Town Council - Regular Meeting

okay i am uh all right everybody try to keep your keep it down thank you we are calling to order the regular meeting of the town of fairfax uh monthly regular meet excuse me may regular meeting today is wednesday may 6th and i'm calling to order our meeting can we get a roll call please

Yes, Mayor. Council Member Blash. Here. Council Member Garangeli.

Still here.

Council Member Kohler. Here. Vice Mayor Ager.

Here.

Mayor Hellman. I'm here. And now if you'll join us for the Pledge of Allegiance.

To the flag. of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Does anyone have any quick questions or items they want?

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda.

Actually, one second, because there was something that I wanted to pull. I thought I did. One second. No, I think not. Okay.

So I'll make a motion to approve the agenda.

We're approving the agenda.

We can pull later, right?

We can pull later.

Yeah. We have a motion from Council Member Kohler to approve the agenda and a second from Council Member Garangeli. Council Member Blash. Yes. Council Member Garangeli.

Yes.

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

Yes. Okay, moving on with the land acknowledgement, the Fairfax Town Council acknowledges that we are located on the unseated 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. So the meeting protocol is that the mayor or presiding officer shall maintain order at the council meetings. Council members share the responsibility of modeling respectful professional conduct to effectively facilitate the meeting and encourage meaningful dialogue. civic participation all participants including council members staff members of the public and remote attendees are expected to engage respectfully profane language personal attacks ridicule discriminatory or harassing contact are not permitted to ensure all voices can be heard disrupted behavior or other actions that interfere with the orderly conduct of the meeting is not permitted during public comment or council deliberations. Participants are now asked to silence their electronic devices. Meeting will adjourn no later than 11 p.m. and at approximately 9.30, the council will review the agenda to determine which remaining items may be continued. So moving on, we have announcements. Any announcements from the dais? Keep it brief. I know we had today was our first farmer's market of the season. I heard it was well attended. I got caught up at home with work, so I wasn't able to be there, but I heard it was wonderful. So really happy it's back. Any other announcements?

Okay, seeing none. Heather, town manager's report? Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to make sure and let people know that our take back event on April 25th collected over 5000 pounds of material and people were also able to pick up their own compost. So that was wonderful. On Friday, we had a hazard tree issue at Perry Park Playground. Consulting arborist Ray Moritz provided a report on a dead red alder tree that was leaning over the playground public works area. Director Kristen Arnold closed the playground immediately for safety and had a biologist check the area quickly so that we could perform that emergency tree removal. And also thanks to Vice Mayor Egger, who provided a photo of a limb of one of the oak trees that also looked precarious. So that was also taken down. And I'm really delighted. to say that on Monday morning when I came back, the playground was open, everything was safe, and really appreciate all of our staff and community members making sure that that dangerous situation did not turn into something worse. Unfortunately, we are going to have to say farewell to the giant sequoia tree at Doc Egger Park, which is diseased. It has a a fungal contagion, and it must eventually be removed. We've had two arborists confirm that it is beyond reviving, and three biologists confirm that no animals would be harmed when that is removed. There's not a date set for that removal yet, but that is to be posted. And then I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware that Fire Station 21 remodeling is well underway. Firefighters will move into their temporary quarters, which is at the community center in mid-May, and then construction on the interior remodel of the fire station will begin shortly thereafter. And lastly, and probably most importantly to most people watching today, this summer season is going to be a season of projects downtown, including the Marin Water Project on Bolinas Road, which you heard about at the March 4th meeting, the Towns Park Road Project, which is just outside of this facility, and then a Ross Valley Sanitary District project which we have asked them to come and present at the June meeting about.

Sorry, Ross Valley Sanitary District is going to present in June?

Yes, that's right. Okay. Yeah. And we'll make sure and put that out in the newsletter and the agenda posts as well. And so I just want to close by saying there will be some inconveniences, of course. But by the fall, Fairfax will have a significantly refreshed infrastructure downtown, which is a very positive thing in the end. Thank you.

Terrific. OK, we are moving on to future agenda items.

Go ahead. So some of you have followed that there's a property in Fairfax Sky Ranch Knolls that would be an open space property. The town is not being asked to acquire that property, but We will be looking at, I would like to bring in June, donation using Measure A funds as well as funds in the Fairfax Open Space Committee budget to bring that up. Right now, the San Anselmo Open Space Committee is donating $800,000. And so ours would be a much, much smaller donation, and it would be in Fairfax. But we don't have to own it, which is great. And so I'll be bringing that, and I've confirmed with the Open Space Committee this is what they want to do. And I know Frank is their liaison and was at the last meeting. Thank you.

Okay, so I presume we have support for that from the majority of us.

I'll make a comment on the manager's report, if I may. You know, to buy a slab of redwood... three inches thick and maybe three and a half feet by five feet, runs about $500. That's a giant sequoia down there, and it is a large sequoia, and it looks like we might be able to get some slabs out of that. So whoever takes the tree down, there are a lot of tree removal companies that will slice them down, slice them up, and we could get a couple of slabs out of it possibly. So let's see if that's possible with whoever happens to be, ends up removing the tree.

Okay, we'll take that offline. But Heather, one thing we talked about the last couple of meetings in your manager report also was the park signs. Could you give us a time update on that? I know they've been designed and what the production status and installation date is.

Yes, Mayor. They are at the county sign shop. And as soon as we get them back, then we'll be able to install them. So it should be very shortly. OK, terrific.

One more while we're talking. Quick, quick, very quick. Just a question. We were going to put out an RFP for for a new auditor. And I'm wondering if that RFP has been put out yet.

Yes, I've drafted that RFP, and we hope to release that in the next few days. And then once we get replies, we'll convene the finance committee to evaluate the proposals and then bring that forward to the council to make the final selection.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much. So now we're moving on to the open time for public expression and this is the time when members of the public can speak on items that are not on the agenda. What we typically do is a lot 30 minutes for this, and if the number of speakers wishing to speak exceeds that, we tend to put it at the end of the meeting and continue it from there. So I'd like to get a show of hands who would like to speak at open time right now, because I would consider extending the 30 minutes so we can all have the opportunity. I know there's a group here, and I'm really excited to see the young members of our community expressing or using their First Amendment rights as tenant of our democracy. I want to welcome you here. Your voice matters, and it's really exciting to see you participate in this way. So with that, I'm going to read you some instructions about the public expression in the open time. So this is a time for the public to address the council on matters not listed on the agenda. Each speaker is limited to two minutes. The council cannot take action or discuss items not on the agenda. So if you have a question for us, we won't answer you. And that doesn't mean we didn't hear you or that we don't respect you. It's just not a back and forth. It's a one way. If there are more speakers after 30 minutes, open time will continue to the end of the agenda. So with that, for speaker, you can press the button and you can lower the microphone to your height.

Please go ahead. Hi, my name is Megan. I'm a mom at Nanner School. And we have some young people here who are very excited to be part of this process. Thank you guys for being such a warm welcome to what may be their first experience with this type of politics. So I'm going to now pass the microphone to my daughter.

Hi, my name is Evelyn, and I'm in second grade at Manor School. I love my school, but I'm not old enough to vote, so I don't get a say on if it stays open or not. Please vote yes on H so all of the public schools here can stay open. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Alicia Solis. I'm a mom of a first grader, Sarah Skye at Manor, and I'm also the school psychologist at White Hill. We're also homeowners here in Fairfax.

I love my school and I love my teachers. It's important to vote yes on AIDS. I hope it passes. Thank you. I love my school, so I want to make sure everybody's supporting it. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, council members. My name is Susan Adams. I reside on Tamil Pious Road in Fairfax. I'm here to compliment our town police department and to state specifically my appreciation for its community service in which it provides home security checks by the officers while we are away from home. As you well know, this is a particularly remarkable service to me. I don't know of other towns that provide this. So while we are away from home for any length of time, the police department will perform perimeter checks of our homes for security for disturbances. My husband and I used this service several times in the past, but I'm here tonight particularly because I was away for a fairly lengthy period of time visiting family in a different country. And it was extremely reassuring to know that while I was away, the police officers there. I ran into the one of the last day when I first arrived home the day that I arrived. And there he was finishing up his report. And and one of my neighbors who happens to walk my near my house specifically said, and I saw them twice. And it was so impressive. So anyway, there's lots, lots of kudos to our police department. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Parker Clifford. I go to White Hill. I used to go to Manor School, and some of our beloved schools would be closing. My little sibling goes to Manor, and so it would be really sad if that school closed just because she wouldn't have that experience.

Thank you.

My name is Grace. I went to Manor Elementary. Now I'm in White Hill. I have a little brother who goes to Manor and I think it's really important for him to have a good education. So I want the schools to stay open. Thank you. Hi, my name is Sienna Rubino. I go to White Hill and we really want our schools to stay open because like my friend said, all of our little siblings, just we want them to have a good education. We really care for them.

Thank you.

Hi, Nikki Clifford, parent of Parker over here. And really, these kids came up here because of this excellent schooling and their confidence in themselves is from RVSD. And this one here is going to be the next one going through. So we want to keep the schools open. We want to keep it as a safe, wonderful place that can grow these beautiful minds.

Do you want to say something, anyone?

I forgot. Say, I'm a kindergarten at Manor, and I love my school.

I'm at kindergarten in Manor, and I love my school. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mark Bell, Fairfax. What grade are you in? I shouldn't have dropped out. I just wanted to complete a thought that I had brought up when we were talking about chain stores. And I had contacted an attorney who said that he could provide Fairfax with several chain store or anti-chain store ordinances to protect the integrity of the small town character of Fairfax. and make sure that it met all state laws as currently are written. He quoted a price of $2,400, which he said would be negotiable because he loves Fairfax so much. There was a comment from Council Member Blash that his rates were totally out of line. But you know, when you look at our attorney's charge, Then she goes to BBK, gets her specialist, who I'm sure is more than she charges, and then her override, and then staff time, and then our planning director putting together his PowerPoint presentation. I bet we've already gone past $2,400 easily. It would be nice if I could get an answer to a question, but since I don't ever seem to get answers, I'll answer it myself. Well, Mark, we don't require our attorney to give us itemized billing for the services she provides. She just gives us an invoice and we pay it. So there's the answer to my question.

Thank you.

Without an education, I don't know what we have. So got to support the schools. But on the other hand, how do we support the kids and teach them for who and what they are rather than trying to stuff them into a box that we expect them to sit in? How do we foster creativity and actually feed a whole kid? Anyway. I'm here to ask you guys about the parklets, especially the ones at Bolinas Road and Broadway. The road is narrow. It's kind of dangerous on a bike. In front of Fradalizio's, there's like a... lemon tree or something that sticks out. They'll grab you in the arm if you're riding by. I've almost been squished numerous times by people's cars along Bolinas Road lined up trying to get through on a bicycle. Cars are getting bigger. I don't know what happened with conserving anything. We're trying to save the world with electric cars and consuming bigger, bigger, bigger, and nobody knows where their side view mirrors are, so I don't know quite where that is. Anyway, I don't really like the parklets. It's public use of it's private use of public property and parking is at a premium in this town anyway i don't really like them also a lot of the parklets have speakers in music that's noise pollution i mean i kind of like walking around listening to the trees and the birds and yeah there's traffic but i don't really want to be subjected to somebody's choice of music downtown walking around i mean that's it's noise pollution that's all it is um Last thing is actually, well, there's lots of things, but it'd be really nice to repave the roads and do something with them or take them back to dirt. because dirt roads are actually better than paved roads with big holes in them. The last thing is just pebbles on the roads. I know that the street sweepers have a hard time with the small pebbles, but in terms of the bike path, a lot of the bike paths to Francis Drake and other places are filled with these small pebbles, nice for flat tires and also nice for sliding out. It's like all the cars kick them off from the road. It'd be nice if those could get cleaned up somehow.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, council and viewers, news reporters. This is Todd Greenberg broadcasting to you live from Fairfax, California, where once again, democracy is being denied and transparency does not happen. It's so good to see Sierra back here. because he's been discouraged from speaking previously. I just spoke to somebody else who used to attend these meetings on the way over here. And she said, I can't handle it anymore. They frustrate me so much. That is something that frustrates a lot of people. You recognize groups, and don't recognize other groups. This is National Small Business Week. I see nothing in the meeting agenda recognizing the people who are paying the bulk of the taxes and bringing in your sales tax here, and yet you don't support the Chamber of Commerce the way that you should. I'd like to ask you to pull multiple agenda items in the consent calendar this evening. including there is no mention of a 35-person citizen petition that was submitted that pertains to consent calendar item 4J. I'd like that to be pulled for discussion along with the financial statement and report because there are still no financial controls in place for the town attorney who is on track to spend over a million dollars this year How can you ask to raise more taxes? How can you ask any of us to pay more taxes when you yourselves will not commit to reasonable measured budget cuts where necessary? All you want to do is take more money from us.

Let me just remind people this is open time for things that are not on the agenda, and the consent calendar is on the agenda. So thank you. Go ahead.

How you doing? First thing I'd like to say is I would like to see the council support even with their own rules when 35 people get together and submit a request to put something on the town agenda that it's received well and at least given the public an opportunity to hear it. 1, 2 for Barbara's comment about the open space. Good job about acquiring property for open space. But I'd like to see our town maintain that process through the Fairfax open space committee. So it's not opaque as the wall property was through the Marin open space trust, which is a private 501. So, when we made requests to find out the finances and stuff. They didn't want to be forthcoming. And then when we specifically started questioning how much commissions different people were making, they then provide back to town sixty six thousand dollars and required Fairfax to sign a letter of indemnification to protect them in case something comes up. That really doesn't sound good. But I think the town, if we're spending our public funds for public property, open space, we should keep it as open space. Another example is the property on Forest Avenue that this town bought for a safety egress, for a fire egress, and for open space. But then one member on the council specifically pushed that for the agenda to be workforce housing. That would kill all the people on Forest Avenue, possibly literally if there's a big fire. There's no egress there. 10 workforce units probably provide 20 more cars and block that street. So I think for all property that's required for our town, we should come up with some provision that it remains public property, that it stays as open space, and it's never then converted for a short-term gain for some other project. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Still on. As everyone on the council is aware, the town clerk was sued recently in her capacity as the elections authority for the town of Fairfax. And while that lawsuit was largely a failure on legal grounds, it did succeed as a lawfare attack. It did succeed in costing the town money, costing time, creating a nuisance, bullying people. And that in the future may lead other towns to be a little bit more amenable to costs, demands for changes in ballot language or arguments, which I find very unfortunate. But there's something else that that lawsuit achieved, which was to get the lawyer to agree that the elected clerk, while they can delegate their duties to the staff clerk, cannot delegate their authority. And in light of the fact that there is no real definition in the Fairfax Town Code of exactly what the responsibilities are for the town clerk, it's left up to the California Government Code. And that leaves a lot of room for, let's say, a maximalist person who gets themselves elected as town clerk to define things that they don't want to delegate to the town, the way that they might use their authority over elections, over... My understanding is also business licenses. There are plenty of areas where somebody who decides that they want to use the power in a way that they don't want to delegate could cause some problems for the town. So I think it's probably a good point now that we're having these very contentious elections to start looking at where the vulnerabilities are and maybe create a section of the Fairfax Town Code that more clearly defines the role of the elected clerk, the role of the staff clerk, and what is actually being delegated. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Do I have to push the button?

Thanks. Hi, I'm Mina with the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce. I just want to thank the Town Council for the back and forth communication we've been having about supporting the Chamber in different ways. Over the last several years, the Chamber has steadily increased and expanded its role through events and merchant coordination and business communication and outreach. and mostly through volunteer labor and very limited resources. At the same time, businesses are under increasing pressure from rising costs, online competition, softer consumer spending, and now months of upcoming construction impacts downtown. The Chamber's already coordinating with Mervyn Water because businesses are concerned about visibility, parking, customer access, foot traffic, water shutoffs during this time, and their concerns are legitimate. So I would like to ask the Town Council to take that into consideration. They can survive small, short disruptions, but what becomes dangerous is prolonged inconvenience. combined with changing customer habits. So when people begin avoiding downtown because it feels difficult, parking feels frustrating, the experience becomes less enjoyable during construction with dust and noise, those habits can stick even after the project ends. So, you know, just like in a good day and a bad day, it really affects the businesses and whether people come out to go to restaurants or do those kinds of things. I think this is really important for Fairfax to think proactively about how we can support the long term health, visibility and resilience of our small business community, especially during periods of disruption. So thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker.

Good evening, Council, Larry Bragman, Hickory Road, and I'm here tonight on behalf, and I should say as the chair of the Fairfax Festival Committee. I'm here tonight to request additional support for this year's event, Beyond the Town's In-Kind Contributions. In preparing for this year's festival, I need to confirm our arrangement with Marin Sanitary and And in researching the franchise agreement, I found that beginning in 2019, it includes a zero waste event fee of $10,000 a year. And this is separate and different from Zero Waste Marin, which in the past has made grants to the festival. At the time the franchise agreement was passed in 2019, The manager's report specifically recommended that these funds be used to support Conservation Corps North Bay's waste and recycling services. Allocating the funds this year in this way would not only fulfill the original intent of the franchise agreement, It would also directly support CCNB's youth training mission while helping the festival continue to meet its sustainability goals. Given that alignment, it feels like an appropriate use of the funds, and I'm here to respectfully ask that it be considered as part of this year's festival support. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other members of the public wish to speak in the room? Now would be the time to raise your hand if you're on the Zoom.

There are four raised hands on Zoom. The first speaker is Berthe, followed by Deborah. Berthe, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself. Berthe, excuse me.

Hi, it's actually Valerie. I'm Berthe's wife. Good to see everybody. Thank you very much. To follow up on Michael's concern about public safety and evacuation. I live on Dominga Avenue, been here since 1990. We love and support the farmers market, but as always, our street is heavily impacted. And already it is all of the parking places are gone. And renters on our block are circling and circling and circling as they always have to when they come home because there's another event downtown. I'm really hoping that at some point the council can address the parking concerns of those of us downtown. Bolinas is nearly impossible to get through at this time of day, especially when there's an event like that. Well, the only other way to get out of town, for those of us who live on the south side or downtown, is on Dominga. And Dominga has a very sharp ending to it before it turns into another street. So it's not the best evacuation corridor. If we were to have a fire during an event, I don't know how we would get out. So burning in place is not something that I look forward to doing in my life. So if you could address this at some point, we would really, the residents would really appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Deborah, followed by Jess.

Deborah, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Thank you. Deborah Benson, Cascade Drive, Fairfax. Thank you, Council Members, for your needs. I wanted to speak to the Measure J, upcoming sales tax measure on the ballot. It seems to It appears that the revenue from the sales tax increase will be going to fire and police, but it's my understanding that it actually goes to the general fund, which can be spent on anything that the town staff and the town council chooses to spend it on. Also, I don't believe any other municipality has a sales tax measure without a sunset, so I would appreciate if... If it were moved to, I know it's impossible now, but I would have appreciated it coming up at the November election with the sales tax sunset. I agree with Sierra about the parklets. They were allowed during COVID. I think that time has passed. Most other municipalities and San Francisco have eliminated them. Bolinas Road is a very narrow road. We're talking later on in the agenda about bicycle and pedestrian safety. I think that they detract from that, and I think it's time to let the parklets go. The third thing I want to say is the gong. There are people who do sound bathing. It's something that calms you. It's something that is enhancing your health and well-being. That gong is so scary that if I'm watching or involved in the meeting at home, when the gong goes off, my little dog runs out the back door. I would love to have a softer gong. I think it sets people off. Thank you. Thanks, Deb.

The next speaker is Jess, followed by Kathy. Jess, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Hi, this is Jess Lerner. I wanted to follow up. I had sent the council a number of emails regarding the giant sequoia tree in Doc Edgar Park, and I just wanted to make a comment about it tonight. So I recently sent an email with a list of requests, and the number one request was, I've made and others have wanted is to postpone any major cutting of this tree until August 1st when nesting season is over and when migration season for birds have passed. We have a lot of nesting birds right now. is also habitat for Northern Spotted Owls. And to protect all the birds and their habitat is very important. We lose so many birds every year. It doesn't look good. Even if we think we have a lot of birds in our yards and we see so many of them, we're losing huge numbers of birds all the time. including a billion every year just to habitat disruption and loss. So protecting those birds right now is really key from the disruption of cutting a gigantic tree like that. As you probably all know, many of us love the tree. If there is a way that we can possibly work with it to save it, that would be wonderful. And if there isn't just waiting until after August 1st, if it is stable and structurally sound is the best plan. And if there's any limb cutting to be done, just requesting a protocol level biological survey because a regular normal biological survey is something where someone can just walk around and say, I don't see any nests and it's fine. But the protocol level means they really go out there different times of day checking for what's going on in the habitat and making sure the nesting birds are protected. So I sent a lot more in the emails to you, and you should be able to see that. And I hope you'll take all of that into consideration and bring that to Public Works as well. Thank you so much.

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

Hi, my name's Kathy Flores, Fairfax. And it actually has to do with the sequoia tree that was cut down last year, erroneously by, I think, the core people. And I believe the town got about $24,000 for it. We still haven't even replaced it. I don't know what's going on with that. I know we can't replace it with one of its kind that's so large, but something should be done. I think there's a tree ordinance, unless that no longer exists. I don't know. And then I was going to talk about whatever tree that they're supposed to cut down now, the exact same thing. If one is cut down... had to have it replaced. That was a tree ordinance. Just wondering when that will happen. I sent a email a month, about five weeks ago, to Linda Kenton, and she never replied. Sent it again, she never replied. I sent it then to Linda Kenton, Kristen Arnold, and the whole town council, maybe even Heather's included, still never heard back. These are simple questions. It was like, what are we going to do? What's going on? This is not a difficult question to answer. So I would really appreciate it when people get an email. I know you're busy, but these are simple to do, to answer. Thank you.

Thank you. Any more hands? Okay, let's close open time and move on to the regular agenda. Item number one is our public review of the proposed fiscal year budget for this upcoming year, 26-27, and the proposed operating and capital improvement budget. And Mr. Vibrat, please take it away.

Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight, we're reviewing the proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Last meeting, we had the first preview of the draft budget for fiscal 27, and that followed a budget hearing that we'd had a couple of weeks before that, an extensive budget workshop that had department presentations. Based on the comments that we received at the workshop, and subsequent updates, information that we used to prepare the budget. We've assembled the proposed budget from which we distributed last Friday for this meeting. This document was assembled from the budget requests that were submitted by the departments and our initial projections from outside sources. Management trimmed approximately $1.2 million from these requests to prepare a balanced budget that meets the desired reserve levels that the council has passed and preserve essential programs. Many of the projections that we used were based on sources that are only preliminary in their own projections. So this budget is a work in process and we will continue to fine tune the numbers and projections as more information becomes available. and present a revised budget document at the next meeting. That will be the adopted budget and that will be at the June 3rd meeting and we'll incorporate any input from this hearing as well as updates from other projections that we may come across. Slide 2. So let's start with an overview of the budget. This slide shows all of the income sources for the general fund. We have approximately $15.9 million that we're accounting for here. The biggest source of revenues for the town are the property taxes, and this year we expect to receive about $9 million, which is about 56.8% of the projected general fund sources of funds. This year, we are estimating an increase of about 3.5% based on projections from the county. And this includes our share of the basic 1% tax, which is $6.5 million, and various other property taxes such as storm runoff and pension obligation. So sales taxes are our next biggest source. Sales tax is bringing in about 14% of our general fund revenue. The projections from Avenue. I anticipate a slight decrease in our Bradley Burns 1% tax this year and a slight increase to the district tax, which is Measure C, over what we budgeted last year. And, of course, this may change as economic conditions change. Service charges, such as permits, recreation fees, and dispatch charges, represent about 6.5% of our general fund revenue. And Measure F transfers account for about 5%. Other taxes and fees provide about 16.4% of our revenues. Finally, we have the drawdown on surplus revenues from the prior year of about $61,750, which is about 1.3% of the total sources. And we're projecting that we'll begin the fiscal year this year with a surplus of about 27.4%, which is slightly above the required reserve of 25%. So I'd like to skip this next slide, which is slide three for a moment, and go to slide four. This slide shows... our biggest source of income, which is the property taxes. Under Prop 13 that passed in 1978, assessed valuation is primarily the base of how properties are being assessed, rather Assessed valuation is based on how much a property was purchased for plus improvements after that date in most cases. The basic tax that's charged is 1% of the assessed valuation. And this tax can be increased by up to 2% per year based on CPI. And also, it can go down based on periods of recession, such as we had back in about, was it about 2014 or 2013, that we had a decrease in property values. And so the assessed evaluation can increase or decline. In addition, voters may approve additional taxes, which are either ad valorem taxes, which are based also on the assessed valuation, or parcel taxes, which have a value that may be set or changed based on predetermined formulas. In Fairfax, we have two ad valorem taxes. I've highlighted those in yellow. That's the pension tax, which is about 0.091% per $100 of assessed valuation, and the Measure K road bonds, which will be retired in the next couple of years. We also have two parcel taxes. That's the runoff tax for the storm drain maintenance, which is about $15 for most residences. And the special purpose tax, which is currently about $225 per residential unit or business. And that funds 24-7 fire and police access, recreation and senior programs, and some matching funds for grants. All told, the town receives 19 to 21% of the property taxes that you pay. That's what we received back. I paid over to the county. We get back about 19 to 21% of the property tax on residential and commercial property within the town limits, depending on what the assessed valuation is of the property. The rest is distributed to other agencies. The schools get about 50% of the property tax. The county gets about 20%, so they get about the same amount that we do. And then there's the library and the sanitary district and other special districts that get part of the property tax proceeds.

Just a quick question. Sorry to interrupt you. I know you're on a roll here. The last meeting I had asked for how much interest we paid on Measure K over the many years since 1999. Do you have that amount?

Are you asking about the savings that we've had?

No, Measure K, how much interest we have paid on the original whatever it was, $6.8 million. And the payoff for the last two is going to be August 2027. I had asked at the last meeting if we could have an estimate of how much interest we will have paid on the $6.8 million that was Measure K originally over the years. Yeah, we need that number.

I can get that number. I have it tonight.

If you could provide that. Just send it to the council. Send it to the council and maybe at the next meeting bring it up.

Each of the bond issues has a bond issue schedule which decales all of the interest.

We understand that, but we want a dollar figure. I can give that. We need it more simply than you.

And just... want to clarify this wheel, this disc, which I've never seen before. This is a distribution. Yes. To clarify when we say, oh, property tax is our main source of revenue. The property taxes that people see on their statements doesn't all direct to Fairfax.

Correct.

This is the distribution of

This is the distribution of the total amount that people pay.

Yeah.

And the amount that's on the green portion of the disc that's up there is the amount that Fairfax receives.

Right. So when you do another iteration of this, when we take action, could you retitle that slide to distribution of property tax? I think that would be.

Yeah. Below property tax, it says property tax distribution, the basic tax.

In the table? I'm talking about the title of the slide.

The circle says distribution.

We can do it on the slide. And I would just ask staff, I mean, I know that these are, when we get copies, if we can get copies that are a little bigger, because even with my glasses, I can't read a lot of it.

Okay.

Please proceed. Thank you, Michael.

Okay, so all told the town receives about 19 to 21% of the property tax paid. In dollars, the town gets about $2,100. of the 11,000 paid annually for a median value residence. So if you have a median residence in town, they're paying about $11,000 of which the town gets $2,100. So that's on a median value residence of about $650,000 of assessed valuation. And we receive about $3,800 of the $18,000 paid for a new home with a median value or valuation of $1.2 million. So there's two columns there that break out how much goes to the town and how much goes to other purposes there. So the next slide. So this slide shows the sales taxes, which are our second largest revenue, accounting for about 14% of the town's revenues.

Can I ask a question, please? Thank you. Before you get into sales tax, going back to property tax, has there been a calculation done on what kind of property tax increase will happen in the future when we get... the School Street Plaza built.

Okay. Our projection for this year of property tax increase is about 3.5%. That doesn't include anything having to do with School Street because the property tax doesn't change until they actually start construction. We won't know what the construction or what the amount of property tax being raised from that is because we don't know what the valuation of what their building is. It's going to be based on primarily when they pull permits and put values to the construction. That would define that.

Has there been a projection when they do do that? There must be some person that knows they're going to build this building and Janet, can you go pine on that? It's eight stories. It's 300 units. I know it's whatever. The point being is we should know what's coming in from that building. And by the way, they're all rentals from what I understand, right? So how's that compared to if those were actually units you could purchase?

It wouldn't make a difference whether it was a rental or a purchased house. It's based on the valuation of the building. So if the building is $20 million, then we will have a property tax of 1% of that, and we'll receive a distribution of about 20% of that total each year. And it'll go up as... 18% of the 1%.

Yes. Janet, when does that get... Just hypothetically, what is the timing of when we would know that?

When they come in for a building permit. And I don't know that when they're coming in. Right. But that's when they have to provide the value?

Yeah, that's when we would know. Okay. And then from there, it would be, when is it assessed?

Well, it has to be completed.

So the project has to be completed and okay.

And then it's that of occupancy. It's that next tax cycle thereafter, basically. Depends on when it hits in the cycle.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks for the question, Mike. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense.

Your microphone. It makes sense. That seems like a significant amount of money that might come into the town, so we should be doing some math and some homework and talk to somebody and figure out. There's other examples out there of what those things are worth.

But we're not going to plug it into the next fiscal year. Who knows what's going to happen? I mean, that's no.

Sorry to interrupt, but I would assume that we're not going to start receiving our portion of that property tax until that is, you know, on the county's books, which would be after construction, I believe. Right. Okay.

Thank you. Go ahead, Michael.

So this next slide shows sales taxes. It's our second largest revenue source, which is about 14% of the town's revenue. And the sales tax is a tax on purchases, but it's also on use. It's also a use tax. So if an item is purchased out of state, a sales tax can be owed because it's used in California. So if you buy a car in Oregon, maybe to get out of paying a sales tax and then drive it into California and register it, you'll pay a California tax if it's less than a year old. Then this may also apply, a district tax may also apply on purchases such as a car or internet purchases if it's used in a different locale which has a district tax. So currently if a person in Fairfax goes to San Rafael and buys a vehicle, the town is going to get a portion of sales tax based on the fact that it's used in Fairfax. So it's important to know that our sales tax is both a sales and a use tax.

But at least you told me several years ago that because we have a district tax, that's the reason why we capture that. So let's be clear. The Measure C is why we are able to capture that. Without Measure C and potentially the renewal, we wouldn't capture that use. Right.

Yeah, that's a district tax. Measure C is. So the sales tax rate in Fairfax is 9%. Sales tax rates vary from city to city. In Marin County, most agencies are at 9.25% except for Fairfax and the unincorporated areas of the county, town of Tiburon and Belvedere. Both paid.

So, Mike, on this slide, you have Corte Madera at 9% and Corte Madera at 9.25%.

There are portions of Corte Madera, I guess.

Is that unincorporated?

When I looked it up, there is a portion of Corte Madera that is lumped in with Larkspur. So, in any case.

Oh, so that's why it's kind of odd? Both, yeah.

But thank you for pointing that out. I can make that more clear in the future. Marin's cap is 9.25%, but interestingly enough, other counties may have higher rates. In Sonoma County, as an example, the tax is as high as 10% in Santa Rosa and 10.5% in Sebastopol. So if you go buy a meal in Sebastopol, you'll pay 10.5% sales tax. So the sales tax collected by the state from businesses is collected by the by the state from businesses. And the townshare is distributed to us monthly after the state and other participating agencies take their 80 percent share. The town receives 11.1% of the sales tax collected for the basic tax, which is called the Bradley Burns tax. And that's about a dollar for every $100 sale on which a consumer pays a 9% tax currently in Fairfax. We also have a three-quarter cent sales tax. which is a district tax, that's the measure C, which is about 8.3% of the total sales collected. So that's about 75 cents on every $100 sale. So it's interesting to note that if a sales tax increased by a quarter percent, that $100 dinner at Sorella's would cost an additional 25 cents in sales tax. So can we go back to slide three? So I've gone over the revenues for the town. The use of funds is called appropriations in budgetary terms. That really is anticipated expenses. And in this budget, it's about $15.9 million. The biggest use of funds is for public safety. which is 61.6% of the budget. Police is nearly $5.5 million, and fire is about $4.3 million. Council administration account for about 11.6% of the budget, and this includes the town manager, town clerk, personnel department, attorney, treasurer, audit, elections, finance, and the environmental departments. Planning and building is about 8.3%. Public works is about 6.9% of our budget. Parks, facilities, and the recreation and community services combined total 4.7%. And then we have nine departmental expenses, which is about 7%. Next slide, please.

Mike, I actually had a question on the sales, back to the sales tax, if you don't mind. Could you go? Yeah. Okay. Just for the sake of clarity and transparency for members of the public watching this. So can we just go line by line on the sales tax distribution for Fairfax, that top middle? So we've got the state at 6%. Bradley Burns is 1%. Measure C is the one that is expiring and potentially being renewed with Measure J with an increase of 0.25. The county transport, could you... Elaborate on what that is. And TAM, I presume, is Transportation Authority of Marin. Measure A Parks, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. And the smart is a smart train?

Smart train.

Okay. So could you just elaborate on what county transport is?

Transportation? So how is that different from TAM? Is that measure A? I'm not sure.

No, that's, is that the first? So TAM had first measure A and then measure AA. Is that the difference? I don't think so. I think that's something different.

Yeah, it gets somewhat convoluted when you realize that the state collects some monies that it does pass down by way of the safety tax, 172, etc. So it's not a... If I showed you the true graph of how it is, it's very difficult to understand. I tried to simplify it here by pointing out the fact that the town gets 1% and 3.25% of the 9% sales tax that's charged and that the state gets 6% and that other agencies get the remaining money.

Okay. Yeah, so for the next round, could we get clarification on that line item in addition to some of the other things that we've raised?

Okay.

Okay, great. Thank you.

By category, appropriations for salaries and benefits total about 43.8%. Then there's the contract with the Ross Valley Fire Department, which is about 26.9% of our budget. Then there's other operating expenses, which are about 18.9%. And other contract services, which make up about 9% of the budget, which includes contractors, including building and plan checkers, public works, engineers, the town attorney, and others. So the biggest takeaway from this slide is that we do have other contract services. The biggest one is the Ross Valley Fire. But of the others, that's 9% of the total expenditures. So that puts the use of contractors into perspective there. The next slide. So this year, the appropriations show about a 5.5% increase over last year. Public safety expenditures are up by about 10.2%. of which fire is 16.5%, 604,600, mostly because we're including the debt service on the fire station improvements that are going to be happening this year. And then the police has a 5.6% increase of about 292,300. Interestingly, all other appropriations are down by 54,000 from the prior year budget. Next slide, slide six. So this is an overview of the general funds. I went into this quite a bit last time, so I'm not going to go into as much depth this time unless people ask questions. Basically, our general funds is made up of about eight different funds. Some are for spending discretionary monies. That's basically the O-1 general fund. And then we have others that collect revenues from specific sources, such as the building and planning fund and the retirement fund. And we also have a number of reserve funds, which are for maintenance of and replacement of town assets, including vehicles, facilities, and roads. We project that we're going to start the general funds balance with almost $4 million when we reach July 1st of this year coming up, two months from now. And this compares with the starting balance for fiscal year 25 of $4.7 million. This represents a reserve of about 27.3%, which is the percentage of appropriations over fund balance. That's how we calculate a reserve balance. the council has a minimum reserve policy of 25%, and we project that we will end this upcoming fiscal year with an ending reserve fund balance of 25.5%. So not a lot of wiggle room there, but it is above what we want to have as a minimum balance. So as you can see, this year we project revenue of about $14.6 million. Appropriations of about $15.9 million and net transfers in of about $1.3 million. With an ending projected fund balance of about $4.1 million, which is an increase to the general fund of about $61,750. That's your play money. That's how much you can play with until you reach that magic number of 25%.

You're saying the 61K is the reserves?

It's the amount that's above the 25%.

Hold on, I'm not done. The 0.5% is the $61,000. Okay. Go ahead, Mike.

Thank you. The average reserve fund by city is what?

That varies based on what kinds of revenues are underlying it. As an example, when I worked in Yountville, three-quarters of the revenues of the town was transient occupancy tax. So there's a lot of eggs in one basket there. They decided to have a much higher reserve balance because they had to protect themselves if the transient occupancy tax was to be hit in any way, such as it happened when the fires went through there. uh san anselmo i understand has a fund balance that's only a reserve fund balance that's only about five percent uh i would have to check that but that's what i recall hearing uh 25 is a is a good balance uh it it represents about uh three months of if we didn't have any revenues for three months we'd be able to carry ourselves for that how much is that in dollars The reserve? 25%.

Well, the 25 and a half, which you'll be at.

$4 million. It's $4 million. Yeah.

And...

I just want to make a comment. Sure. I think we should look at what San Anselmo is doing in other cities that are similar to ours and consider using some of that money to...

use it for areas we need to use it in right mike when you say similar do you mean like because they are actually pretty different in terms of their revenue sources and so so do you mean similar in terms of their i think they're somewhat similar to ours they have well they have

Property taxes and sales tax, mostly. They don't have a lot of hotels in Mississippi.

Let's not get into it.

One comment that I would make on this.

Yeah.

is that because we have $4 million, we're able to make it through the end of December without borrowing money. It used to be 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I came here, that we didn't have a lot of extra money in our reserves. And we went through TRANS, which are tax revenue anticipation notes, and the borrowing from city of Tiburon and borrowing from the county in order to make it through December.

Yikes.

Okay. By having $4 million in our reserves, we don't have to borrow to make it through December. So, yes, we can draw down on reserves, but it's going to leave you on a cash flow basis in a situation where you have to borrow.

Hold on a second.

That begs another question. Thank you. So how much did you borrow? $4 million? Or what if you drew down $1 million? Back in those days? You had three left. Wow. So what's the magic number that you don't need to borrow money?

There's no legal requirement. As I understand it, I remember from going to Cal cities, the recommendation is 25% in terms of their finance tax. Like I said, recommendation.

That's right, Mayor. So the GFOA, which is Government Finance Officers Association, recommends about 23 percent to months of carrying capacity, if you will.

So we're conservative, which. Yeah. And can you, I mean, clarify, so this whole thing about borrowing so we can make it through December is related to the fact that we receive tranches of tax funds so that we don't get it all at once. We don't just have it in the bank to spend down. We have to watch when we actually receive it. And can you remind us when we get those tranches?

Our expenses are pretty linear. You have personnel. You're going to have a million dollars of expenses every month because of the nature of the bills and the nature of the expenses for the town. We've just received our April tranche of property taxes. We're not going to receive another tranche of property taxes until next December. So we are going to be negative each month because the revenues that we're projecting here are for the year. But month by month, we have probably only three months out of the year that we actually have more revenues than we have expenses. And that's just the nature of the cash flow.

Yeah. And I just want to emphasize that I guess I'm pretty darn conservative. And I have talked to a couple of town managers in other towns, one in particular that has very low reserves, where they've been considering RIFs. So, you know, it may sound like you have plain money. but you really don't. And I don't want to be here at a time where we say, let's draw down those reserves. And then we're in sore straits when we have roads collapse and things that we can't pay for. And we have roads collapse every year, right?

Well, and we've had two sinkholes in the last three years. We've had at least three road slides so this is what exactly I mean it's like a rainy day it's for it's for that and I you know we've got old infrastructure so I don't we're not deliberating this right now we're trying to let you get through your presentation we can we can deliberate more when it's time to take action on how conservative we want to be with this reserve I'm

But thank you for those questions, because it does bring up issues that I think need to be.

Well, thank you for adding color to it. And as I'm keeping a list of all the questions. So if you if you do want to go back and potentially provide a comparative analysis on San and Salma, whoever else might be considered similar to us as far as what they're if they have a policy on reserve limits, ours is twenty five. That would be helpful. Thank you.

So the next few slides, I'm going to turn over to Heather.

OK, great. Thank you. Well, first, we wanted to point out this is our third presentation on the budget, and there will be one more when we hope you adopt the budget in June. But just to make it easier for you to find the specific details that we're discussing, so we've listed the departments and then the fund numbers, which appear at the top of the page. and then the budget pages. So you can find those quickly. So I hope that's helpful. And then I'll go to the next slide. In the budget workshop, which was essentially a full day of your concentration on the budget, we had each of the departments present their budget. And as you recall, I asked the departments this year and this year only, I hope, to prepare the regular budget, what I call the budget A, which is consistent with what we have been doing, the services that people expect, and the commitments that we have. Nothing extra, nothing big and over, but just keep it the same in terms of services. and give me that A budget. And then I also asked them for what I called B budget, the worst case scenario. If we lost the sales tax, then we would potentially need to cut about 10%. And so I wanted to make sure that every department, every department head could unfortunately go through that very painful process of looking at what would actually have to be cut in order to keep us solvent in that case? So for PD in Budget A, you know, this is keeping the same – Their budget A that you see in the packet preserves all of the staff that they currently have. They're currently fully staffed minus medical issues. And there are MOUs with the labor group. And so there are cost of living increases. That increases the cost. And then a little bit on supplies. If they were to have to talk about Budget B, which would be a 10% cut, and that would be just because no sales tax, they would need to cut four FTEs, so four officers. They would also be unable to support special events and other things. And because they're top... And because they are the largest slice of that budget pie at over $5 million, the amount that would be saved, that 10%, is over $500,000. So going to planning and building, when they preserve their current work and current positions, And actually, there's been one retirement and there's one more planned. So there's a couple of open positions right now. But assuming that those get filled, they stay about the same. If they were to cut 10 percent, they would eliminate one of those positions. They would eliminate the short term rental position. program, which would also eliminate revenues that go with that, the support that they've been providing to the BPAC and other grants that they've been able to get. In the Department of Environment and Climate, this is already a shared position. So we house that position and we invoice the city of San or the town of San Anselmo for half of all the expenses. for that position. Um, and, uh, in the budget that's before you, that would be preserved and they would continue to do the, um, required compliance activities for, um, recycling in California. The, um, recycling laws laws are quite strict and also continue to keep up on the climate action plan. Um, if they were to cut 10%, again, based on, um, lack of sales taxes, that would eliminate the $20,000 that we've allocated as a match for $100,000 grant that we've recently gotten. So we wouldn't be able to access that $100,000, which is slated to update the HVAC in the police department and town hall And those would be all electric. And in police department, that system is well past its expected life.

I have a question about some of these cuts. So this is related to the budget cuts. that we would need to proceed with should Measure J not pass. And so did you, Michael, did you actually flow this through? So it's not just cost cut, but in some cases, like you're saying, we would also lose revenue from not getting the grants. Did you cut that as well, or did we just do the exercise of cutting the costs?

No, we looked at the net effect of losing something. If you lose something that generates revenue, you have to take both parts.

Right. And so you have a model already. You have like a separate model already created.

when the departments went through and identified the things that might be cut, that was part of the exercise.

Yeah. Okay. So also to clarify on that question, so that budget B is not before you today. If we lose sales tax, we would have to bring that back to the council and there would be lots of deliberation regarding that. So moving on, recreation. Recreation has two part-time staff people in it right now, as well as the Artists in Residence program and other classes and programs. In this Budget A that is before you, those are preserved. And if we did have to do a cut, we would be able to cut hours without cutting positions there. But of course, we would have to cut the artist in residence program. And I'm sure there would be a reduction in the class offerings and those kinds of things because we wouldn't be able to support them. So moving on to the second slide. In the administration, which includes finance, clerk, the manager, the town attorney, the budget before you has all of that planned out. And I believe there are just very modest reductions in that total altogether for budget A. For budget B, if we needed to cut 10%, We would cut two positions, one in the clerk and one in the finance department. So obviously then outreach, communication, processing of financial documents would slow and in some cases would have to slow. stop. For example, we might do less or no newsletters. Ross Valley Fire, as Michael mentioned, is a joint powers authority. We don't have the opportunity to make cuts there. The budget decisions are made at the full board, which includes the four jurisdictions that are members of So that, that is budgeted for what they currently are invoicing us for in budget A. And if we, that's part of the reason why, even though the sales tax accounts for seven or 8% of our total revenue, since we can't cut that second largest pie slice in our, total pie of expenses.

that makes the rest of the departments have to cut more yeah i feel like that is something that i'm very familiar with because i'm on the board and i'm understanding you know i've spent a lot of time with these numbers but i feel like that point to the public is not being made so we i think folks typically know that over half our budget is spent on police and fire and should we not get this tax renewal doesn't make sense. Why is it just police getting cut? So I think this slide, if you could clarify, because I don't know that everyone knows what JPA is, because you said we are contractually bound. We can't breach that. We are essentially locked in. That's absolutely right. And it's a lot of money. And for good reason. But we can't... So we have to...

we would have to find it elsewhere essentially that's right um the town spends uh over four million dollars a year on um fire services and um that joint powers authority jpa that agreement is controlled by a board which is not only made up of fairfax representatives but also those other three jurisdictions and in the case of the ross valley fire joint powers authority, the rules to negotiate changes are quite strict. And so it essentially requires a unanimous vote from the other jurisdictions as well as Fairfax in order to make significant financial changes.

I have some questions. If the sales tax measure doesn't pass, All this happens. You're talking about right now. It won't come back in November? Because we're saying, what I've been hearing is that if the sales tax measure doesn't pass now, all this will happen. But I believe this would go back on the ballot in November, maybe more modified from no sunsets and things like that. So this scenario... isn't really true if it doesn't pass in June because there's still November. Is that right?

It's a good question, Mike. I'm going to...

It's not a hard question to answer. I just want an answer.

We have to have a budget. So our fiscal year ends in the summer. So we have to proceed with a budget, right? So if it becomes that Measure J doesn't pass on June 2nd, we have to do the prudent thing and get a reasonable budget adopted. Does that make sense?

No, because the money's still coming in on June 2nd. Thank you very much.

But the fiscal cycle goes through next July.

Right. In November, you might have to adjust the budget if it failed again. So thank you. And let me ask you a different question. You said there that you get an estimated reduction of $200,000 in the two full-time employees budget. and things like that. Are you saying that a full-time employee costs a town $100,000?

No, this is a combination of the two employees and the other things that we would cut, but- Well, no, because how much is one employee cost? All of the salary schedules are in the back of the budget.

But I think they cost more than that, by the way. So one full-time employee, I believe, with benefits and everything else, I bet they cost more than $100,000. That says two full-time employees, basically, right? Reduction of $200,000, but I'm pretty sure two full-time employees cost the town more than $200,000. Are you able to answer that question? I'm talking about salary, pension, benefits. How much is that one employee cost in the department you're talking about?

Right. So I think. I'm not the manager.

I'm on the council. I'm asking the question. I don't want to go look it up. I want to ask you as the manager.

Why don't you let her answer?

Respectful. I gave her a chance.

Let's be respectful.

Very respectful. Go ahead.

So it would be an oversimplification to say that $200,000 represents simply two employees. You could cut a couple of employees and you would still have some contract work that needs to be done. You have, you know, in the financial department, for example, there are requirements. So these are estimates. If you don't have a sales tax, and I'm saying you purposely because it is really, you know, what the town's, what town resources are available is what services we can deliver to So if you don't have the resources, then you will have service cuts.

With all due respect, that wasn't the question. The question was, how much is two full-time? It says there 10% reduction. It's going to cut two full-time employees. That estimated reduction to the budget would be $200,000. And I'm just...

thinking that that it costs more than two hundred thousand dollars and i asked you what the actual number is yeah i um i'm bringing to you the um budget a which is the realistic budget for this year and um I want to make sure you understand what we might be bringing in the future if we need to. That's important for transparency.

Once again, I'm sorry, all due respect, the answer to the question is so simple. No, because she's dancing around the answer. If you don't know it, you can say you don't know it, but you're not saying you don't know it. And I'm telling you that I think that you save more money. If you had two full-time employees reduced, it's going to reduce the budget by more than $200,000.

So there are a couple of things, Mike. Number one, what she's saying is even if you cut two FTEs, you would probably have to use more contractor resources, something that people hate. So it's not an even-steven... I understand your question, and I also want to add something. You keep acting like if Measure J doesn't pass in June that we're going to put it, the council's going to put it on the ballot in November. No guarantee there, and I can tell you that some of us, all four of us, have been working very hard on this. I don't know that anybody has the energy to do it. So, you know, you just assume that's going to happen. I think it's been... You're being very confrontational. And I've explained to you two FTEs are clearly more than 200,000. But what she already said is you would have to hire contractors to fill some of those needs because you can't let everything fall apart. So that's the answer. I also wanted to just ask.

so right now we're doing a we're doing a a budget a right which is best case scenario measure j passes um no okay just just sec let me ask my question okay um and then we have measure b which is worst case scenario measure j doesn't pass and there's actually you know, at this time, right? But there also would be possibly a budget C, which would mean we went to November and we passed it, but we would have a funding gap. So there would be a different budget with a reduced funding. Am I correct there?

Yes. So as you can see, this is pretty, it gets pretty complicated the more scenarios you put in. So what I was trying to make clear is budget A, which is what is before you in the packet, is the best case scenario. It is the You know, continue on as we have been doing Measure J passes. Budget B, the worst case scenario, is the worst case scenario. It's no sales tax. And you're absolutely right, Council Member Blash. If the Measure J fails and the council chooses to put another measure of whatever kind on the ballot for November, there would be a gap. And we don't know, we have no way of guessing whether you know, at what level that funding would be or, you know, how much of a gap there would be unless you make an assumption like it would be the same except it would pass in November and we can't make that assumption.

Can I just say, you know, we've done this, now this is the third time. I would just say, I know we want to cover this because people are listening online, but I don't think we need to beat this to death. We're not doing Budget B right now. This is an estimate. If we needed to do this... that would come back much more fulsome, much more detailed, much more specific on these things, which really estimates to move forward just to give a flavor. So I'm wondering if we can move on to the next slide. People can see this. It's online. And we have talked about it before.

And we do have several other agenda topics for this evening. So, yeah, let's pick up the pace because we've got to open public comment. And thank you for the good discussion.

Next slide.

Right.

It's not showing up on the TV while I'm looking at her. Okay. This is the group of funds that's known as the special revenue funds. That's funds that are designed for restricted funds or special purpose funds, such as the gas tax, which was voter approved to collect funds to be used for road purposes. And TAM, Measure A funds. Parks and transportation funds. We have seven such funds in this group, which include the special police revenue from COPS, which is a state program that gives us money to backfill or add additional police funds. programs or personnel. We have the Fairfax Festival, Measure F, which is the special purpose tax, gas tax, Measure A, transportation, Measure A, parks, the federal stimulus funds, which is our ARPA funds that we are using this year in order to do the park road storm drain improvement project. And what I want to point out on this is that we don't do a lot of direct expenditures from these funds. Most of these funds are transferred to the places where they get used. So for the most part, we transfer them to capital improvement funds if there's capital improvements that those funds are being used for, or we transfer them over to the general fund to cover... Related expenses such as gas tax may be used in the general fund to cover street department expenses. Cops money is used is transferred over to the general fund because that's where we have our police expenses. So. Next slide. So. This one represents the debt service funds. This includes the three Measure K funds, which were issued to service road bonds that were issued between 2000 and 2006 and will be retired in the next couple of years. It also has the lease agreement fund, which is the name we use for the monies that were borrowed in order to refinance the PERS unfunded accrued liability fund. in 2020, which saved the town about $4.2 million, which is an interest charge that we would have paid over to CalPERS. This year, we have about $1.1 million in debt service expenses appropriated. So the fiduciary funds is the funds that we administer for others. In this case, we have a fiduciary fund for the Open Space Fund, which we basically manage the money that's there. I had at one point thought that the Fairfax Festival should probably be reclassified over to this since we have a fiduciary agreement in order to do it.

You mean like a line item below 73?

Make it a fiduciary fund rather than a special revenue fund.

I think that's a really good idea. And would this be the time to talk about um the zero waste and some of the dialogue we've had an email um with mr bragman and so forth for fine for uh we would have to back up at because fairfax festival was in the special revenue fund we can do it after public comment but i just want to have um some alignment and and give you some direction related to that okay Do you want to do that after public comment?

Well, I haven't spoken yet. I've been here very quietly. I spent a full day.

No, no, no, no, no. We're not taking public comment. I was asking Michael something. No, I'm not. We're not taking public comment. What would be your preference?

It doesn't matter to me.

Okay, so the zero wastes... MSS does give us $10,000 annually. Yes. And right now I understand you did some research as far as like where it's being pointed and it's being pointed to road funds. Is that right?

Correct.

Okay. But I guess I want to make the recommendation because there was a, there was a precedent for using those funds for the conservation core, right? Is that right, Heather?

Not in my time here, but I understand previously there was.

Yeah. So we are getting... And there is some documentation related to that intent we saw from the MSS contract. I mean, it's a little... It's vague, but it's really your choice as the council. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I would recommend that we point those funds to the Fairfax Festival line item with the designated purpose of whatever the Conservation Corps does.

So we're going to discuss that when we get to recommendations, right?

I think there's a couple things I just want to add. So what I saw was $8,800 is the cost of Conservation Corps for doing zero waste. I think... And that is the amount rather than the other for the children's activity, which is not zero waste work. If we're going to be talking about this at some point, it seems like the Conservation Corps is working. So that would be the way to just pay them for that amount, period, rather than the additional funds that were requested. And I think it was $8,800.

Yes. In Mr. Bragman's email, he gave an amount of $8,800 for the Conservation Corps work. And so the council could, you know, deem that the remainder of the $10,000 is used for, you know, the compliance and other event activities regarding zero waste, like not necessarily the festival. There are other events. Like last weekend's cleanup, take back.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's what what makes a lot of sense to me is that we have so many events that create garbage, waste, whatever, that the additional amount that's left over, which is not very much, could be used towards that rather than I guess it got moved to roads, which is odd to me. But that's what I think makes sense. Okay.

Is there any disagreement? I understand we're not deliberating, Liesl, but because we were just talking about Fairfax Festival, I just thought it would be a good time. I know Mr. Bragman is sitting here. So are you in alignment with that?

The festival?

Yeah, the discussion we just had related to that.

Yes.

Okay. So we're good.

Okay.

Proceed.

I've made a note.

And I would just say that we should pay that bill directly as the fiscal agent. It would not go to the festival committee that we would pay the Conservation Corps bill for the festival directly. Right.

We pay all the bills.

What's that?

We pay all the bills. The invoices are submitted to us and we pay them.

I just didn't know how it worked. Thank you.

So the last comment on open space is that we've appropriated $4,000. That doesn't mean that we're going to transfer $4,000 over. It's intended to pay up to $4,000 of fundraising expenses that they might have. So if they have less, then we'll transfer over the amount of whatever their fundraising expenses were. So next slide. This slide is our capital improvement funds. We have three capital improvement funds, two of which have active appropriations in them. One of them is a storm fund, which is basically there when we have emergencies, and we use that to collect funds that might be eligible for reimbursement through OES, insurance, or FEMA if FEMA ever comes back online. We have appropriated $5.1 million in CIP expenditures for 27 different CIP projects. The revenues come from grants either provided in advance such as the ARPA funds or through reimbursements where we spend funds and request reimbursement and transfers from special revenue funds such as the gas tax or general fund or Measure A transportation funds. Next slide. The highlights of our CIP projects this year include various road projects, which are primarily slurry seal. We have our Fire Station 21 improvements, which will cost about $1.4 million. The total cost of the project is $1.6 million, but we're estimating we're spending $200,000 this fiscal year. So the remaining $1.4 million would probably be in next year. And then we have the storm drain project on Park Road, which is anticipated to cost about $1.9 million. We have about $1.8 million of ARPA funds that will cover that, and then we'll be backfilling the remainder. The remainder may also include some contingencies, which may not happen. So last slide. So finally, here I have an options slide, which is basically to remind us of the options we have for generating additional funding should we decide to do additional projects or to meet the special needs of the community. We have a sales tax. which is currently being explored. Fee increase. Interesting to note, we're in the process of putting out an RFP currently for a fee study. We have a possible special tax for public safety. That's always an option. And then road bonds, which was tried recently. a few years ago, but which might be able to be explored again should we find something that meets the needs or expectations of the people who are likely to be voting on it. So that wraps up our presentation, and I'd like to turn it back to you for questions or comments.

Vice Mayor, I know you had a lot of questions. Go ahead.

Thank you. You're welcome. Each time we receive a budget, I go through that budget and highlight issues and mark it up. So I've got three budgets here, all highlighted and marked up. So I'm just going to go through them quickly. On page two of three of the budget message, it turns out the fire service increases were 52% over the four years. I didn't realize they were that high. But they were 15.9%, 16.5%, 6.9%, and 13.4%. 52% increase over four years. I'm just getting off the budget message. I'm going to jump over now to the police budget. And the day we went over the police budget... The officer here had to leave before noon, and we never had a chance to ask questions. And so I've got a couple issues with it. Of the police budget, a huge percentage this year, it's actually 23% of the police budget, is retirement. $352,000 this year, and $901,500 is the unfunded liability that we're funding. And I'm not sure if that $901,000 is all police or part of that is the fire, which we had to make up also. Another issue was... The smash and grab that took place at Sunshine Bicycles, where bicycles were stolen, and the vehicle was parked, it was driven up to the Fairfax Lumber Company and set on fire. So we had theft and arson. It was a stolen vehicle from Kentfield. And I've asked about a cost estimate for Motorola vehicles. license plate reader, not a flock. The flock is the one that's causing a lot of grief for cities right now. But Motorola has one that's not directly tied into any other federal agencies. And we still don't have a price. I believe we need a Motorola license plate reader, maybe two of them, on two of our patrol cars in order to keep our officers safe.

Vice Mayor, I just want to mention I spoke to the chief about what you'd asked for on Motorola, and he said there's still issues with the privacy and data. So I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying I think we probably need to have a discussion with the chief on the pros and cons even of the Motorola. But I'm completely in agreement with no flock. So just it may be worthwhile to do that as kind of a separate item, which we could amend the budget later. Just bringing that up.

Well, I've brought it up a number of times that I'm trying to get an estimate cost. Well, he wants to talk. I can tell you what CHP did in Oakland. The amount of stolen cars they recovered is unreal. I'm going to move on to the Ross Valley Fire Department budget. And I'm asking if Ross Valley Fire is talking about purchasing a ladder truck, especially for Fairfax. If we have up to seven housing sites that could be very tall and we need a ladder truck. I know we talked about School Street Plaza. We need one to reach 98 feet. uh at from merwin side and the kent they the fire services said can't feel ladder truck is available to us that only goes to 85 feet so the closest ladder truck um that we could you need in town would come from southern marin and it reaches 107 feet that's a brand new ladder truck that southern marine purchased So I'm not sure. When does Ross Valley Fire talk about how they're going to fight fires in Fairfax if we end up with seven downtown housing towers? Should I be going to their meetings or what?

So the discussion at the fire board was not buying a ladder truck, but in the future, buying a new engine. And what they've said is it's usually a five to six year wait to actually get one. And I think Chief Mahoney has come here. And he feels confident that we would be able to use other ladder trucks. I think there's one in San Rafael as well. But I think he also mentioned that none of them would be able to be as high as what we could contemplate. But as far as speculating about other things other than School Street Plaza, I don't think we're there yet.

Right. I mean, it's not our budget. I mean, we pay for it, but we're not budgeting for a ladder truck tonight, right? We can't do that.

Well, we better start thinking about it because we're going to get six more. Well, I think, but so that's something that goes to the fire department? I've done the research with Southern Marin, the fire chief. I know exactly what they have. It goes to 107 feet. But that's not on this budget. It'll take 45 minutes to get here.

Okay. I have a question.

Let me just finish this process, and please, you can chime in. We've already covered that one. Let me go to the next one here. I've been in the street department budget, and I can't find the cost for contracting for street sweeping with the garbage company. I know some years back, Fairfax approved a $450,000 contract for street sweeping services with a garbage company, and it's about $150,000 a year. So I can't find that $150,000 in this budget, and I'm wondering where that is.

So, Frank, let me know if you want me to sort of answer questions as you're going or if you want to go back. As far as street sweeping, I saw your question via email earlier today, and I really appreciate that because then I was able to go to the finance department and ask Elena for what we've actually paid. And I emailed that to you, and I'm just going to read it out here now. So for fiscal year 24-25, which is the last year, we paid Marin Sanitary Service, who is the contractor that we use for street sweeping, we paid them $75,062, so much less than the figure you're quoting, which is good news. And then for fiscal year 25-26, which we're currently in, And this does not include April because we haven't paid that bill yet. The amount so far before April is $58,835. Okay, so it was not a contract for $450,000 that was approved by the previous town council? Yeah. I'm not remembering exactly that number, but it may have been an up to not to exceed amount. And then we just try to keep it as low as possible.

It was 150,000 here. I was here at the meeting anyway. Okay.

I just have one quick question. I thought he said he was done.

I'm almost done here. I'm almost done here. Um, The loan that we made to Victory Village, and they make annual payments. Is it 10 years they're going to be making payments? Do they pay any interest on that loan, or is that an interest-free loan?

That is an interest-free loan. Thank you. Okay.

On the capital improvement budget, I just want to jump to that for a second. And I think it's this year. One of the projects for the slurry seal is Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It says Pastore Avenue to town limits. So the question is, is that Pastore to the westerly town limits or Pastore to the easterly town limits that we're going to do this year? believe we have a map i don't have that in front of me but i can distribute that to the council well it's really important i mean if it's past story to the eastern town limits it's only about 100 feet because all of that street is in santa somo town limits um so when when does this project go to bed will we see some bid documents

Yes. So the council agreed to go in coordination with San Anselmo to save money on staging and getting the contractor in. So once those bids come in, then the council will have an opportunity to approve the apparent lowest bidder.

But when will we know, is it Pastore to the west end or Pastore to the east end?

Sounds like she wants to research that, but we'll get back to us.

It's a huge issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Frank. Okay, go ahead, Mike.

Will the developers of the eight-story or so building that's about to happen, are they required to pay for things like a ladder truck? That needs to help protect their building?

No, I don't believe so.

So the rest of the taxpayers have to pay for a special fire truck with a special ladder for those kinds of buildings?

If the fire board approved that purchase and the fire department asked for it.

And we're sure there's nothing anywhere that it's required by the developers to reimburse the fire board and the towns for the extra costs incurred by their monster buildings?

I mean, you're pointing out one of the issues with the California housing law that, you know, this council has been grappling with and we've had workshops on is that we're very limited in what we can extract from the developer of the school street Plaza project, which is projected to be 7 stories.

Is that it, Mike? Oh, OK. Liesl or Barbara, do you have any questions?

I had a few comments, questions that I already had answered when I sent them to staff.

Thank you. OK, seeing none, we're going to open the public comment.

Thank you. Michael, I assume where it says transfers, that means you're moving money either out of the general fund or from the reserves where you keep saying like transfers. I don't know where that transferring from. If you can answer that afterwards, I have a couple other questions.

We'll respond to questions after.

Okay, that's fine. Second one, on your budget, it showed that if the tax doesn't pass, you'd have to cut two equivalent full-time positions, and that would save the town $200,000. And agreeing with Michael, two positions would certainly cost much more than $200,000. Okay. Understanding what Heather's comment was, oh, well, we'd have to supplement and fill those voids with contractors. So why wouldn't we do that if you're telling us that if we remove two of those positions and hired contractors to fill that void, we would save $200,000? I think that's a very simple, easy thing to salvage money for our budget. And last but not least, and I really would like an answer to this because I don't know and I have not taken the time to dig through the budget. Thank you. But I have been led to believe that the town of Fairfax is depreciating the wall property, which is an unimproved piece of property, which I know would not qualify to be depreciated through GAAP. So I just wanted a clarification. If we are, and if we are depreciating an unimproved piece of land, how is it that we're justifying that through our books? Thank you.

I just want to say thank you for listening and taking action. Really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Good evening, Todd Greenberg, downtown Fairfax. I find it highly troubling that this council continues and staff continues to falsely portraying that if Measure J does not pass, that the world's going to end and that we will have no sales tax revenue. Because I, for one, would vote for an extension of the current sales tax in November. So I want to applaud... Councilwoman Blash for pointing out that there needs to be a more accurate budget that reflects some reality, not an extreme. That would be a budget C, which would be if things continued actually as they are. We continued with the existing sales tax collection of three quarters of a cent rather than creating a forever tax. extension with an increase, which is a reach too far. I object and I believe it's contrary to law that town monies are being expended to lobby for Measure J repeatedly. I object that the mayor has indicated that Measure J must pass tonight, otherwise we would lose $1.3 million. Now, what she said differs from what some of these reports say. That being said, I want to point out a couple of things. And there's not much time left, but there's only a 3.3% increase in this budget with the sales tax increase for street maintenance. But property taxes are going up 5.2% and sales taxes are going up 4.8%.

Hi, I'm Ross Asselstein of San Anselmo. I've had a long experience last 17 years in watching our flood district burn through $70 million, $60 or $70 million. It's been a string of bad ideas and very small ones that have burned through that kind of money. The reason I come here tonight as it relates to budget and representation is that Fairfax is currently in the flood zone. No one will be paying the flood fee after 2027. There will be ad valorem taxes that were imposed in the 1960s. A small amount of money every year that's imposed on everyone but San Anselmo and Fairfax. There's a situation that's gonna be unique at some point in the future. potentially, and that is that Fairfax is in the flood zone. There is a vote comes up for a fee or a bond measure, whatever you want to call it, for a new funding of more flood projects. Think about this. If every other citizen outside of Fairfax votes for that fee and Fairfax votes 100% against it, The fee will be imposed on Fairfax because you're acting within a zone, within a body of electorate, not just Fairfax. I mention this because there's a simple fix to this now or soon or next year. And that is for the council to simply put withdrawal from the flood zone. on the ballot because that's the only way you can do it and in the future if someone elects to try to create a fee and there's an election he would have to election for that uh that fee big finish sorry that was very disruptive

We'll give you a couple seconds back. Okay, Chris.

I'll write on it.

Get the gong under control, please.

I feel like I should have lightning bolts. I will write you all an email to explain that. It's an administrative task that's in your interest. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. Next speaker, please. It's good to laugh. Laughter is healthy.

Hi, I'm Mina with the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce. I just wanted to briefly clarify the intent behind the Chamber's funding request. This request was never meant to fund the Chamber as an organization, but was meant to support the work that helps businesses in downtown Fairfax, especially with the upcoming construction impacts. We got an update saying that it's going to be July and August. And so, you know, we have some time to prepare. Um, we understand that the town has asked for additional financial information and I'm actively working on pulling those materials together for you. Um, we have historically been very small volunteer led organization, but the amount of work has continued to grow. And we help organize events. We work with Park and Rec. We work with a lot of nonprofits in Fairfax, communicate with businesses, bring people into town. We're trying to work on placemaking. We are so lucky to live here. There was the SF Chronicle article highlighting the special nature of Fairfax. And so just looking for support.

Chris Kenton, Cascade. I was kind of curious, looking at the budget, the fire safety, the rate of increase in costs for fire safety seem to be outpacing our revenue and will be for the long-term future. So it seems like even with Measure J, we're just kicking the can down the road for maybe just a few more years. I'm curious whether or not the fire safety costs and the rate of increase for Fairfax, whether we know, is that similar to other towns of similar size in California? Is there some reason why our rates are higher? I'm just curious about that as a question for the budget. Thank you.

Mark Dahl, Fairfax. I agree to pull out of flood zone nine. It's kind of more like, what was it? Plan nine from outer space. I think that was the movie. Our legal budget this year is going to be about 7% of the budget. We're looking at spending over a million dollars on legal alone. That's a lot of money. Why is that? Over a million dollars. No one's talking about looking at ways to cut that down. Why not? We've got record property taxes. On our street alone, one house just sold for $1.5 million, and the other they were asking one for probably went over. Two blocks away, the guy has it low-balled at $1.2 million. Some of these are houses that were bought for $500,000, $270,000, $700,000. And this is throughout the town. We've got all this money coming in. So why are we in such a desperate mode? Seems to me that if we were being well managed, that wouldn't be happening. Reminds me of like in San Anselmo when the town manager there said, oh, we have to close the library because there just isn't money. And she wouldn't give up her $600 a month stipend to drive two miles to work to help the library out. It was just a very odd circumstance. I'll just leave it at that.

Mark, could you press the button? Thank you.

We have two hands raised on Zoom. The first caller is Deb, followed by Bert or Bert's wife. So, Deb, you are up first. You're unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Thank you, Deborah Benson Cascades. Thank you for hearing me. I just want to say I agree with Council Member Ghirangeli's question as to the value of losing two full-time positions being $200,000 and not being able to get an answer on a real value because that seemed to be really undervalued. And the answer seemed to be, well, we would incur additional expense But there was never an answer. I mean, what's the real value? Wages, payroll taxes, staff time, benefits of losing two full-time positions. And then you look at what we spend to to replace those positions in terms of contractors or whatever. So I'd like to see some real numbers here and some real answers. And again, the gong, poor Mr. Azelstein, I felt my head was going to explode. I sure wish we could get a gentler time reminder than that thing. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Bert. Bert's wife, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

OK, thank you very much again. Yeah, that gong has to go. There's absolutely no reason for that. People online should be subjecting this. And I know that you are in touch with people at CMCM. I'm sure there's someone who could do that. Or maybe you have auto control right where you are. Anyway, there are many of us waiting to hear the answer that Mike asked tonight. And I don't understand why other council members are allowed to act like bulldogs and interrupt him and he doesn't get an answer. I don't understand what's going on with you guys up there. Mike and Frank were the two top vote getters in the last election. Barbara barely pulled it out. So it's really important to understand that many of us in Fairfax voted for Frank and Mike because we like to hear their opinions. We wanted to see some sunshine at last in the Fairfax Council, but we're not hearing that. And so many of us still have that question. And there's a vote coming up very soon. And we know that a couple of you pulled it off just barely. There were well over a thousand people that said, do the recall and you barely made it. So I really think it's time to start answering questions because it's really, really tedious to watch the obfuscation that goes on at every council meeting. and it goes on and on and on and it's not just council members it's staff clearly clearly following somebody's direction i wonder who that is thank you very much any more hands

Okay, thank you. Closing the public comment. And we'll move on to deliberations. We've already had a little bit. Liesl, did you have anything before we close it out?

Well, yeah. I mean, I am in favor of exploring extending funding for the council, I mean, the council for the chamber. You know, I've looked at some other towns, and I was recently at a conference, and I'm really interested in how we can foster economic development. However, we can't do it if we do not pass Measure J. the even limited amount of funding that we have allocated towards the Chamber for this next cycle, which is actually considerably more than we've allocated in the past, would go away. So I would like, though, to start looking, you know, get more numbers from the Chamber and really look at how we could see if there was any way. I mean, I know our budget's really tight, but I think that the community building activities are really vital in our town, which is quite polarized and divided. And I did want to note, though, that one of the things that the Chamber could look at is, I love the events. They're amazing. If Funding is tight. Maybe we do fewer events, but we do a few really great events because they've been fabulous. People rave about them. So I would love to us to explore how we could actually fit that in if indeed Measure J gets passed at the 1% level. I wanted to note in terms of Councilmember Egger's question, I think it's Bell Avenue that's being paved from Pastore to Town Limits and not Pastore, so it's worth looking at that. I also wanted to note that Budget C that I mentioned is the second worst case scenario. That would be we didn't pass Measure J in June. We tried to pass it in November. We did pass it. We would still have a funding gap. It would just not be as bad as not having it at all. So just wanted to clarify that. Okay. There are a couple of things that I am still interested in seeing. I will ask this when we talk more with Tam about the amendment to the Measure A expenditure plan, which is just I'm really curious about how the double allocation that we are talking about and that will be reflected in our budget if indeed it needs to be reflected so i'll hold that until we get to that conversation i still think it would be useful for us to think about hiring a grant writer through california consultants i went to several conference presentations at the california city's leadership summit where some smaller towns were really raking in the grants and getting really nice public works infrastructure projects done, both really practical things and parks and rec. Okay. So I did want to mention again, and I'm just going to say it briefly that, you know, I keep hearing the complaint about attorney fees and I keep saying, if you don't want to see those attorney fees, stop bringing litigation and legal costs to the town. And as I've said before, all of the Public Records Act requests, all of the referendums, all of the other things that people keep bringing end up costing a lot of money. So, you know, sometimes they need to happen, but some of them seem a little frivolous. And we need to know that the town needs to defend itself if a legal case is brought against it. And so, you know, bring a legal case, then town's going to have to defend itself. We're going to spend more money on that than on all the other beautiful things that we'd like to see. So just, I want us to keep that in mind. I would love to see some of that money go towards our Chamber of Commerce, our Parks and Recreation Department. So I would like us to explore whether we, you know, whether when the Chamber comes back with a budget and sort of a proposal, if there's some way we can work on that. So that's it for now.

I have a question.

Thank you. Okay, we're going to go down the line, if you don't mind. We're going to go down the line. Go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. Sure. I'm looking at this budget as the budget that we will adopt come June. I'm not looking at any massive cuts at all. In response to Council Member Blash, I'm just reading off the Slurry Shield project, and it does say Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Pastore Avenue to Town Limit, flat out. It says it in black and white.

Okay, I was looking at the one that said Pastore to Bell, which is at the top. Thank you.

There is, up above, there's one that says Bell, Pastore Avenue to Town Limits. That's completely different. Anyway, you know, I... I'm looking forward to be able to look at the budget for the Chamber of Commerce and help them with their funding for this coming year. So I'm trying to have a positive outlook on everything. Thank you.

I'm just going to chime in on the chamber because I've spent a lot of time. I think a lot of us have responding to local businesses asking for support. I think there's no question of the value that MENA in particular has been bringing as far as bringing new events into town, community building and a lot of advocacy work as far as You know, the Marin Water Project, for example, and how to minimize disruption to business. So we adore the town events. I think what we're what we're grappling with is really just trying to understand the cost per event and have some metrics around like. You know, the the Taylor Street Fair this this weekend, you know, was that from a cost benefit standpoint, something that you would recommend doing? What kind of traffic did you bring in or? pedestrian traffic? What kind of sales volume do you think it provided? What are the ticket sales revenues? What kind of sponsorship are you getting? The number of 24,000 feels arbitrary. There's no backup in terms of what... It is and what it's for. And, you know, if we do increase the 5000 to another amount, which I'm very, very open to doing, we just need to substantiate it. And I've I've said this many, many times over the past several months. So today we heard that they are working on the number. And I'm hoping in the next two weeks we can get that data that we've been asking for, because if we proceed, we're going to need to have a contract. And so, you know, there just needs to be some some meat on the bone related to that. So enough said and look forward to getting that information before this comes back to council for voting on June 3rd. Thank you.

So I just want to say, again, I'm also looking at this budget rather than the one should Measure J not pass. And I spent a lot of time looking at every page. A couple of things, just something that was asked about was the fire services budget. One of the reasons it's gone up is with the closure of the Ross Station, the fire station, We picked up more costs and also with the three on an engine, that became more expensive. In the fire board's budget, there is a specific how much we will pay over five years. There was a five-year forecast done by Jeff Zuba, who is our finance person. And it's not cheap. So that's where we're at. But I just want to speak to the chamber issue as well. For many years, we gave nothing to the chamber, and then it became $500. And this year we talked about 5,000. I want to point out something that is kind of lost in the translation. We provide a lot of support to the chamber through having our police on overtime. For example, at the winter market, um, Four of us council members sold beer and wine, which we were happy to do. Of course, we did that on our own time to support the chamber. That's a different story. But I sat with our police chief and about eight of our police staff who were on. As you know, we usually have two on. So we were paying overtime for all those staff for the winter market, which was incredible. I loved that. And other events, we're paying overtime. So it's many thousands of dollars that we are supporting the chamber in these wonderful events. I also want to say I'm a big fan of Mina Kim. When I was mayor, I got to know her really well. And she has an amazing amount of energy and has brought a lot of new programming and events. And as the mayor has mentioned, we're waiting to see more details, more meat on the bone as far as the funding requests go. And I also want to say that we're not big. We don't have a lot of money. And, you know, some of the larger cities provide support to the chamber or their business district. And from what I've seen, it's not a huge amount. But also when we talk about Measure J, Even if it passes, we're not going to be awash in extra funds. This is really just to keep pace. And I think as Chris Kenton pointed out, you know, costs are rising. Fire service is one thing, but everything has changed. I think the mayor estimated at one point cost of living has gone up.

What did you say? In the last five years?

40%. 40%. So the reality is, as much as we hate to admit it, costs go up. But I do have concerns. Something I pointed out as mayor several years ago was I had asked, when I was mayor and meeting with the chamber, Could they start doing a door to door trying to get folks to join the chamber? And I know that some of the larger businesses have walked away from the chamber, not because I believe Fairfax Lumber is not part of the chamber. Okay. Anyway, that's good. But I asked that a few years ago, and at the time there was no appetite for doing that. Now, Meena wasn't on board at the time. So I think increasing membership and really doing the horrible legwork... of talking about the benefits and we'll maybe increase more but i'm open to it but i just want to point out we do provide a lot of support to the chamber by in-kind services and a lot of that's our police So I'm open to it. And I feel comfortable with the budget today. I've asked a few questions. I'm hoping on June 3rd, maybe we don't have to go through excruciating detail on every page. So I'm done. Thanks.

Just to clarify, the CPI over the last 10 years has increased about 38%. So that's what I was referring to.

Thank you. I'm sure we'll hear about it. One thing Barbara missed is the increase in gasoline to run our police cars and fire engines. I mean, that's hitting us big time.

And I just spoke to someone who works a lot in the oil and gas field, and he said the estimates are that gas per gallon will go up to $10 to $12 a gallon very soon. So, you know, it's you're right. Thank you, Frank. OK, go ahead, Mike.

Thanks for your patience.

Oh, thank you. We're going down the line. So I have a few round robin things here. What is the exact gap? First of all, I actually believe this will pass because people in Fairfax are very generous. So I think the sales tax will pass. If it doesn't pass, it'll be because they want a sunset, things like that. But let's say it doesn't pass and then we have to do it in November. What is the actual gap? I haven't heard that. I've been told there is no gap if we move quickly. There would be no gap in funding. And if there was, what is the gap?

The 7.5%? What was the dollar number?

The gap being how many months would it be before we start receiving money that will fund the town? Okay. It passed in November. Let's say it didn't pass now, but it passes in November. You guys said there's a funding gap. Well, how many months? When does that funding gap happen? Because I've been told there would be no funding gap. That's what I've been told. So now... You can think about that answer while I ask the next question. The next question is, we have a million dollars in attorney fees, according to Mark, and I guess the information there, 7% of our budget. And I keep hearing that if we can only get rid of the public record acts request. And I want to know how much money are we spending out of that million dollars to answer public records acts? How much does that cost? You can think about that answer at the end here. On the chamber, I started this exact chamber, this variations of it, of course, but never stopped. I picked up in 1996 or four or five, I can't quite remember. I formed the chamber because the other chamber, which did a really good job for a long time, but got tired because they had no director. No executive director. So I actually made the first executive director position. We had no money in Fairfax then, just like we don't have any now. But we funded that position. How did we do it? We created a system where the director would have events that didn't just have events. They took money in. And 30 years ago, we made a profit of $20,000 off the first Beer Fest event. Festival up in the pavilion in Fairfax. So events like that. We did a jazz festival in September. A bunch of things happened that we literally made money. The chamber is an extension of the business community. The business community is here to make money, provide jobs, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, we should be running the chamber like a business. And I don't actually I think that the fact that the town does support the chamber in and with the police department and and on these events, I think that's a really that's a good amount. That's good. And if we continue to do that, that's worth a lot of money in kind services, I think. And I talked to Mina about this, that and I'm going to sit down with her and we're going to get together with Mary Chapman, who was the first executive director of the chamber that I hired. 30 years ago. And we're going to be sustainable. We had 140 chamber members back then. Well, how'd we do it? We went to the Hills, just like you guys were talking about. And we got people from working in their homes and this and that. And I think there's a lot of that obviously still. So I'm not sure how many members we have now, but we, that would be a membership drive charge enough money to help fund Mina's position for all the hard work that she does but I have a whole different idea with the chamber in terms of I like to see it go back to its former glory from when we first started the 30 years ago and I think it can happen again we just got to create that excitement get this council I believe is behind them and I think it's very generous to even be talking about more than $5,000 in addition to in-kind services. But I think that we can make that sustainable. I know that you've taken about $23,000 a year so far in revenues, and we can increase that to $100,000 a year in revenues based on membership, based on events that happen. create dollars. I actually think if the chamber can prove itself that one day it could run the Fairfax festival possibly, but that's another story. Okay. So those, those are the three things. I still want the answers to the two questions I had. And I'll say one last thing. Imagine if we pass the tax, whether it's now or in November. And we did some budget cuts anyway, maybe not 10 percent, but better management of this town. And we will have enough money to start maybe not fulfilling like the Measure K funds that I think was Measure K that failed two years ago. But you would start being able to lay some pay. You'd be able to do more work on the town. And if you do it over 10 years and you're not borrowing that money, you're going to be able to do a lot of projects, a lot of projects, especially if you hired one more person in public works and start doing some work ourselves, even more work, I should say, because that is the best bang for your buck is public works. So you want to know how a small business guy in Fairfax would fix this? I just laid it out to you in three minutes. Thank you.

Amazing. Thank you so much for, thank you for partnering with the chamber and I'm, I can't wait to see the game plan for a hundred thousand. That's amazing. Okay. I think we're ready to move on. Pardon me.

Mike asked a couple of questions he would like answers to. One thing I want to add, we keep talking about Public Records Act requests. I think we have something like eight lawsuits, which we can't control. And that's where most of the money went to. But I think, could you try to answer? I think there were two major questions that Mike asked.

I don't have an answer for his first one, but I do have an answer for his second one. So we have two habitual Public Records Act requesters, Michael McIntosh and Todd Greenberg. and we spend an inordinate amount of time answering their request. Usually they're requests that can't be answered. They've asked for things they can't have. It's incomplete, it's incoherent, that sort of thing. But we do provide responses to all the requests. The second thing, the second thing is, recently we received a cure and correct letter about the Brown Act from Todd Greenberg. I spent hours poring over that, trying to figure out what he was talking about, what he meant, incorrect citations, one citation that didn't even exist. No, I'm not finished.

What's the dollar amount is what the question is.

$2.45 an hour times hours.

See how you avoid the answer. No, I am not avoiding the answer.

I am answering the question, and you need to listen to this. I'm sorry. You need to listen to this. Hold on.

No, no. I don't.

It was completely unnecessary. There was no Brown Act violation. And yet I'm required by law to spend the time to pour over this AI generated slop is what it looked to me to find and get an answer out for him. I don't like this at all. I met the timeline on that by spending hours going over that. And that was ridiculous and an absolute waste of time.

And the amount of money that was spent on it, which was the question, not your editorial about how you don't like doing it, What, because, you know, by the way, I don't like them either, just so you know.

Okay, it's not that I don't like it. The point is, the question was, the point is, this is what's wrong with them.

Can I redirect us to the protocol for this meeting, Mike, which is that we do not yell over people. We let them finish their answer, and we respect it.

about legal answered, but in the monthly financial statement in the distribution report, are you with us? Okay, I see you typing on your phone. I can wait. Oh, okay. Well, let's speed it up. There is a page for attorney expenses. Do you want to pull up this item? Because I think it will help you understand the distribution of legal costs. Okay, so we're good. Okay, we're going to move on. I'm going to close this item and move on to agenda. Number. To item number 2, which is amended measure a expenditure plan and we have. some guests here to present. And we're looking to approve the amended Measure AA expenditure plan as adopted by the Transportation Authority of Marin board on March 26th, following a comprehensive public outreach and review process. So thank you for being here. with us and for waiting. And if you could just identify yourselves, that would be wonderful.

Sure. Good evening. I'm Ann Richmond. I'm the executive director of the Transportation Authority of Marin.

And my name is Derek McGill. I'm the director of planning at TAM.

Thank you for being here. Okay, so thank you very much, Mayor and Councilmembers and staff. We are here to present information and seek approval for amendments to the expenditure plan for Marin's Half-Cent Transportation Sales Tax, known as Measure AA, which was approved by voters first in 2004 and then renewed in 2018. So I will do a quick introduction of TAM and then walk through the review process and the proposed amendments for your consideration. And I do want to just clarify at the outset, we are not talking about a change or an increase in the half cent sales tax rate for Measure AA. We're just talking about some amendments to some of the categories for how funds are distributed. Next slide, please. So just a quick refresher on the Transportation Authority of Marin. We have several roles here in the county. We are what's called a congestion management agency, which is a state term. We are the sales tax authority and the vehicle registration fee authority for those transportation measures. We're an independent agency with a board of elected officials that consists of all five supervisors plus one council member from each of the incorporated cities and towns. We have advisory committees such as our Community Oversight Committee and our Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. We have our own staff. TAM was first formed in 2004 when the first sales tax was approved by voters, and the agency has continued operations since that time. We are not a transit operator or a department of another city or county. We don't own the roadway network, so partnering with other agencies like the town is how we do our work, too. Next slide, please. And our work really is centered on delivering the commitments of Measure AA. When this was renewed in 2018, it garnered almost 77% approval from Marin voters, and we take that support seriously. The approval included not just the half-cent sales tax rate, but also an expenditure plan detailing how the funds are to be spent. There's kind of a simplified picture of that here with the pie chart. And the major categories of funding are for highway and interchange improvements, local roads, safe routes to schools, and local transit services. And this is a 30-year measure, so it expires in 2049. Next slide. so marin is fortunate to have this funding and we're known as or what's known as a self-help county in california due to the existence of these transportation sales tax funds these funds not only support local and county-wide priorities but they also serve to leverage other regional state and federal funding So, just as an example of that, TAM's annual budget is shown in this chart, and the local funds are about half of our revenues. The other half comes from outside grants from regional, state, and federal agencies. So, partly as a result of that coordination, we do work with a lot of partners, including the transit agencies, the cities and towns in the county, community groups, schools. And we hear again and again that this local funding is very important. It's flexible and it supports a variety of programs and projects that are important in the community. So that brings us to talking about this review and the amendments. That 2018 expenditure plan actually included a provision to review the expenditure plan every six years and consider amendments to keep pace with changes in transportation. So it really provides us with kind of a unique opportunity to reflect and adjust the plan if needed. So in about 2024, which is roughly five years after the measure went into effect in 2019, we started that review process. We sought input from the board, the public, partner agencies, fund recipients, specifically looking or asking what's working and what could be improved. The review also included an analysis of how the measure aligns with TAM's countywide transportation plan, some updated financial projections, and a look at travel and demographic trends and forecasts. So all that information has been provided to the TAM Board throughout the review process in 2025 and into 2026. So really, we took this opportunity to review the successes, the opportunities of the measure, and to account for the changes that have occurred and are still playing out from the last few years. Next slide. So this slide shows the overall process and schedule. And an important piece here is that any amendments are required to be approved by the TAM Board, the County Board of Supervisors, and a majority of the cities and towns representing a majority of the incorporated population. So these amendments do not have to go to the voters, but they do have to go back to all the councils. So we've worked through the analysis and the outreach in 2025. We brought drafts of the amendments to the TAM Board in December, and in January, we held a required 45-day comment period. And then the TAM board considered and approved the amendments at their meeting on March 26th of this year. And we're now in the phase where we're presenting to the cities and towns. And we expect that kind of round of presentations to conclude in June. And then the amendments would go into effect July 1st for the new fiscal year. So I'll spend a moment on the outreach that was conducted. We did four pop-up events in the summer of 2025 in the North, Central, South, and West Marin areas where we provided information about the measure. and the review and did a dot exercise so that the public could kind of weigh in on their priorities. So I think this is the West Marin dot exercise shown on the slide here just as an example. We also engaged in quite a bit of dialogue and discussions with our partner agencies and our advisory groups. We had the formal comment period that I mentioned. We did receive a number of comments. And then additional public comments were provided at the TAM board meetings in February and March. And there have been opportunities through all of these presentations to the supervisors and the councils as well. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Derek, and he will walk through the amendments.

Thank you, Ann. And thank you to the council for the opportunity to present the amended expenditure plan tonight. I do want to just reiterate that we are not making recommended our changes to 95% of the funding in the measure. So we're really going to focus the presentation on what is changing in the expenditure plan. And that's really only 5% of the funding. We're maintaining the overall structure of the measure of funding with highway and interchange improvements, local roads, safe routes to schools and crossing guard programs, as well as our local transit services. The 5% of the measure that is proposed to shift is based on the input that TAM has received from our partners in this reviewing process. The shifts that are shown on the screen really are, we're transitioning funding from category 1.3, the local interchange program managed by TAM to support TAM's crossing guard program. We're transitioning 4% of the funding from local transportation infrastructure to support major capital roadway projects by the request of various public works directors. And then we have minor changes to the eligibility requirements of the sea level rise program and ferry and regional transit access program. And then we have additional changes to our community oversight committee membership and in the review timeline. And that's really to align with our other revenue source measure B. Next slide, please. I'll start by talking about the Crossing Guard Program. We are recommending that the amended expenditure plan increases by half a percent, really to respond to increased cost pressures on the program. We are proposing to increase funding for the Crossing Guard Program to maintain 96 guards out in the field in this next cycle. Currently, the program costs exceed our annual revenue collected, requiring the use of carryover funds to help sustain the program. The TAM Board has instituted a number of expense reduction measures to really streamline the administration and make sure we deploy as many guards out in the field. And it has approved one-time only funds, which will allow the program, along with this amended expenditure plan, to sustain 96 guards. Without these amendments, five additional guards would need to be removed from the field, resulting in 91 guards, or the TAM Board would need to revisit and develop an alternative revenue strategy to maintain this number. As an ongoing operational program, there are really limited outside funding sources for these types of services, and staff will continue to seek outside funding sources when they are feasible. Next slide, please. Early in the review process, TAM asked our board and our partners, what challenges do you have with the current program and what opportunities we have in administering these funds that we should be addressing? And what we heard from our public works and the TAM board is that there's really a need for larger capital projects, namely multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency, and multimodal projects that cannot be addressed by a local jurisdiction's revenue source. Currently, TAM has no funding sources to help support those types of projects. In response, the amended expenditure plan shifts 4% of the local transportation infrastructure funds to a new category called the Reimagined Roadways. That intends to get these larger capital projects shovel-ready in the next few years. Additionally, this category includes half a percent from an innovation program, which is a standalone program in the measure, to really embed technology improvements into the larger roadway projects. This category would provide an opportunity to advance our countywide transportation plan, which is adopted in 2024. And the map here shows where we have roadway corridors that have local but multiple countywide needs, such as transit priority, active transportation needs, or activity hubs where walking and access and safety improvements should be focused in the county. Next slide. I'm going to back up a little bit and talk about how we got here. In the previous Measure A, approved by the voters in 2004, the local road formula funds were actually 13 and a quarter, and a major road category was also included in the measure at 13 and a quarter. This major road category, how the funding was distributed and developed was based on close coordination with our Public Works Association. And they actually identified and prioritized major road projects. The list was more exhaustive than what's shown here, but these are the completed projects with one exception where we have a project still awaiting project delivery. As you can see, it was split by planning area and by jurisdiction and the projects delivered in that sort of fashion. Next slide, please. When Measure AA was approved by the voters in 2018, the local road formula funding went from 13 and a quarter to 22%, but that did come at the expense of TAM funding support for those larger capital projects. It's also worth noting in 2018 that SB1 and the state gas tax, which are the state funding sources for roadway repair, was also secured. Prior to 2018 and 2017, the 13 and a quarter percent from Measure AA was dwarfing what we received from the state from those two funding sources. SB1 wasn't actually in place. And so when we went to 2018, where we went up to 22%, you know, we still have a number of, we're basically providing about a third of the funding and the state gas tax provides two thirds of funding for the county's roadway repair funds. Due to the size of the state funds in comparison to Measure AA at two-thirds to one-third and the flexibility provided by Measure AA, the proposed changes are expected to have a minimal impact on pavement condition index. A lot of the funds are used for both projects as well as roadway repair. And so that's sort of a council decision that can continue in place. It's also worth noting that as a whole Marin County and its jurisdictions have the highest PCI of North Bay counties. And that's a testament to the good work of all of our public works teams in the county. Next slide.

Excuse me. I just wanted to ask one quick question about the gas tax. Does that work the same way that it works locally here where it doesn't fluctuate in terms of sales volume? Like it's just given to you based on population or. Do you know what I'm saying? There's no fluctuation with the gas prices.

I would say there's a complex formula for this. It's not as simple as our population and lane miles. It does have an impact on vehicle sales and gas taxes. But I would note that next year, the town of Fairfax is expected to get an increase of about $20,000 from the state gas taxes at $440,000.

Okay. Is that new information for you?

Pardon me? I compared what was in the budget, and the correct numbers were shown.

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Next slide, please. So we know that a change in reduction in the Category 2.1 can be impactful for many of our jurisdictions, and so we've thought about how we address this. For many jurisdictions, this funding shift can be addressed through grants for key transportation projects. But to further support this transition, the TAM Board has directed staff to make a change in our allocation process outside of the expenditure plan in our strategic plan process if this amendment is approved by the voters. And what really occurs is what we're referring to as a double allocation process. It's a shift in our accounting procedures in the accounting process. Currently, we fund in arrears, and we'll be moving from a funding in arrears where we collect the funding over the current fiscal year and distribute the funding the next year to an expense reimbursement. not only have we been collecting funds that would become available for the jurisdiction to use next year, but you'll actually be able to do an expense reimbursement on the anticipated revenues over that current fiscal year. So you'll basically be double dipping for this first year of the change in the expenditure plan. The result of that shift is basically this double allocation, and while next year's funding would be reduced, as you can see on the screen, from $198,000 to $158,000, you're actually receiving 356,000 from that double allocation process. That provides a pretty significant transition cushion in addition to any local grants that may be received that can support local budget pressures. I do want to note category 2.1 as a whole also has an eligibility clarification to it. So it's sort of outside of this double allocation process. We did receive a lot of public input about types of projects that should be funded. And so we've amended the language in the plan to clarify that roadway components of environmental protection projects like wildlife crossings are eligible uses of the funds. Next slide, please. Perfect. In addition to the 5 percent funding shift that I just went through, there are a number of other changes to mention. The amended expenditure plan proposes to align the review of both of our local revenue sources, Measure A and Measure B, and that results in a cycle where we'll conduct another review similar to this in six years and then align them to follow an eight-year cycle until 2049 when the measure ends. The amended expenditure plan also makes language changes to the community oversight committee to bring those into alignment with measure B. And then we have eligible recipient changes in our TAM sea level rise program and the ferries and regional transit programs, and allowing the ferry and regional transit program to expand to all major transit stops, which are the smart and ferry stations in the county. Next slide, please. So with that, we are definitely happy to answer any questions the council may have. But in order to amend the expenditure plan, the TAM board approved the amendments to the expenditure plan. It's March 26th board. The board of supervisors approved their item at the beginning of April. And we've been presenting to the towns since that date. And so we're happy, we're continuing to schedule those meetings. We're basically wrapping them up in June. But we're happy to answer any questions, and we are requesting action to approve the amended expenditure plan as approved by the TAM Board on March 26.

Thank you. I think we're going to have some questions. Go ahead, Council Member Kohler.

Yeah, and... I already sent these questions or one of these questions. So going back to the old previous Measure A and the major road slide, I'm guessing that the reimagined roadways is as close as possible to the major roads. And one of the things that concerns me looking back at that old Measure A slide is all the Sir Francis Drake work didn't include Fairfax Sir Francis Drake. And that really concerns me. So I'm wondering, you know, everything was around us, but completely missed us. And people that are going to the coast go through St. Francis Drake. People from the West Marin go through. We have tremendously degraded St. Francis Drake. So. is the reimagined roadways open to really looking at, and this is about Fairfax, about the Fairfax Sir Francis Drake area, which was completely outside of what was done before. So is that something that the TAM Board will consider and our TAM representative will fight for? I didn't see anything on what your expenditure plan included for the reimagined roadways, just a description. So is the answer we don't know?

The answer is that the TAM board, so let me explain a little bit of history and then I'll give you the answer. So the previous 2004 process, the roadways that were identified and selected were done by the public works directors, and they were prioritized by the public works directors of the county. At that time, back in 2004, that was the county director, you know, the county and the jurisdictions, all of them as a collective called the Marin Public Works Association. They presented that to the TAM board and that's process and ranking was what was advanced through the funding. For this process, we are recommending a different approach to that. I do want to note that Sir Francis Drake in Fairfax was included in that 2004 discussion. It just didn't rank as one of the high priority projects. And so when the funding was distributed, they went down the list of projects and the funds only went so far. So for this round, we're proposing a little bit of a different approach. to that, the TAM board will guide us in the process of how to actually select the corridors. It won't be driven necessarily by the public works directors, but will be done in consultation with them. We have identified example projects in the Reimagined Roadways fact sheet, and that does include the Fairfax section of Sir Francis Drake. And so we will be going through that process with the TAM board to identify how to select those corridors and then prioritize the corridors that have been identified.

Okay. Can I tack on to that question? I've never been to a TAM meeting, so just this is educational for me. So when you say TAM,

2004.

So that's literally 22 years ago. So is there, so it's, it's baked and no change from, from that.

I mean, from 22 years ago, is that how I may understand measure a measure, a major road category that went away in 2018 was developed back in 2004. We are, we do not, um, we are talking about a new program and a new process at this point.

If I can just add, so the major roads projects that you saw up on the board, those nine projects, those are done except for one that's still in process. So those have been completed. So what we're talking about with reimagined roadways now is kind of a second round of that type of projects. And that process is what we'll be working through with our partners and with the TAM board.

Okay. And I just want to, can I finish? I have a couple other questions. So the other question I have is, um, And I guess I just want to emphasize for our TAM representative that we need to fight for that because Sir Francis Drake has been tremendously degraded through Fairfax, through the work at Sunnyside, through other heavy-duty projects. As we know, those heavy-duty equipment are like 15 times the weight of a regular car. So things have changed since 2004. So it just... planting that seed. Another question I have is just obviously very supportive of the Crossing Guard program, and I just want to ask you, have you considered trying to go for greenhouse gas reduction fund money through the Strategic Growth Council? And that is the funding that comes from what used to be called Cap and Trade and now Cap and Invest. The Crossing Guard program helps reduce greenhouse gases because Kids are walking. Their parents aren't driving, or whoever is driving. So I would suggest to you that if you haven't considered that now, it's kind of a tough road to hoe, but I think that's an opportunity that maybe you haven't considered. So it sounds like... that you're writing notes, you haven't considered that. And the last question I have is, I know there was a big push from the Newt Brigade, which I love, but that's a 10, $15 million project. And I see in your Category 2, you added environmental mitigation. And I'm just wondering, has the TAM board considered, I understand that's kind of a farm road or a rural road, just closing that road during the new crossing season, which I think would be minimal cost to TAM, if anything. So have you considered that?

So thank you for the question. There was a big discussion about the new crossing potential at a couple of the TAM board meetings as this was being considered. That road, Chileno Valley Road, is actually a county road. So it would be County of Marin decision about how to address a potential project or road closure. So They were at our meetings. They're aware of this issue, and I imagine they'll be considering various options.

Well, it does seem like even though it's not specifically your jurisdiction, it would be a good idea to talk to them more about it rather than just relying on them being at the meeting. It just seems like it's just a question I have because we don't want those newts squished. And I can't imagine bending over and picking up how many thousands of newts. So there may be an opportunity, which is something that's done in Tilden Park. So thank you for the presentation. Appreciate it. Go ahead, Council Member Garangeli.

Okay, thank you. Fairfax has always been the gateway to West Marin. I'm not sure if you heard of that little saying, um, people coming from the Richmond bridge, people coming from the Golden Gate bridge, they all got to go through Fairfax to get out to West Marin. And so we need to be taken care of in my estimation, just for that reason alone, because even if we, we get impacted the most out of all these towns, um, The other one would be, and maybe you're not aware of it, but we're also the home to White Hill School. And everybody from San Anselmo uses the road to get, or the buses, to get to White Hill School. One more reason why we need more funding for our roads. I think we're getting shortchanged, and... not only, um, in the, in the major part of, of, of the major funding, but also in the allocation process, um, Santa's almost getting a hundred grand more than Fairfax. And if I read that right, sorry, if I didn't. And, um, and it looks to me like, um, We need to be compensated as best we can for the fact that we are the home to all, every single resident that has students, has children that go to our White Hill School.

And Manor.

And Manor, yes. But San Anselmo schools, grade schools all go to junior high at White Hill. That's where they meet up. Then they go back to Drake eventually, or not Drake, but Archie Williams. I was the third graduating class from White Hill School. And by the way, they had Red Hill Junior High back then. There was three junior highs back then. There was one in Sleepy Hollow as well. But now there's just one. So I would hope that you guys write that down and try to get us more funding to fix Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. the smallest town, the poorest town, I guess, financially, not culturally, but financially, with the most use of our roads when you look at the way people are coming in here, whether it's on the weekends for the gateway to West Marin or the weekdays for White Hill School. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead, Frank. I have comments too, but you go ahead.

Okay. Just picking up on Barbara and Mike's comments, Sir Francis Drake is actually Route 17 from the Richmond-Santa Fe Bridge to Point Reyes National Seashore. It really is. Fourteen million people travel to West Marin every year. The majority of them come through Fairfax on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. State and federal agencies should be assisting our little town in making St. Francis Drake Boulevard safer. In the 1970s, I served as the California Coastal Commission's representative to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area Board of Control for the travel study. We had recommended federal funding for local agencies like Fairfax, to help them with transportation issues and travel issues. I don't know where that all went. I mean, that's, you know, that's, what, 50 years ago. But I happened to be there 50 years ago. And so here we are today trying to figure out how we're going to take care of the issues on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. So it is really important that TAM recognize Fairfax's role in this whole thing. And Mike and Barbara have spelled it out really good. Just one last thing. Interesting, your category 2.3 C level rise. I also sit on the Ross Valley flood zone number nine advisory board to the county. And and we're we're seeing sea sea level rise issues already with king tides in Quaternary Creek blocking Highway one on one. They're flooding. So I mean, there is just a whole lot of issues here in the Ross Valley that Tim's got to deal with. Thank you.

Go ahead, Lisa, and then I have or if you want to go last, you're welcome to do that. I'll go last. You want to go last? OK. um so i'm i i too have comments about sir francis drake but um if one wanted to advocate as a member of a public or um lisa who sits on the board um What is the timing in terms of when these projects will be identified and approved? I think, you know, I have all sorts of ideas as far as how we can get support for Sir Francis Drake in Fairfax as far as getting folks out here and really seeing for themselves. You know, needless to say, next to highway 101 it's the most traveled um road in the county so it's it's it's pretty beat up it's it needs help so what is the timeline and what does the approval process look like and so we can start thinking about because you don't decide right it's a board decision right you put forth recommendations is that right and then the board decides and what's the timeline correct so um

This is an area that we need to have further discussion on is what is the board's timeline for making a decision, but we're envisioning a process where the first 6 to 9 months of after the funds are secure starting July 1, there'd really be a 6 to 9 month data gathering and decision making process discussion with our board. How do we want to select corridors? What are the metrics that we should be considering? How do we involve our countywide transportation plan? And what do they want to see in terms of delivery on these corridors? So we'd be onboarding a consultant team to help us with that process. And then hopefully within a year to 18 months, we sort of have a sort of set of corridors that have been identified and discrete projects along those corridors where we can start talking about a prioritization among them.

Okay, so I'm hearing you're 18 months out from a recommendation or from an approval?

Just in terms of like a discussion decision process, like as how we would try and think through that. That's sort of what we're thinking about at the moment. But this is all subject to further TAM board decisions.

Okay. And then I'm looking at the... Again, 2.4, the focus on multi-jurisdiction, multi-agency, multi-modal project development. So Bolinas Road presents interesting challenges because some parts of the road are owned by the town. Some parts of the road are owned by the county. Some parts of the road are owned by the water district.

Did I miss any?

so that to me qualifies as a multi-agency multi-modal so um is that on the radar is that i knew it was getting some momentum when former council member cutrano was on the board and i don't i don't know what happened with the earmarks and i i wasn't tracking it but i would really love to know that it's considered a high priority and folks are looking at it because we get complaints all the time for both of those roads and

So, Bullion's Road, we are familiar with the issues and the multi-jurisdictional partnership that's sort of been developed on that roadway. It's not exactly what we were envisioning when we were talking about these projects, mostly due to the volume of roadway and traffic and the sort of lack of community connection outside of sort of... you know, resiliency-type roadway risks, because that is a connection for West Marin when Highway 1 does go down. So I think it's something we can consider and talk further about, but it's not exactly the type of roadway that we were envisioning when we were thinking through this process.

Because of just the sheer volume?

Sheer volume, yeah.

Okay, but what about, like, for fire? I mean, because the fire services needs that road.

That's definitely a factor that we're thinking about in terms of metrics. So like I said, this is a roadway that we could consider. It just didn't rise to like the example project list where we identified Fairfax's section of Sir Francis Drake. So it's something we need to look at further in the process.

Okay. And then this is... not to put you on the spot, but this has been on my mind for many, many years, is so a lot of the traffic, the day-to-day traffic on that road are from folks visiting the golf course. And is there a way to get that traffic volume or do you have is there any examples of like how we could i don't know subsidize you know get them because as is a key stakeholder for that road you know i mean it's it's hundreds of cars every day are you talking about engaging the owner of the um

We will need to talk through that outreach and engagement process. I think one of the things we need to think about is how we select these roadway processes and what does that community engagement piece look like? If we're adding a lot of roadways in the county, it's hard to do a very detailed corridor study across 20, 30 corridors. and bring in that stakeholder engagement.

Yeah. Setting aside 2.4, I'm just curious, with your expertise, like how to think about that as a stakeholder, as a, you know... an organization that is bringing in sufficient traffic and likely business and economic development. Like there's a lot of good, but they're also a lot of wear and tear on that street. Like, how do we, how do we think about that and bring them to the table as a thought partner?

You know, I think the first step is just a conversation with the property owner and talk about what are the issues they have, what are their volumes, and what sort of strategies would they even be willing to consider in terms of parking management or in terms of transportation options to that site. We can't resolve land use decisions that have been historically made, but if you have a willing partner, there may be some opportunities that come out of initial discussion.

Okay. Okay. All right, thank you. I think that's it for me.

Go ahead, please. Okay, so I just wanted to mention that, yes, we have talked to the TAM board and TAM staff about concerns about St. Francis Drake and Bolinas. And also, you know, early on in this process, we were concerned about the whole reimagined roadways thing because of the decrease in, you know, annual funding. But we had a really good conversation where we also talked ended up talking about how if indeed we were selected for a project, that this would allow us to do something for which we have limited funding and staff time and expertise, and that it would be one of those complicated projects that would really require like a partnership. So after we had that conversation with the TAM staff, the DPW director and I were convinced that it was a good idea to go ahead and do this, that it would be a beneficial partnership. and that we should go ahead. And I think at the board meeting, there was only one town that voted against this, and that was one town representative, and that was Ross. So even Belvedere, who I think had significant concerns, decided that it was worth going for. So for whatever that's worth, yes, we have been, you know, I'm aware that we need to advocate for Fairfax, and we have in fact talked extensively about this.

Can I see another word?

You may, and then we're going to open the public comment.

Picking up on your comments, you know, the mayor's right. I'm going to take you back to 1966. The Fairfax-Blinus Road was designated in this federal secondary roadway system. Flat out, it was. It was the only north-south connection from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to Highway 1. spot out. Now, we could drive all the way out Drake to Alema and you're on one, or you go down Highway 101 up through Mill Valley and get out there. But as far as an actual connection between St. Francis Drake and Highway 1, it's Fairfax-Bellinus Road. I just wanted to mention that too. Thank you.

All right, let's open the public comment.

thank you it was an enjoyable presentation to hear my council stand up for the town of fairfax so first off thank you i do think if you set your schedule at tam in 2004 and haven't done these projects or awarded or addressed fairfax that's really short thinking and i wonder the allocation priorities that you're using That's not benefiting the community that's taking all this traffic. To Frank's point that he said 14 million visitors, the National Park Service in 2020 estimated that West Marin... Thanks. Okay, we can hear you.

Yeah, we'll give you extra time.

So the National Park Survey through Michigan State University estimated that we had 14.5 million visitors with the bulk of that traffic going through Fairfax on France Strait Boulevard. With that 14.5 million visitors, there's approximately 2 to 4 million visitors. visitors with a zip code exceeding 120 miles which mean they made multiple trips back and forth because there were not the accommodations in west marin collectively they spent 569 million dollars on different um tot gasoline excise taxes and restaurants from that traffic that generates a tremendous amount of revenue for these bonds for tam We should have that revenue where it's protected, where we need it, and where it's generating this revenue for your whole staff. So I commend the town of Fairfax to go ahead and fight for something that is ours. We're the ones taking a bulk of this expense. We should be reimbursed. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Jeff. I live on Bay Road. I came to speak originally on the BPAC comments, but there's been a reoccurring theme tonight about Sir Francis Drake. And spoiler alert, if you stick around for the BPAC presentation, you're going to hear about Sir Francis Drake again. There are a lot of vulnerable road users on that corridor. That's where our subjective survey results have come back with such strong feelings about it. It divides our town. It's a moat between the businesses that are on the north side and on the south side. But more stark is the amount of accidents that happen on that road and the people who have actually been physically hurt from crash data. That is where the real risk is in our community. Besides the inconveniences of social friction, people on different modes of transportation, there's actual real... danger on that road. You got children, you got seniors. It just needs attention. So I just wanted to make sure that you guys took that back with you. It's a huge priority for us and it's limiting active transportation as well as it's endangering our citizens.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, Todd Greenberg, downtown Fairfax. I want to thank the representatives of TAM for being here and for their work on everyone's behalf. I'd like to get some clarity if it's possible to get answers, which most people don't seem to get here in this town council process in Fairfax, California. I'd like to know if it could be elaborated on whether and what the relationship is between TAM and the smart train in Measure B and the traffic flow in San Rafael, which affects all of us. There's frequently 45-minute waits to get out of Fairfax through San Rafael, and it is a cluster because of the smart train. Why is that not elevated? And what is your interaction there between the two? And additionally, was what is the rationale for having biking in high traffic areas? I think some funds from the county were just allocated in a very highly traveled area of San Rafael, and that just further slows traffic. There are people that would contend that traffic jams are being created. We would ask, many residents in Marin would ask for your help with this. And then finally, before the meeting proceeds, can we get some clarity on whether this meeting is being conducted according to Robert's rules of order or whether that's changed to Janet's rules of order? Thank you.

Mark Bell, I'll try to be brief. I brought up several years ago to the town council that the Fairfax part of Bolinas Road after town, after Deer Park Villa, is basically, I guess, falling over the hill. And it was brought to my attention by people who travel it. that you have trucks going up there who have safety chains. Unfortunately, the safety chains are also hitting the pavement, which I believe was the cause of a 240,000-acre fire up in Trinity. And so if you're looking at fire and fire... dangers affecting what's going on, that would be one thing. And also, you know, the Fairfax-Bellinas Road is an escape route one way or the other. So I think that that should add to the importance of trying to help Fairfax get that part fixed. And just the other point, when Kinsey was on TAM, he illegally gave the smart train $8 million. Have you guys stopped doing things like that? Thank you.

Could somebody turn off the microphone, please? Thank you.

Are there any hands raised?

No, they're not. Okay. I'm sorry. Yes, there is one raised hand on Zoom. Go ahead. Sierra, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

I just wanted to pipe in and say, Bolinas Road... It is kind of a mess, and Sir Francis Drake is certainly a mess. And anything that we can do to get funding to take care of doing some repaving or cleaning it up is a good thing. And not waiting another 15 years to do it is an even better thing. And I'm not even going to get into fire egress and disasters or anything else. I mean, the roadways are the lifeblood of the town in terms of getting in and out. And that's how to get the funding, I'm not sure. And the costs of everything are going up. And the longer we wait, the more it's going to cost. And we definitely need to take care of it. And good luck. And thanks.

Thank you. Thank you again for being here this evening. Oh, we have one more? Oh, okay. Closing the public comment. Thank you again for being here and presenting and answering all our questions. And with that, I will entertain a motion to approve the amended Measure AA expenditure plan.

So I would move that we approve the amended Measure AA expenditure plan as adopted by the Transportation Authority of Marin TAM Board on March 26, 2026, following a comprehensive public outreach and review process.

I'll second. We have a motion from Council Member Blash and a second from Council Member Kohler. Council Member Blash? Aye. Council Member Garangeli?

Aye. Is the money we're talking about for Fairfax going to be in this particular?

We're voting on what you just saw, the slides that you just saw. Microphone. Pardon me?

Microphone.

Yeah, I saw them.

Okay.

But we also talked about adding, you know, taking care of Fairfax. So is that going to happen?

They already said that that will be discussed in the first six to nine months after July 1. It's not in here.

And can I just clarify, we're not giving up. We still get money. This is just a change in the way the plan is constructed with a slight change in the allocation. But we still get money. We still get all kinds of benefits from TAM. We're not voting on whether or not we don't get any money. We're just voting on whether or not we accept the plan as amended.

Well, I'd like to ask that we amend it so we get more allocation for Fairfax before I vote yes on it.

So I do want to clarify that in our discussions with county council, our legal council, we cannot accept amendments to the amended expenditure plan from various councils because there's no reconciliation process for the various amendments here. So from our legal interpretation, your town attorney is here. It's a yes or no to the amended expenditure plan as presented.

A good question would be how many cities have approved it and how many have denied it? Are we the first community, first town to have the presentation?

We have presented to the Board of Supervisors who have approved it, as well as six jurisdictions who have all approved it. And the board approved it.

The whole board approved it.

And the TAM board.

So we're seven for seven. I'm going to vote no only because I want them to know that Fairfax needs more money. It's not going to stop this from getting approved.

Council Member Kohler. Yes. Vice Mayor Ager.

Aye.

Mayor Hellman.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you. Thank you for hearing our comments.

Mayor, we passed the 930 rule.

So, I mean, it's... We've got one more item in consent. Is that right? Yes, that's correct. Do we want to go ahead with trying to get through all? Yes. Okay. Let's see.

Do I need to make a motion to waive the 930 rule? I think we're okay.

Let's proceed with item number three, the bicycle, the long-awaited, much-anticipated bicycle and pedestrian master plan update, a progress report on bicycle and pedestrian master plan update. And I know we have Bryn and Jeff here. Thank you for staying late. The floor is yours.

I'm just going to turn it over to Bren McKillop, our associate planner, who's been actively involved with BPAC and preparing the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan.

Yeah. So hi everyone. Like Jeff said, my name is Bryn. I'm an associate planner with the town and the staff liaison to the town's bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee. Um, so a bike and ped plan is a longterm strategic document that guides the development of infrastructure policies and programs to address walking, cycling, and other active modes like using a wheelchair or stroller. Um, last time it was updated in Fairfax was in 2016. Um, the town is in the process of updating this plan, and we'll be providing a progress report today, focusing on the progress made by the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee, or, which was formed in September 2025 to assist in community engagement for the project. We are about halfway through the process, moving from a phase of doing community engagement to applying the engagement to recommendations. So we thought this would be a good time to check in with the council to hear thoughts and engage you all in the planning process. We will first discuss the extent of GIT engagement so far, and then dive into an online survey and a survey report provided to council conducted between October 2025 and February 2026, and then go over some of our next steps. The BPAC have met almost, or actually, sorry. The BPAC have met almost every month since September 2025. They've discussed and identified how and who they want to reach in town. They've reviewed survey questions, the 2016 plan, presentations from a public works director, saved shots to school, and had conversations with the Marin Bicycle Coalition, the Chamber of Commerce, and some principals at local schools like Manor and White Hill. They've also gone out into the community and gone on a walk on it in the downtown area and tabled at local events like the farmer's market this evening. The BPAC has directed our consultant to draft a prioritization matrix in a plan with a focus on making the plan more actionable than aspirational, which they observed was something the 2016 plan could have focused on more. The BPAC will continue to meet and will be reviewing an upcoming first draft of plan recommendations at their meeting this month on Thursday the 14th. Next slide. So we've contracted with a map-based survey company for two surveys. The first of which we will go over tonight. And it was conducted in the fall through the winter with an aim to capture a snapshot of where and why people do or do not travel by an active mode, like walking, biking, using wheelchair or stroller, excuse me. We'll be conducting the next survey once we receive the recommendations from our consultant, probably in about a month. And we have a sign-up list available on the town website, and it was available to sign up for tonight at the farmer's market. if you would like to receive an update on when that survey will be available to take. Next slide.

So, but what type of, what responses did you get? I understand that.

Yeah, sorry if that was unclear. We're going to go into a deeper dive in a second. Yeah, so I'm just starting to get into it. So this graph shows how many survey respondents are from Fairfax or other jurisdictions, showing almost all respondents are Fairfax residents. This graph shows how well the survey represents different age groups in town or from the other jurisdictions. Where the purple and green bars align, the percent of people in town is represented best in the survey. For example, the survey results did not represent the younger demographic in town and overrepresented those 35 and over. The BPAC interpreted this information at our last meeting as a need to do more direct outreach to schools and young people in town so we get their input. Next slide. These are the questions we asked in the survey, which included a variety of types from rating infrastructure, an open-ended question about the future vision of Fairfax, to mapping locations of concern, destinations people wish they would reach more easily by an active mode and frequent routes people take. A lot of these questions had follow-up questions with the opportunity to provide more open-ended detail as well. This chart shows the results of a question asking respondents to rate infrastructure. If you would like to look further into the details of it, it's available in the survey report. A main takeaway being from this is that the greatest concerns for people are sidewalk conditions, sidewalk widths, on-street bikeways, and quality of road for biking. Next slide. For the open-ended question about the vision in 2035 for Fairfax, responses indicate that maintaining existing roads and sidewalks, like fixing potholes and root lift, should be a top community priority by then, as well as there being physical separation between cars and active modes, greater enforcement of both cyclists and drivers, and a reimagined downtown that deprioritizes cars. And for the question regarding locations of concern for walking, the intersection of Bolinas Road and Broadway was the primary concern, followed closely by Broadway and Elsie Lane. Next slide. Oh, sorry, previous slide. For biking, Bolinas and Broadway is again the hotspot with 22 selections. We also saw significant concerns that Sir Francis Drake and Pastore, parents and students in particular, highlighted Upper Bolinas Road as a difficult school route. Next slide. We also gave the option for people to ride in their own mode outside of walking and biking, which most people use to bring up constraints around using strollers in town with the area near the park on Park Road, the top location of concern. This graph in the report visually captures the concerns associated with the locations identified. The general safety and comfort side is the highest concern, and wayfinding signs is the lowest. Also, speed comes in second here and is frequently mentioned in other responses as a concern. Because the community expressed concerns about vehicle speeds, we are researching various strategies to address that. One approach we are looking into is using infrastructure first, so using design to naturally encourage slowing drivers rather than just relying on signs. We are also reviewing... We're also reviewing California code options that would allow us to declare 15 mile per area zone, specifically within 500 feet of schools. These are kind of like tools that we are considering as we begin to process this feedback into recommendations. When people drew their own frequent routes on the map, we see that Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in the downtown area made our highest frequency corridors. These are the spines of the town and they're where the friction is highest.

Get a little bit more orientation about this survey. So when you say routes drawn by respondents, what does that mean? Yeah, sure.

So one of the map questions asked for people to draw... Frequent walking routes, they take frequent biking routes and then they have the option to, I believe, if they wanted to draw like a different route with like a different mode, like with the stroller using wheelchair. And when I say draw, they were able to select a point on a map and then select. along a route of where they were going. And when that data came back, we were able to search it for how many times did people use Sir Francis Drake in their routes. And then we were given, like, a percentage of, like, 40% of people use Sir Francis Drake as a part of their, like, frequent biking route, for example.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Let's see. Sorry. Many of the respondents highlighted the school route on Upper Bolinas Road as a challenge. This data is vital because this shows us exactly where the community is present biking and walking in our current system other than arterials. So this list here is where people outside of those arterials were most frequently drawing their biking or walking routes. And there were also 121 specific comments we received in response to a question about where people would want to walk to but find difficult. And so for this one, When that question came up, people would put in a pin on a map. And then we received that information on the other side. And we put it into this table. And we thought it would be best to organize it by the feedback into these geographic zones to help us see patterns in the barriers. And I wanted to put up the table. to kind of give everyone an example of what's in the survey report, but it probably is a little bit hard to read on here and worth like going and spending some time reading if you want to look more closely at it. But the gist is that the down cone course saw the highest volume of input with nearly 40% of all comments focusing on complex crossings and the high conflict between pedestrians and vehicles. In our residential hubs and commercial quarters, the feedback was about missing links. So people told us in these areas, their concerns are mostly about the sidewalk networks that just stop in a lack of protected space along Sir Francis Drake, where traffic speeds feel really high. We also heard some unique concerns about our parks and schools. For our trails and parks, people mentioned deteriorating stairs and poor lighting as major hurdles. For schools, the primary concern was vehicle speed in zones where children are walking. And again, this data is purely a reflection of the barriers identified by the community. And we're using this category of concern list to ensure that when we begin the project recommendation phase, we're addressing the right problems in the right places. And the same thing, but this time for biking, the downtown core again accounts for over a third of the feedback. The community is telling us that the traffic congestion and the lack of dedicated bike lanes make downtown a high stress environment for riders. We also see significant feedback regarding our parks and the San Anselmo border. Cyclists find it very difficult to pick a safe route between Fairfax and our neighbors in San Anselmo, and as Fairfax is responsible for projects just within its borders, it's important to focus on projects within town, but the BPAC has expressed an interest in some joint BPAC meetings with San Anselmo's BPAC to see if any collaboration could address this challenge better than just working on it in a silo. And then in the commercial quarters from this table, the word unfriendly was used to describe current road designs, citing high-speed traffic as a major deterrent. And for our schools category, there's a clear request from the community for protected paths to make riding safer for students. So we're about halfway through this process, like I said earlier, and before the BPAC begins reviewing the policy recommendations from the consultant that we'll likely see at the next BPAC meeting on May 14th, we wanted to ensure we shared this community snapshot with you. One of the questions that would be great to hear you all address is like, are these findings consistent with what you're hearing from your constituents? Do you want to highlight any gaps you notice in the outreach? So staff in the BPAC look forward to your thoughts or recommendations as we move into the policy drafting phase. And I know that was a lot of information.

Yeah. Yeah. Before you go, did I miss in your presentation how many responses there have been?

Yeah, so in one of the initial slides, it mentions that the response rates varied from question to question because we didn't require... Not the response rate, but the number. Oh, sorry. The responses for each question varied because we didn't require people to answer all the questions to submit. Some people would kind of like cherry pick what questions they wanted to answer. So like the greatest responses, number of responses we got for a question was 300, around 300. So there's a unique...

Individuals?

Unique individuals. Like, could they answer more than once?

I just want to know how many people took the survey. I don't care. I mean, I care, but I don't know.

I don't need the very... For some of the mapping questions, people could choose more than one location. So when we asked what's the location of concern in town for walking, they could have chosen...

What she's asking is how many actual people, individuals took the survey, regardless of how many questions.

It was around 300. Okay. I can get you a more precise number, but that was like the that's, that's fantastic.

300 might be the most we've ever gotten. Go ahead.

So I guess I have a few questions. So number one, I'm kind of questioning why we needed survey responses from people that are not Fairfax residents. We have a lot of visitors, but it also seemed like, to me, that sort of skewed things a certain way.

Sure. I think when we talked about that with the BPAC before the survey was published, and there was the thought that it's better to include than exclude at this point. And we're just going to be doing outreach within town, like the outreach was done at the Yeah, so I think it's... That's all right.

I just wanted to know. I mean, my personal opinion is that it's very important. Okay, all right.

I dropped my question. So the other question I have, and I provided these comments before or prior to you guys... You know, we never implemented the 2016 plan. So what I'm concerned about is our ambitious idea to include areas that are not Fairfax. Oak Manor is unincorporated Fairfax. Sleepy Hollow is not Fairfax. And it's Marin County. San Anselmo border is not Fairfax. Pancho Villas to the Fairfax East border, the sidewalks are all owned by San Anselmo. We have the actual property. And Frank probably knows the history of that weirdness, but I don't. And then the other thing is people talking about getting to Red Hill. Red Hill is two to three miles away. And I think that we should... puts I realize the survey is a survey so I'm not disputing that but I think we really need to think about when we put this together as an actual plan specifically Fairfax now it may be that there's an appendix for some of these other areas and that's where I would put them but for us to think that we never implemented the 2016 plan Why are we going to go well beyond Fairfax? Let's put something together that's practical that we can do you know, with limited resources and let's try to actually implement it.

So I just wanted to mention that this is self-generated, a lot of this. So this is like self-generated by people and there's going to be a collaborative effort with the San Anselmo BPAC and it does impact those of us like me writing to the bank 600 times in Red Hill Shopping Center and trying to...

I understand that. Can I finish my comments and questions? So I feel like... Whether or not that impacts people who are biking or walking to San Anselmo, I think we need to put together a practical plan for Fairfax. So I'm just saying, anticipating next steps for Fairfax that we can implement and for the things that are outside Fairfax that would be nice to have. And all this collaboration... which is not a bad idea, but it's going to divert us from being able to implement what is in Fairfax. Let's get our arms around that. And then for the things that are very expensive that we won't be able to afford, again, when we put the actual plan together, I'd like to see those in an appendix and put together a plan that we can practically... actually implement.

Yeah, I think that's important. And just thank you, because I think that's really good feedback. But I have a question about process related to that. So the consultant that's going to be putting forth the recommendations or the plan, is that something that we can give? Because I think that was funded by a grant, but I just don't want to spend time and money and energy on, you know, areas that aren't, I mean, to Barbara's point, right, I do think that's, it's important, these other things, but what's going to be most useful and really most effective?

I think as the staff liaison, I'll communicate that to the BPAC so they understand that, and Lisa will too as the council liaison. I mean, even something that could address these survey responses could be as simple as like a, a policy just for example to give you a better idea of how it could influence the plan is a policy for regional collaboration by like the you know that in the program for that could be the bpacs meeting um you know like once a year or something like that to talk about what their different projects and just get on the same page you know or something you know so it could look as simple as that it doesn't have to be like you know this we're going to spend all this money the the program doesn't have to be like this an infrastructure recommendation or yeah yeah okay

and is there a vision to have because this is a lot of words and i'm just is there a vision for there to be an actual visual so we can say okay in the downtown area and like all these different sort of categories that you're looking at this is where it's strong this is where and have some color mapping, because it's a lot of words, and I'm just trying to visualize this section of the town and then where the needs are.

Yeah, I think that would be a great next step. Unfortunately, we don't have ArcGIS or any sort of mapping software in town, so it is something we have to kind of farm out to a consultant, and I'm not sure at this point if it's within the scope of the contract we have to create a map based on community input, because As a town, we said we would do the community input and all the funding would go towards the more technical analysis. But that's, I think, a really good idea and something that would make the survey.

Getting the community input. So now that we have that, though, can we synthesize it into more like iconic icons?

iconography is that the right word um like as a map or like graphs and charts or yeah just like more digest that that feels like consultant work i mean is that the vision or like what do you just don't think we had that within the budget like the scope right now and we're kind of at the end of the uh-huh like i don't think there's going to be leftover money but i think it's something we should talk to the consultant about at least and see what they think okay yeah

Yeah, I mean, we can certainly do one or two maps. I mean, usually they would have a feature map in the plan, which would be kind of a centerpiece, which would show all of the proposed improvements. And then there probably could be a couple other supporting maps. So it's not like there won't be any visual information. It's just that it is kind of...

limited because it does take yeah gis to do okay go ahead frank that it makes well thank you um let me just ask our manager a quick question the 75 000 grant did that cover any of our staff time or is that strictly the consultants

That's a great question, Frank. So the grant was for $82,000, I believe, and $75,000 was the not to exceed amount for the consultant. So there was some ability for the staff to be covered.

I thought the $5,000 extra was for the survey work.

Yeah, we also contracted with Rapshner for $5,000 for two surveys. And so we've spent half that so far, which is what generated a lot of these results.

So just a few comments. The participation is roughly 7,400 folks live in Fairfax. And it looks like it's four-tenths of 1% of the people participated. I mean, that's my guess.

Yeah, what I would like to say that is imagine if 300 people came into the town hall right now. So it's, you know, it's a snapshot. We're not claiming it's statistically significant at all.

So what I wonder is why there are no reports and data from the police department. No accidents, no... No citations. I don't see any of that data in here.

Yeah, this is just a community survey. So that's going to be in the plan. The consultant has access to that and is going to use that to inform their recommendations too. This is just a piece of what's going to inform it.

So that information will come later for the Fairfax Police Department. So we'll know what we're up against here, right?

There's, you know, Lisa can probably speak to it better than me, but there's like dashboards that exist that have this kind of data that we've talked about at BPAC meetings. Yeah.

Yeah, the Safe Routes to School in the county has dashboards that track, especially pedestrian and bicycle collisions, and people are aware of that.

I saw possibly closing Blenish Road from Broadway to Elsie once in a while, maybe. The problem with that is half the town of Fairfax would evacuate down Bolinas Road in a wildland fire. And we've been through the closing of Bolinas Road in the past, even a small section of it. It's going to put more traffic over in Dominga. It's going to put more traffic over in Bank Street. And it's going to create problems for our downtown merchants who depend on folks be able to drive and park by their business and go to their business.

So I don't think that that was a proposal of the BPAC per se. Isn't that just something somebody suggested in the survey?

And there are no leading questions within the survey. People just generate that. We're not doing that. I think those responses came from the open-ended question for how would you imagine Fairfax in 2035?

So that's what a resident suggested. It's not the BPAC that's suggesting that as a solution. It's just residents have suggested that. So we're just noting that that's what they said.

So what's interesting about the vehicle, on almost every, quite often I read people are talking about the traffic speeding, cars are speeding. And I've been trying to lower speed limits at Fairfax for a year and a half, but this survey shows even as small as it is, people are really concerned about the speed limits. And we need to see what kind of citations have been issued here to try to slow this traffic down. So this is just an initial report. We're going to have much more information and data.

Yeah, it's a progress report. And the results I just showed you were just from one community survey. So asking residents what they feel and think about walking and biking in town.

I have a question when you get it.

Yeah, please go ahead, Mike.

Just curious. So report, this is an accumulation of what's been done over how long of a period?

This is from September or August was when the BPAC formed. So this has been the BPAC meeting like almost every month besides the holidays and kind of learning, you know, a lot about how local government operates and deciding where they want to engage and who they want to engage with and then doing the engagement, and then coming up with the survey questions. So it's, yeah, it's been going on since September, and we had our last meeting last month.

And the, how much have we paid the consultants so far?

Do we have more? We're on track. We're, you know, we, I don't have the exact number of what we've spent so far, but, yeah,

Okay, it's okay. Within the grant. Just a question. Oh, it's just within the grant. Have we used half the money?

Yeah, a little bit more than half the money.

Right. And are we over halfway through this process?

It's kind of hard to quantify it like that because we just have a set of deliverables that were promised and we're on track with the deliverables. So we have just the plan recommendation and the prioritization matrix. So it's a list of projects that are weighted by concern. And so we're expecting those.

And how much staff time goes into this? Both you guys are here now. What percentage of time do you spend doing it? Jeff, what's your participation?

So for BPAC meetings, I attend those as the staff liaison. And I coordinate the agenda for that. And let's see. And then planning for presentations like this and conducting the survey. I'd say... It's a little bit hard to quantify. We don't count our hours for those kind of things. But, you know, I'm also taking on a lot of current planning work as Linda is transitioning out of town and we had Kara leave. So I'm quite busy doing a lot of the current planning things. So making time for it where I can.

OK, thank you. I was curious as to how the time gets allocated. That's all. That's all I have for now. Thank you.

Can we open the public comment? I'd like to do that.

Thank you. Hi, Todd Greenberg, downtown Fairfax. I want to compliment Councilwoman Kohler for bringing up the issue of who stakeholders are and that residents aren't really properly represented here. This report under engagement activities talks about four stakeholder meetings, local schools, chamber of commerce, Marin County Bicycle Coalition and Climate Action Committee, but there's no survey. And it appears from testimony given tonight that there are very few residents. that actually are having input into this. I'm very concerned about that. I'm very concerned that where some of these things have run amok elsewhere in the Bay Area, when San Francisco's MTA came up with a now proven failure of a huge expenditure that remade Valencia Street and it caused 30% of the businesses to go out of business, I'm concerned that when residents aren't consulted here in Fairfax, when businesses aren't consulted adequately, that businesses are gonna go out of business and Fairfax is gonna die on the vine like so many businesses did in San Francisco. I'm concerned about other data that's been presented that supposedly seven stories being built with 243 units at School Street Plaza is somehow reducing the vehicle miles traveled in Fairfax by 15%. Thank you, next speaker.

Hi, Mina, Fairfax Chamber of Commerce. Very tired. I'm sure you all are too. I just want to say to Brynn, thanks for leading this group. I think they're very conscientious and they try really hard to take in all of the different viewpoints. I support many of the goals in this plan, especially improving sidewalk conditions, accessibility, safer crossings. and making it easier for families, seniors, and students to move around the town safely. I also agree Fairfax should continue improving connections between the neighborhoods and the different business districts in Fairfax. Where I have concern is around any future proposals that would reduce downtown parking or significantly impact vehicle access to local businesses. And this includes business visibility from the road. So like, you know how sometimes there's a traffic calming measures and they tend to push into the road to make it feel like, you know, to urge people to slow down, just to be mindful, like visually of what's happening around them in that area. That's about it, so thank you.

Hi, Jeff Geild again, Bay Road. I'm on the BPAC. I'm thrilled to hear that there's a real hunger for actionable recommendations coming from the BPAC. And I want just to say that everyone on the BPAC really wants to give you things that you can work with, that you can move forward. It was acknowledged that from the last BPAC that not a lot happened. So we really want to have something that's actionable. And thanks for the presentation, Bryn. That was nice. So while the discovery survey provides a snapshot of resident sentiment, we're working to organize these results using a framework that I like to call the friction continuum. So this allows us to map our challenges along a spectrum from social conflict downtown that you heard about in the survey to objective kinetic risk on our arterials that comes from crash data that we get from the state. So, and then we do, by putting those things along that continuum, we can identify three distinct tiers of intervention by correlating that survey sentiment with objective crash data. And then we can have a strategic roadmap for action. The first tier is kind of the high-speed moat. So Sir Francis Drake is our primary safety failure. The crash data supports this. We've got a lot of vehicles hitting vulnerable road users for these critical school routes. 44% of residents envision a future defined by physical separation. And this is an objective engineering priority. Second is the sidewalk trap. In the downtown core, the friction is social. E-bike strollers and seniors are competing for narrow sidewalk space. This is a prime candidate for a pilot project. An example is the Fairfax Loop that we're talking about. It's a counterclockwise one-way that connects from Bolinas to Broadway.

To continue.

Okay. Great. Sorry.

Could you rewind on the loop? Cause I'm trying to visualize a very visual person.

So, so, so this, it sounds radical, but it's also, um, a very, like one of the things we've considered as part of the B pack, we've talked to MCBC, um, and, and did some, uh, seminars on, um, uh, quick build, low cost, um, pet projects. And we have, uh, kind of a polarized constituency here that if we're going to do anything, we want people to be involved, and we want people to be a part of it. So a pilot is kind of a perfect thing for us. We're not really easily governed, but maybe if we participate, we can move forward. So the idea is, and this is just an example, but the idea being that if you did a counterclockwise loop, where Bolinas was northbound. The section between Bolinas and Bank on Broadway was westbound only. And then Bank Street and Elsie then connected. It basically turns the downtown corridor or the downtown section into kind of a grand roundabout. You could free up space on the road for more bikes to get off the sidewalks. it could potentially, in the pilot mode, it probably wouldn't change the parking at all. It would just be the same parking, but it would free up road space. If the pilot proved out, potentially you could do things with sidewalks, maybe even reorient the parking and potentially increase parking. So it could actually be a boon to merchants in that way, in addition to making the things flow better and people wanting to actively transport downtown. Is that just an idea? And then just to get back to kind of where the physical safety and the social friction kind of overlap the most is down at the end, and this is within the Fairfax city limits, at the end of where... I think it's Center, either it's Broadway turns to Center or it's Center Street there at Pastore. That intersection there, there's crash data there, and it's also kind of where people come in and out of Fairfax. People are shopping, they're crossing, they go across the street there between Good Earth and the parking.

We've heard from a woman named Lindsay about that intersection, right? Yeah. With a stroller, she finds it very dangerous.

Yeah, I've mentioned that to the BPAC, and I think it was worth reiterating that the stroller issue is big.

So, sorry, so I'm going way over. But that's kind of the third bucket or the third tier where it's not necessarily an easy solution, but it's got kind of the... the Venn diagram of physical safety and social friction, they overlap there, and it's a complicated solution. So it deserves more study. It's not necessarily like what you could do on Sir Francis Drake by putting up physical barriers to separate the bike lane. It's geometrically challenged there. So there's no clear solution there, but it's something that needs more further study. So it's kind of those three buckets. pilots, low-cost, innovative ideas, physical separation for the high-speed arterials, and then the more complicated problems like you have at Center and Pastore. So I guess my question, my ask here is that, I don't know, does that kind of make sense? Is that something that we should, kind of a path we should go down to give you guys recommendations? Or if you had any other thoughts about like what You mentioned a map.

I'm speaking for myself. What you just mentioned, the Venn diagram, all these terms I think you guys are meeting, and these are very familiar terms, and they make sense. The Venn diagram of social fiction, where to help prioritize. This area of town you know, these are the strengths, these are the opportunities, these are the problems. I don't have the crash data. We're going to have to synthesize this in a very digestible way. And the more that you can we, you can do it visually. I would, I would personally really, really appreciate it. Cause it's just, it's just too, it's too much like words. So I'm not talking about GIS software. I'm talking about like happy faces. I'm talking about red lines. I'm talking about color, you know, help us kind of visualize, okay, where are the hotspots? Where are the opportunities? Where should we focus? You know, it's, That's what I would like to see ultimately. I don't know if that's helpful.

So, yeah. I just have a question. Are we asking questions of him because he's a BPAC member? Because it seems strange that we're going back and forth. Yes.

Yeah, because it seems non-standard. It is non-standard. I said I would allow it. He's obviously got a lot of expertise having served on the BPAC. So if you have a problem with it, let me know.

Yeah, I'm just saying it seems like we have other people waiting to speak and we've given a lot of time.

Well, I'm not on the BPAC, so I don't get to.

Yeah.

I mean, he's asking for feedback so we can direct this in a meaningful way.

Well, I think we get that from staff, though.

Yeah, I don't disagree. All right. Do you have any, anybody have anything else? Okay.

Thank you.

We're still in public comment. I think, um, go ahead. Oh, sorry.

Mark felt. So, um, I'm glad to hear that you're not planning on closing Bolinas one day a week. That's totally off, right? You're not going to do that. You didn't talk to anybody on Domingo about that. Why do you want to destroy Dominga? I don't understand. We've seen it from noise pollution and now this. Dominga is a main thoroughfare for bicyclists.

Mark, you need to stop being confrontational with staff. Just make your comments to us.

I'm trying to, but you're interrupting me.

Make your comments to us. Don't direct them at staff. You're being very confrontational and very rude. Direct them at us.

Okay, fine. I'll direct them at you. Can I have my time back, please?

Go ahead, Mark.

So Dominga is already the choice of bikers. The mountain bikers with their groups go through there several times a day, sometimes with 30, 40 people on bikes, mostly kids. They have people in front, adults in front and in back. You want to put more cars on that, onto Dominga? Incredibly bad idea. One thing that you did bring up that I thought was a good point was more crosswalks, which is what we brought up as the public a couple of years ago when you wanted to spend and continues to spend $14,000 or $15,000 on the crosswalk by Mai Tai restaurant instead of putting in three or four additional crosswalks with the same amount of money. And most traffic calming strategies that I've seen have caused the opposite. You can just look at Center Boulevard by the Good Earth. There would have been room to put in a left and right hand turn lane in the middle, still keeping the basic idea that happened there, and you wouldn't have huge backups going every time somebody wanted to make a left hand turn. I think that what you need to do is to talk to people who are going to be affected by your decisions, not by people who walk a mile and a half loop once.

Thank you. Are there any raised hands?

We have two speakers on Zoom. Okay. The first speaker is Deb, followed by Sierra, followed by Kathy. Deb, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Thank you. Thank you, council members, for hearing me. Deborah Benson, Cascade Drive. Unless I'm mistaken, this is open time for public expression on matters on the agenda. And you just gave eight minutes, over eight minutes, to a member of the public. for whatever reason, I don't know, perhaps because that person agreed with your point of view, Mayor Hellman, but I do not want to be stopped at two minutes. I want my fair time. I don't know if any members of the bicycle and pedestrian committee are familiar with any of the history of the general plan or the comings and goings of Fairfax, but I would like to make comment on the fact that we spent a lot of money on Safe Routes to Schools. I think at the start, a woman named Debbie Hubsmith started that whole process and it was continued after she unfortunately passed from this planet. But we did spend a lot of money finding out ways for kids to get safely to schools and there could be modifications to that for sure. We also had in the original general plan potentially closing Bolinas Road. That was taken off completely in 2017 off of the books. And so now there are mentions again of closing Bolinas Road, making it a pedestrian mall one day a week, two days a week, all the way around. There are mentions again by this member of the public who spoke for over eight minutes about rerouting traffic on Bolinas Road. Over 2,500 of us live on the side of town that is accessed by Bolinas Road. And it would put us in grave danger to have to go through loops to satisfy some pedestrian and bicycle plan. Other than that, I would like to see, because a lot of us are aging, I would like to see more handicap parking spaces. I recently, as I am an aged person, went through a surgery which required me to have a handicapped space, and I realized that so many of us are in that spot right now, in this town, that there are only a few. So I would like to see more of that going on. There was also mention in this presentation of more parklets. I think the parklets should go. I guess that's all I can think of right now. And thank you for hearing me.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Sierra, followed by Kathy. Sierra, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

I'm going to try and talk fast. Oak Manor and the county are stakeholders in this. We are part of Fairfax, regardless of how you feel about us. The survey is only as good as the questions. So that's something to look out. The most dangerous part here is the transitions. Transitions from the sidewalks to the streets, transitions crossing Sir Francis Drake. Our pavement, our roads are in really terrible condition. That makes our transitions even more dangerous. I ride a lot. Visibility is incredibly important, especially like Bolinas and Broadway. You look at those parklets there, it's really narrow. You got plants sticking out, you got cars, you got SUVs that people have no idea where their side view mirrors are. Parklets really aren't a good thing, especially in that position for visibility. Throw in the state of the pavement. You're talking to the TAM board. How do we repave? I don't know what the economics are with the TAM board and road and county and everything, but our pavement is adding a lot to this. School traffic is a mess. pickup and drop off. If you could get half of those kids out of the cars and onto feet and onto bikes, there would be a whole lot less traffic. If you sit downtown and you watch the traffic build up during school drop off and pickup, it's exponential. Unfortunately, too many cyclists and pedestrians are hit and killed and hurt. And part of that speed, part of that transitions, part of its visibility, part of its pavement, and just the state of everything. You know, what's our best bang for the buck in Fairfax for taking care of our infrastructure? And we've got places where there's sidewalks with signs parking on the other side of the street. There's sidewalks that end in the middle of the block. You know, there's work to do. And I think I've covered what I was trying to say. Visibility, pavement, and transitions. Getting across Sir Francis Drake.

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

Thank you.

I'll just double. I do agree with Deb Benson and Sierra about the parklets. Closing Bolinas Avenue is a serious public safety concern. This road is a critical corridor for more than 3,000 residents and surroundings in an emergency.

Kathy, you have a tremendous echo. I know, I hear that. I no longer understand what you're saying.

Let me turn this down. Do you hear me now?

You probably have your zoom on at the same time. Turn it off because that's what's causing the reverb.

What's what? All right. Let me try again later.

Thank you. Well, later. Okay, we're closing the public comment. All right, further deliberations. Okay, I need to say a couple things.

So first off, Closing Bolinas Road is not a recommendation of the BPAC. That was a suggestion a community member made in response to the survey. So I received letters about this. People seem to be panicking. That has to be clarified that that was a comment from a member of the public. This was not a recommendation of the BPAC that we're going to close Bolinas Road one day soon. a week or something. So that's one important thing. Um, the other thing is, and so I do want to mention, you know, you know, in response to Sierra's comment, which was, you know, there was a lot of things I agree with there. Um, I mean, I rode this morning with the safe routes to school crew and the parents and the kids on bike to school day. And yes, that is the whole purpose of having safe routes to school and to make better bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure so that children are able to do healthy transportation on their way to school, not get killed, and also to decrease traffic. And it has a proven track record of decreasing traffic. So, you know, it's a really important program that is largely funded through TAM. I'm surprised that very few council members took this survey. It is very interesting tool to try to track how where you walk or bike on a daily basis. The idea of the loop, I do not think is a recommendation of the BPAC, although it is of interest to a member of the BPAC. So again, I want people to not panic about this. Like I appreciated the comments, but there is a lot of sensitivity to traffic circulation in our downtown. And I want us to be very careful about, you know, where we're going with this, because I think a lot of the recommendations we're going to end up seeing are going to be things like slowing traffic or, you know, adopting a different signage. So, you know, there's big dreams and there are smaller practical things that we can do. I'm very impressed with the leadership of the BPAC. It's been a really great group of community members who's come together and really shown great leadership in reaching out to the community. So when I hear someone say, oh, we're not reaching out to the community, we had a survey that more than 300 people responded to. We had booths at the The winter market, we had a booth at the craft fair. We've had booths out in front of the Good Earth. We've had booths at the farmer's market. And we had a workshop here in this room. So people are being reached out to. And if people feel like they want something different, taken into account, they need to actually come to those events or respond to the survey or come to a BPAC meeting or send emails to the BPAC. And I've invited people to do that again and again. You can't just, you know, kvetch on next door. You need to like actually reach out because they're very eager to hear your input because it's extremely important to all of us that we have decent bicyclists and pedestrian safety in town. I did want to note that if you read the council member reports, you'll note that the Safe Routes to School and the county are already addressing some of the concerns that we have. So they will be working on Manor by Manor School to slow the speed limits. And they've done a speed study of it. It's easier to slow traffic around schools. So they will be doing that, I think, over the summer. They'll be looking at speed limit signs that are lower than are currently there. And that was where I rode today with the kids. So it's really important. It was very scary being on Sir Francis Drake with a bunch of little kids on bikes. You know, you realize how fragile everybody is. And then I also wanted to note that Safe Routes to School is also researching safety concerns on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and particularly focusing in the area of the Azalea Crosswalk. So they will also be presenting some findings at some point on that particular issue. and i just wanted to note that the main value of the current report is public outreach to educate the public and to confirm some of the concerns that we've all had and heard about particular locations in town but to try to bring more people into that conversation so we can really confirm with our residents you know what are what are the top areas of concern and then as jeff mentioned you know, corresponding that with crash data that we do have access to about where those hotspots are that we should address. So I'm like really looking forward to the recommendations report, but I just want to put out there, like people have a lot of big dreams about what could happen. It doesn't mean that those are going to be, What gets done here, we're going to look at recommendations and they're going to be recommendations that take in all of the different input. Some of it really, you know, big dreams and some of it smaller focused practical dreams on what could happen.

I'd just like to add one thing. Since you asked, and by the way, nice presentation, and it's hard to do what you're doing. It's hard to do what we're doing. But I would highly recommend just my personal opinion as a merchant with multiple locations downtown. Plus, I live up at Deer Park now. But I would not do that loop. that is going to cause an uproar. And I don't think it's going to help. And I know it's a nice dream. Everyone has it about every five, six years. And then it just causes an uproar. And I don't think it's going to work personally. That's just me. So I just want to let you know, you asked for that input. Like, what do you think? I'm just telling you what I think. Thank you.

But maybe, maybe it's a pilot to prove that it works or doesn't work. You know, there's, if it's opinions, opinions, opinions, maybe you try it and you say, yeah, It doesn't work. I don't know. But that's not why we're here. But thank you for your comments. Frank, did you want to go?

I just want to say that, you know, we probably have about $70,000 in staff time to get to this point.

No, not staff time. We have a grant for a contractor. Contractor is not staff.

No, I'm talking about our staff for seven months.

$70,000 between the two.

For seven months of work?

I mean, I don't know. Anyway, could you go on? Is that all you wanted to say? That's all you wanted to say? Okay. Thank you. I would just say that 300 is actually remarkable. So we've done several surveys and I think that's the highest, if not the second highest. Fire safety, evacuation is one of the top concerns of the whole community. And we did a survey recently. I think we got 12. How many responses did we get? Well, 21, I believe one, and it was out for months and we put it in the newsletter. I mean, I mean, so well done on the 300, whatever you did, that's yes, it's less than 1%, but it's really, really strong. It's qualitative, but it's really, really strong. And I, is it, is the survey still open? It's not. Okay. So it's closed. There's going to be a second one?

Yeah, so there's a second one. Our subscription with this software company goes until October. So we're going to have another one that's focused on the recommendations. So we get community input on the recommendations.

Okay. So when you come back to us, having a project timeline would be really, really helpful because I don't know what to expect from here.

Yeah, on the last slide I had, I had like a next steps and it listed like five bullet points, but I can list them again right now.

I just have like a timeline.

Yeah, like a line.

Yeah, like when should we expect...

Yeah. At the beginning of the process, I had one on the website and I can go back and update it and add it to our like bike ped master plan webpage if you think that'd be helpful.

Yeah. I think what we need to do is just reorient the community on what this initiative is, what the, you know, and just like every time you come back to us, like re-explain, this is where we are in the project. So when are you, when are we engaging the consultant? When are you coming back with

the recommendation like all of that i'd really love to know um yeah so the consultant is gonna present it's um the first draft of the recommendations at the next bpac meeting okay which is may 14th um and then sorry i have it right down here let me pull it up okay see and then after we have those recommendations or that draft of the recommendations we'll use that to um draft the survey um the sec the the the we'll collect feedback from the community on the recommendations yeah and you know thinking about that now um We might wait until the BPAC provides some feedback to the consultant, and the consultant goes back and looks at the recommendations again with the BPAC's input. So then we would wait to do the survey until the recommendations are refined by the BPAC. Okay.

Probably June.

Yeah, and we're going to do a joint BPAC planning commission meeting. Oh, great. And then after that, the BPAC will get the final say at another meeting of theirs. Okay.

I would love to see that all in a project. Yeah, yeah. Because there's a lot of good work happening, and I would just... Yeah. Okay. So joint, joint meeting with planning commission, which will probably be July or August.

Yeah. July or August with the goal of it coming to you guys in the early fall. So September. Okay. Yeah.

And I mentioned the survey is interesting and all that, but I'm hoping that while it's interesting, I think it's caused a lot of confusion about what are, you know, real thoughts. And so I'm hoping when you come back to the council that you provide more of the specific recommendations and maybe the survey responses that are, you know, an attachment that, cause we spent a lot of time going through that and I think it caused some confusion and I'm not trying to be critical. I just think it'd be good to say, here's what the recommendations are. And that's just background information that maybe we don't go over all those details. Yeah.

It's source data. Right. But I mean, it's really, really interesting, but yeah, I think some of the comments we heard tonight is like, no, no, no, no, that wasn't recommendation. That was one person who said, you know.

Right. And I tried to clarify that with this being the discovery survey and the next survey is the recommendation survey. But yeah.

But I just want to just say, like, I don't want to see a whole bunch of pages on responses to the survey. You can have that as an attachment. But really, I would like to see the specific recommendations. And you can say that there was a vast majority of people like that. But I just think it was good, but confusing.

Okay. I'd like to add something. We've already done a survey. You've got feedback from 300 people. Let the BPAC do the work. Come in with some recommendations. Let us do whatever the heck we do. I would not do another survey. In my little business, it's called Too Many Cooks Spoil the broth. It's too much stuff going on. That's what Barbara, I believe, is saying. And we've already took a survey. It's already done. But I would not do another one that the BPAC do the work, come back with some recommendations, and let's move it forward. That's what I would do.

All right. So is this an action item or this, this is not an action.

Okay.

Thank you for staying late. Thank you for working so hard on this. This is a really important initiative and we appreciate you and we'll see you next time.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. Moving on to the consent. It is a few minutes after 11. Let's proceed. 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 speakers may address any item on consent with each speaker speaker allotted up to two minutes and limited to one comment session i just want to quickly either you speak to or just pull

It might be easier to pull. I'd say A, the financial statement and the council member reports.

Why do we have to pull council member reports?

Oh, because when I mentioned last meeting about I want to make some comments, you said to bring them up at this meeting. On the council member? I put out a written memo, but I guess it wasn't distributed to the council. I was just going to say a few words, that's all.