can potentially do it. I'm not sure we're in a place right now where we can do it. I know we wanted to increase the amount of money for the Chamber from what it was previously. I'm not sure anyone's going for the 24K that they're asking for. It's something that I'd love to give, but I'm not sure we're at a place in our budget process and a sort of pending issue around a possible loss of tax income where we can do it. But I'm open to discussing that in the future.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Go ahead, Frank.

Sure, thank you. Todd Greenberg mentioned legal costs, and I should point out in tonight's monthly budget report by our finance officer, we now have a page on legal. It breaks it out, the different legal firms that were bills that were paying, And folks can see exactly how much. I think it's a little over 800,000 for the first eight months of the year. So it's on the very last pages connected. So that's a step in the right direction. And I'd like to see us set up a road fund the same way we set up a legal fund. You know, we get motor vehicle and lube funds from the state. We get state gas tax. We get $77,000 a year from the garbage company for truck impact fees and other truck impact fees. You know, I think if we set up a road fund like we have a legal fund, just for folks to see how much goes in and how much goes out, I think it would be very helpful for our community to see a road fund in some manner or fashion.

Don't we have a road fund delineated in the budget or is this something different that you're asking about?

We have a road fund in general fund, fund nine, and we designate that Revenues that come in from road impact fees and road opening fees be in that fund. That's because there's a nexus between what's being charged to the person who's getting a permit. With other fees, there's other reasons why those fees are charged. We might get vehicle tax. license fees in order to pay for police enforcement there's lots of other reasons that it could be there other than just roads so that's why it's in the general fund is because it hasn't been designated or isn't collected specifically because of road damage

No, I'm talking about the funds that come in specifically as a result of vehicles, motor vehicle in lieu, the gas tax, et cetera, showing them all coming into a road fund, and then it can be distributed.

He's saying centralize all of the revenues related to road impact fees, etc.

Just show up in a road fund. Doesn't matter if it goes to partially running the street department for employees, etc. But we know how much comes in for roads. And we can see them where it goes out. You know, as far as Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, that's the old Route 17. And it was taking the traffic from the Richmond-Santa Fe Bridge to West Marin. I was going through some of my old stuff here, and I'll get it for you. Copies of the proposal for Route 17, it came through Fairfax. It was elevated. It was an elevated roadway. And the photos are unbelievable. I hadn't looked at them in a long time, and I just ran across them trying to clean up my garage there. But Route 17 was going to come up elevated, along Center Boulevard, sweep over the then Lucky Store, and run up against the hill and over the businesses of downtown Fairfax to get out to West Marin. That was the state's proposal at one time. So it seems that the state is that thinks that road is necessary. Maybe they ought to be paying for some of the costs to move people from Highway 101 out to West Marin. It's a huge recreational area and the traffic's unbelievable and all the responsibilities put on Fairfax for maintaining that road. We need to get some state and federal funds for that road.

I thought you had done some outreach related to that.

I did not hear back from our assembly member.

Oh, okay. Maybe you can follow up.

I will take that when I go to Sacramento.

I just want to add one quick thing. Measure K, the first issuance was 2000. That was folks that are on this council that have been here for a while. And I'd like to see something in the future. So it's 26 years later, and it was initially supposed to be 6.8 million, not supposed to deal with all the roads. I think the total amount was about 6 million that was issued. I'd like to see what we paid for our 6 million 26 years later and And we won't finish paying off until August 2027. So that's the way the vehicle works, right? Yeah, I mean, it's just interesting. So I'd like to see that at some point, maybe at the next meeting, you can bring that. Thank you.

Yeah, I'd like to do that too. And I look, I apologize for getting testy with you, Mike. But I think what I take... offense to is our hardworking staff is not doing anything nefarious and there's no inappropriate spending. It's just not enough money to go around and moving furniture around at Station 21 is deeply offensive to me and the several members of our staff and fire services organizations that have been working on this for months and months and years. It's just it's inappropriate commentary that I reacted to. But I do apologize. and um that's an apology saying i apologize the way you stay the way you stated that i take offense and i reacted to remarks that were disrespectful to our staff you know i never said anything bad about the staff

I think it's more of us. Well, you were challenging the breakdown of the CIP. I challenged the policymakers. I challenged this board. I challenged government in general who's making these decisions. Got it. That are totally inappropriate.

So we're here right now. You're a policymaker now. What do you want to do differently?

I've been saying it all year long, but you're not.

Well, what's the specific?

I've said it almost at every meeting.

What do you want to do?

Well, I can tell you right now that the 25% increase just in general in government employees, I bet you that's happening here too. In fact, I know it is. If you go back to when we passed the first bond measure, I always said I wouldn't be against a bond measure necessarily, but not until we've become more efficient. And I don't believe we're at that efficiency level.

Well, I would like to see some evidence of the efficiency or lack of efficiency before I... I've been saying it all your life. No, no, I'm just going to say I don't see any actual evidence. And I think we've watched what's happened at the federal government. They've made massive staffing cuts with no evidence that what they're doing is making it more efficient. If we are going to make the staffing cuts and the sorts of cuts you'd like to see, I'd like to see some actual evidence of why it's not efficient as it is and what would be more efficient. And that's all I'm saying. I'd love to see that. So if you can make that argument, you might gain some.

Quite frankly, we were very efficient. years before when we didn't have a Department of Public Works director and nothing got done, not enough got done, and the roads decayed, decayed, decayed, decayed, and now we're all paying for it. So let's move on. I don't have any other clarification. I thank you for the good work. Go ahead, Barbara. Do you have any?

I just want us to move on to the Bridge Preventative Maintenance Program. I know we have somebody here from the community who's interested.

To move on to number two. Oh, you're saying on the agenda?

Yes.

Okay. So we just receive and we're done. And the next time we are reviewing this is? May 6th. May 6th. And then we have one more opportunity after that, or is that when we hope to approve it?

We would like the council to approve it on June 3rd. And if not, it would have to be approved July 1.

Great. Okay. Moving on to Bridge Preventative Maintenance Program. Okay.

And I want to note that I hope people appreciate the Council, because this is like a reading on this. So we all studied hard this weekend.

Kristen?

Thanks, Michael. Can I ask, are these slides posted on the website for the public as well?

Thank you. The slides are posted, and then if we could have the mayor open the public hearing at the appropriate time.

Which would be after the presentation or right now, Janet? Right now is great. Okay, let's open the public hearing related to bridge preventative maintenance program. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Kristin Arnold, Public Works. I'll be giving the presentation for this tonight. I also have Nader from MGE, who's our designer and engineer. Sorry, our design engineer and project manager. Justin from WRA, who's our environmental consultant on the project, and Sarah Oswitz from BBK Law, who provided legal review for the environmental process. Just for a brief background on the project, the bridge preventative maintenance project includes work on three bridges, Canyon Road Bridge, Bruce Road Bridge, and Marin Road Bridge. Around 2012, it was determined that these bridges require maintenance. And the overall goal of this project is to extend the useful life of the bridges and delay replacement for a significant amount more time. So Canyon Road Bridge requires replacing one wing wall and repairing another, sealing the cracks in the bridge deck, and some minor repairs to the fish ladder. The fish ladder repairs are federal requirements from the National Marine Fisheries Service and were passed down from Caltrans to the town and are requirements for the project to receive reimbursement from federal funds.

Could you tell us if you look at that picture? What is a wing wall?

So can you see the base of the redwood trees? So the one of the wing walls for this bridge is right under the base of that redwood tree. And it's actually just stacks of concrete. And there's a bit of a gap behind it. So we'll be fixing that. And then also kind of a similar situation on the other side, although the other side is, I don't believe is stacks of concrete. So they're a little bit. Okay. Thank you. Spruce Road Bridge requires sealing the deck, repairing the expansion joints, and repairing the concrete spalls on the underside of the bridge.

And then... Can you say what a spall is, please? Excuse the ignorance here.

No, no. So... Like generally concrete is flat, but when it starts to spall, it's like little pieces of concrete start coming out. And a lot of times that's when you'll start to see like exposed rebar. So it's kind of breaking off. Yes. Yeah. It's concrete that's breaking.

Yeah. All right. Let's much better. Let's use terms for some of us more ignorant folks.

Wait, did I talk about Marin? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Marin Road Bridge. We'll also be repairing a wing wall here. And then the rock slope protection around that wing wall. We'll be repairing structural damage to one of the other wing walls. And then we'll repair some of the concrete that's been breaking off on the underside of the bridge. So I'm going to try to simply explain the SQL process. There are a lot of details to it that I am likely leaving out and it's just for simplicity to give hopefully an easier explanation. So every SQL process starts with a project. Once the project scope is defined, the town begins to review The town begins the environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, which is CEQA Some projects are exempt from CEQA But if a project is not exempt, for example if work occurs in a sensitive area like a creek under a bridge the town will prepare an initial study and The initial study looks at how the project could affect the environment and determines the appropriate level of review, which will generally either be a mitigated negative declaration in MND or an environmental impact report, which is an EIR. For the bridge preventive maintenance project, the initial study found that, while the project may result in environmental impacts those impacts can be reduced to less than significant levels with mitigation measures. So an example of a mitigation measure is not working in a creek during the wet season. So you only work in the creek during the dry season and that helps protect some of the fish that can be in the creek and some of the other wildlife. And there's more to it than that, but just a brief one. So for this project, I said that already, So based on this analysis, preparation of a mitigated negative declaration was determined to be the appropriate level of environmental review under CEQA. So the initial study determined the project may result in environmental impacts in the following categories. air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, geology and soils, hydrology and water quality, noise, and tribal cultural resources. The ISMND, so the Environmental Review Document, determined that all environmental impacts can be mitigated to less than significant levels with mitigation measures in place. The ISMND includes a mitigation monitoring and reporting program specific to this project to ensure that environmental impacts are mitigated during construction. One of the important pieces of the sequel process is providing the public an opportunity to review and comment on the process before it's adopted by Council. The draft is m&d was circulated for 30 day public review period letters were sent to residents were most impacted by this project. And a notice was advertised in the Marin IJ. Staff received two letters with comments related to Canyon Bridge. However, the final ISM&D includes responses to these comments and no significant changes to the project occurred based on the comments. So to close this out, Our determination from the ISMND environmental review process is that all potentially significant impacts can be mitigated to a less than significant level. And there is no substantial evidence that the project will result in significant environmental impacts with mitigation in place. So with that, staff recommends adopting the ISM&D, the mitigation monitoring and reporting program, and approving the project to move forward in the design process. Take any questions.

Any questions from the dais?

I've got a lot of questions about the report. Yes, I do. And objections to it.

Now is the time.

Is it now the time? Yep. Okay. I was there when they installed the two fish ladders, one at Canyon Road Bridge and one at the Pastore Bridge. And we had great hopes those fish ladders would work. I've never seen, in all the years that I've been observing those fish ladders, that's got to be, what, 35 years at least. I've never seen a spawner use those fish ladders. I consider those ladders... salmon killers flat out they don't work never have worked you know we had big hopes for them but they don't work um we do much better with just some ponds working up at that location on canyon road um throughout the report you read that well There's no longer Steelhead or Coho in Fairfax Creek. And there's no longer Coho in San Isamu Creek. But the report says... We've been advised that there's steelhead there. So WRA was a firm that started with the Meadoway Bridge project back in 2013. And over a three year study, they never saw a salmon in that creek there, steelhead in that creek. When in fact, we have photos of a lot of steelhead in San Anselmo Creek for sure. Back to the Canyon Road bridge, there's a lot of concrete slabs down below the fish ladder kind of in the creek there. Fairfax Public Works Department dumped them there, thinking they were going to stop erosion. So part of this project ought to be removing those concrete slabs that are just dumped down in the creek and getting it back to a natural creek. What's interesting is there's no discussion about restoration of the fishery here. I sit on two nonprofit boards dealing with fishery issues, the North Coast Rivers Alliance, and the San Francisco Bay chapter of the Sierra Club Water Committee. I co-chair that. And we're constantly looking at issues dealing with fish passage. There's a creek up in Sonoma County just above Jenner. It's the east branch of the Russian Gulch Creek. And they had not seen a coho in that creek in 60 years and they did some work improving fish passage up there and this year they ended up doing a survey in the creek and they found literally hundreds of coho and steelhead fry the creek the first time in 60 years so it shows what a community can do if it's serious about restoring a fishery i've got a photo of my daughter in 1967 with a coho and five steelheads she caught in fairfax creek before village west was put in there So at one time, Fairfax Creek had an Andravis fishery. It had coho in it and it had steelhead in it. And these reports say, well, you don't have to worry about them anymore. They're gone. Well, they're gone because where Fairfax Creek empties into San Anselmo Creek, it's gouged out a huge cavity. And there's about a four and a half foot drop it there. And so what it's it's an impediment to spawners to get up there It's interesting that the fish and wildlife don't seem to be too encouraging about about protecting some monies and in the upper quarter Badera Creek watershed, but There's an opportunity here To do that we can look at fixing that connector to Fairfax Creek so at least Steelhead could get back up in there.

What does that mean, fixing?

I'm sorry, where is it?

No, no, what do you mean, fixing?

Well, I think maybe if we could get a crane to drop some boulders in that creek where that Fairfax Creek dumps into San Anselmo Creek and raise that level up, So there's not a big, huge pond where they have to jump to get up to Fairfax Creek. It's an impediment to fish passage. We do litigation all the time with public agencies that have dams to try to get fish passage on those dams. We've been talking about that for some dams here in Marin. especially Seager Dam at Nicasio Reservoir. So this is just an opportunity to address those issues. And here's something interesting that I found out at the last Ross Valley Flood Zone 9 meeting, that any work we do in the creek on bridges cannot raise the water level below the work. It's called water raise. At first, we thought there was not a big problem, but it turns out FEMA set those regulations some time back, and the Ross Valley flood zone nine, they say we spent 50,000. I figure we spent close to 70,000 so far. And some projects have now been canceled, the last projects, because If the projects are completed, it's going to raise the water level below the project. I had asked county staff, I said, well, what about Fairfax? Fairfax is working on bridges. And they said Fairfax has the same FEMA conditions on any work in the creek that the county has in San Isamal, Ross Valley Flood Zone 9. So we've got to really be careful here because we could be held liable for future floods here in the Ross Valley. We were at a meeting, there were five of us, and it was kind of a shock to hear we're abandoning the project that basically they said we've wasted $50,000. So I don't know if Fairfax has addressed water rise levels in any of our creek bridge projects. but we're gonna have to do that before we actually start the work. It's really important. We have folks in Fairfax with flood insurance, and if we're doing work in the creeks that's gonna impact flooding downstream, then we're going to be held liable, and those folks with insurance may lose their insurance. It's a pretty serious matter, and we were actually shocked to hear it all at the Ross Valley Flood Zone 9. We ended up voting 4-1 to, okay, recommend a Board of Supervisors. We abandoned the Ross Valley Flood Zone 9 project. I mean, it was... It was like we had no options. So here in Fairfax, our consultants are going to have to look at what happened with Ross Valley Flood Zone 9 to make sure that what we're doing in all of our bridges does not adversely impact water rise below that project. Thank you.

So can I just boil down? I think there's two questions in there that I'm curious about. So I think my understanding is I agree about the fish ladders, right? I like what they've done out in San Jeronimo Valley, but that isn't what we have before us in this project, just in that we've been told basically we don't get the funding if we don't fix the fish ladders. Is that correct? yes yes okay so that's a bummer um and so i'd love to hear at some point if you know council member edgar who has so much expertise could look at you know if there's some way we can get grant funding or look at some other way to enhance uh you know this the health of the creek so that we have more fish that would be great but it seems like they're not going to allow us to do that kind of thing in this project and then i think the other thing was uh the concern about raising creek levels If we make some changes below the bridges, it looks like there are studies in here that specifically address hydrology. Is that correct? Is there a concern here about raising the water levels below the bridges?

So I'm going to let Justin, our consultant with WRA, answer that piece. Justin, could you say your last name, please?

Yeah. Justin Simeon with WR.

Thank you. Thanks for being here.

Sure. Yeah. So the two questions on hydrology and the fish ladder efficacy and restoration. Um, and I think everybody would love to see, uh, you know, a full restoration project on that, that fish ladder. Um, this project is a bridge project. It's focused on the bridge. Um, and so the, you know, the funding streams are focused on the bridge as well. Um, and where the, you know, if, if this were a bridge project that required full replacement of the bridge, there might be some opportunity to get a re a fish, full fish ladder restoration, uh, incorporated into that funding stream. City Council Chambers, i've had that experience before on other bridge projects, but it's it's really just a preventative maintenance project and there's pretty much relatively minor activities happening. City Council Chambers, Compared to some of the bigger bridge replacement projects that we can get and so it's not integral enough to the the overall project to be able to access that funding stream fun from caltrans. grant funding streams that could be used, you know, that could fund a restoration like that. But it's not, that's not the specific, you know, project that we're looking at right now with the preventative maintenance and the Caltrans funding.

So if we, like, do all this preventative maintenance, right, is there something that prevents us in the future from, say, removing a fish ladder and, I mean, not, you know, making it sound easy there because I know there'd be all these regulations and all this money that would be needed, but say sometime in the future we wanted to take the fish ladders out and put in a more natural flow that wouldn't, you know, cook the baby fish as they go up the ladder. Is that possible or are we now stuck with, like, we have to fix those fish ladders and we have to keep them?

That's absolutely possible to, to, to get, uh, to, to do a permanent fix. There is absolutely possible. The, the repairs of the fish ladder that are required as part of this project are, you know, essentially like if you, the SIM kind of similar to this podium, right. Where you've got the little baffles, uh, on the top and the bottom, uh, some of the baffles have come loose. And so that's the extent of the repairs on the fish ladder it's it's that sort of repair so it's a really actually a pretty minor component of the project that was included because of requirements from the national marine fisheries service.

And I just want to add, so I used to be a freshwater ecologist and have a few degrees and did a lot of research. And while I would love to see fish ladders removed, it also, if you did, you would really increase the flow. And so it requires, unfortunately, it's not a simple fix. So, like you say, we're looking at a bridge preventative maintenance program. And when I first saw the fish ladders, I thought, ooh, we're actually fixing them. But we're just making minor repairs that are required for this project. correct so i think we just need to know that we can't get a backhoe in and drop a bunch of boulders in because that would also change flow regimes as well as removing fish ladders which i think we'd all love to see they were an idea from the past that was not a good idea um so thanks um i don't have any questions i just wanted to add that

City Council Chambers, yeah and then just to circle back on the hydraulics the you know each of the bridges for the designs for each of the bridges under when a location hydraulic study that's the specific. City Council Chambers, type of study that is is performed to address the question about raising flood levels. City Council Chambers, That type of study was done for the Ross valley flood control project as well and and caused some you know challenge found the challenges downstream. It's the same type of study that was done for each of these bridge projects. To put it simply, the projects came back with a clean bill of health from those studies, meaning that they're not increasing flood levels.

The two bridges that were going to be replaced, Meadoway Bridge and Azalea Bridge, but I just found out in the last budget meeting that we're not replacing the Azalea Road Bridge. So that's a good thing, actually, because that was going to raise water levels on that Azalea Road Bridge. That's not under discussion tonight, but are we going to be discussing the Azalea Road Bridge? Is that later on in this or are we discussing it tonight?

Not tonight. It's not on the agenda.

Okay.

Any other questions? Okay, let's open public comment on the public hearing.

Hi, Todd Greenberg. I want to just reiterate concern about what some of these bridges might do, some of these projects might do to the velocity of the water flows, whether it affects fish or more importantly, as is my recurring theme here, how much liability it creates for the town of Fairfax because of potential flooding that will occur because of the increased velocity of water to downstream homes. This has been a major concern that resulted in the disbanding or future near-term disbanding of Flood District 9 and San Anselmo pulling out of it. So if velocity is being increased by the water and this increases flooding risk of downstream homes, that needs to be mitigated. and the town needs to quantify its legal exposure by not doing so. Thank you.

Anybody online?

There are no speakers on Zoom.

close the public hearing and there's any other deliberations or i will i'm ready to make a motion entertain a motion i'd like to make a motion to adopt the resolution adopting the california environmental quality act

CEQA Final Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration, IS-MND, and Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program, MMRP, for the Proposed Bridge Preventive Maintenance Project, BPMP, I love the acronyms, and approve the BPMP. In a second.

In a second. We have a motion from council member Kohler and a second from council member Blash. Council member Blash? Yes. Council member Garangeli? Yes. Council member Kohler?

Yes.

Vice mayor Egger? No. Mayor Hellman?

Yes. Thank you both. Thank you for keeping us compliant. Thank you for keeping momentum on these efforts. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Yeah, let's take a quick break. And we'll resume in five after the hour. Okay. Okay. We are still on the regular agenda. We are on item three, which is accessory dwelling unit and junior accessory dwelling unit ordinance. This is a public hearing to introduce and read by title only an ordinance to amend chapter 17.048. of the Fairfax Town Code to comply with recent changes in state law. CEQA statutorily exempt under California Public Resource Code Section 21080.17. CEQA does not apply to the adoption of an ordinance by a jurisdiction implementing the provisions of Article 2. of chapter 13 of division one of title seven of the government code, which is California's ADO law as defined by section six, six, three, one, three. And with that, I will hand it over to our director of planning, Jeff Weisinger.

My presentation will be shorter than your introduction. I promise.

Let's hear it.

Because you've already essentially adopted this in January as an urgency ordinance. And so, and I'll just point out just a couple of places where it's changed. And so I have about 10 things to point out and it's all just kind of in this ordinance that I just put in front of you just so you'd have all a clean copy and have it on top.

And that's in the supplement that's in the public packet.

And it's in the supplement in the public packet, yeah.

Great.

the first thing to point out is that we on the we did have essentially three public hearings so because even though we were not really changing anything substantive from the January hearing the public did not get a chance to kind of weigh in on the urgency ordinance because we had adopted very quickly so we felt it was important to take it back through the public hearing process so we advertised for a public hearing for January 15th with the planning commission and it was it was a full agenda and so we didn't have a chance really to adequately discuss it so we continued that to the february meeting so we essentially had two public hearings at the planning commission where the public had an opportunity to speak and then of course we have the public hearing tonight So a nuance with the zoning ordinance, just to point this out, because it's here in the ordinance as a whereas statement, the eighth one down, but our zoning ordinance requires that in order for a planning commission to have a positive recommendation, a two-thirds vote is required, which would require five positive votes from the planning commission. We only had five planning commissioners at the meeting and four of them voted for it and one voted against. So it actually didn't get a positive recommendation from the planning commission due to that nuance in our zoning ordinance. And so that's recognized in this. That's one thing actually that staff would probably recommend changing in the future because it's very unusual and doesn't really accomplish anything besides results in negative recommendations when it's actually a positive recommendation.

You're saying it's, odd to have that requirement.

Yeah, that's a very unusual requirement. I've never seen that before in any of the zoning.

And the requirement is to have five people, not just majority.

Correct. To have two thirds vote for a positive recommendation to come out of the planning commission.

Okay. So two thirds of members present.

No, of the total of the body of the total. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that may be coming back to you in the future just as a code cleanup item, just because it is unusual. So, and we also, the reason that you're also getting a clean version of this, we added a statement at the bottom of the first page, which is the foregoing ordinance was introduced at regular meeting in the town of Fairfax town council, which is tonight, just to recognize that it's introduced tonight. And then there's a second reading for adoption, which will likely occur at your next meeting. And so that's why it's blank on the second page. The. Other things to point out, just the highlights here, the planning commission, Did have a good idea, even though they didn't technically recommend it, staff kind of took the idea and put it into the council version of the ordinance definition of interior livable space, because the size of JADUs and ADUs are now based on the usable interior space of the unit. So it's kind of a unique way to calculate space. Dave Kuntz, allowable square footage so we added in a definition of interior livable space to help with clarity. Dave Kuntz, Also, just to point out on page three of 14 we. The incentive program does live on as a kind of the 50% reduction in fees to encourage residents to legalize or create accessory dwelling units. And that was extended to 2036. And you did that back in January. So we just carry that forward into this.

And this also said no penalties for people legalizing you.

Correct. Yes, that's that is in here as well. The other thing that was done in January, but just to point it out again, is we do have kind of new, more aggressive permit processing times that we have to follow for ADUs. There's a 15-day period to determine completeness and a 60-day period to approve or deny an ADU. So that's like half of what it is for any other project. So they're really trying to promote and currently we don't have issues dealing with those timelines. The other significant change is on page 7 of 14. it's a rental term and. This is a specifically a state law that doesn't allow any jurisdiction in the state to rent a as a short term rental. So this is a slight conflict with our other sections of our zoning ordinance where we have provisions related to renting of JADUs and ADUs as short-term rentals. So we'll have to make a little code fix to address that discrepancy, but Um, currently so that four on page seven to 14 kind of sub four rental term, no JADU may be rented for a term that is shorter than 31 days and no ADU built after January 1st, 2020 may be rented for a term that is shorter than 31 days. So there's a difference between how JADUs and ADUs are treated. Okay. I only got a couple more here to point out. Um, There is a change also that's new this year that was also in the interim ordinance adopted in January that when a garage or carport or covered parking structure... Where are you, Jeff? Oh, this is on page 11 of 14. Thank you. At the bottom where it says no replacement. If... PB, Harmon Zuckerman, If an ad is built on top of a driveway or garage or other parking structure. We can't require that the parking be replaced. So we just kind of lose that parking. So that's kind of PB, Harmon Zuckerman, A bit disappointing provision because we have limited parking supply and Fairfax as it is. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Um, There's also a change on page 12 of 14 that's new this year related to impact fees. We can't require impact fees for ADUs or JEDUs that are smaller than 750 square feet of interior living space. So that's where we kind of get that new definition of interior living space that we have to follow. And then the other, the last thing to point out is they do have... more generous provisions related to non-conforming zoning code conditions, building code violations, and unpermitted structures on the bottom of page 13 or 14. And this is where if somebody constructed an ADU illegally back, could be five, 10, one, however many years ago, that there's provisions to make it easier for them to legalize it. Dave Kuntz, And then there's also new provisions that if a at you is kind of has non conforming elements like say the ceilings a little bit too low or it's in a setback or there's some minor issue with it, which makes it not 100% compliant with the building code there's kind of a health and safety. Dave Kuntz, Inspection that can be made to allow it to continue, even if it's not completely in compliance with the building code kind of all these things are intended to make it easier for people to do at us, even if they're not quite fully up to code as long as they're safe. Dave Kuntz, And that is. Dave Kuntz, That is it oh and also also I want to compliment. Mimi Newton, one of our planning commissioners, because she went kind of above and beyond and helped us do kind of the last thorough cleanup of a code. So this is now the cleanest section of our zoning ordinance.

Very nice. Thanks for recognizing her. Has been cleaned up. And thank you for walking us through all of the components here. Any questions from the dais?

Well, questions.

Go ahead, Vice Mayor Eggert.

Four comments. I started out with the one that was in our packet. And I read that, and I marked it all up. And then at Town Hall, there was a second one.

It was a supplement, yeah.

A supplement. So I took that one, and I marked it up. And now tonight, there's a new one again.

There's three. It's pretty much the same as the supplement. I just wanted people to have a clean version in front of them.

Okay. If I just may make some comments on the supplement. So... This is page four or five. I'm not sure what it shows on your new one. It's specific changes to the town ADU ordinance, and it allows for ADUs and JADUs constructed illegally to be processed without a financial penalty for failing to acquire building permits at the time of construction. So does that just mean... don't have to get there's no penalty for building without a permit but does does what they does what they built have to meet the town codes uh yes it has to be brought up to town code frank just so you know i brought that years ago so we could get people to bring in illegal units Well, I just don't want to encourage people to bill without permits because they can come in later and get it legalized.

But they have to legalize it. Okay. So they don't get a penalty. We want them to come in.

Let me jump over to the next page. So lot coverage has increased from 35% to 50%. So my question is, is that for all building permits on a lot or just ADUs?

Just where there's an ADU involved.

In other words, if I come in with an empty lot or to build, I still have the 35% limit.

Correct. A lot coverage. Correct.

If I'm doing ADU, I can go to 50. Correct. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Then... I was over on... Let's see. There's definitions. Livable space, living area, multiple family dwelling, a structure with two or more attached dwellings on a single lot. For example, apartments, attached townhomes, and row houses. So I'm wondering... developments like Cannon Village and Village West, they have CC&Rs that limit what the owners could do with their units. Is this going to override those CC&Rs so that someone with a townhome... My understanding is that state law changed it, and as you know, I live in Canyon Village, but Janet, go ahead.

Well, in general, the law is what the law is, and CC&Rs are private agreements between individuals, and so the law remains the same. and you have your private agreement, if you've agreed to something different, as long as it's not in conflict with the law, because you can't enter into an agreement in conflict with the law, then you can go ahead and enter into that agreement. But CC&Rs and the law don't interact. From our perspective, they do probably from the homeowner's perspective. But we don't offer any kind of opinion or anything on CC&Rs. That's a private agreement, and it doesn't impact what the law is. The law stays the same.

Okay, so the homeowners association won't get on an owner if they don't abide by their CC&Rs.

They very well might. That's a private agreement. That's between them. But... it can't be in conflict with state law or local code. Okay.

So I just want to interrupt. So the CCNRs for Canyon Village are quite old. Yes. And I didn't enter into any agreement. I didn't sign anything. When I bought that place, they just gave them to me and they made some changes to them over the years. They're trying to change them big. But It's my understanding that state law says that things like ADUs can be built or JADUs can be built in townhomes. And so if those CC&Rs conflict with state law, and not that I want to, but if I wanted to, I could go ahead and then I could fight it out with the HOA. Is that correct? That's correct.

Okay Then I'm over on well, it was 7 to 17 on the supplement, but it's a deadline to approve or deny ministerial approvals and it says Application within 60 days the application is deemed Oh if in fact the town has not approved or denied the application within 60 days the application is determined approved and Correct. Unless either the applicant requests a delay. So what if it slips through the crack? You know, those things happen from time to time. Somehow the changes happen and we miss it. Does that mean it's automatically approved because we screwed up?

Yes, it does, unfortunately. Oh, wow. That's state law, yeah. Okay.

Okay. Okay. talking about total square area limited detached on lot with single family total floor area is 1200 square feet or smaller based on interior livable space so for instance when we bought our home it was 900 square feet um we've had some additions then but There are a lot of small homes in Fairfax. Can a 900-square-foot house have a 1,200-square-foot ADU?

Yes. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is true.

Okay. Wow. Okay. Then... Unlimited, detached, on lot with multifamily. So I own two duplexes side by side. That's four units. And I own both of them. Could I conceivably add eight ADUs? I was looking at... It talks about... How many ADUs you can end up building on a multiple unit parcel? You can only have 25% of the total or there is a minimum number.

I don't want to give you a wrong answer.

25% of, if you own four units, you only get one more ADU. Is that it?

I think, yeah, you get one more. You get an ADU and then maybe a JADU. JADU, okay. So you could potentially get more.

Okay, but you can't get up to eight. Somewhere I read it, you get up to eight units. And I thought, let me see the right here.

If you have a larger, like if you have an apartment complex, you could get 25%.

Okay, so no more than two detached ADUs on a lot with proposed multifamily dwelling or up to eight detached ADUs on a lot with existing multifamily dwelling. Is it any multifamily dwelling? You get eight ADUs or is it a percentage of the number of units that you actually have?

Yeah, my understanding is that it's 25%.

Okay, so is this a state law or did we amend the state law? No, we... This is exactly as that state sat down to us and said, this is the new ADU law. We didn't fool with it at all. Correct. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. On fire sprinklers, if you're going to do an ADU or JEDU, if sprinklers are required for primary residence, there's a lot of our primary residences that didn't require sprinklers when they were built. But today they would require sprinklers. Will that affect an ADU or JADU? Will they have to add sprinklers to everything or just the ADU?

Well, if you're just adding a JADU or an ADU, you would not have to add fire sprinklers. Now, if you were doing like a 50% remodel, which would trigger it.

That would trigger it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Here we go. The ADU is located within an architecturally and historically significant historic district. Fairfax doesn't have a historic element. So that doesn't affect Fairfax. Even though we have a lot of historical homes, it doesn't affect us.

Now, if you ever created a district, then it would apply.

But we would have to have like a historical element for that to be triggered in Fairfax. Yes, correct. That's all. Thank you.

Great. Anyone else before we open the public hearing? Okay, let's do it.

Hi, Todd Greenberg here. A couple of things that I'd like to get cleared up. One, the planning director was referring to 14 pages, yet agenda item at hand has 17 pages and the supplement has 17 pages. So I'm sort of puzzled as to what he was referring to versus what we're looking at because there seems to be some discrepancy. And then the supplement that was received doesn't have any red line on it, but the agenda item has red, green, and purple lines on it. So I and other members of the public are probably having a hard time following exactly what was being referred to when. And this also brings up another concern of mine, not particularly related to just this agenda item, but frequently it occurs to me or appears to me that is this town council's practice or the staff's practice to add last minute or last hours supplements where any reasonable person would not be able to read them in time to be prepared for the meeting. So, uh, That's all I want to point out is that this, in my opinion, should change. And supplements should be required to be posted at the same time that the rest of the meeting materials are so people can come prepare.

Mark Bell, Fairfax. Just a really simple question. For the past several years with all the housing element discussions and consultants that we had, we heard so much about our robust ADU program that we were having and that there were going to be all these ADUs being built. So, I don't know, say in the last two or three years, how many ADUs have been built? I believe the estimate that was being ponied about was 20 a year when the reality was four or less. So I would like an answer to my question.

Are there any hands raised online?

There are two hands on zoom. All right. The first speaker is PJ, followed by PJ. PJ Pfeffer, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself. He just dropped off. Okay, PJ, you are unmuted. Are you there? Yes.

Yeah, thanks. Sorry, I keep getting disconnected and reconnected there twice. Anyway, I'm speaking solely on my own behalf, in my opinion, not as a member of the Planning Commission. You know, I understand the intention behind the the amnesty program for financial penalties for ADUs that Vice Mayor Egger was asking about. It seems to me, though, counterproductive if our intention is to get some of these units legalized so that they can be counted for our arena cycle when you have the incentive program expiring. many years after the Rena cycle is over and counted, nobody, everybody is actually better off. If you have an illegal unit, not getting it legalized until the day before the program expires, because then, you know, you're just putting off when you have to pay, it doesn't make any sense. So I think the way this is written with the program expiring in 2020, 36, I'd expect everybody within a legal unit who would try and get it legalized to take advantage of that provision by 2029 or whatever in this housing cycle. Now it's a smarter choice for them not to do so until 2035. And I don't think the town should do that. I think we should be focusing on the fact that people taking advantage of illegal and unregistered units are stealing from the town. And this is just one area, but if you, and I know this is imperfect, you get a ballpark, average the amount of total households that we have in our town versus the number that Vice Mayor Edgar has said of off the books units we'd have, that's about $500,000 of property tax every year we're missing.

There are no more speakers on Zoom.

Yeah, although I do want to understand what the suggestion was there.

I think he was suggesting that we not have this program extend so long. And I think I want to say that I brought this program several years ago. We know that a lot of folks in this town Maybe they weren't called ADUs at the time, but they made units illegally without permits. And our goal is to get people to come in to do these ADUs. either start off the right way or bring them in from the cold. And that was the intention. And I think we have brought some illegal units in from the cold. I don't think and respectfully disagree with PJ that people are going to wait till 2035. If they're not going to bring them in, they're not going to bring them in. But part of the amnesty program was that everybody would only pay 50% of the fees. So that it's an incentive for people to come in, not just to legalize illegals, but to do more. And I also want to just speak to one thing that keeps being bandied about. So we were able to estimate the number of ADUs in the housing element based on a formula that HCD does based on our past track record. We did not estimate higher than that formula, nor could we have. And the last meeting that we had, which was, I believe, the budget workshop, we actually had our report to HCD, which said the number of ADUs. So, no, it's not at the numbers that we estimated, and we still have time, but we may not make them. Just like we may not make other aspects of our arena, that's the reason why you do a buffer. So with that, I'm ready to make a motion.

Well, I just have one quick question because I'm curious about this. Because we have a lot of turnover in homes. So how does this work if you have an illegal unit and the property is sold? Because the town does inspections and so forth. How does this work?

Yeah, in fact, that tends to be when they're caught. Yeah. That when a home gets sold, we do do a resale report. And if there is an illegal unit or illegal construction, that's a lot of times when they have to come in and legalize the unit.

Okay, so that is a primary source?

Yeah, it's a significant source, yes.

Yeah, and then they... They qualify for the amnesty in that regard? Correct, yeah.

But you have to legalize it. And things have changed, but somebody had built some very strange thing that somebody was living in by our house, which I would never wish on another human being. And they came and made us take the heater out and make it unlivable until it was legalized. And I don't think it could be legalized, but it was an interesting process.

Yeah, sometimes they can't be legalized, but yeah.

Do you think this item related to the nonconforming is worth doing some publicity around? Do you think that some folks are not coming forward because they don't think there's anything they can do to become compliant?

I don't know. That's a good question. It's possible.

Yeah.

Could we advertise this program in the newsletter once we're past this?

Yeah.

Because I think that's one of the things. We do these good programs, but we don't do a great job of advertising. And that might make folks say, hey, I'm ready.

Yeah, we can advertise that. And I will say that a lot of our residents do use the ADU Center. In fact, we're one of the top users of the ADU Center, so there is a lot of interest from Fairfax residents in building ADUs. So we do have a lot of activity.

Do we have any idea how many have been legalized through the amnesty program?

I don't know off the top of my head. I could, I could mark may have a good idea.

Okay. Cause I mean, I'd love to know what the uptake is over the years. And I also just want to say, I acknowledge that this was a huge amount of work on the part of the planning staff and the planning commission. So I watched those meetings and they went over it with fine tooth comb. And I did notice that commissioner Newton in particular has put a lot of effort in And I did, I'm happy to hear that you guys can meet the deadlines right now because, I mean, I know one of the concerns we have about staffing is that we have all of these programs where you have such fast turnaround that if you don't have enough staff to process those permits, then it's just going to be legalized de facto because you can get to it on time. So it sounds like we're not having a problem with that yet. So that's great.

Thank you. Okay, I'll entertain a motion. Oh, Frank, did you want to speak?

Well, no, I just wanted to, I haven't commented. So, you know, about 30 years ago, we estimated about 300 undocumented second units in Fairfax. Our planning department had done some neighborhood surveys. Folks walked neighborhoods and just noted where second units were. We didn't go after them. We didn't do anything. We just wanted to find out how many undocumented second units were out there. And those number was about 300. One of the reasons folks don't want to come in and legalize our unit, even if it's all up to code, is because the taxes are going to go up. That's an issue. So we've been losing tax money. And I'm not sure if we can incentivize people to come in and legalize your unit when they know that the property tax is going to go up. So there's really no way to deal with that, is there? We can lower the cost to come in, drop it to 50%. I know a couple of chicken coops in Fairfax that have been turned into living units, so that's what's out there. Probably more than a couple, yeah.

Yeah.

But I mean, I think I think you're raising a really good point, Frank. But I also think we may get some in that are not. I mean, good point. Okay, I'll entertain a motion. I'm ready to make a motion to waive first reading and read by title only an ordinance to amend chapter 17.048 residential accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units of the town code to comply with recent changes in state law. Do I need to read the other thing that's above? This is what the recommendation says. Janet. So it's fine. I didn't hear you're not speaking into the mic.

I'm sorry. Yes, it's fine.

Okay. So we want a second.

Can I get a second? Okay. I'm going to second it.

We have a motion from council member Kohler and a second from council member Blash. Council member Blash. Yes. Council member Garangeli.

No.

Council Member Kohler? Yes. Vice Mayor Egger?

You know, I want to vote for it, but I think we could tighten it up a little bit. So I have to vote no on the introduction. Maybe we can tighten up between now and the adoption. Thank you.

Mayor Hellman?

Yes.

Motion carries.

Okay, moving on to consent calendar. The council can approve all items on the consent in one action. Alternatively, any council or staff member can remove items for separate discussion and voting. Public comments for consent calendar items are taken collectively, not item by item. During this period, speakers may address any item on the consent calendar with each speaker allotted up to two minutes and limited to one comment session.

Can I just make a comment? Sure. I would like to say thank you to Lisa Hellstrom for stepping up again to be reappointed to the Parks and Recreation Commission. Since Cece stepped off to move on to bigger and better things, Lisa has been amazing for all the years she's been there, and I think she's an excellent chair.

Wonderful. Thank you.

As far as pulling items, I like to pull E, F, and H. Okay.

Okay. I wanted to comment, thank you again to Michael who added that new page at the end of the financial statement isolating and detailing our legal costs appreciate that very much okay so. we're going to pull. E F and H. And so I guess we'll take public comment on everything else right now.

I taught Greenberg. It seems Fairfax is still in the habit of including controversial items and packing the consent calendar in the consent calendar. A consent calendar is meant for non-controversial items. Given that Fairfax just declared a fiscal emergency, it's hard to understand why the finance reports would be non-controversial. Given that the city of Berkeley spent a lot of money on their ban on gas and Fairfax has already spent a lot of money on their ban on gas and Berkeley lost in court even after going to appeals. It's hard to imagine why a controversial item that increased costs to Fairfaxians would be on the consent calendar. It looks regularly like you're trying to sneak things past people in Fairfax. I think that's all I need to say aside from what's been pulled and I'll address those items separately. Thank you.

Never did get an answer to my question about. how many ADUs have been built, year totals for the past two or three years. I thought that was part of your responsibility as a town council.

I would limit your comment to the consent. That would be great.

Well, I would if you had done your job properly. So as far as, just to piggyback on what Todd was saying, with this huge fiscal emergency that we seem to be in, E should definitely have been an item. I mean, we're talking about spending $1.6 million.

That was polled.

I know. I'm just saying that I'm agreeing with Todd that that should have been on the regular agenda for discussion. I mean, just because you have a 3-2 majority for whatever you want to do, shouldn't impinge on the public's right to speak on items.

There are no speakers on Zoom.

We will close public comment on the consent calendar minus items E, F, and H. So I would like to make a motion to approve the rest of the consent calendar minus those E, F, and H. I second.

We have a motion from Council Member Kohler and a second from Mayor Hellman. Council Member Blash? Yes. Council Member Garangeli?

Yes.

Council Member Kohler? Yes. Vice Mayor Ager? Aye. Mayor Hellman? Yes.

Okay, moving on to Item E. it'll be it'll be quick hopefully award construction contract for fire station 21. uh this is a resolution awarding a contract to argo construction for fire station 21 remodel project and authorizing our town manager to execute this contract and pay City Council Chambers, The amount not to exceed 1.036 000 1.036 million with an additional contingency of 98,953 dollars this resolution is not expanding the total project cost, which still remains estimated at 1.6 million. And we have Kristen still here. Thank you for sticking with us. Frank, what's your question?

So I looked at all the bids and Argo is a low bidder at $1,036,000. The second place bidder was Belts Construction at $1,060,000. They're $24,000 above it. But then when we issue the contract, we award the contract, we're adding $98,953 to it. It's a contingency. Yeah, so it's not added to the contract.

It's authorizing the town manager to essentially approve change orders up to that amount. So the contract amount will be for $1,036,000. And when change orders happen, that's when the total construction contract amount will go up.

And the whole 1.6 has that contingency embedded in it. It's part of project management.

So you're just saying that the 98K, even if they used some or all of that, is not going to increase the 1.6. It's within the 1.6. Correct. So it's a contingency. Okay.

I know some bidders, you know, always plan on unforeseen expenses and they think they're going to get more money out of the little bit anyway. But anyway, I'm just trying to see how the relationship to the 98,000 to the little bit. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Any other questions from the guys before I open public comment on this? Okay. Seeing none, go ahead.

It's too bad the finance director's not here to clarify, but perhaps the mayor knows this well enough to clarify. This item on the consent calendar that has been previously controversial, item 4E, the last sentence says that the cost remains estimated at 1.6 million, but earlier this evening, we heard the finance director when queried by Councilman Egger, state that there's an additional $51,000 to the $315,000 per year. that previously wasn't contemplated or added in. Well, if I add those two figures, it totals up to $366,000. If I multiply that by five, which is the number of years this is going to be paid off, it totals to $1,830,000. Now, what the finance director is not here, can't easily answer is, he did indicate that there's a declining balance and I'm not privy and I don't think this council's privy to necessarily and it hasn't been publicly presented how much will be paid off each year. So what I'd like an answer to, I think the public's entitled to is how much is this project actually going to cost? I understand there's contingencies, but if $1.6 million was borrowed How much is Fairfax going to pay on $1.6 million? Is it 1.8 or is some other number? Thank you.

Mark Bell. So I'm looking here, like $1.36 million. And then the contingency being added on to that. brings us to $1,134,000 approximately. I understand that we're renting some housing, etc., but it seems to me that there's still about $300,000 or $400,000 that's kind of floating in the wind. So if I could get a clarification on that, because it seems like it would behoove the town to take that $300,000 or $400,000 that's not being used and make a bulk payment on the money that we borrowed to bring the interest down since the principal would be much less and we could probably save even more money. Thank you.

Any hands on line? Okay, great. We'll close public comment. I will entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion that the town council adopt the resolution toward the contract to Argo Construction Inc. and authorize the town manager to execute the contract and pay the total project amount not to exceed $1,036,000 with an additional contingency of $98,900. This resolution is not expanding the total project cost, which remains estimated at $1.6 million.

Second. We have a motion from Council Member Kohler and a second from Council Member Blash. Council Member Blash? Yes. Council Member Garangeli?

Yes.

Council Member Kohler? Yes. Vice Mayor Ager? Aye. Mayor Hellman?

Yes.

Okay, moving on to F, which is the wall property fuel reduction. Dr. Resolution authorizing the town manager to execute a contract with WRA for fuel reduction environmental services for an amount not to exceed $68,031. Heather, is that you? Or Christina, is that you? That's me. Okay. Thank you for staying. Go ahead. Is there anything you'd say other than the obvious? I think Frank wanted to ask a question.

Yes.

If this was your item to be pulled, go ahead.

Do you want me to comment?

Why did you pull it?

Okay. So I'm not sure if the $68,031 is a one-time thing. Or is this one year? Or is this each year? And it looks like there's going to be nothing done this year, this summer. It's going to be next summer. Is that correct? So we're not going to do any... maintenance this sub.

So I just want to clarify that this is just for them to do the environmental compliance work. It's not the work? No, it's just the environmental compliance, correct? So to do the CEQA document to evaluate the environmental issues. So it's not the project itself.

That's correct.

So the project is going to be over and above this. This is just so we're not going to do any any work on the property this year.

There's a chance if this is adopted tonight that we may be able to do some work by the end of summer. It won't be all of the work because. We'll have enough environmental work to do some lighter vegetation removal, but we'll need the full CEQA process to be completed to do heavier vegetation removal.

Okay, and those funds come from the $500,000?

No, it's not. So I just want to clarify the way we've got this is we're using our Marin wildfire local funds to do the work. And so it's not the 500,000 is for engineering work that we had most raised money because there needs to be geo netting and stuff put on the wall property. This is really just for the vegetation management. So we're using Marin wildfire money, separate monies.

Thank you.

And I just want to say that I had specifically pulled this last time because I wanted, since I'm the Marin wildfire rep, I wanted to make sure that we were able to use, we had enough money in Marin wildfire money.

to not short circuit our other Marin wildfire local this is the kind of clarification that could happen in staff meetings with staff beforehand or through email in advance just just pointing that out um I'll entertain a motion on this don't you have to do public comment oh yeah public comment on item a what is it e f it's f f f item f on consent that we pulled

Mark Bell. So, how do we get an estimated cost on what the work will be? Do we have to wait for this to happen?

This is not interactive, Mark.

Just say it. That's the theory. And the way the Council has run for years, which I don't object to, is... that you take down questions and then when you close public comment, you answer them. But it seems like we're in a new era where you ask questions where you want answers and you don't get them. you get ignored. I find this quite contrary to the long diatribe that we were forced to listen to when Mayor Hellman came and made her presentation about how things were going to be. I thought civility was one of them. Well, civility is answering questions, but that doesn't seem to be the case. So you can smirk all you want, but basically you aren't doing your job. And if you had any self-respect, you would resign because you're not doing your job.

Mark, you need to stop disparaging us. That's not appropriate.

I should stop. I'm being disparaged because I can't get answers to simple questions. That's disparaging.

Are there any hands raised? Okay.

So I'll make a motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the town manager to execute a professional services agreement between the town of Fairfax and WRA for environmental services for fuel reduction on the wall property in an amount not to exceed $68,031.

Okay, I'll second it. We have a motion from Council Member Kohler and a second from Council Member Blash. Council Member Blash? Yes. Council Member Garangeli?

Yes.

Council Member Kohler? Yes. Vice Mayor Egger? Aye. Mayor Hellman?

Yes, thank you. Okay, moving on to item H, the zero-emission building appliance rules. This is a resolution for adoption supporting the Bay Area District's zero-emission building appliance rules. Frank, did you have a question on that?

I did, I did. So here is the issue was... Implementation begins in 2027. So it looks like it's a ban on gas heaters. And so the question I have is, does that mean at the time the property is sold, a gas heater has to be replaced with an electric heater, number one? Or how about with a 50% remodel? Does the gas heaters have to be replaced with a 50% remodel? And then another issue is when two family members are untitled and one passes away and one is left and the assessor's office reassesses because the one family member gets 50% of the original taxation and the other 50% of the value is going to go up. Will that also trigger... a required replacement of a gas heater with an electric heater?

No, I can answer this having worked at the Air District and working on rules. This is basically when, for example, your gas furnace dies. It's just that, is that, you know, I had an old gas furnace or an old gas water heater. If it dies when it's replaced, it has to be replaced with electric. I also understand they did these rules about a year ago and they went in and added some exceptions, right? where, you know, it was kind of a hardship or something like that. I don't remember exactly what the exceptions were, but it's not on a 50% remodel. It's not that. It's just if you have a gas furnace, a gas water heater right now, if it dies after this period, unless you meet one of the exceptions, then you have to change it.

So I just need to note also that, I mean, what's confusing about this is it's resolution, but basically it just says at the end, the resolution does not create local requirements, but expresses policy support, right? So we're not adopting something that commits us to anything. It just says, hey, we think this is great.

Well, it's a res, right? It's not an ordinance. So it has, yes, but you're absolutely right. This is supporting the policy that's pending.

So does that make sense, Frank? It's basically just a replacement when the thing dies.

But there's no requirement in this document. No.

It's just symbolic. Well, it's the air district rules.

If a house transfers hands.

No, if your house transfers. So having worked on these kind of rules with the air district, if your house transfers. and let's say you have a gas water heater in there, you don't have to replace it. It's just when it dies, then you have to. And we're not doing this. This is the Air District. So it's their rules, and there are over nine Bay Area counties.

So I guess this is just a response to the Sierra Club's request that we support this in theory.

Does that make sense?

Okay, so this is different than when we were requiring replacement of gas.

Right.

The Berkeley case that went up to the Ninth Circuit. Right. It's not going to affect us at all.

Well, it's not... The town is not doing this. All we're doing is supporting the Air District's rule. But if you live within the nine Bay Area counties, the Air District has jurisdiction to tell you to change your gas water heater when it dies to electric. But the town is not adopting any rules. Basically, just supporting their rule.

Okay, so for instance, we're getting... We lost insurance twice. And in order to get insurance, I've had home hardening done, trees trimmed, and we're upgrading our electrical service.

Right.

So it was going to be about $5,000 to upgrade electrical service. And I said, what if we want to put a charger in or add an ADU? Is this 100 amp going to be sufficient? He said, no, you're going to need 200 amps. So then I said, well, what's it cost for 200 amp? It's going to cost about $8,000 for that same electrical service.

Not to have a conversation here, but I did a heat pump, air conditioner, about a year and a half ago, and I had to upgrade my box. At the time, because I had one of those old boxes that are fire hazards, and the town required that if you do something like that, you have to get rid of the fire hazard one. The box was $5,800, but it was money well spent, because I don't want to burn my house down. But the other thing is, if I asked them at the time, now remember, my place is small, you've been there. is if at the time I decide I wanted to add a charger or change to something else electrical, because I do have an old gas water heater, would I have to change the box? And in my situation, no, but your house is bigger than mine. So it may be that when you make your personal decision, you might want to do the upgraded box. It's a lot of money.

That's what I'm looking at right now.

Yeah, but I think that's what I would just consider is that... If you're thinking of all those things, this might be the time to do it.

Okay, let's open public comment on this. Sorry, I didn't mean to do that.

I urge you. My name is Todd Greenberg. I urge you not to support this. Seems like it's a nice end run round. thinking that the town's supposedly not responsible, but if people do go after this rule as they went after Berkeley, the town's going to get named in a lawsuit too, and it's going to cost a lot of money.

Now, Barbara's shaking her head, so maybe that's not the case.

I have a few other things I'd like to say. The town says no fiscal impact, but the real fiscal impact is being shifted onto Fairfax households. In difficult older home compliance scenario, the most likely homeowner costs can plausibly reach about $15 million. to $40,000 or more once you include the appliance panel upgrade, rewiring, opening and repairing walls or floors, moving costs, temporary relocation and related work. That total is an inference from the current published cost ranges that back mud itself used. The Air District says that the average incremental upfront cost for the standard heat pump water heater project is about $3,500, but we just heard that Barbara paid a lot more. But actual... Bay Area project costs have ranged as high as $38,000 in difficult cases. If a rental unit is disrupted, lost rent can add several thousand dollars more per month. Fairfax rent data shows average rents in the town are already high. In a town already struggling with affordability, these are not minor costs. Berkeley already lost in federal court over its natural gas restriction, later repealed it. Why should Fairfax take this risk? The DOJ is still suing California cities over similar ordinances right now. You can go to the DOJ website and see this if fairfax later moves from symbolic support to actual local restrictions the town could face substantial legal expenses i mentioned before public money would be better spent on roads street maintenance and infrastructure that actually reduce residents daily costs rather than increasing them this is not no fiscal impact

Thank you. Are there any hands online? Okay. Closing public condiment on that item.

So I'll make a motion that the town council adopt a resolution supporting the Bay Area Air District zero NOx appliance rules, rules 9.4 and 9.6, which promote the transition to zero emission water heaters and furnaces.

I'll second.

We have a motion from Councilmember Kohler and a second from Mayor Hellman. Councilmember Blash? Sure. Councilmember Gierengelli?

No.

Councilmember Kohler? Yes. Vice Mayor Aker?

No.

Mayor Hellman? Yes.

Motion carries. Okay. Unless anyone objects, I'm going to skip Councilmember reports and comments. All right, then. No objections there. We are journeying in memory of John Martin Hauserman, Jr.