Town Council - Regular Meeting

I'm calling to order the town of Fairfax town council meeting. Welcome. It is Wednesday, September 2nd. And we are here for our regular meeting. And we just closed out or adjourned our special meeting for which there were no findings or anything to report. And I hope you'll join me in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you.

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.

Christine, can we have a roll call, please? Yes, Mayor. Council Member Blash? Here. Council Member Garangeli?

Here.

Council Member Kohler? Here. Vice Mayor Ager? Here. Mayor Hellman?

I am here. All present.

Thank you.

And can I make a motion to approve the agenda? Thank you very much.

Did we have a change to make to the agenda? I think. Yes. I, given the meatiness of our agenda this evening, I'm recommending that we continue regular agenda item number four, the fleet electrification item to the October meeting.

Okay. I'll take that friendly amendment. So I make that motion. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any nays? Hearing none, motion passes. Okay. I will now read the land acknowledgement. The Fairfax Town Council acknowledges that we are located on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people of present-day Marin County. We honor with gratitude the land itself and all of its ancestors past, present, and emerging. Meeting protocol, the mayor or presiding officers shall maintain order at all town council meetings. Council members share the responsibility for modeling respectful professional conduct to effectively facilitate the meeting and encourage meaningful 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 of character or motives, and discriminatory or harassing conduct are not permitted. These standards apply equally to all viewpoints and forms of participation. Participants are asked to silence their electronic devices. Disruptive behavior may result in the pause of a meeting. Continued disruptive behavior will result in removal from the meeting consistent with applicable law and in a viewpoint neutral manner. Meetings will adjourn no later than 11 p.m. At approximately 930, the council will review the agenda to determine which remaining items may be continued. As I mentioned, we have no report out from the closed session, and we are now at the town manager's report. Heather, I know the community would love an update on Perry Park, the slurry seal, as well as the Ross Valley sanitation project. If we have excuse me, not sanitation, the Marin water district, and if we have a new date for that.

The Bolinas.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. I will start with the construction underway in our roadways. So as I'm sure you noticed coming into the facility today, we have a road... Project on Park Road. It's about 3 quarters of the way complete for stormwater improvements and repaving. So we're still on schedule to complete this project by the end of September. Asphalt grinding and paving is scheduled for next week along all of Park Road. Vehicles, including bicycles, will need to detour around Park Road September 9th through 11th from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with local access limited. So people will be able to get in and out of their homes, but on a very limited basis. And the sidewalk, as you noticed, has been removed and will be replaced with a wider sidewalk. sidewalk for more public access. So that's very nice. The Ross Valley Sanitary District project has some finalization to do on Park Road and the Merwin section. So that's also happening. The schedule for the downtown section on Broadway is being adjusted and updates will be available as details are available. The Westbray and Alema Road areas are in progress and the Oak Manor area will be completed by the end of February. So there's a lot of different spots for that Ross Valley Sanitary Project. You asked about the Marin Water Project. It's on hold, and there's currently no estimate of when it will start again. But we have given input to the water district that we want to make sure that there's no downtown impact for businesses during the month of November and December. And so then the slurry seal, which was a hot topic, especially this weekend, is nearly complete. So they've done all of the slurry sealing, which is wonderful. Our team at the town performed a number of additional communications to backfill the contractors' poor communications. So we apologize for that. There are still to go minor touch-ups and replacing the paint striping. It's required that you give that slurry seal a few weeks before you start the paint striping, so you won't see that immediately. But the disruption will be much less than we've seen so far. And then as far as Perry Park, about half of Perry Park is reopened, no fleas. Anticipating the rest will be reopened very soon, although we still have the construction on Park Street. And we have a clear, clean bill of health for the fire station and the fleas. We're just continuing to perform the check on the area that last had some fleas left. So in the coming days? In the coming days. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And then a few more things. Fire Station 21's remodel is underway, as you know, and on track for completion in early December. And as was mentioned, the Council met earlier in closed session discussing the SEIU negotiations, so that is ongoing. I know that's been a topic of interest. I want to make sure that people are aware, and this will be in our newsletter as well, starting in October, Ross Valley Fire Department will be performing vegetation management thinning along Center Boulevard from Fire Station 19 in San Anselmo to the Good Earth in Fairfax. So expect some potential delays in early October. And Ross Valley Fire will be sending out information to residents right on that strip of center in September.

And then we'll put that in our newsletter as well. Yes. Okay, great.

Oh, and I also wanted to mention we did a number of extra communications on the slurry seals, including extra news news posts. And then there's been some talk about the Fairfax market and potential for grocery outlet sales. We sent a letter to Fairfax Market business owners, the property owners, as well as a grocery outlet contact, reminding them that the town has a formula business moratorium. That is a moratorium that is locked down until April of 2027. and that could be extended by the Council until April of 2028. The topic has also been covered in our newsletter just this Tuesday, so yesterday, and staff is preparing a letter for the Council to be able to consider sending on your October 7th meeting, so you could do that as well. And then, of course, individuals can send send letters if they so choose, you know, as long as they state that they're doing that on their own behalf, not on behalf of the town. And then the Planning Commission will be studying options for updating that formula business ordinance over the next several months. That's something that they've started work on already. I'm getting close to finished here. On August 31st, trained inspectors for Marin wildfire prevention started conducting risk evaluations for Bolinas Road and Bothene neighborhoods. So people should be seeing their reports and please do open those reports. Many of those fire prevention activities are now required by law. I wanted to celebrate roughly 700 residents participated in the town picnic this Sunday. That was wonderful to see. And that was a joint effort between our parks and recreation staff, Ann Maness and Maria Tropoulos-Baird. And the Chamber of Commerce and even the town's open space committee was present. So that was wonderful. Upcoming, Fairfax has a repair fair and holiday, excuse me, Halloween costume swap on September 12th at the library from 1 to 4. and then i wanted to give you a preview of the october 7th meeting agenda topics just a sampling but we anticipate a ross valley fire department presentation on the fuels reduction on center boulevard So that'll be just starting that project. So it will be good for us to hear from them. And then there is a Ross Valley Fire Department amendment number four that will be coming to us from the board. And there will be the presentation on the town's fleet electrification plan, which was continued today, and an update on the microgrid project. And we are anticipating an item for June. the police department to purchase an additional EV and surplus a gas vehicle. And then, um, the bicycle and pedestrian, um, advisory committee, um, has their report, um, draft out for public review. It's available on our website. It will be, um, uh, they'll be sending out messages as well. And then they'll bring that to the council on October 7th. Thank you.

Highly anticipated BPAC presentation. Thank you so much for that update. And just to go back to the sanitation project, this section of it, do we know when this is going to be finished? This is very, very disruptive. Sorry. Yes.

Well, yeah, we have several disruptive things converging. So we have this section and then the park road is... And so Park Road is still on track to finish by the end of September. And I believe... This will be done by that same time. But I'd like to get back to you on that. OK, a couple more weeks.

And this one, which is it's good timing for the El Nino presentation we're going to have. This is all stormwater flooding prevention. So the timing could not be better, honestly, for us to get that work done with the ARPA funds. So well done. Thank you. All right, moving on to future agenda topics. Do my colleagues on the dais have any requested items? Go ahead, Liesl.

Yeah, so I would like, especially for the October meeting, for us to consider a resolution making the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee a standing committee. Right now, I think that the wording in our resolution says that it dissolves upon the acceptance of the report. And I just really think we need to encourage resident participation in town affairs. And I've been really impressed by the diligence and thoughtfulness of this particular committee. i think resident committees bring a wealth of experience to the town they enhance public participation and engagement and they serve as a training ground for future council members and planning commissioners so i think it's really important um i think that um you know we can talk about the details if we do bring it back about you know the composition of the bpac ongoing how often it meets um what its charges is although i assume the primary responsibility would be to monitor the implementation of the bicycle pedestrian master plan and not let it fall by the wayside as the 2016 effort did. And, yeah, so that's one of the things I'd like to see, especially sooner rather than later, since we'll be considering the plan.

I'm in support of that. Do we have others in support of that? Yes? Mike? Yes? No? Yes.

I'm not a guesser.

Frank, you're good with having a BPAC present? Or a discussion around a long-standing BPAC commission?

So that will take place at the October meeting?

Or a future one, yeah. But it makes sense since we're having the BPAC presentation, maybe have that discussion alongside. Okay, I'm seeing support for that. Any other agenda topics?

Yes. On the issue of Fairfax Market and the current moratorium... we need to get that before the town council and give some direction to the planning commission and the staff. The moratorium can be extended, what, one more year?

Yeah, that's what Heather just said, yeah.

That's one more, okay. So rather than waiting until the very end, if we get this on an agenda, either October or November, to talk about it, to give some direction,

Well, I think waiting for the planning commission to give recommendations to the council to take action. Is that right? Okay. So, and they have it, do they have it on the upcoming agenda or what's the game plan with the planning commission? Yes.

They they've had several study sessions and they want. to come back for more. And so then they would take action, advise the council, yes, we think this is the right way to go. Then it would come to the council for discussion, debate. You may or may not agree with everything that the planning commission recommends. And then you would take action to update or potentially extend the moratorium if needed because you don't have resolution yet.

So given the circumstances, and I know that they have a lot, a number of priorities we've been waiting on for a few months. So can we help them prioritize this as something or? I can communicate that. Okay.

We need to extend the moratorium, and I don't want the moratorium to run out on us and we end up not taking action in a timely fashion. I think it has for quite a while, right? It's an ordinance that's going to have to be introduced and adopted. It's going to take at least two months here at the town council. Right.

And so we're eight months out, right? Seven months out? It runs out in April. So we should definitely bring it back. But I would advise bringing it back closer so that we have the full year, you know, if need be. And then we can work on the details of a formal ordinance.

So it needs to be like on a January, no later than January?

No, no, no, no. It's got to be December. Wait till January and we're going to run out of time for an introduction. Okay?

Okay.

Okay.

December is when it next occurred. That's fine.

Okay, so I'm not sure what we just totally agreed on. Sorry, did you have another one? My apologies. No, no, it's okay. I wanted him to go first because I think that was really important. And I'm going to ask a question about that, then I'm going to make another suggestion. But is there, does the extension of the moratorium have to be triggered by something that the Planning Commission does? Or is it legitimate for Council Member Egger to just say, let's go ahead and schedule it for a meeting sooner than that? Like, what is the...

It's supposed to be if you, if you need it for more time, if you need more time to work on it.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cause yeah, I would have, I would have give an update as to what we've done and why we need more time.

Okay, so we need findings, and I would have agreed with him to put it in on October, but it sounds like we need to do something else. Okay, so the other thing, there's two things that I think we should consider in the future, and heaven knows I might not be here by then, but considering how many things we have to cover. I do think that we should start considering raising the pay of council members to the level that a lot of our sister cities are doing right now, Um, I think that, you know, some council members who feel like they have enough income can always forego their stipend, but I think to get new people on the council and to get people who are maybe, you know, less well off, it would be useful to have, um, a, uh, pay increase. Um, right now we receive $300 a month. A lot of towns, I think the max right now is nine 50. And I noticed a lot of the other towns in Marin are starting to accept that. So, um, I would love to have a conversation about that. And, you know, I think that it may be for the future council to decide these things. But I do think we should also, you know, I read an article by Dick Spotswood lately. I usually don't agree with him, but I'm starting to wonder if we should also be, you know, revisiting council terms, term limits. Term limits. Yep, term limits. You know, I think that we want to encourage new people to run for council and to be excited about it. And I think some of us who are on it can, you know, for many terms start to sort of consolidate power and become, we have such name-bearing recognition that it's hard for other people to get a foot in the door. So I just want us to consider that at some point. Thank you.

So I'm not supportive of bringing council member stipends to increase them this year and maybe not even next year. I think there are some equity issues with people who don't make very much money. to potentially come, but I think it also encourages people who think, oh, I can make $1,000 a month, it's $12,000 a year. I'm not supportive of that. I'm also not supportive of looking at term limits. There's a couple of towns Mill Valley and Belvedere which have an informal idea of two terms but I've also seen for example in Mill Valley two incumbents filed and nobody filed against them so there's also the idea that sometimes people don't care and then we end up appointing people so I'm not supportive of doing that in the near future maybe when the new council is seated we can discuss it again

You want to opine on that, Mike?

Oh. No, I don't want to hear it either. I think it's fine just the way it is.

Okay.

So it doesn't sound like you have support for that. Sounds like not, but I just thought I'd bring it up because I'm seeing other people starting to discuss these issues as a better government or good governance sort of move. Thank you, Liesl.

All right. Anything else? All right. I just want to ask one question of the town manager. You sent that letter out today as per my request regarding grocery outlet, the moratorium, Fairfax Market. Could we get copies of that letter and could we post it on the website? Because I know there's folks that work at Fairfax Market that would be very interested in seeing it.

Yes. I sent that to the council in a council update this afternoon, very late before our closed session began. So I don't expect that you would have seen it. And we can post it to our website as well.

That would be great. All right. Thank you.

Okay, moving on to open time for public expression. This is the 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 as restricted by law. If there are more speakers after 30 minutes, open time will continue at the end of the agenda. First speaker, please.

Hello, Mayor, Council, Rick Hamer, downtown Fairfax. This week, someone who helped and participated in our musical community, Simon Costa, is going to be transferred to Southern California. For those who don't know, Simon had a stroke two years ago, and he's been rehabilitating at the Marin Post Acute Center over on San Pedro Road. So this week... And the next few days will be the last time that any of us can bid him farewell. And I'm doing it tomorrow. And most of us should know Simon because he was very active in the community musically for a while. He's not the only musician struggling with music. a stroke right now, but he is on his way out of reach very soon. So it's more of a public service announcement. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

My name tonight is God. I'm truly ashamed of my town. I'm truly ashamed of my country and of humanity in general. It's really no skin off anybody's back to go ahead and extend the moratorium on chain stores. We can buy the same old crap anywhere, anyplace, in every town across the states or just anywhere. And it's all made in China. What happened to the mom and pop shops? What happened to Yardbirds or any of like the, and Fairfax Lumber is one of the last things. It's like, it's no skin off anybody's back to go ahead and extend the moratorium. And it has nothing to do with the advisory committee or whoever's advising you to extend it for a lot longer than that and renew it. They're two different things. I'm ashamed. I truly am. You know how many hours and how many people went into that chain store thing? And do you really want to see a bunch of really weird crap on every corner? We may as well have McDonald's and everything else here. My other thing I wanted to say tonight, which I say every week is we got a nice seven story building coming. It's not going to serve us. It doesn't serve anybody that works at the good earth or any business in town to save a few hands, maybe a handful. Nobody in this town that actually works in town or very few make over $40,000 or $50,000 a year. So how come we're allowing three extra floors of affordable housing pegged at $120,000? It doesn't work. And then we got infrastructure, we got water, we got fire. We don't have very good public transportation. I ride my bikes, it's quicker. It's a whole lot more fun. Every now and then I have to drive, my God, what a wreck. And in terms of traffic, I wonder what happened if everybody's cars broke down on Sir Francis Drake and Center Boulevard during commute. What would the traffic be like? It might be kind of like a fire or something. I don't know that I'm suggesting that, but I wonder what would happen. I'm truly ashamed. We can all do better.

Thank you.

Mark Bell, Fairfax. Can I have my three seconds back, please?

Sure.

I'm here by the oak trees in the Children's Park. There was no rush to take out those trees. The park was closed. You consulted two arborists? I didn't consult four or five. Did you look for a specialist who could deal with any type of disease? I understand one of them was too far gone, but the second one wasn't. So now we have these stumps. I mean, we might as well start calling it Stumpy Park because we have a lot of stumps sitting there in the park. kind of aesthetic do you have? There was no rush whatsoever. You could have taken another two or three days. You could have called 10 arborists, seen if anyone had experience in restoring the health to any of them. But no. 200-plus-year-old oak trees treated like, what, 20-year-old rivets that are basically weeds? And this is what we're getting? This is how you're serving the people who live here? Because you don't. You're not emotionally connected to this town at all, as far as the staff goes. How could you just go, oh, we're just going to take out these, what, 120, 150-year-old oak trees without even really researching if we could save them? I find it really, actually, unfortunately, difficult.

Thank you. Next speaker.

I'm Lynn Lozier, 32 Tamalpais Road, and I'm just here to say thank you. I had a remodel in 2012, and I was required a so-called major remodel on my 700 square foot cottage to fully install the fire department requirement internal alarm systems. And they've been popping out at odd times in the middle of the night. every 10 or 12 months since then. So a few weeks ago, I replaced all six of them with new units direct from the manufacturer. And then the next day, one of them went off. Thank God, not in the middle of the night. And I couldn't control it because I had to get on a ladder for it. So I called the town, and I told the police department and the fire department, this is not an emergency. Please don't be concerned. And when I talked to the fire department, they said, well, let's come out and see if we can help. And they did. Three guys came out in a truck and they looked at it. They went through what I had done in problem solving. They figured out which unit was malfunctioning and they determined it had a poor connection. They rewired it for me. And I'm going to sleep much better from now on. And I just want you to know how much I love living in a town where we have public servants who are connected to the community and are so helpful. So thank you.

Lovely. Thank you so much. Next speaker.

Deborah Benson, Cascade Drive, Fairfax. One thing is I thought that we were not going to do flock cameras, and there are cameras up on the poles by Klaus Drive. There are two of them, and Sir Francis Drake, and I'm wondering what that's about. The other thing I want to speak to is the trees that came down. We are a town of laws. We're a nation of laws. We have laws protecting our trees. We have a law that says that no person can take down, alter trees. cut a tree, a shrub on any public sidewalk, I'm paraphrasing, in any park, without written permission from the town council. We had two arborist reports on those trees, and one of the trees was deemed healthy. with possible limb droppage because of its species on a hot day. The other tree had already been severely safety pruned without coming before the tree committee months ago. And one arborist deemed it likely to fail within two years. The other deemed it likely to fail sooner and suggested removing it within 30 days. We had a tree committee meeting 30 days to the day after that arborist report. The tree committee was disregarded, the public was disregarded, the law was broken by town staff. I've been a member of the tree committee working every month along with other volunteers looking at arborist reports, going to look at emergency trees. These trees were not an emergency. The playground was closed. They should have been flagged. The law should have been followed.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Thank you. I'm Joe Banaszak, and I'm a member of the Fairfax Open Space Committee. I just wanted to make a quick comment about one item on your consent agenda, which is item G, dealing with a letter to the Board of Supervisors.

Unfortunately, you have to wait to speak on that item because it's an agendized item. This is open time for items not on the agenda.

Then I will wait till the end.

Thanks, Joe. Sorry.

next speaker good evening todd greenberg downtown fairfax it's good to see so many perspective council members here tonight tonight i want to raise a basic good government issue council members and the public need adequate time to adequately review the information on which the council is mean asked to deliberate and make decisions once again multiple presentations and supplemental materials were added on the afternoon of this meeting tonight Even when the agenda itself was legally posted 72 hours in advance, putting substantive information online only a few hours before a meeting undermines meaningful review. Most residents are working during the day, and council members have other responsibilities too. Neither the public nor the council should be expected to discover, digest, fact-check, and intelligently respond to substantial new information in a matter of hours. The 72-hour requirement should be treated as a minimum, not a goal. Unless information is genuinely available earlier, substantive presentations and supplements should go out with the original packet. If important new information arrives late, Council should consider postponing action. I also want to second several ideas Councilmember Lizelle Blash has raised. I support considering Council term limits. I also support increasing Council compensation. Those ideas actually complement each other. If we want more residents with different backgrounds and expertise to serve, council service cannot realistically be limited to people who can afford the enormous time commitment for very little compensation. And Fairfax should consider San Anselmo's formal rotation approach for council committee assignments. Rotating members through finance, fire, transportation, regional agencies, and other assignments builds knowledge across the entire council rather than concentrating expertise with the same people. Term limits, reasonable compensation, committee rotation, and timely information all advance the same objective, a broader, better informed, and more capable town council with a public that has a meaningful opportunity to participate.

Thank you.

Next speaker. Hi, I'm Mina with the Chamber of Commerce. I just wanted to give an update as Heather said about the picnic. I think we did, Maria and I make a great team. We really enjoy working together. I think this is our fifth one. And I think it was the best one yet. We added a water slide. We had a DJ. Everyone was dancing the whole time. I think it's definitely, we found our niche, which is like the kids' families, 10 and under. And there were lines for the water slide and the henna tattoo and the bouncy house. And Sierra was there doing the cardboard city. It was amazing. He's so clever in the way that he does these things. But just so you know, it takes an incredible amount of effort. We got a lot of positive feedback. There was a lot of amazing volunteers. I just want to recognize everyone's effort in this. Local schools, Sierra, First Federal with their piggy banks, Fairfax Brew Co, Live Water, Design Table, who's our local florist. You know, they all contribute to make it work and be amazing. We had like a reptile show where you got to hold like all these different animals. It was so cute. And the police came through and we got to say hi and it was really nice. And then we have a whole bunch of events coming. So I'm trying to plan a candidate forum on September 23rd on Zoom with the League of Women Voters. We're just trying to pin down all that. And then we have a chamber mixer at the Lodge on September 8th. at 6 p.m. A shout-out to the other things happening in town, the Fairfax Theatre Company. They're going to have their show on September 11th through the 26th. It's The Importance of Being Earnest. There's a repair fair at the Fairfax Library on September 12th. There's House in the Park in Perry Park on September 26th. It starts at 4.30 because sunset happens earlier. Um, there's also a mama tree. They're going to do a Fairfax fall family festival on September 27th at three 30 to seven 30. It's going to be music for little kids. I have one more continue. Okay. I just have one more. And then falling in love with Fairfax is the garage band roller skating event. That's going to happen on October 3rd in Bolinas park.

What about the Art Walk?

Oh, the Art Walk is also September 25th.

Okay, great. And thank you for all your work and the success of the town picnic. That's really amazing and a testament to your energy and time. So thank you. I make my kids work it, so it's good training. Thank them, too. Any other speakers in the room?

Okay. Okay.

Do you have any hands raised?

We have one raised hand on Zoom. Kathy, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Okay.

Hi, Kathy Flores, and I have like four concerns. One is, again, Perry Park and the trees. I'm wondering why did staff authorize immediate removal of two heritage oak trees when the arborist report specifically said neither tree was in immediate danger of falling or losing a limb? Why didn't the town submit a tree application as per protocol for evaluation by the tree committee? Tree number 136 near the sidewalk recommended to be removed within the next 30 days to two years. This is not the same as saying it was in imminent danger. Tree number 137 near the creek. This is more concerning. This arborist assessment described the tree as healthy, thriving, in good condition. The report did not recommend immediate removal. In fact, it specifically recommended annual assessment. Residents deserve transparency, what alternatives were considered, why removal was determined to be immediate, and why the town's established tree protection process was apparently not followed. Number two, I sent in a citizen request, but of course I've never heard back. At the traffic light of SF Drake and Claus, the left turn line needs to be moved back approximately six to eight feet so the trucks, buses and cars traveling from Broadway Claus onto Drake can make the turn safely. Number three would be another citizen request. There is a low spot in front of 275 Frustrick where rain converges and floods the streets. We've cleaned out the grates, put straw wattles, placed rocks, but I believe this may be a low point in the street where water converges when it rains. Please inspect this area before the next major rain. Lastly would be the sidewalk going from Willow up Drake. There's the hill there and the sidewalk is eroding, or not the sidewalk. The hill is eroding with dirt and rocks onto the sidewalk. I don't know if that's the town's responsibility or the property owners, but I think it. Thank you. Yes.

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

Thanks. Thank you. On the slurry seal, that was great to see it. And I'm just wondering, did the town, does the town have plans to replace the torch down decals for the bike spine? Because some of those were paved over. The second thing I wanted to say about the moratorium on Fairfax Market for the next franchise ordinance I think we should consider as a condition for a use permit for franchise that it adhere to the Fairfax living wage ordinance. I think that's critical. I think a big part of what's driving people's concern about the market is not only the change, but the loss of a union workforce in Fairfax. and the living wage that they bring home to their families. So I hope as the matter comes back up to the council that you'll consider adding Fairfax's living wage ordinance as a condition of any use permit that's issued to any franchise that applies. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker. There are no more speakers on Zoom. Okay.

I think Heather was going to respond on the bicycle stuff that's been slurred over.

Yes, I'd be happy to. As I mentioned in the town manager's report, the next phase is to redo all of the paint and striping that's been covered by the slurry seal. And so that would include those markings. And we have to give it a few weeks to let that material cure before those markings can go back on.

Terrific. I'm going to close open time for public expression. And moving on to our presentation, we have a couple of people here to present on our upcoming El Nino season. We're going to hear a presentation on the Marin County Emergency Operations Plan and coordinated preparation for the 2026 El Nino season. Hello, welcome. I'm sorry, I don't know your name.

Your Honor, members of the Town Council, town staff, residents, my name is Chris Zapata. I'm the Assistant County Executive for Marin County.

Welcome.

I'm here with Stephen Torrance to provide a little bit of information and talk about readiness and preparedness.

Chris, would you mind moving that up a little bit, maybe speaking a little closer? Because we want to hear you. And welcome. I haven't seen you for a long time. Congratulations on the new position.

And Christine, is this presentation on the website? OK, great. All right.

Yeah.

All right. No more interruptions.

All right. Thank you very much again. Appreciate your time. Want to just say the emergency and urgency aspect of Super O'Neill has been really talked about in the media significantly. Just last month, Senator McGuire had a virtual town hall and there were over 5700 people signed into that. So that tells you the interest level. And so we're approaching this from a Bob Dylan standpoint. You don't have the weatherman telling us which way the wind's blowing. We know it's blowing, and there could be some serious issues that come from that. One of the things that we also know is that Marin is not the same everywhere in the county. one size does not fit all in this county there are different parts of the county that will have different challenges but the preparedness aspect of it is something we can all lean into and so the county started a month and a half ago internally doing that we're going to talk a little bit about that tonight we're going to continue our partnerships today we met with water and wastewater providers special districts to understand what their needs might be how we could coordinate and cooperate And they could understand what resources we were putting in play to attack this potential problem. I want to really also stress that if anything comes out of this, when we say emergency response or virtual preparedness is everyone's responsibility, we also mean residents. So, you know, we want to make sure that the residents are honed in on what they can do. to help this, and we will continue this up until, you know, the end of January. And we are looking at this in different phases. There's a pre-event phase, there's an event phase, there's a post-event phase, and then there's a long-range look-see that we're going to have to take to make sure that we work on these aspects of fire season, flooding season, which now seem to be the new normal. So with that, I want to turn it over to Stephen Torrance. our emergency operations manager, and he will run through presentation and we'll be happy to take questions. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Town Council. Stephen Torrance, Director of Emergency Management for Marin County. With that, we also serve as the operational area coordinator, which means that we coordinate with every single town, city, town, and district within Marin County to support not only the police department, fire department, but also unify our emergency response plans. And so just building on Assistant County Executive Zapata's opening remarks, the The movement that is happening with emergency management in the county is not something that we are doing in a silo, but we are working with all of our partners. And I do want to express my support of Chief Tabaranza, Ross Valley Fire, for us working together to build an emergency response strategy to make sure that we're accurately supporting the community members of Town of Fairfax. Next slide, please. And so as we mentioned, we are looking at El Nino from an elevated standpoint where we're looking at a combination of sea level rise, king tides, and winter storms. All of these, as many people saw in January, have an impact, of course, in our low-lying areas along the bay. Ideally, the king tides, of course, less so here in Fairfax. but we're still looking at this for an entire county-wide lens, primarily because the king tides this year are expected to hit, unfortunately, on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. With that, we understand that we are going to have people coming into the county, leaving the county, and so we want to make sure that the preparedness is shared ahead of time so people know what to expect as they are coming in, but also making informing people who are coming into the county that are not familiar with these things of what they can expect. And so we are leaning into the messaging, hence why we are here. And then also we also are working to make sure we're pushing out the messaging countywide. Next slide, please. There are a number of resources that are live and ready to go today. We have the ReadyMarine.org page, which is a countywide resource that the town of Fairfax is also a partner on. ReadyMarine.org slash El Nino is live. And we have a number of locations throughout the county where people can find information regarding sandbags and then additional resources of how to prepare their homes. Also, many people can also prepare sandbags. their families as well in this space as we have a number of checklists ready for the storm season ahead. Next slide, please. Uh, in addition to that, in addition to these community outreach, uh, we are also planning with the County supervisors, uh, six planned town hall, um, meetings with our, uh, within the community, uh, five are slated to be virtual, excuse me, in person. And then a six being virtual, uh, that way we can continue to proliferate the messaging of preparedness, uh, And also explaining what we as the county collectively are doing in collaboration to support our community members. And so we want to highlight that as a next phase. And we also welcome the collaboration with the town as we start rolling that out throughout the county. Next slide, please. In addition, we have a couple of areas that we continue to highlight. September is the kickoff of Disaster Preparedness Month. We are going to be sharing a lot of information throughout the county with a primary focus on signups for Alert Marin. That is going to be the primary thing that we are focusing on. And then also wanting to highlight a couple of elements of the Emergency Operations Plan. We know a lot of people are looking to this plan as This is what we can do that we as a county are doing, but as an operational area, our cities, towns, and special districts, this is how we are collectively preparing the community. But also, this is the next steps that we need the community to take in order to meet us with the preparedness levels that we have. And so next slide, please. Our theme this month is Getting Ready with Marin. This is actually coming from our 18 to 40-year-olds as our lowest opt-in group and the group that is least prepared in our community based off of some surveys. And so we're taking one of the hashtags of getting ready with me and we're getting ready with Marin. to allow for that hashtag to continue to be shared among social media and show up on those 18 to 40-year-olds' social media feeds. And so we want to make sure that we are sharing that countywide. And with that, we're going to be sending out social media. We sent out a social media toolkit to all of the agencies throughout the county to help share that messaging so we can target that 18 to 40-year-old group. Next slide, please. In addition, we have a number of special events. I'll highlight two of the two that are on here. This upcoming September 26th at 10 a.m., we're going to be doing our next countywide alert Marin test for all opt in users within the county. You will get a text email and a phone call. On your on your devices that are registered. And so with that, we're also sharing the toolkit, which will be going out on Monday or excuse me on Tuesday to make sure that all of the jurisdictions can share that with their community members. In addition, we also have the senior fair on September 16th, where we are also supporting Two elements of the senior fair. One, how can we make sure that seniors are prepared for disasters, but also their caretakers if they have them? We want to make sure that caretakers also know what their roles and responsibilities are to make sure that in the event that a disaster happens when they are taking care of someone, what are those next steps that they can fulfill? And we'll be throughout the county throughout the entire month of September. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, we are here for the Emergency Operations Plan, and we refer to this as an operational area plan because it does connect to every city and town plan within the county. We wrote this in collaboration with many of our partner agencies with the intent to start with the county plan, update that. We have a number of lessons learned from the last 12 years that we've taken into this update, and we've also collaborated created two new annexes, the first being the Emergency Communications Annex, which is how we are going to share information with the public, and then our Family Assistance Annex, which is how we are going to take care of people who have lost loved ones during an incident. And so those two are plans that the cities and towns can adopt. And with that, we are making sure that all of our plans are being available. Our next step that we've already started with Chief Tabaranza and the town of Corte Madera is to go through and we actually have a working group that we're going to be starting off to be able to make sure that the city and town emergency operations plans are also going to be updated. And so we're We are actually working directly with the police department to get those on the agenda to make sure that we have an updated plan for the towns and cities throughout the county. Next slide, please. I do want to just highlight a couple of improvements. I know alert and warning is at the forefront. And the next slide is the one that I'm actually excited to announce. With that, we've taken a number of important steps to improve the system for alert and warning throughout the county. And we want to just highlight that our goal is to make sure it's a people first. So removing barriers, removing technological barriers, and also just making it easier for people to opt into the system. And so We've incorporated a number of intentional feedback designs into the system. For example, going to the next slide, we've gone through and developed a dashboard where we've gone through, and just in the last year, about 3.4 million messages have gone out countywide over the course of 70 alerts annually. 247,000 phone calls. And so all of these messages are starting to go out and we're starting to see an uptick. Over the last three months, we've actually seen over 200% increase in the number of people that are able to opt in to the system. And we look at that as an indicator of it just takes less time to opt in. Before it used to take five to 10 minutes, we removed a lot of barriers, two minutes to opt in, and we're seeing these numbers increase. Next slide, please. In addition, there's a new dashboard that's available to the community. We always know that people are asking how many people are signed up. And this is actually the slide that I'm very excited to share. Fairfax has the highest sign-up rate in the entire county. Congratulations. Uh, six, uh, 60.1% or 60.9%, uh, Fairfax, uh, community members, uh, have at least one person signed up for alert Marin in their household. Um, we are, of course, uh, it is, there's a, uh, community right on, on the heels of Fairfax, but, uh, you guys are number one. Uh, so congratulations. Uh, We are consistently seeing that 60% as a great benchmark. Nationwide, you typically see about 30%. And so not only are you guys doubling, you guys are winning in a competitive county. But we in OEM, we still like the competition and we want to see, you know, we want to see the next person to get to 70%. And so this dashboard is alive on the emergency.marinecounty.gov website. Next slide, please. In addition, as I mentioned, there's a lot of people who have king tides and coastal flooding at the mine. There's also some additional checkboxes for riverine and creek flooding. We encourage people to go back into their accounts. We've just created these to be able to send proactive notifications for flooding in the event that it does happen. We also have prescribed burns, which we know a lot of them are happening. There are additional notifications that can be reached or that can be subscribed to with the new updates. Next slide, please. I'll briefly say we also have a new map that shows where alerts go. So if you did not get it, you can go to the emergency.marincounty.gov. You can see the alerts, where they went, what they said, even if you were not in the area. All of this is with the intent to be able to show people all of the things that are happening throughout the county. If there is an incident in Novato and you're not signed up for Novato, you can still see what's happening. We want to make sure we're sharing information with the public. You also can call back the Alert Marin number and you can listen to the last 24 hours of messages now because we've always heard, I didn't get the message because I don't live in that area. How do I know what's going on? Call back the number or you can go to this website. All of the information is available in English and Spanish. Next slide, please. Last thing I'll highlight is the emergency portal. We are consistently making updates to that. Not only once you get that notification, of course, is the where. If there's a prescribed burn happening, you can click on the link at the bottom of the website. It'll take you directly to this map, and you can see exactly where an incident is occurring. When we send out those notifications, we don't want to just leave people with a text message. We want to provide them with a higher level of information. Next slide, please. So with that, as you can see, we are consistently getting ready, whether it be for El Nino, whether it be for providing emergency alerts. We asked the town council, members of the exec staff in the community to get ready with us, not only for El Nino, but for a number of things that we were planning for over the next couple of months. We look forward to the future collaboration with the police department on their emergency operations plan and more. And with that, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you so much. That was great information. I know I have a few questions, so I'm just going to dive right in. So you mentioned lessons learned, and that was one of the questions I was going to have. So like specifically thinking about last December and the King Tides event, like what... What are the lessons learned? We at NCCMC recently had a presentation from Transportation Authority of Marin, and we had some conversations about, you know, what this was really about Corte Madera in particular. But, you know, is what can residents be doing? Because obviously we can't do anything about the tides. Right. But we know they're coming. So what are their pumps that residently what what can we and should we be doing right now?

Indeed, there were. So the county conducted a countywide after action report where we have a number of after action items and findings from the January king tides. And number one is proactive communications. That was the main thing that was that was identified, but also unified communications. We heard from a number of community members, people that were in in Novato driving through quarter mid era heading to San Francisco that they didn't get those messages. Right. And it's because they were not subscribed in those communities. And so that is why we've created these next steps of having additional groups for people to have significant traffic impacts or the king tides. We can send those out countywide. In addition, we also are working with all of our law enforcement and fire departments to make sure that we're unifying messaging. That way, there are no gaps in the messaging that's gone out, no matter if you live on the north, the central portion of the county, or more. That was the main thing, and so that's why we're, with the Office of the County Exec, that we're taking this aggressive stance to make sure that we are leaning into that messaging. Now, what can community members do on the ReadyMarin.org slash El Nino website? We have a list of things that we are asking people to do. And the main thing is help us with the properties. And so we've recognized that a lot of members of the community, you know, they have either culverts or drains on their property. Of course, at least for we at the county, we cannot go under the property and clean those. And so we want we request the assistance of the community members to help us kind of remove those sticks and leaves from property before it starts raining. That'll help us prevent the culverts from being clogged and things like that. And so in addition to planning for yourself, taking care of your home ahead of these storms are those things that we can do.

And what about limbing your trees that are

Yes.

That kind of thing.

Yes. We we we encourage people to look at the trees as well as we've seen a lot of times when a tree falls into a creek. That's where we start seeing a lot of the debris build up. And so as much as possible to be able to, you know, manicure the lawns, manicure the trees. We understand that, you know, there are certain there are certain places that can and cannot have things done. But if we can take those steps to do what you can, what's on your property, that will help us in the grand scheme countywide.

Okay, yeah, and my next question is related to the younger audiences that you're trying to increase opt-ins to the alert system. Have you been working with MCOE or the high schools?

Yes. So we actually have a really good program where we just partnered with Tara Linda for a pilot project to have our have a series of freshmen go out and actually teach emergency preparedness on behalf of the county. And so they have taken that step of sharing the information, developing their own social media videos. We're actually going to be starting that pilot project again at the beginning, at the top of the school year. So that's now. So we should be kicking that off in the next couple of weeks with the intent to really start asking the question of how do we get people before they leave to go to college? And luckily, we have a number of younger people in our office that we can just ask them, what would you be doing if somebody walked up to you? So we're building that campaign from various ways.

Cool. Last couple of questions is around the business community. And I know that the upcoming kind of perfect storm of conditions that you described is going to be over the holidays. But do you anticipate ever a messaging going out to just shelter in place and stay off the roads? And should we be talking to the business community about flexible work options to just stay off the road type thing?

Yes. So we, we are, we have looked at, you know, the, the, the language and because shelter in place is actually a legal term by the state, we have to be a little conscious of when we use that terminology. Um, however, we do like to encourage people to stay off the roads and we do that a lot on our social medias. Uh, especially if we know that, you know, King tides, we've shared that messaging. If you don't need to travel, stay at home. Um, but we try to stay away from the shelter in place just because of the terminology. Um, As far as the business sector goes, our chief resilience officer, Nick Brubaker, is actually reaching out to a number of the business districts and the chambers to start conversation. This is a new position that we've had. We want to hear from them, of course, what we need, but also providing them with the information to share with their employees.

Terrific. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Any questions? Go ahead, Council Member Kohler.

You know, I know we talked a lot about techs, et cetera, and we know that some older adults may just use landlines. So it sounds like you make direct phone calls to landlines. Is that how that works?

So the Alert Marin system can do phone calls in situations where there are lower level incidents. We try not to use them because we do get a lot of opt outs after phone calls. But in a true emergency, yes, we will send we can send out everything from a text message, email and a phone call all the way up to what is a wireless emergency alert, which is the Amber Alert style message. We have that capability all within the Alert Marin system.

And do you do those messages on local TV as well as radio?

Yes, we can do what is called the EAS, Emergency Alert System, which hits televisions. We try to use that one the least because it actually hits the entire Bay Area market. And so our message would hit all the way down in San Jose. So we have to be very cautious of when that is used.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, thank you. You know, Fairfax has experienced major floods in the past 70 years. In 1955, that was a major flood here. We actually lost a street department volunteer firefighter in that flood of 55. 27 years later, it was a 1982 flood. And again, it was devastating for the town here. 23 years later, we had the 2005 flood. And here we are now, 21 years later, looking at the potential for another flood. So are we really prepared? Do you think we're ready to deal with it here in the county?

I will say one of the stances that we've taken over the last couple of months is making sure that we're pulling all resources together. We are definitely better than we were. Of course, looking at the El Nino that's coming in, there are going to be things that I will say that are going to be harder for us to tackle. But I believe between us having a unified structure between all of the cities, towns and special districts working together, sharing resources, for example, the county has 11. We've been sharing that we have 11 deployable pumps that can be sent throughout the county. Those are some things that we did not have back in 2005 and 82. And so being able to make sure that. Office of Emergency Management can deploy those things to locations in the event they are needed is a very large step forward to make sure that we can overcome some of the impacts of the upcoming El Nino. So we don't believe that it's going to be perfect. We do see that there's going to be some opportunities for improvement after this. But the collaboration between all the departments, I think, will put us in a far better state than we were previously back in 2005.

Is NOAA or any other federal agency actually putting numbers on the amount of rainfall we might get, or is that just up in the air?

So no one is putting numbers on it. They are actually giving us either-or statements. So we can either have a super... high level of precipitation, or we can be in drought. And that is the unique thing that we're planning for the worst case scenario. And so the way that Marin is actually is located in the actual El Nino map, I'll just call it, we're right in that and we're right in the middle. And so all this planning could be for drought. And so we have to also plan for that. And so they haven't put a number on it. They just advise us that it will be enhancing whatever does happen.

In 1982, we had the flood here in 82, and the next day, the National Guard was in Fairfax with low boys and major earth-moving equipment because Fairfax was really in trouble. So will we have access to the National Guard in a major incident here this coming year?

Yes. So the state of California has a very robust National Guard in collaboration, not only with the police departments, but also the sheriff's departments. If we need to bring in high water vehicles, specialized equipment, additional staff, we can tap into the National Guard within the state. It is a matter of a call between Chief Tabaranza, myself, and then the sheriff, Jamie Scardina, to be able to identify what those resources are. And then that goes up to the governor for a deployment. So we know what those processes are. We can expedite those. And that allows for us to bring in the resources rapidly. Thank you.

Lisa, any questions? No? Okay. We'll open public comment on this. Please step forward if you have any comments.

Good evening. Thank you for being here. My name is Todd Greenberg, downtown Fairfax. Item 1 is a good start, but preparedness needs to mean more than clearing drains, having sandbags, and responding after damage occurs. Fairfax has had FEMA reimbursement problems before. FEMA rejected the 378 scenic storm project, and our storm recovery fund still carries a very substantial deficit. So before this winter, we should have a written system for documenting pre-storm conditions, immediately recording damage, tracking costs, and promptly reporting everything potentially eligible to FEMA and Cal OES. But we should also be pursuing money before disasters happen. Tonight's report mentions evaluating temporary flood mitigation, but I don't see a Fairfax grant strategy for protecting downtown businesses. San Anselmo already requires floodgates for businesses in its downtown floodplain. Fairfax should identify its vulnerable businesses now, evaluate reusable flood barriers or floodgates, and aggressively pursue FEMA hazard mitigation and flood mitigation assistance funding rather than waiting until businesses are flooded. The same applies for fire protection. Ross Valley Fire does not currently station a ladder truck in its system. Its own structure fire response model relies on a ladder truck coming from outside the department. Meanwhile, Fairfax has enabled substantially taller and denser housing, including a proposed 64-foot, 243-unit project at 95 Broadway, a.k.a. School Street Plaza. We should... know now whether present ladder truck response times are adequate and pursue apparatus funding if they are not. And as the region plans fire station investments along Sir Francis Drake corridor, please evaluate whether a larger station should be designed to accommodate a ladder truck rather than building today's limitations into tomorrow's infrastructure.

Thank you. Thank you, counsel. I do remember the 82 flood. I was the individual that dove down in Kent Lake to try to save the pilot, Roland Maxwell, that we lost. But the reason I'm here speaking is Fairfax has a safety opportunity that I've brought up many times. My property is above the 500-year floodplain. The reason we have congestion, because everybody wants to get out of a flood or a fire area. Years ago, there was a bridge at the end of Pacheco to my property. If the town of Fairfax routed all that traffic through my property, whether it's a fire or flood, you could control the amount and volume of vehicles going down Center Boulevard so we could have the opportunity to get all of our emergency service vehicles in here. I have brought this up before. The fire department has looked at this and they've told me the only reason it didn't go forward, one word, politics. These are bad politics. You have an opportunity to potentially save many people in this town at really minimal cost. So I again encourage you to look at that opportunity because I own both sides of Pacheco and my property. If you put a bridge in there, as long as it's not constant vehicular traffic, so you put a baluster in there, the general public could be saved in a flood or a fire, but it would also get the congestion out of the way so that our emergency response teams can get to the area they need to. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Mark, excuse me, Mark Bell.

Yeah, the forecasting will be quite interesting since Washington has gutted the National Weather Service. So I guess we're going to have to keep our fingers crossed. The thing that I wanted to raise is that the people from the County of Marin have looked at the work that's going on, the storm drains, because what we'll be doing is putting more water and have it go through an undersized culvert is going to cause flooding I've seen water coming out of that culvert which doesn't stop until it smashes into the opposite side of the creek you know looking at that from Bridge Court so I think that we're adding water but we're not doing anything to the size of the culvert I think we're going to end up having major issues all that water that's now being Dave Kuntz, To be diverted into the creek going behind the town hall, probably flooding town hall and then going in downtown and onto Domingo and onto mano so I would just like to see if the county has looked into that and see their idea is thank you.

I was here in 82. I was here in 85. I was here in 1960. Big deal. We have no idea what's coming. And all that we can do is kind of like, you know, have some cans of food, maybe some candles and some other things going. But when the shit hits the fan... We're all in trouble. There's water everywhere. I watched people kayaking down San Anselmo Avenue, down the whitewater of downtown in 82. I saw cars stacked up at the end of Bolinas Road, down at Ross, at the end of San Anselmo Avenue, stacked up like tinker toys. I mean, look at the tsunami videos. That's water. It's powerful. What's her name? A niece, I think, was paralyzed in the valley when a mudslide hit her house in 82. We can prepare for it, but we don't know what's going to happen. And when it's going on, it's wet, it's soggy, it's cold, and it's a mess. Phones are down. Landlines, maybe they work. Maybe the cells are probably working. But what I'm trying to say is we can prepare so much, but when it happens, it's nuts. And good planning is also planning for population and roads and buildings that make sense and taking care of our own community. And there's a lot of people that don't make a whole lot of money in our communities. What about them? They're not going to be living on the seventh floor of the new building over here if we allow it to get built. I'm not going to allow it to get built, not in my town. I hope other people join me on that. And it might be a drought just before 82 was a drought. If it's mellow, it's yellow. If it's a brown, you know, flush it down. That was the slogan on everybody's stickers everywhere in every bathroom. It's like one to the other. So we either don't have any water. We got too much water.

Thank you. Are there any hands raised?

There are no raised hands on Zoom.

Okay. Closing public comment on this item. Is there any, there's no delay, but this was just a, thank you. We gladly and with appreciation receive your presentation. Thank you for keeping us safe. Take care. Moving on to our second presentation this evening, we have Mark Van Gorder with PG&E, and we're going to hear an update related to the recent fire on August 15th, the underground vault fire and power outage on Broadway. Take it away, Mark. Thank you for being here.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to come before you, Mayor and Council Members, and I thank Manager Ivers for the opportunity as well. Fairly brief report out, but we know it's an issue of safety, an issue of concern, so I've come here tonight along with our Public Safety Specialist, Ron Carlin. Ron can introduce himself when he comes up, but Ron works directly with the jurisdictions and the county, also works with the Steve Torrance and the folks for emergency prep. And so this El Nino discussion is pertinent to PG&E and preparations for power outages and such as well. So we're preparing along with the county. But just wanted to start off by saying that I think that the questions that I've heard, what happened? What's PG&E doing about it? What are you doing to make sure that our community is safe? So, um, I think getting straight to the, what are we doing about it? Uh, there was a transformer fire. Um, as I understand it, although I don't have the details, um, there were two, uh, individuals, uh, who may have received medical attention. I don't, again, I don't, I don't have those details, but this is what I've heard, uh, town manager and the chief is that, uh, You know, there was a civilian who was working to perhaps try and put out the fire that had some smoke inhalation. There was an officer, as I understand it, who may also have had some smoke inhalation or something. So we'll get more details and follow up with those individuals directly. The equipment itself has been transferred to our Applied Technology Services office, which is in San Ramon. They're going to inspect that equipment. Manager Abrams was actually there at the site. Totally separate issue, but though oddly coincidental, we both witnessed a vault fire. A simulation. A simulation, yes. It was a simulation to show us what could happen the idea was to show, you know, the dangers of it and the safety of it. So we both witnessed that. And I can, you know, it's a serious issue, serious matter. We take it seriously. So we're trying to find out what was the cause specifically. We're taking a look to see what kind of transformers that we have that are on ground or in ground in the town. Get your information. The The in-ground or on-ground transformers in the town were last inspected in 2025. We were there on a three-year inspection cycle. So we're taking, you know, once we have the details about what was the cause, we'll have a better idea of where, if in the town, there might be similar transformers go back, inspect, et cetera. But so we're in that process, right? I'd say similar to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. People want to know right away what happened. So we're trying to inspect for that. Ron's here to tell us a little bit more about what happened at that time and that day and can give you some more information about how we worked with the county, how we got information from dispatch, and some new technology that was actually implemented here in Marin, which Ron helped establish with the county's fire staff. just to show you that we are really working to come up with technology, just as Steve Torrance was talking about. We're working to come up with technology to better prepare and respond to these kinds of incidents. So I'll let Ron talk about what happened in that time.

Okay, great. Welcome. Thanks for coming tonight.

You're welcome. Good evening. Thank you. Mark, I've sold most of my thunder already. So I'll just jump right into some of the good news. And even though this was a significant incident that occurred within your town, there was some positive things that have occurred because of a platform we've been working on. for a little over a year now with your fire department and the county fire agencies as well. So your fire agencies are dispatched through a platform called tablet command and they manage an incident or resources through this platform. It is across many, almost all fire agencies across California and the nation. And so a little over a year ago when we were experiencing storm issue responses with the fire agencies and we were having meetings, we started looking at that platform of what the fire service was using. And so we tried to see if there was a collaboration between PG&E and what the fire service in Marin County was using for notifications of an incident. And so we started looking at that. Over a year's time, we were able to build a platform with this company, which had never done it before with a utility company. So PG&E is the first utility company to conduct this platform with tablet command that communicates directly with the fire agencies. And so what that does is in this day that this occurred with the ball fire, I was off duty. It was a weekend. And, uh, but I get the text on my phone for, uh, a fire in Fairfax. And so anytime there was an electrical or gas emergency, I get notified. And this was a part of the pilot. I was the pilot part, meaning I was going to be the, the foreseeable future of what our dispatch center is on a PG and E side. So we were able to build a system to where, when is there an incident? in your jurisdiction involving gas or electric, it sends a notification to me. So I have told all the first responders, both law and fire, that if I'm not on vacation, I have my phone on me and I take action. So when I saw that, I saw that it was a wildfire. I'm a retired fire chief, so I know the relevance of something of that nature. So I started to look at it, realized what it was, went to the fire channel to listen to their radio traffic. I could sense the tone of the BC's voice of being elevated and how this incident was expanding. So right away, I could call our electric supervisor and see if he was aware of this call, which he was aware of it, but he didn't know the magnitude of it because I had that information, the additional stuff. So I was able to share with that person, like, this is what's happening right now. It's elevated. Large amount of smoke being produced. There's evacuations in place. And so I would send more resources right now. And if I were you, I would probably head that way also so you can help mitigate this issue faster. So that person was able to send more resources to that incident in the get-go versus a standard response of maybe one person. He started launching additional crews that way in preparation and hearing what he knew about this incident, that we had a confirmed fire and that it was elevating. So our resources were able to get there quickly, I was able to point out to him through the the resource identification where that BC was parked. I told him this is the BC, his location. We walk up to him, get the information from him directly. So he had a direct line of contact with who to talk to when he got there. And so I was able to talk to the BC on scene, talk to our supervisor and coordinate that effort. It was all through this platform of being able to see what was happening in real time with your incident in Fairfax. And so we're happy to see that actually work, where we were able to give a more robust response to an incident that was escalating. We could see it practically in real time through CAD notes and what was occurring that helped us make decisions on our end that can make a mitigation time much faster on that side. So it was kind of an accident that it happened, but because of the hard work we've been doing over for a year, and trying to implement this program. Our eventual goal is to have that notification go directly to our dispatch center so that they have the information directly and they can launch those resources as a dispatching component of our PG&E system, which is going to cut down that response time and cut down making that scene safer for your citizens in the future. So that's what I wanted to share on the positive side of it is, you know, because of the things we are trying to improve and make better, there are things that we're going to be able to do faster. And as we go into the winter months, this is where this kind of came from for Marin County. When we have those storms roll in, there's usually wind with those storms. We have trees down, wires down. and we have that same congested effect where your fire agencies and law enforcement are trapped on these calls waiting for a troubleman to get there to make something safe, we can see that live now on a screen through the shared resourcing, and we can get our resources to your people faster and relieve your fire and law enforcement resources to get to the real emergencies that are out there while we get our people there to make safe for those power lines down. So we're super excited where this is going. We just scraped the surface of getting this up and running. We're only like three weeks into this, having the program stood up. So I'm sure in the future we'll have more conversations about the good things that this is doing as a more robust response from PG&E. Thank you.

So a couple of questions. So we talked about this recently at the Fairfax Citizens Disaster Council, and that's when we invited Mark to come. And I understood that there was a similar incident in Petaluma, is that right? Where did it recently, a transformer fire occur? Up in Sonoma County somewhere.

Sonoma.

Sonoma, okay. And I was just curious, is that, was that the same? We don't know. You don't know if it's the same? device. I don't want to say device, whatever piece of equipment.

Sure. I'll just say Sonoma County, I represent Marin and Napa counties. I can find out for you and get back to you. That's not my area. I wasn't engaged on that incident. So I don't know what transpired.

Okay. And do we know how old this equipment was? I know it was last inspected in 25, but do we know anything?

uh I don't okay that they're going through the process they're going to have a report that comes out and talks about the age did they give a delivery date sorry I have to ask these questions uh as I understand it it might be a couple weeks okay if if it's sooner I'll let you know but okay okay go ahead Councilman flash

Yeah. So I'm just going to put this out there. A lot of residents thought that this was somehow related to the sewer pipe replacement on Bolinas road. Is there any evidence that it had anything to do with road work?

Not that we're aware of.

Okay. Just wanted, because so many people asked, and then, I mean, I guess this sort of keying into the question about Sonoma, you know, how common is this type of failure and, um, you know, how dangerous is it to the community?

I mean, it's difficult to speculate on the dangerousness of it. I mean, as the city manager or town manager knows, I wasn't there. So I don't know what exactly transpired. The danger of smoke inhalation, the danger of any fire, the danger of electrical incident obviously poses threats. I mean, I think you're asking what would have happened maybe if, if somebody had been closer to it or standing nearby or that sort of thing. So I couldn't tell you, obviously it's something we don't want to see happen. Uh, but we, you know, we deal with, uh, high pressure gas, flammable, you know, materials, uh, you know, thousands of, of, of volts of current and current. And so, I mean, what we, what we deal with the commodities, um, I don't want to sound flippant at all, right? But it's one thing to turn the light on at home. I don't think about the dangers of the commodities that we deal with when I'm turning my light on. But for the people who are out in the field, working on the transformers, working on the power lines, whatever, and the gas lines, I mean, safety, safety, safety, safety is our company culture. Every meeting that we have, not once a day, every meeting, six meetings, six safety messages every single day. Um, that's our focus on safety. We take it very seriously. Uh, I just, I don't think speculating about what could have happened or how bad it could have been. I really can't speak to that.

I have some questions. How many of those transformers are in town?

Yeah, that's, so that's what I'm working on to find out with our electric superintendent. You know, we're trying to put together a report, right? Town manager, uh, I wanted to come out here quickly out of respect for the serious nature of the incident. So when town manager said, hey, can you come to this meeting? I said, we're not going to have a lot of information to share, but we'll certainly come and tell you what we have right now. We are preparing an update that we hope to have in a couple of weeks to answer how many transformers. Are they the same transformers as the one that we had the experience fault with? Are we re-inspecting them? Are we checking to see if whatever the cause of the failure of this transformer, is there a potential for a similar failure in the other transformers? So those common questions that one might ask, we're all working to get those answers.

How long has it been since that accident? How long has it been since that fire? Three weeks?

The date? Yes.

If this was like an OSHA thing, there's a lot of poisonous gas in the air and all that. If this was like an OSHA type situation, the investigation, in my estimation, should happen quicker. I think that's fair to say. I don't think it should take six weeks, seven weeks to figure out why that fire happened and or how many transformers are in town that it might happen to as well. So my request would be to speed up your investigation. Thank you.

Go ahead. I just so thank you, Mark, for coming. And thank you, Ron. This is a question. So transformers usually have PCBs. Do these transformers have PCBs?

I'm not trying to be evasive.

You just don't know.

I do not know.

And so Ron's raising his hand. I love that.

Yeah, I do happen to know that because, again, I was kind of working that incident with the electric superintendent that was on scene. That particular transformer did not have the PCP chemicals in it. It was a newer transformer that had more of the vegetable base in it. So we still, even though when they went through that process of reconstructing that transformer and putting it back together, they sent a cleanup crew out there, a hazmat crew, To make sure they still cleaned up the area. Very typical, like what a hazmat situation is so that it's very clean.

Thank you. And will your report say what kind of chemicals were released? Because I cleaned up hazardous waste sites for a number of years and I'm just wondering.

I would anticipate in that report it'll list what fluids were in that.

Okay, that would be great. And I think I realize a lot of this equipment is quite old, but it does seem like there should be a map. You know, just one thing that Council Member Gangali brought up, there should be a map that shows where all these transformers are in town. So I realize that PG&E is not going to be wanting to release pieces of a report, but it does seem like that's basic information. If it's very old, understanding that it probably takes a little more time to dig those maps up. But let's hope that—I mean, maybe one thing I would just ask, maybe it's Mark or Ron— is what do we envision this report will say? Will it have things like where are the other transformers that are underground in Fairfax? What kind of chemicals were released? Do we think we will learn the cause, like somebody threw a cigarette in there or somebody dumped grease in there? Do we think we will have that kind of detail in the report? What do you expect?

I would anticipate that it will explain all those things. There really isn't anything to hide per se. You know, if it's a malfunction and a failure, then it will state that. And more importantly, what it'll give for our electric ops people locally is something to review and look at anything similar within Marin County. So not just in Fairfax or here locally, but through our whole entire system and through our whole territory, they'll compare that incident with other similar likes of transformers out there. So it gives them an opportunity to decide, okay, if this happened and this was a failure point, do we go out and inspect all these other transformers at what level, to what degree, how far out do we go?

Do you think there will be recommendations that come out of the report?

I absolutely think there will be. Based on the company's transparency and wanting to share information that they're not going to hide anything.

I wasn't suggesting hiding, but I just want to know, do you think there'll be specific recommendations that come out? And I think for our residents, I realize we're worried about Marin County as a whole, but because it happened here, I hope there is a focus on, you know, what we know about Fairfax so that we're not delaying the report to learn everything about everything in Marin County. That would be great.

Yeah, no, first and foremost, it'll be about this incident and what's here centrally located. And then I'm sure they'll probably work out from there. But since we have the opportunity to talk about a PSA moment with your community is, if there's that type of fire and there's a fire coming out of the ground and there's smoke being produced, just stay away from it. We teach the law enforcement and fire agencies to isolate and deny the area, like stay away because it could be hazardous.

Well, they did that. I was downtown when it happened.

Yeah, they did. But with those initial people that, walk up on it and see it.

There were a lot of people filming. I told some people to go away and they were like, well, I have to film this. So, yeah, there is that natural inclination. And I think the police did a good job of trying to separate that area. But, you know, and I know fire showed up a few minutes later and I saw you guys a few minutes later. So thank you. Appreciate you guys coming. Very much. Vice Mayor.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. We undergrounded downtown Fairfax in the late 60s and early 70s, and I don't know how many of those transformers are underground in vaults downtown. I know there's one right in front of Mas Masa, a little restaurant on Molinas Road, a very similar-looking vault that was down there on Broadway. Is there a regular checkups on these vaults?

The last inspection.

In this program?

So the last inspection of all the vaults in Fairfax was 2025, and they're on a three-year cycle. So the next inspection, if it was a normal cycle, would be 2028. But as I expect, there will be additional inspections. just to perhaps double-check, make sure we didn't miss something, or the Applied Technology Services folks may determine that there was something that just was a one-off with this particular transformer. So, yes, they're regularly inspected.

Um, the, the, the photo is what kind of viral on, on social media on next door and only in Fairfax, the fire. And I saw one photo where it was going pretty good. And, and a Roswell, a firefighter was on his knees trying to deal with the smoke coming out. I, I, I couldn't see if he was dead. I don't think he had, he didn't have a hose there, but, uh, it looked like it would be very dangerous if that thing should have blown. And that firefighter was right, right over the grate. But, um, One thing PG&E really responded quickly. PG&E had equipment lined up Broadway, the whole side of the street. You brought in massive jackhammers I've never seen before and dug out that transformer. That whole vault was taken out. I think you probably worked most of the night. PG&E did on it. So PG&E must have realized the significance of that fire at that vault. So they did a really good job of getting here. But, you know, we had the theater, we had four restaurants, we had two bars, all closed. They lost Saturday, a very busy day for them. They lost that income for that whole evening. Is there any kind of reimbursement that they could get from – is there, again, kind of a disaster fund that they could apply for to make up some of the loss of revenue?

I can't speak to what – There's a process. I don't want to say yes in this event that something happens, there's a power outage, people will automatically be reimbursed. So if there's storms or other things like that, typically, if there's a short outage or something, typically the answer is no. But if people suffered losses or due to the failed equipment or something in particular, My suggestion would be that they go to you can Google search PG&E claims. And there's a there's an online form that businesses or folks can can use to fill out what the loss was, explain what happened. And there may be potential reimbursement, but I typically not. But this is not a typical this is not a storm outage or or a car driving into a pole. It's failed equipment. So there may be some consideration for that.

So we have a pretty meaty agenda tonight, and I imagine we're going to go through all of this when the report comes. So I don't want to cut you off, but it doesn't sound like you have any more information to provide. Is that right?

With regard to the underground vault, I did have three slides that were requested to talk about wildfire prevention efforts for our undergrounding plans here in Fairfax, but we can do that another time.

No, let's do it.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. And yes, we will come back when we have more information about the vault. town managers to give us a little quick update on what's happening. So I brought some slides here. I will go through them quickly. I'm looking to get something a little bit more specific than this. But the main message is, because this very often comes up, people hear about PG's undergrounding efforts for fire safety. We do have about a 98% ignition reduction with the underground lines. We have higher reliability. Over time, we don't have to do much tree trimming and such. So undergrounding is desirable for a number of reasons. It can be very expensive, but we feel like it's a good thing to do in these very high-fire risk areas, and Fairfax is one of them in Marin County. So main thing here is we are forecasting in 2028 approximately 12 miles of undergrounding. The little diamond dots here show you the general areas of the overhead lines. And hopefully I'll be able to have something that's more like specific to it's a long XYZ road. But if we can go to the next slide. And I think, Mayor, you had reached out to me a while back. I want to say June.

You or... Yeah, many of our neighbors talked to some PG&E folks who were marking up the street.

Right.

And they were telling us that they were doing some undergrounding planning.

So they are what we call scoping folks. And so the main thing is that this is basically this timeline of July 26. We have welcome kits and messaging and door hangers, flyers, and mailers that go out to properties along the way where we may. And I just want to underscore may. There's no guarantee we will do this. We do not yet have approval from the CPUC or the funding dedicated. But right now, we're just taking a look at creating a work plan. right, to say to the CPUC, hey, we would like to do this work here in Fairfax. There's other communities throughout our service territory where we'd like to underground. We go through a process of what's called the general rate case. It gets approved by the CPUC in the past. So in the last cycle, it's a three-year cycle, we've asked for 2,000 miles. They countered with 900 miles. We settled somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 miles, just pointing out that sometimes our request to perform work isn't always granted. And so it may be limited, and that's why we really focus in on the, you know, this is what we're planning for. This is what we may be requesting.

so help me out with these communications so do these go out after you hear back from the cpc because i none of us got any communications that's why i'm asking so i they should they should be starting the communication should be starting if we go to the next um and and part so

Let me back up. Part of my consternation with our folks and why it's taken us so long to get here now is they have been concerned about, you know, getting information out and sharing publicly about this work that they're scoping. So there's a little bit of battle between my role, right, which is to work with you and inform you about what's happening in your community so that you don't have to hear it from your neighbors about, well, PG&E is doing something in my community and you'll come to me and say, gee, Mark, I thought you were our guy to tell us these things, right? So there's a little internal battle going on, and I'll just share that with you, that it's unfortunate, but that we've had to take this long to get here. But I am working with those folks to say, look, you need to get these communications out. You need to tell people that we're scoping, that we're planning. And as I understand it, these communications should start to go out in these areas. Again, it's the start of a conversation. Can we work on your property? How might we do it? Where it allows us to sort of plan the route of the undergrounding and if it's even feasible, given the geology.

So I just want to say I live downtown and I've received probably about six calls from a contractor saying they worked with PG&E, wanted to partner with homeowners or property owners about potential undergrounding. So I'm going to assume that it's maybe part of this effort. And then they just sort of, when they finally got a hold of me, went through a whole little thing about how, you know, they were just kind of letting people know that it might happen. And, you know, there's a big X on our street. So my neighbors are talking about that, but I'm assuming that that call is part of this effort and they didn't say what contractor they were other than they were a contractor with PG&E.

Sure. So I'll just say it's been a battle within our company. I'm a plain spoken person as most all of you know and I am working to get this information out. What I can tell you is that we are scoping for undergrounding in this area. We are working, they're marking up the streets to determine where the utility lines might go. Is the communication optimal? No. I'm working to make sure that it is.

But in preparation for this presentation, on your first slide, you said 12 miles that are on the Woodacre Circuit. I don't think you're on the Woodacre Circuit, Liesl. And I don't know that I am either.

I can probably, you know, what I can probably attempt to do is give you a ballpark of where that circuit runs, right?

That would be great.

Yeah. Yeah. And trust me, I have been pulling teeth, you know. Screaming into a pillow. You know, it's been very frustrating. I can't, you know.

Yeah.

So it's unfortunate that we're here with that. That's the way it is. All right. So I'll just keep working to get that information to you. I think there may be one more slide. I'm not sure. Yeah. So this is this. There's something that we're updating on a quarterly basis. It's not ready yet, but there is a system upgrades in Marin. If you want to go to PG&E.com forward slash system upgrades hyphen Marin, there's a link there that tells see our progress. Soon, not yet, but soon we hope to have something updated that shows the scoped actual mapped areas that we're looking in. But meanwhile, I am encouraging our team, and I think this meeting will help, to get the message across to our leadership, the importance of getting that information out. Okay. And I will get back to you as soon as we get the results from the Applied Technology Services.

Okay. We're going to have to take public comment. That's what we do. Okay. I'm going to open public comment on this item.

Yeah, I just want to thank my full-time work colleague, Ian Montgomery, who grabbed a fire extinguisher and beat down that flame so it wouldn't get to my tie on the 15th. So I've got a video. I know you can't see it. But, you know, he ran there, got a fire extinguisher, and he tamped it down until the fire got there. His name's Ian Montgomery. He lives in Oregon.

Thank you. Next speaker?

Good evening, Todd Greenberg. Thank you for the presentation, representatives of PG&E. I'm hopeful that you are trying to make some progress here. I want to make a public hazard warning and a direct response a request to both PG&E and this town council. Fairfax has identified PG&E infrastructure hazards that should be corrected before they result in a preventable injury, fire explosion, prolonged outage, or other loss. First, the 1935 natural gas main along Bolinas Road, a PG&E employee told me this line was whip circled as needing replacement. There have been repeated reports of leaks and repairs along this corridor. PG&E, when will this line be replaced? Give Fairfax a date certain. Town Council, please obtain that answer in writing and track it publicly until the work is completed. Second, PG&E, Christie boxes in Fairfax sidewalks have not been adequately maintained and have become tripping hazards. These are existing hazards today. PG&E should immediately inspect them and repair and replace every hazardous box as soon as possible. The town should identify the locations, formally notify PG&E and track completion. Third, Fairfax continues to suffer frequent electrical outages. PG&E should provide Fairfax specific outage frequency and duration, identify recurring causes and give us corrective projects and completion dates. Fourth, we need an accounting of promised undergrounding and system hardening work. I'll yield.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, Council. I do appreciate PG&E coming here for this presentation. I've also contacted PG&E and discussed this when I've seen people from PG&E working. I believe we have three old transformers with PCB, or polychlorinated biphenyls, that are located right next to the laundromat in the Fair and Selma Shopping Centre. The reason this should be a concern to everybody They are supported by three large telephone poles that are like a parallelogram leaning away from the buildings and they are crossed with a couple of they're probably four by six cross members, but the whole thing keeps leaning. PCBs are well-known carcinogenics. This is above our creek. It's above an area where there's a great deal of people moving around, part of our population. I think it'd be very reasonable for PG&E, in their scope of work, to look at some of these old transformers that are up on poles, and specifically older ones such as that that I have brought to their attention many times, and it has been ignored. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room? Seeing none, are there any hands raised?

We have one raised hand on Zoom. Cindy, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Hi, good evening. I want to thank PG&E for being here tonight to speak. I live right across from the Fairfax Plaza and in recent weeks there have been several people that have been doing some kind of surveying work supposedly for PG&E and I've tried asking questions about what exactly they were doing And nobody really seems to know. I mean, it's been mentioned that there would probably be some undergrounding And I'm certainly not opposed to it. I certainly want to see whatever will be the safest for me and my neighborhood. I want to see that go into effect. But I got a really strange phone call from somebody who identified herself as a contractor for PG&E, but I don't really have any specific information. But she started asking me questions about my fence and my property and I asked her why and was trying to determine what kind of work was going to be done and she really didn't know and then she started saying that she would pass along my objections and I said to her I'm not objecting to the work being done but you're asking me about my property and you know I just couldn't get any straight answers because you know I do have some health issues that would make it really, really unsafe for me if there was a lot of construction, if there was any kind of tar, if there are chemicals being released. So, you know, of course I want to know what's being done, but I'm just really, really concerned that there's this lack of communication. And, you know, again, this person that I spoke to said, oh yeah, you'll be getting information about it. But, you know, I've talked to about three different people so far, and nobody seems to know what's going on. Thank you.

More information is forthcoming. Thank you. Any other...

There are no more speakers on the...

Closing public comment. Thank you again for being here. Do you have any...

If I could, just... I'm going to give the advice that I give to my mother, okay? If I was, you know... I don't recommend providing information over the phone to somebody who says that they work for XYZ company. Unless you've received a mailer or even that, I think it's a good idea for us to do a better job of communicating through the city. With you to verify these phone calls, these numbers, give you information so that people can call back, at least verify it.

100%.

So what I would say is if people in the community are receiving phone calls from somebody who says, I work for XYZ company, let me talk to you about your fence. When are you home? You know, what's your social security number? Right. Just don't give that information out and say, you know what, you know, I haven't heard anything about this. I don't know who you are and I'm hanging up now.

Right. Thank you. Agree. And I just want to add that I got two of those scam calls from PG&E who wanted to talk about my bill and I hung up on them and they called back and I hung up on them again. So I think there's scammers out there and PG&E is a likely target.

Thank you again.

Can you shut that mic off, please?

We're looking forward to receiving the report. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Mayor Mrakas, All right, moving on to agenda item number three we have we're in excuse me Ross valley sanitation district here this evening to present general manager Steve more. We're also gonna be, so we're gonna hear a presentation. We also have two action items, considering appointing a council liaison to the board and consider sending a letter to Central Marin Sanitation Agency. So you are up first. Thank you for being here, Mr. Moore.

good evening honorable mayor and council members and citizens of Fairfax I'm Steve Moore I'm the general manager of Ross Valley sanitary district which I've been doing for about eight years I'm a registered civil engineer and have a master's degree in environmental engineering with a focus on wastewater Ross Valley Sanitary District, as you probably know, provides sewer services to the citizens.

You might want to speak just a touch closer to the mic.

We provide, as you know, sewer services to the citizens of the town of Fairfax and beyond. And I'm very grateful for the opportunity to present to you tonight. Also from the district, I'm pleased to introduce you to the elected officials. We have President Michael Borstein online joining us remotely, as well as board member Pamela Maggs, maybe you could raise your hand, board member Doug Kelly, and also CMSA commissioner representing the RVSD, Andrew Poster, who is also the director of public works for Mill Valley. Also with me is Assistant General Manager Felicia Newhouse. Before I begin, I do want to recognize the productive and valuable working relationship with Town Manager Heather Abrams and Public Works Director Kristen Arnold, especially as we've been rehabilitating high-priority sections of the sewer system in the town these past three years. Tonight, I'll provide an overview of one of our several disputes with Central Marin Sanitation Agency, CMSA, the issue of overcharging RVSD ratepayers for wastewater treatment for many years. I've got eight slides to show you. First, thank you. I'd like to orient you to some facts about RVSD. In 1899, local citizens organized one of the first sanitary districts in the state of California, Sanitary District Number One of Marin County, also known back then as Ross Valley Sanitary District. Today, almost half of our sewers were installed before 1955, and we're steadily replacing them at between one to four miles per year. We serve Fairfax, San Anselmo, Sleepy Hollow, Greenbrae, Kent Field, Ross, and Larkspur residents and businesses. We manage over 200 miles of sewers. You can stretch them from here to Lake Tahoe's North Shore. And we manage 19 pump stations. We've invested $44 million over the last five years, making our system more watertight, reducing flows to the treatment plant. Next slide. Some background. In 1979, we formed Joint Powers Agency with San Rafael and Corte Madera, and this JPA is known as CMSA. CMSA is responsible for wastewater treatment and for setting and collecting treatment charges from JPA members. JPA members collect sewer charges from ratepayers directly. Based on CMSA's population numbers shown in the graph, which need further study, RVSD has about half the population, but the commission ratio is 2 to 2 to 1, with RVSD underrepresented. RVSD annexed Larkspur in 1993, and Larkspur gave up the sixth seat on the CMSA commission in 2019, and RVSD did not claim it. Next slide. So how should cost of treatment be determined? Treatment cost is related to the strength of the wastewater, how concentrated it is. Strength is measured by biochemical oxygen demand, known as BOD. This is the organic content that depletes oxygen in receiving waters, as well as total suspended solids, TSS. It's like the cloudiness of the water. Stronger concentrated wastewater costs more to treat. This is directly measurable in the energy used in treatment processes, the solids handling and trucking, and the chemicals that we add. These cost factors are proportional to the loading, the strength of the organics and the solids into the treatment plant. RVSD has the lowest strength wastewater measured by CMSA. This graph shows the last three years of quality data that demonstrate RVSD has lower strength than the other JPA members and San Quentin, the prison. As shown on this graph, RVSD's average three-year BOD is 150 and the others are 175 or higher. RVSD's three-year average TSS is 125. The others are 150 and higher. Next slide, please. After decades of using flow and strength or equivalent dwelling units, which are known as EDUs, and those are based on flow and strength as well, so after decades of using these methods to allocate costs, this past April, the CMSA Commission changed the allocation formula on a three to two vote with RVSD commissioners dissenting. CMSA changed from flow strength to flow only, which increased RVSD's annual charge by about $500,000. That's about a half a mile of sewer that we could put in the ground. This change occurred less than a year after RVSD identified large errors in CMSA strength measurements. This change occurred without any technical reports or analysis to support the change. This change increased the annual payment from us from $7 million in fiscal 26 to almost $8 million in fiscal 27. This change restored an allocation percentage that had been based on bad strength data, which RVSD uncovered in 2025. Next slide.

So I think all of us are going to have questions, but we're going to let you get through this and then go back.

Oh, absolutely. And I will take us into some of the data. So hopefully it answers some of those questions.

Right.

So I just want to say for this point, you know, as I mentioned before, RVSD has lower wastewater strength. than San Rafael, Corte Madera, or San Quentin. And therefore, RVSD wastewater costs less to treat per gallon, and RVSD ratepayers should pay less per gallon under Prop 26 legally.

And you're going to have to say, no one knows, I can assure you. Most of us don't know what Prop 36 is.

Yeah, it's kind of like Prop 218, but it's for wholesalers. Prop 218 is the... You can't make a profit.

You can only charge what it costs. That's right. Right.

Yeah. The cost of service needs to match the expense.

Okay.

As far as what is billed. So the independent company WRE Consultants reviewed similar agencies around California, including SASM in Southern Marin and Silicon Valley Clean Water in Redwood City. And in July, they concluded that no other JPAs or similar agencies to CMSA use flow only, unless by original agreement documents from back in the 1970s. So flow only is an antiquated method and only appropriate in smaller systems according to guidance. Flow strength is the modern industry standard. All right, next slide. I want to go into the data. Bear with me. I'm going to walk through this. Hopefully it makes sense. It's a scatter shot, but there's some sense to this. For decades, CMSA has been collecting strength data from the two interceptors, two large pipes that come from Ross Valley and San Rafael. and they enter the treatment plant, and they're not hard to monitor. It's a routine operation, and it's required by the state. The flow into a treatment plant is called influent, and the flow out of the treatment plant that's treated is called effluent. Those are some of the jargon I'll use. CMSA has been reporting these data to the state as influent data as part of compliance monitoring for its federal NPDES discharge permit. CMSA's enforceable effluent limit is 85% removal of BOD and TSS at the treatment plant before discharge to San Francisco Bay. And the data in this graph are used to define the influent concentrations, with CMSA calculating it as 60% Ross Valley and 40% San Rafael. The graph shows BOD and TSS concentration data over the last eight years. on the x-axis, and the data points are 24-hour composite samples taken about 50 times a year from both San Rafael and Ross Valley interceptors. On y-axis, the upper axis, is the concentration. For reference, in the Bay Area, influent concentrations of BOD and TSS are fairly consistent and hover around 200 milligram per liter. You see where 200 is on the y-axis? It's all the way down at the bottom on the left. That's the first value. You can see the seasonal pattern here in these data of the wet weather that dilutes and lowers the strength concentrations below 100. Note the y-axis scale shows a lot of data, well over 200, and some values exceeding 1,000 mg per liter, which is never seen in influent concentrations in the Bay Area. As shown on the graph, in June 2023, CMSA changed the location of the sampling ports on the two interceptors from 5 o'clock near the bottom to 3 o'clock at the midpoint of these 5 to 6 foot diameter pipes. CMSA did not tell the JPA members about this change, but it significantly changed the treatment charges significantly. And the Ross Valley Board members noticed these costs increases and directed staff to investigate.

Now, taking a look at these data, you know, they speak for themselves.

The data speak for themselves in this graph. They're not credible. And as the professional responsibility, CMSA staff should have long ago reviewed this issue and changed the sampling ports. Since June 2023, the data are now in expected ranges. And CMSA staff told JPA members last year that these values now match values in the treatment plant. Well, great. Well, Ross Valley then provided an analysis in July 2025 that showed that CMSA continued to charge JPA members based on the last three years of data, which included this bad data, and was overcharging RVSD rate payers by about $600,000 per year. Again, you know, over a half mile of sewer that we could be putting in the ground. CMSA ignored RVSD and billed us anyway, and the other JPA members benefited financially and did not object. CMSA's response was to employ a statistical method that would allow this bad data to continue to be used. And when RVSD questioned that method, CMSA switched to a strategy to change the allocation method to flow only. penalizing RVSD and attempting to erase the memory of this long history of faulty data reported to the state and used to allocate treatment costs. We could spend a lot of time unpacking this data on the graph, but in the next slide, we'll break down some simple statistics before I wrap up. The upper left graph on this slide shows the median or average values of the data from the prior graph, before and after the change sampling location in June 2023. The lower right graph shows the standard deviation or variability of the data before and after the sampling location change. The less variable, the better the data. The y-axis on both graphs shows concentration of BOD and TSS from the Ross Valley and San Rafael interceptors on the same scale, so the graphs are comparable. According to an authoritative wastewater treatment design manual from Metcalf and Eddy, typical wastewater-influent BOD is less than 300 milligram per liter. TSS is less than 350. These values are shown in red on the median concentration graph. Before 2023, all the medians were above the maximum literature values and the standard deviations were much higher than after June 2023. These are conclusively bad data and should be discarded from use for allocating treatment costs. It's not even close. These hundreds of data points show that the June 2023 sampling change made the data reasonably accurate and useful for allocating treatment charges going forward with some minor recommended changes to improve accuracy. Since June 2023, the standard deviations are all less than 50 milligram per liter and the medians are at or below 200 where they belong, my first comments from the last graph. The data collected since June 2023 also shows that RVSD was overcharged for 10 years. All right, and final slide. In conclusion, RVSD calls on CMSA to consider restoring the flow strength allocation formula used for 13 years and provide a third-party objective technical report. they we will call on them to resolve the dispute regarding paying back rvsd the overcharges to implement quality assurance and transparency recommendations for sampling calculation and reporting and we asked to consider structural changes to the jpa for instance restore the larch receipt on the cmsa board to rvsd totaling three seats to equitably represent population serve or modify the JPA agreement to require supermajority vote for major financial decisions. With that, please let me apologize to you for taking so much of your valuable time this evening, but we humbly appreciate your making this public forum available to explain our concerns to our common citizens and ratepayers, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. We've spent a lot of time together, and I want to highlight some questions and comments on each slide, but it sounds like Councilmember Kohler has questions, so I'll go last. Go ahead, Councilmember Kohler.

Just a question. First of all, I want to thank the mayor for being so involved in this, and I understand you're in mediation right now with CMSA? No. No, or you'd like to be in mediation?

That's right. We did write a letter invoking the district.

Just speak into the mic. It's really hard to hear you.

Sorry about that. We wrote a letter in March of this year to invoke the formal dispute resolution process with CMSA. There are four steps. The third step is mediation. We're only still in the step one. We haven't proceeded to step two yet.

So that's a problem. Six months in step one, it needs to get moving.

Okay. And then I want to ask, used a lot of acronyms and I did my master's thesis in the sewage effluent. So I know some of them, but I do not know what TSS stands for. What is that?

Very good. Yeah. Total suspended solid.

Okay.

Got it. It's kind of like turbidity.

Yeah, I got it. So let me just ask you, since you have known about this for a while, I'm wondering why our elected officials, two of whom live in Fairfax, have not brought this to the town. Sarah Margolis from Larkspur brought it to our mayor, and I'm just wondering why we haven't heard about this before. Because I think we could have lended more support.

I really appreciate the comment. And I think, you know, as civil servants, it's incumbent on us to try to work things out between local governments and come to amicable solutions. I think it's just gone on. As I mentioned, we did the study in July of last year, and we're trying to let the process work itself out, but we're just reaching levels of some frustration there. And I'm sure our board members would be happy to comment from their perspective because they have been aware of this since last summer.

And since you have dispute resolution as part of the JPA agreement, you can't jump ahead and file a claim to start a lawsuit. You have to go through the dispute resolution. Is that correct?

Yes, I believe there is some obligation to do that legally because we're bound to the JPA. However, if that process is not being carried forward in good faith, I think there is legal remedy.

Well, since you're in step one after six months, it does seem like Going through four steps is going to take, what, two years, maybe, or more. I mean, it's just, I'm not trying to cause a lawsuit, but it just seems like there might be a slow roll going on here. And I do also know, as you know, I'm on LAFCO. that there also are discussions about annexations between CMSA, Ross Valley Sanitary District and Sanitary District 2. Is that complicating this at all or is it getting in the way? I hope it isn't because I think I want to commend folks for even thinking about that because I'm not used to this separation of collection and sewage treatment. Sewage treatment usually is One shot deal. Everybody does it together. So is it getting in the way or are we proceeding a long separate paths there?

Yes, that's very thoughtful observation and question. And indeed, we are participating in a cooperative effort, a collaborative effort with the JPA member agencies to study with LAFCO the potential for consolidation of the districts and dissolution of the JPA.

Yeah, I mean, I think that would be an incredible start. So thank you for your presentation. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Any other questions from the dais? Questions.

If I may. Currently, Santa Fe is facing like a tsunami of apartment complexes, 17 stories, 24 stories, and I think 8 or 10 8-story apartments. And they realize they can't handle what's coming with wastewater collection and pump stations. So they're trying to hand it off to CMSA, Central Marine Sanitation Agency. They want them to take over. the Santa Fel Sanitation Department. If that happens, Ross Valley is going to end up subsidizing the cost of Santa Fel's wastewater collection and treatment. Has Ross Valley talked about what's going to happen if CMSA of which you are part of, takes over Santa Fe. I served a number, about six years, on Ross Valley and CMSA boards and was able to secure a state grant. And I worked with M.M. Muthburn Water District, and we put together a program to reclaim and recycle wastewater. Um, it, it, it, it was good to use San Quentin as a, as a demonstration project. And the inmates there did not like the idea of, of having all that wastewater over there, uh, treated well treated wastewater, but it didn't, it didn't go anywhere, but, um, it seems San Rafael should be double having all of those apartment complexes, double plumped. So one day, uh, uh, centrum and sanitation agency will have to raise a treatment level of that wastewater and start reusing it. If they don't do it one of these days, the state's going to force it on us. We just can't keep discharging it, treated wastewater into San Francisco and San Rafael Bay. But has anyone talked about double plumbing for future flushing of toilets with treated wastewater at all?

Yeah, so there's two questions that I'd like to answer there. And I will answer them about the recycled water. But to begin with, you might have noticed in the beginning of my remarks, I said, today I'll provide an overview of one of our several disputes with CMSA. One of our main disputes with CMSA is the proposal to contract with San Rafael Sanitation District and bring all their employees under CMSA, which is a JPA, which we are very largely financially responsible for. So our commissioners on the CMSA board voted no on that proposal to contract between CMSA and SRSD. There are a lot of complicating factors. I appreciate you pointing out the proposed growth in San Rafael. It's an interesting dimension. But there is a long list of reasons as members of the JPA that RVSD is opposed to that arrangement. And we just make this point, and we did in our grand jury response on special district consolidation, We made the note that there is a crisis. This is, in our mind, to our ratepayers, being liable, increasing our liabilities for this proposal. And you used the word subsidize. We believe that is a risk of subsidization of San Rafael collection system services by Ross Valley and Corda Madera Group. um rate payers so that's a real risk that we've identified and in the grand jury response we said there's a crisis and we formed the consolidation committee in response to this crisis saying there's a better way to work with lafco and do a consolidation of governance combining collection and treatment under one agency but it's not to be done piecemeal in the fashion that San Rafael is proposing. So this is a big part of our dispute. I've had a chance to give you a little bit of an overview. We'll be happy to come back and give you more details on that work. And then second, you mentioned the recycle water. As a recycle water advocate, I'm concerned CMSA is not investing more in getting grant funding and other sources to advance recycled water. As you point out, almost every drop that CMSA treats ends up in San Francisco Bay. That's a resource that we should be actively working with Marin Municipal Water District to realize as part of a water supply portfolio. And your ideas are great. If you're going to put in high-rises, Do double plumbing. You need to lay pipe to get to those high-rises. It's not cheap. You need assistance. It can be done. San Francisco has pioneered high-rise recycle water on site. Maybe that should be looked at. So I appreciate Vice Mayor Egger's comments on the opportunities that we need to seize to realize the resource value of this wastewater.

Thank you council member blast. Do you have any questions? Okay, so if you wouldn't mind putting the slide back up, so just starting from the beginning, just going to highlight some of the things that I understand and then some questions and comments going to the beginning please. Okay, the next slide, please. So, tell me how the population numbers are reported. Do they come from each town and city? Do they come from the county? Do they come from the census? What's the source data?

Yes, the source data for this population graph is from a budget document from CMSA. And that's why I mentioned we need to study this more because we started digging into their sources and we're not real sure that they're consistent. We have a source in that previous graph. We have a number for our district, 44,900 students. That's based on a Department of Finance source, but we're not positive that's right on the money.

From the county?

From the state.

Oh, from the state.

Okay. So we think it makes a lot of sense to have a third-party objective review because it's complicated. There's unincorporated county areas that are lumped in CMSA's budget report that are from portions within our district, within Corta Madera's district, and within San Rafael.

Okay.

So it's... It needs to be unpacked a little bit and updated so that discussions about population-based representation are more accurate.

Okay. And then on the next slide, okay, so I don't think I have questions on this slide. So just from a timeline perspective, so for 12 or more years have been on the flow strength model, right? And at some point in time in 2023, the sensors were changed. There was no written notification of that. Your district detected fluctuation in invoicing and did your own investigation. Then at what point did you learn the sensors had changed?

Yeah, it was about one month into inquiring about the data management system that a meeting was held between the JPA managers. And we were told, oh, by the way, a few years ago, we changed the sampling locations and it better matched what we were measuring within the treatment plant.

Okay. So you had initiated the inquiry and at that point it was revealed that a couple of years back, the samples, okay. And the billing happens, this is where it gets really kind of confusing. The billing happens on a three year rolling basis, right? So we're still, there's still how much of that quote bad data, if you will,

in the numbers that's right and and we were anticipating it in 2025 we we basically communicated that hey there's still another year ahead of us where the results are going to be based on this poor you know this unrepresentative data and would you please exclude that data when you allocate costs and we were ignored

Okay. And I've only been paying attention lately, but it would be helpful to know, are these communications just happening between your staff and CMSA staff, or is it actually being raised at CMSA meetings?

Yes, it was at a staff level. A lot of work got done in 2025 and to the end of the year, but it was raised to the board level board member level.

Okay. At that point, because one of the I've been trying to learn. One of the things that I've heard is what what is the problem here? You got Ross Valley Sanitation District received a six hundred thousand dollar credit. You know, what's the source of sour grapes? Right. Can you talk about like the timeline? So we've been paying 1.9, 1.9 on a quarterly basis. And then we just kind of fill in the blanks from a timeline perspective, please.

Yes, every April, the previous year's data is, let's say, dumped in to the three-year rolling total, and the year that's four years back gets taken out, right? And so it's an abrupt adjustment, but it shouldn't be that abrupt. our wastewater is not that complicated. It's, you know, 70% residential. It's, it should be smooth, but to have big jumps like this is evidence of the bad data because, and we predicted it. We basically said in our documents, making a, you know, an informal and then a formal claim, our mathematics, you know, our arithmetic added up about 600,000 that we were overpaying. So we, we were given back what we overpaid and we predicted we were going to overpay but then by changing to flow only it reinstates that half a million dollar extra cost uh you know five to six hundred thousand dollars a year which did i mention i could put half a mile of sewer in the ground for that yes you did okay um

So I know that Ross Valley Sanitation funded this study by WRE, and I refer to it as more of a qualitative study, right? But what I personally am curious about is... if the CMSA board would be amenable to doing a more technical and quant study on what makes sense specifically for CMSA and all of our JPA members, because that was not done to inform the model change, right? And what I've learned, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but in 2013, when they did a switch to the methodology, There was two consultant data studies informing that vote. Is that correct?

That is correct.

So did anyone ask for that or just came to the board and they voted? Like, what was the process from your standpoint?

Yeah, we were a little, from our standpoint, we were a little surprised that then discussions that had been dormant from October all of a sudden were restarted in March this year. And a proposal to go to flow only was discussed at a March meeting and then adopted in the April meeting with a three-page staff report with no technical analysis of the data. So, you know, CMSA, as you see with my presentation, they're data rich. There's a lot of data that we can use to guide decision making. But that staff report proposing flow only included no data from treatment, you know, from water quality that drives treatment at cost. And as you said, there was no technical report to support the change.

OK, so, yeah, I we can talk about it after a public comment, but I just see a lot of opportunity for, you know, more oversight and more collaboration and more transparency and just some basic operating principles related to. You know how the how the different members are actually meeting and talking with the GM at CMSA, because I don't I don't I don't think that there's recurring meetings happening right now with the GM's and the head of. CMSA, is that right?

That's right.

Okay. All right. I'm going to open public comment. Did you, or did you have a question?

No, I just was going to suggest public comment because we're almost at nine. We have two really meaty things that are actually very, yeah, this is really important.

So, okay. We're going to open public comment.

Hello, council. I'd like to start with complimenting the staff of our RVSD because they come on my property all the time to clean a trunk line and five, six inch laterals and take care of forest. I was very polite and do a good job. I would encourage our own Ross Valley Sewer District. to bring forth suit in case there's a statute of limitations on how far they can reach back. I also think that Frank's comment about maybe they're changing this, I'm kind of paraphrasing this, to accommodate all the additional building is a real concern. So I think that if we can help them bring this forth, And as earlier speaking to one of the members here tonight, there's a case that I've certainly brought up a couple of times here to beat on Fairfax about called Sheets versus El Dorado County. And when that was adjudicated by the US Supreme Court, fees and expenses cannot be passed on arbitrarily. There needs to be a matrix of proportionality. And you've heard me discuss this before. We are well within our right to withhold payments and say we need to see a matrix proportionality for everybody's input and what is our actual impact and expense for this overall bill. So it's kind of like if we only put in 10%, we can only be charged 10% on just a flat little basis. So the other reason I encourage we look that quick, this town here tried to say that you could only bring forth a complaint of overcharging for the UUT in 15 days. So let's hope that our sewer agencies act with a little bit more integrity and don't try to shorten that window so we have an opportunity to gain those funds back. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker. Okay.

Hi, Pamela Meggs, 310 Cypress Drive. I'm elected on the Ross Valley Sanitary District since 2010. When I first got on the board, one of the things I noticed was there were many sewer districts in Marin County. And I thought, we need a summit. And I've been sort of saying that same thing over and over, but never got enough support. So you might want to consider that to start some wheels rolling. What I'm hearing, though, about the money is very disturbing. We're elected to serve the public and the public entrusts in us. But to hear that is very upsetting to me. We've worked really hard in our district and we have many awards in the last couple of years, so I want to right this wrong. And we have reached out quite a bit to CMSA, as Steve has said, and I'm not going to go into all those details. So just looking at this, good governance demands a full review. RVSD is not looking to create conflict. It is fulfilling its fiduciary duty. Transparency and fair dealing require a holistic look at how CMSA has been managed in a more rational, efficient structure for the future. LAFCO probably... has been involved, and the current talk now is to have a committee for consolidation. So accountability is the name of the game. Integrity and transparency, if you want to start looking at what is best for the community. And then maybe we need a forensic audit. Thank you.

Good evening, Todd Greenberg. I'd like to personally thank Pamela Miggs, Steve Moore, Felicia Newhouse, and Doug Kelly for being here tonight and for the work that they're doing on this and on behalf of all of us. here in Fairfax. I'd like to ask the town council to write a letter in support of their position as the town council has written many letters in support of certain positions. I'd like to personally ask Barbara Kohler as being one of the leaders of LAFCO to use all of her expertise to find a way to come to a speedier solution without spending lots of legal monies. That's all. Thank you very much for all of your efforts.

There is a letter on the attachment to send.

Next speaker, please. Hi, I'm Mina. I live in Cascade Canyon almost 20 years. I'm pretty shocked to hear all of this. Steve, it took a lot of guts to come here and make that presentation. And whatever support we can give to them, I would like to see. I can't even believe it. I'm sure so many residents would be outraged at their lack of responsibility. And I don't understand how that's going to happen.

First off, credit where credit's due. I'd like to thank Mayor Hellman for writing that letter to CMSA and for attending the last meeting. That's very helpful. We're trying to keep... the issues kind of between the sister agencies, but they've just been treating us so poorly that we asked the general manager to start reaching out to the town councils. I have spoken to Frank and Mike about some of these issues in the past. Strangely, in 2017, when RSVD wanted to rent some land, at CMSA, the representatives from San Rafael shook her head and said, you can't vote on this. You have to recuse the fells. When San Rafael wanted to dump all of her employees at CMSA, refuse to recuse themselves so we have a whole slew of issues um and it was uh the finance committee tom gaffney and myself that uh looked at the discrepancies of our work 100 million dollars over the last 10 years and our load to the uh treatment plant going down our bill's not going down which is where this all started so steve gave you the kind of easy uh info today. It's actually a lot deeper and he did a really, really great job. So we're trying to work these issues out. I'll be happy to send an email to the town manager expressing the other issues we have. CMSA taking on Ross Valley is huge. It's a disaster. Thank you.

Any comments online? Okay. Closing public comment.

So can I just say I think there's a wonderful letter. I want to again thank the mayor for all her work on this issue. That would go to Central Marin Sanitary Agency from the mayor, and I think we should move forward with that. I would just suggest, and I'm sure it's just not included here, that we copy Ross Valley Sanitary District. so that they have it for their files easily. We can always send it to them, but it just seems like that would be a good thing. So I think we ought to just move forward with that letter.

Yeah, I think that I want to thank you, Mr. Moore, for being here. And Felicia, thank you for all the time you've spent with me, getting me up to speed. You know, I do want to offer the feedback that we, you know, to the members of the Ross Valley Sanitation Board who are here. We know you. We have relationships with you. And I really wish that I learned about this 18 months ago. We have relationships with folks on the CMSA board. We have relationships all over the county. And we could have had conversations to help steer this along. There's a lot of things we could have done. And some of those conversations are happening. And I am hopeful. that there will be progress, progressive steps in the very near term. I think they're hearing us. I think one of the things, as I mentioned earlier during your presentation is I think asking for a technical report on the agenda and figuring out how we arrive at the right consultant because I know that there's going to be different POV on that. And so what's the right solution for how to identify a consultant that will be unbiased? And I think, you know, perhaps laugh go or some other independent body can or a subcommittee we'll, we'll figure it out. But I think that's 1st and foremost. Um, and then I think, um, in talking with my colleague on in Larkspur, who has brought me into this Sarah, we've been talking about just some other recommendations, including that the GM of. begin to meet with the JPA GMs in a formal setting where there's minutes, agenda, and all that kind of thing, where you can raise your concerns and they'll be documented and then shared back with your staff and your board. That seems pretty basic and reasonable to me. So those are just a couple of ideas that I believe Sarah and I will be putting forth, and I don't know what that will look like. Perhaps we'll show up again at another board meeting. Perhaps we'll do another letter. I'm not sure. But thank you for your time this evening and all the time that you've spent with us getting us up to speed. Thank you. Okay. So do we need to take a vote on that letter?

I would like to make a motion that we go forward to send the attached letter to Central Marin Sanitary Agency on behalf of Fairfax.

Sure, I'll second that. We have a motion from Council Member Kohler and a second from Council Member Blash. Council Member Blash. Yes. Council Member Garangeli. Yes.

Yes.

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

We also had one more item related to that. Larkspur has an official liaison to this board to stay engaged. I don't know that we have support from this council to formally have a liaison, but if we don't have support for that, that's fine. If anyone wants to raise their hand, great. Otherwise, I really call on Mr. Kelly and Ms. Miggs to proactively inform our staff and this council of what's happening with Ross Valley Sanitation and CMSA.

Can I also just say, I am interested in hearing who on the council is interested, if anybody, in being that liaison. And if there isn't anybody at this time, we could bring it up again. The council could bring it up again when they reconstitute, just because some of us will be leaving very soon. Maybe there'll be new people who want to do it.

Yeah. Any comments, Vice Mayor? No? No? Okay. I'm not seeing any interest, so we'll look to our board members who live in the community to keep us informed. Thank you. Yeah, let's take a five-minute bio break.

Okay, and we're back.

We are now on item number five, consider code changes to accommodate special events. So we have a presentation from our planning and building director, Jeff. And we're going to be discussing town code amendments needed to allow outdoor special events and provide direction to staff. Thanks, Jeff.

Yeah, I can give a brief presentation on this. There's an interest of the Chamber of Commerce and others in being able to kind of...

So sorry, but you know, I am... Could you bite the mic, please? Because you know I do...

I'll get really close.

Maybe don't sit on it.

Yeah.

Move back a tiny bit. Thank you.

You have to pick. I either contaminate it or I don't, so... So the topic here is special events, and this is due to an interest from the Chamber of Commerce and businesses in the community to be able to kind of hold special events kind of, I would say, legally within the town of Fairfax. Currently, there's kind of a laissez-faire process where I think the events occur, but there's no kind of town process for approving them. And just to distinguish between kind of public and private on We're not really talking about events on public property like parks because that's more or less handled through the parks department where they reserve space. And so there's a process for that. There may be some overlap just with the noise ordinance because there are limits on the noise ordinance that may impact both private and public events. So I'll focus mostly on the private events side. So the current rules that apply is there's a zoning code provision that only allows activity outside of a building if you have a conditional use permit. So currently if somebody wanted to have an outdoor event, they would have to go to the planning commission for kind of a three month process, pay the fee for the conditional use permit, And then have a public hearing, um, with the planning commission in order to host an event that might be just for 1 or 2 days. Um, so that really doesn't work for temporary events because conditionally use permits kind of run with the land. So, once it's approved, it's kind of on the property. Um, for all time, so it would be better to have a kind of more of a temporary process. So. In terms of noise limits, and I included the table in your staff report. So there's essentially three zones for noise. There's kind of a residential zone, a multiple dwelling residential zone, and a commercial zone. And it's designed so that if you're in a residential area, the noise limits are the most restrictive. And just to describe what these decibel levels are, you'll see at nighttime in a residential area from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., the nighttime decibel level maximum is 40 dBA. And that's essentially equivalent to like a library or a refrigerator hum. So I kind of looked these up on the internet to give you an idea. Whereas on the other end of the spectrum, commercial, the maximum daytime DBA is 60, which is the level of normal conversation or an air conditioner. So it's still not that high. So those noise levels really aren't high enough to accommodate amplified outdoor speech or music, or really not loud enough to accommodate any sort of loud activity. So just people having a regular music festival at the farmer's market are technically probably going over 60 dBA. So we might want to look at that in terms of if it is just an occasional event, maybe they could go a little bit higher than 60 dBA. There is some flexibility already built into the code that does allow noise limits to be exceeded for occasional outdoor activities. So I think that what we would recommend is that if we wanted to be more accommodating to these outdoor events on kind of a temporary nature is that we could update the zoning code and this would require somewhat detailed technical changes to each of the commercial zoning districts to allow for these special events to occur with an administrative special event permit. Um, these could be issued not like over the counter the same day, but we could take these in from the applicants and then we'd route these to the. Fire department police department, we can look at it in planning, um, health department to make sure that if they have food that they have all the events, and then we could probably process that within within a week or so. And then we could permit those, um, special events. We could also include with that or as part of a separate permit, an amplified noise permit. And these are pretty common in other jurisdictions where you apply to like the police department to have like amplified noise for a very short period of time. And these can establish limits in time, location, and the noise levels. And this could include a neighborhood notification process. So, What we would do is if the council is willing to have us work on this, is we would start the zoning code amendment process, which would have to go through the Planning Commission for a recommendation. And that would require a Planning Commission hearing, then come back to the council. There would also be updates to the noise ordinance, which technically that wouldn't necessarily have to go to the Planning Commission because it's not in the zoning ordinance, but we would probably just take those along to the Planning Commission as part of the same package. And then we would create a special permit process, which would involve creating an application form, establishing a fee, and then creating that permit routing process that I described. so and what this would allow would be for people to come in and apply and have these one and two day um temporary um events and we could issue the permit The police department did have a concern with just if this would increase their workload, because they would generally be the ones that would be responding to noise complaints. They are now. So they were concerned that if this resulted in additional activity and additional noise complaints, that it might increase their workload. And so they were concerned about that. I think there's pluses and minuses. It's like if you have like a formal process, then they would know about the event in advance. And so I think it might actually be a little bit smoother than just having them respond just to noise violations that just kind of occur randomly. So with that, I am available for questions.

Go ahead, Council Member Kohler.

First of all, I think this is really comprehensive and it looks like it'll take a little time, but it also seems like, you know, because you've been so specific about the changes that would be needed. it might actually go much faster i think the noise ordinance there's some folks who um have a lot of concerns about that so that might be but i think it would be great if the planning commission took both on but just a question um have we checked in with other Marin jurisdictions to see what they do for this kind of thing? Do we, we have a good feel for that? Because I remember a couple of years ago when I was mayor meeting with Mina and Cass, maybe, you know, we started talking about special events and heard, Oh my God, you need a conditional use permit. And, and it was just too crazy. So what other, I mean, do you know, I know I asked you if you could poll a few to find out what they do.

Yeah, there are a few other, and I'm sorry I don't have an itemized list.

That's all right.

But there are several other jurisdictions in kind of Marin and Sonoma County that do have some sort of similar permit, either kind of what's called a temporary use permit, which is, Sort of the same thing as a special event permit, but it's a little bit more broad. And then there's the kind of the special event permit. And it's actually pretty common. And then also the other thing that's pretty common is an amplified noise permit, which is kind of a different thing that just goes to the police department.

So with an amplified noise permit, you would amend the noise ordinance to just, rather than having a whole new table, maybe you would just say that would be creating this kind of permit and you would have like an upper level of what the noise could be. And the other question I have that I didn't see in here, but I did read it a few days ago was, probably we should have something about times. You know, one of the things that we've tried to do is have people turn off music like at 10 o'clock or something like that. So is that something that would be contemplated? Would it be in the noise ordinance or somewhere else?

Yeah, that's something I, I intended to point out is that you currently have alignment between the noise ordinance has a specific cut off at 10 PM and also the parks are also closed. At 10 PM, so currently kind of everything kind of lines up, but you could. You could keep that, and then events that had loud noise would just have to end at 10, or you could allow an extension through a special event permit. Kind of a point of discussion.

So you'd have a special event permit, but potentially you would... amend the noise ordinance to say, you know, have one line on this table that would say special events and you would have like a timeframe. And yeah, and I think you said that you would have to have an acoustical expert, right? That isn't something you would just pull out of a hat.

Right.

And we had that hat.

You look at benchmarks like you were just asking, like what do others do for these?

Yeah, I mean, but in his and Jeff's presentation or in his materials, he did talk about having an acoustical expert because, you know, it's interesting when I remember talking about the noise ordinance a few years ago many times, and it's interesting when you talk about you know, what these DBAs are equivalent to, like the humming of a refrigerator. It's not very loud. So kind of interesting, but okay. So thank you very much. Thanks for answering my question.

Any other questions?

Yeah.

I just wanted some clarification on the amplified noise permit suggestion. So would that replace the need to do a comprehensive change to the noise ordinance if we just added that as a sort of a separate referred to item?

You probably want to have a footnote that would reference that exceptions to this table whatever that table's called, would require an amplified noise permit or a special event permit.

Okay, because I've been curious about our noise permit for various reasons, just because it seems a little off from what a lot of other communities are doing with the noise permit anyway. So, I mean, that seems like something that could be revisited, but it seems like a workaround to not drag us through too much at this time would be to add like a line and something about an amplified music permit rather than diving deep into completely reworking our entire noise ordinance, right? Okay. Just curious. Thank you.

Yeah. And I don't, I think you're right. I don't think we would want to completely redo the noise ordinance. I think it would just be focused just on special events. And if a special event occurs, there's like an exception.

I mean, if that's the case, does it make sense to, I'm just knowing what the planning commission has on their docket. I mean, and I just want to make this, I know right now there's like a backlog of events that, I mean, that we're just, Not using a process today. Right. And I'm really appreciative of how quickly you put this together. I'm just wondering, does it make sense to include the noise piece with the planning commission? If it's not a zoning item, does it make sense to bog them down when they have so much other items that we're waiting on, quite frankly, like the formula and other things, you know, but you think it makes sense. Okay. All right. Any other questions from the guys?

Just in reading this, I thought there would have been some ordinances attached with the staff report so we could see what needs to be changed. But it says Fairfax Town currently restricts outdoor events to restrict noise limits and zoning structures. So what happens in Fairfax is regular house parties with live music They play inside, they play outside. Fairfax folks, they run nonprofit fundraisers inside and outside, attract people. Do we have specific codes that restricts that, that prohibits those kinds of things?

Yes, those were, I kind of outlined those on page four.

under the zoning ordinance i only have three page i don't have an ordinance here i only have three pages oh no it's not an ordinance just written right into the staff report on page four uh three or five i don't have a four i this says one of five two or five and three or five i don't have a four or five parents like there's a zoning ordinance oh okay Okay. Oh, I'm missing two pages of that. Okay.

And to your question about, this would just focus on just, what I've outlined here is just commercial zones. So it wouldn't have anything and wouldn't have any changes that would apply to residential zones. So it's just in the commercial zones.

Well, like the chamber has run events in town. Do they have to get, they don't get conditional use permits, do they, for those? Like... No. The winter fair, winter fest down along Bolinas Road, do they have to get permits for that, do they?

Well, that's where there's a difference between kind of public and private. So if it's in a park or on a public street, the town has more control over it if it's in the public right-of-way or in a public park. because we can permit that separately. But if it's in private property, then it's subject to the zoning code.

So are we talking, oh, go ahead. Back in the day, we used to have flea markets at a parkade. The chamber had, did it for fundraising, and all the parking spaces became, they sold those spots for people to have a flea market, and there was music, and there was food. I don't think anyone ever got a permit for doing that, but they haven't done it in years. I I'm going back 40 years. Excuse me?

I think they moved the flea market to the children's park.

Oh, no, I'm talking about A fundraising flea market in the parkade, different than a festival.

Are we done with questions for staff?

Can we open public comment? I want to open public comment, but I wanted to maybe ask if also Mina could really explain the types of events that she's thinking about that this would apply to, so that would clarify some of the questions we have about why would this be a good idea, because I know that she's looked into this deeply. Geth, come on up.

Thanks so much for having this discussion that's really been important. You know, I've been putting on so many events and just like trying to figure out how to navigate all this stuff. And so, you know, Fairfax's current code makes ordinary outdoor activity very difficult. And in fact, you know, the staff report says that the current code discourages outdoor events. And so right now, all the events that I'm working on are pushed toward the same handful of town facilities. the pavilion, the women's club, uh, Belenus park, Perry park, and those spaces are becoming increasingly competitive, right? Like, so there's a lot of different people that are using it and it's not adjacent to our businesses. So what I would really like to do is be closer to where, you know, the businesses are to boost foot traffic and all that stuff. So, um, Yeah, downtown, down by Fair Anselms, all those places, right? So I would like the Chamber and Park and Rec to help out with this permitting, like just to be able to coordinate together to develop it, because between us, we have substantial hands-on experience producing events in Fairfax. We know what works, what creates problems, and what needs to be regulated, and we can help make the final permit happen. practical enough that people actually use it, because that's one of my concerns.

Don't you just want an over-the-counter permit process so it doesn't take weeks and months to get it?

Yeah, that'd be lovely. Can you do that? I mean, that's what I heard him present, essentially.

What was presented was not going to the Planning Commission to request a permit. It was just to go to the counter, right? Yeah.

Yeah, we would want a few days. One thing that you get concerned about with special events is just letting the police and fire department know. So there's a little bit of a routing process, so it's not like the day of.

Yeah, it's not going to be real-time approval. But it's fine, because I already do that, right? I already go through the park to get all these park and rec to go through. I go to the meeting. There's a whole process. And I do plan these things months in advance, because... go ahead it's just there's a lot going on what do you mean when you say you want to work with park and like what is park and rec's role what are you what are you asking for well i just want to make sure that this permit becomes a practical thing right if it's going to be like fire asks for a fee and police ask for a fee and the town asks for a fee and i'm doing a free event then it's going to become a burden where we're not going to be able to do it again anyway. Right. And so like the things that I'm talking about, the activities are like flea markets, vintage markets, maybe a tea ceremony with acoustic music. Like it's not amplified per se. Right. Like we could do an outdoor art show, a plant sale, any kind of class outdoors like yoga, fitness, you know, a group mindfulness event. Exercise as a group, right? Clothing swaps, bike swaps, sidewalk sales, holiday events, nonprofit fundraisers, seasonal events such as pumpkin decorating or wreath making or Valentine's Day activities. Like there's all these things that, you know, we cannot do it on private property outside at all.

So just, I'm going to put out some examples of events and just say, like, is this what this would help with? Like, so Tommy Breeze, big event, like vendors and music and stuff might be one of them. There have been events at Split Rock in the parking lot at, I think, Masmasa and all those people wanted to have something in their parking lot or outside at the lodge. Are those the kinds of things we're talking about or...

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm just talking about my stuff, but like, you know, everybody, all the businesses really depend on foot traffic. Right. And when live on the Avenue is happening, not to call them out cause they're doing great job, but it really pulls people away. And so having a little something on, you know, Friday or Saturday really helps the businesses. It's 14 weekends in a row. Right. And this is like what the third year they've done it. It's we got to do something.

We need to roll out the red carpet for these events. That's right, Mike. I don't think it's that complicated. Leave the rules where they are and have a special section of these kinds of events.

You have to change the zoning code before you do this. And what Jeff's proposed is something relatively simple that will take a few months to do. And we will have this over-the-counter thing. And so it can't be just ignore all the rules, Mike.

Well, that's why we're here. I appreciate all sides of this. You know, we're all trying to do the same thing, support the local businesses. And this is a really good way to support economic vitality while also reducing demand on town facilities. Because you can ask them, like, I'm in there all the time. Yeah.

Okay. Is there anything else, Mina?

No, that's it.

Okay. We're going to continue with public comment. Thank you.

Markville, Fairfax. There's no reason any of the events she mentioned have to be amplified. They can all be acoustic. And as a matter of fact, this entire item is a violation of the general plan. The attorney knows, but obviously the public, the planning director doesn't, that the California Supreme Court ruled that the general plan is the equivalent of a constitution. and cannot be violated. The limits that are on the general plan are carried over to the noise ordinance. You would have to change noise section on the general plan, which would probably cost $150,000 to $200,000, considering how detailed it was in my study of it. a while ago furthermore Fairfax has worse noise legislation in the United States we don't have very strict policies there's virtually no consequences for violating the noise ordinance as it is amplification itself takes energy energy from the grid I thought we're supposed to be trying to be green We don't need amplification for everything. We were just in France. There were five groups of people playing within feet of each other, which was only possible because everybody was acoustic. There is no reason any of the events that Meena mentioned have to be amplified. They can all be acoustic. No amplification. So basically, it's a null point unless you plan to change the general plan. because it's a total violation. And I will repeat, the California Supreme Court has ruled that a town's general plan is on par with the US Constitution. End of story.

Next speaker.

I just wanted to say that amplified music, by the time it travels, it becomes distorted, and it's noise pollution. Noise pollution is real, it's important, and please consider that. It takes away from the ability to relax, and we need to be able to relax. For people who live downtown, which we do, It's anytime there is any type of event, we suffer from it and we have to be indoors, we close all the doors because it just carries so much. I don't know about saying that it's the same level, 60 dB is the same level as somebody talking. All I know is that anytime there's anything going on, we hear it, it carries over and we hear it. Fairfax is a sound bowl and everything gets carried over, even up in the hills you hear it. And I just don't see why any time people get together to it's great to get together. It's not like we shouldn't get together and do things. But why does it have to be always so loud and amplified and distorted and pollute? add to the noise pollution we have so much noise pollution with all the equipment everything the sirens car sirens you name it backup sounds and everything we don't need to add a whole bunch more noise pollution it's it's really important for our health being able to relax so please take that in consideration and try to limit the the amount of noise pollution that we're subjected to okay

Thank you. Next speaker.

Yes, guys. Sorry, I was doing a funny thing earlier. My name's Charlotte Fuller. I'm on Bolinas Road, and I'm not usually a redhead. I am interested in not just the part about the noise, which is a really good fact. I can tell you what we do for dances is we have a monitor right with us that lets us know when we're over the allotted decibels. Anybody familiar? Anybody use those at events to make sure we're not creating noise pollution? Can you answer, or is that on protocol?

I can't speak for that.

You can't answer. Could you? Do you know? Okay, okay. This is not a back and forth, just not a public comment. I love back and forth. So I'm just going, okay, I'll stop doing that. In dance, we use a decibel reader. It is a great aid to make sure we are not disturbing other neighbors. In Sausalito, where we've been doing a dance successfully for 40 years, And it could work in Fairfax as well. That's all. Decibel reader laws that are clear about what the limits are could be very helpful. About different events in different places, I love Frank's idea, just looking at the things that used to happen. Maybe a flea market, people are renting spaces, using our spaces in creative ways. Years ago, turn of the century, I was artist-in-residence, and I started something called Open Circle Arts, so art teachers, musicians, dancers, drummers could utilize the pavilion, our historic building, which was underutilized by anyone besides CYO. And there's more for another day. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

Hello, Council. The first thing I would like to actually bring up, I really think that before an ordinance is drafted, that it should take a lot of input from the people that will most affect. And who it's going to most affect are the people that bring forth these events, such as the Chamber of Commerce, such as Parks and Rec. Those are the two agencies or groups that are actually saying and proposing ideas. So I think that they should really be the people at the table to say, hey, these are the things that we want to do. These are the things that we can do. These are the things we've had problems doing. So, I mean, Mina has already come up here and covered some of these things for you. She's a person that should be sitting at the table before you design an ordinance for that's going to cover her activities and Park and Rec. The Chamber of Commerce is a wonderful avenue to bring forth additional resources and bring people to this town. And I'd like to encourage that. And last but not least, although I appreciate the Rintown and Country Club being brought into the discussion and hopefully with the idea that it could be incorporated into more opportunities, but we also have a law, and the law is California Election Code 9217, and it states very clearly that when something is zoned by initiative, it may not be altered, amended, or added to, unless it goes back for a majority vote of the same citizens in that little area, that city, that town. So when the town passes a rent control, I'm exempt. When they pass a no gas combustion equipment, I'm exempt. So again, here you can't change that because the original zoning by initiative did not provide at that time, which is required a mechanism to change it. So I encourage you to review the law. Thank you. Next speaker.

Testing, testing. Hi, my name is Ian Jensen. Um, I'm the founder of, um, house by the park events that were thrown, um, During the summer, I want to touch on a couple key points here. For me, this goes beyond just the sound ordinance thing. I think this is a bigger issue. Fairfax is and always has been a very strong, tight-knit, creative community of people. I think that this has been kind of a reoccurring issue and thing over the years. I had sensed about three years ago when I got into music and creativity and producing things like that, that there is a very big need for this, a desire from the community. I think that untangling the legality of it would also present, okay, now people don't feel like they have to break the law to have fun. On top of that, I believe that certain niche types of events would also present safety for parents. I think it would maybe not eliminate, but minimize concerns of their children going to the city or to Oakland to have fun. I think that it would strengthen the sense of safety in events that are community-oriented. When I had hosted my first event, I had no idea that it was going to bring the amount of people that it did. I had people from kids doing face painting, vendors selling the shirt. I got the shirt from a vendor of mine. We probably had close to 150 people by the end of the event. I talked to Cafe Sorella and California Cowboy afterwards, and they had told me that they had not seen business like that in a very long time. I think that considering this and getting the ball rolling on some sort of change would be a massive asset to Fairfax. And I also know personally from hosting my events that the interest in this goes beyond Fairfax. I had people come in from San Francisco, from San Jose, from the East Bay, from Vallejo to help host these events. And I think that that's the kind of unity that Fairfax needs and stands for.

Next speaker.

Hi. All good intentions, I think. Trying to solve the problem, but maybe creating more problems by creating more work without enough community input. I understand it might be complicated to suggest maybe we have a working group of stakeholders, such as the gentleman who just spoke, Or Michael McIntosh's suggestion that maybe the different groups like the Chamber of Commerce and other people who would actually be holding events in town are consulted. I think you've got the cart before the horse designing the legislation from somebody who is tasked with doing that if there hasn't been a comparison matrix developed amongst and presented to the public or council members on how it works in all the different towns and cities. Why do we have to spend more money when the town attorney has been over budget for the last five years when, according to the town's finances, we've got a $660,000 – deficit this year what is the cost what what is the cost are you the mayor pardon me no but i'm asking you to stay on topic you're not the mayor you're not the presiding officer of this meeting so please abide by robert's rules of order you need what is the cost what is the What is the anticipated cost of this new set of ordinances? And I'd like to ask the town attorney whether or not the existing preclusion for certain events from the town's noise ordinance is requiring in some manner a complete costly revamping of the town's noise ordinance.

Thank you. Any other speakers in the room? Okay. How about online?

We have four raised hands on Zoom. The first speaker is Deborah, followed by Cindy. Deborah, you're unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Thank you, Christine. Deborah Benson, Cascade Drive. Thank you, council members, for hearing me. I see problems with this. I mean, most of the events that Mina mentioned could be held in town facilities, pumpkin carving, face painting, et cetera, et cetera, through Parks and Rec. There seem to be no limits on how many events could be held. per day, per month, no limit on where they could be held. I had an office in San Anselmo when On the Avenue first started, and there was a coalition of merchants who were opposed to having that street closed and those events happening because no one came into their shops during those times. They lost business. We lose parking. Neighborhoods are affected. If somebody could have an event in their yard, neighbors are affected. There is noise. We're already enough of a party town, I would say. We have a great number of events without problem. We have the beer fest. We have the bicycle event. We have events at the pavilion. And it seems that these events would be serving people other than our residents. I don't know when my time's going to run out. I can't see. So it just doesn't seem like it's a good fit. It doesn't seem like it's in the interest of our people. Seems like it's more in the interest of other people. And I think there need to be more parameters if it is changed. I don't really think it needs to be changed. I'm really not for it. Thank you.

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

Hi, Cindy Ross again. I'm a little bit confused by all this because I wanted to say that I really like the idea of having community events and outdoor events and people gathering and listening to music and dancing and creating art and all that stuff. But as a retired audiologist, I'm also really concerned about changing noise ordinances. And a couple of people have talked about noise pollution. Noise pollution is a lot more than just an annoyance. It can cause health problems. It can cause hearing loss. And I'm just really concerned about some of the spaces that were mentioned. like, for example, I heard, you know, mentioned to mention about the fair in Selm, which is my understanding, it's now called Fairfax Plaza, but you know, I live nearby. And You know, I would be really concerned if there was loud amplified music there, you know, certain times a day or, you know, I couldn't get away from it. You know, I've had some incidents. Some of my neighbors have had parties across the street that have, you know, literally made me sick. Like, you know, just they make it so loud. Anyway, I don't want to go off on too many tangents, but I just think we need to be really concerned about not making things too loud. And so I don't understand having to change any noise ordinances. Thank you.

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

Hi there. I am the manager of the kitchen at the Lodge Fairfax. I just wanted to tune in and say thank you to Mina and everyone at the chamber and those on the council who have been supportive of this process. I think that everything in the town manager's report and in the agenda is completely common sense. I think about the fact that when you go out in another town live music at restaurants is a normal thing and in fairfax it's not um yeah we we you know we probably have one of the highest populations of deadhead per capita and i just think um just to speak about the other to speak to the other speakers point about fairfax being a party town i can assure you it is not um We have much work to do to increase the vibrancy, and just because a few people say that we shouldn't be more vibrant is not a reason to say no to this. Thank you so much for your time.

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

Howdy, folks. You know, the noise ordinance has a lot of years and a lot of time and a lot of thought going into it. I wouldn't suggest messing with that lightly. You know, music, sound, noise does really interesting things, especially in the hills. You can have two neighbors next door and one doesn't hear anything and one gets it all amplified. You can have music bounced around all over the place. I'm a fan of music. I love music. I sing in a quartet. I've got really sensitive ears. I find it really irritating to walk around downtown and have to listen to 10 different kinds of music from five different pop-outs walking down the street. It's assaulting. Um, and it's basically filling the public space with somebody else's choice of sound rather than, and, you know, just think about just nature in general. And there've been studies that correlate how quickly people walk or how quickly they speak to the sound or the size of a city and also the noise levels. Birds have altered their voices and their songs because of our sounds. How many of us are almost deaf because of hanging out next to huge speakers at whatever show, which we love, but there's a cost to it? It's like we're not the only things here either. And when we fill the whole environment with our kinds of music, and there's like people like different kinds of music, but when we fill the environments with sound, we're affecting everything. And we're kind of the only things left standing. There's really no other wildlife, no large wildlife. The environments are all chopped up. The water systems are messed up. You know, tread lightly.

Any more speakers?

There is one more speaker on Zoom. Richard, you are unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Good evening, Council, Mayor Rick Hamer. These special events, the access that would be the parking, traffic, emergency vehicles, cannot be overlooked. One of the problems we had at School Street was occupancy, even outdoors. When you go inside of a building, there's occupancy limits. This can also be true if you try to pack a park with too many people. One speaker said they were surprised they had 150 people at the park. Well, this needs to have some type of oversight. The parking is especially ornery. I just want to make sure that that's looked at. But from what I understand, this whole hearing right now is simply to launch an investigation and a draft ordinance. This is not about a really public, a full public hearing. So anyway, that's all I have to say. Thank you. Good night.

There are no more speakers on Zoom.

All right, we're closing the public comment. It sounds like Council Member Kohler is very anxious to speak.

Go ahead. I just want to say that, as I mentioned before, so the mayor meets with the chamber when...

Our mayor has met with the chamber.

Two years ago, the last time I was mayor, I met with the chamber and Meena brought this up and we couldn't think of a solution. And so we dropped it. And I think now, so the chamber has been at the table and I think there's some misconception that that we came up with this on our own. It was the chamber meeting with the mayor trying to do something for the businesses. The businesses are hurting and this is an opportunity to allow them to do small events and do something over the counter. I think our planning director put together an approach that, because he was so specific on the code changes that would need to happen for the zoning code, And potentially this special events noise thing that, I mean, potentially let the Planning Commission take it on, but let's not make it a huge project that goes on for months, is, you know, maybe it's no amplification. You know, I don't know. But I'm not going to dictate that. I think we need to do this. And I don't think there's going to be hundreds of events. I think we want the opportunity. One of the things we talked about for years was the Ferenc Elm area doesn't get the kind of street traffic that we see on Bolinas. And, you know, we have the Fairfax Brewery there. We have Carmen's. It could be a little bit of happening over there. And so I would just say I'm for this. I would like to direct staff to go ahead with the Planning Commission. Let's do this as streamlined as possible so we're not, you know, talking about this for the next six months. I think it could be a relatively small project to come up with a special event permit. and move forward.

Yeah. I, I, I'm just going to piggyback on that. So yeah, this did come out of a recent meeting we had with the chamber and, and, uh, chief Tabaranza was there and there's a lot of us there and I really appreciate you coming back within 60 days with this. I, it should be, I guess, let me take a And so in my opinion, we want to support a vibrant community. The Fairfax that I know is a community that loves music, that loves gathering, that loves being outdoors. And, you know, I think we can work through this. I think the permit process should be, you know, Turnaround time in a couple weeks, you know, no more than that And I just yeah, I don't know that we need to really over complicate it and I I I Probably won't be I'm rolling off the council in a couple months So I don't know if it's gonna come back here in time, but I you know when I hear about I the planning commission, the recommendation that the planning commission weigh in on something that they're not, that's really kind of outside their charter, which is, you know, it's not noise ordinances and zoning. If they want to come back with, you know, some, some thoughts on it, that's great. But I really think we should look to what other communities do. Our neighboring communities do as far as noise is concerned. And again, Um, yeah, that's where I'm at. We need to support the business. To me, it's not about San Anselmo. It's just let's support. We've we got a lot of public comments in writing supporting this. And it's pretty clear that the business community wants it. And from the folks that I know there, you know, they love these events. So, I think we just got to make it work. Go ahead, Council Member Bosch.

Yeah, okay.

So, I mean, I just, I had a couple things. So, you know, I'm going to point out the same thing that the two other council members pointed out for the folks who are saying, you know, bring the chamber in. This is actually kind of instigated by the chamber. So, the chamber has been brought in. The chamber is kind of driving this to some extent. And I'm, you know, very happy about that. I did... I really think that we've talked about supporting economic vitality in Fairfax, and this is one of the ways that we can do it. We really need to be focusing on the good that our community can do working together, and I really feel like we need to be an attractive community for younger residents as well. as as older folks so we have a lot of creativity that we need to nurture and i'm very excited that this would help and it seems like we are already doing some of these events it's just that it takes so long and it's so much money it's like ridiculous so it should be you know like up to date with what other towns are doing and i feel like the conversation has been hijacked a little bit about the noise you know the amplified noise permit we're not just talking about like you know having these giant loud events where people are playing music that was just you know sort of an adjunct to this You know, I mean, there are some things about our noise ordinance I'd actually like to see tightened or fine-tuned, but, you know, we don't need to go into that for this. We want to just facilitate the ability of our local business community to have these really wonderful events that I think are really nurturing the soul of Fairfax. So I'm 100%, you know, behind us doing this.

I have a comment. I don't think this is really about the noise ordinance. I think it's about streamlining the permit process so they don't have to – and also to lower the rates. That's what you're asking for. You don't want to pay $2,000 or – I didn't know it was that much, but I was going to say $500. You don't want to spend that kind of money to help bring people into town to eat at restaurants and to shop in stores and to bring vibrancy to the town. and you don't want it to take six months either. So I don't really see this as a big planning commission thing. We have rules in place on the noise earners. I don't think you even break the noise earners. I don't see any reason for that. We already have music at farmers markets and music for the Fairfax Festival. So it's not about music, I don't think. It's about streamlining your permit process and lowering the rates. I think that's what it comes down to. So I would advise against... bringing this to the planning commission for. There's no rules I don't think that even need to be fixed. I just think you need to streamline your process. That's what I think.

Okay, we don't need you yelling from the audience, but I will say you have to change the zoning code. So that's what you have to do. And I think Jeff proposed something that could go quickly.

All right. So is there an action here? Give, we're giving direction to go to the planning commission, make it a swift process. Thank you for being here this evening for your work. And we look forward to it coming back around. All right. We're moving right along. Where's my agenda.

Mayor, do you want a motion to waive the 930 rule since it's 10 after 10?

Sure.

I'll make that motion.

Somebody want a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Any nays? Okay, motion passes.

Just want to remind folks that for the recording, you need to have your mics on.

All right. Moving on to item number six. This is a residence petition. So pursuant to town code 2.08.090, a residence petition was received by the town regarding cannabis. And Martin Kaufman is the petitioner. And I see him approaching the podium.

Good evening. So thanks for having me. I've been open about a month now at LaFleur. I just want to give everyone a brief update that roughly about two thirds of the people that we see on site, we're having to politely ask to leave because they you know, don't have a cannabis card and are not willing to get one. And that's just kind of what my staff is doing day to day. Just this last week, I cut our hours back to just one shift a day because that's just sort of the reality of how things are going. We are also running our delivery. We've got a lovely used Prius out there on the streets for adult use delivery. But in my experience, it's much more of a niche business. So it's not I think what people previously assumed was going on in Fairfax. And then with respect to that, I've had the harsh education that the legal and ordinance realities aside, that for the last six years, the community and certainly this town was very convinced there was adult youth storefront sales available in Fairfax. And effectively, our job has become letting people know that's not the case. We obviously are aware of the rules and we're following them. And quite frankly, it kind of sucks because... It tends to be, I'd say, a population that's 50 and up that we're having to respectfully inform they would have to get a cannabis card. The feedback I get is that that's bad business practice and we're stupid or it's a stupid rule. So essentially, I'm just here to ask if there's... I don't know what to tell people is a solution, right? So that's what the petition was born of. It was just frustrated locals saying something needs to be done about this. This is nonsense. It's not how it always was. And I'm not asking you guys to change it tonight, obviously. I'm not asking for a smoke lounge or new locations or anything like that to sort of, I guess, a little clarity on what could be done, if anything, if there was support for a change. And then just because there does seem to be a lot of misconceptions about it, for example... If any of you came in today, if it was an adult-use storefront, you could buy eight times less than you could have bought yesterday with a medical card if you were a visitor with a medical card. So it's not going to unleash cannabis upon the community or anything like that. And I'm aware there's a handful of people that probably are opposed to it, and I absolutely respect that. And there's... There's got to be 50 people a day that are very frustrated that that's not the case. And again, I just want to respect the process and see if there's anything staff could explain or explore and then go from there. But I'm grateful for the opportunity you guys have given me and grateful for your patience with me. That's about it.

So Martin, I was just wondering, is that Martin? Yeah. Martin, that's what I thought. I'm sorry. I'll speak more clearly. Mark, just crossed my mind. You must have known that a medicinal only license was not going to cut it. You've been in the business a long time. So why wasn't this asked up front when we first passed this?

No, that's a good question. So I was aware that was the only license there. And so what I've done in the past, trying to open businesses, is I would sit with Clicker and monitor other businesses. If it's a restaurant, that's kind of what you do to monitor demand. You know, I did that. off and on for a couple of weeks at the old dispensary. There was easily 4,000 people a month on average kind of going in and out of there. And I'd get a lot of feedback from people that they thought there was better services could have been provided or just if there was other options, they would go to other places, which to me is all it takes to pencil a good business. And, you know, I, I guess I did myself a disservice not being aware that some of those transactions were being conducted the way they were, which is just not what we're doing. So you're right. I applied for a medical license. That's what you guys were nice enough to grant me, and I'm grateful for that.

That's my only question right now. Thanks.

So, Martin, are you aware that nowhere in Marin County has allowed recreational storefronts or even medical storefronts?

Legally, yeah, I'm aware of that.

Yeah, and it seems like folks that wrote in, so when you say or when people said things like, I never needed a medical card before, that was an illegal activity. we didn't know about till the very end was happening. And I'm not sure how often it was happening, but I think that's a different story. So I kind of go back to what council member Garen Galley asked you. Since you got a medical storefront, which is you're the only one in all of Marin County. And we did that based on an excellent application and your experience and also you making clear to us that that's what you wanted and also recreational delivery. So I guess my question is, why is it a month into opening? And I've seen on your website that weeks back that there was this direct route to start sending us emails about opening up recreational storefront, which I can say, and I responded to every one of those people. I sat through 23 meetings. This was not an easy decision to even allow a medical storefront. It was not an easy decision to allow recreational delivery. Everywhere else in Marin banned pretty much everything. There's some recreational delivery, there's some labs and maybe some weird stuff. And so I'm just wondering, why did you think that, you know, when you apply that a medical storefront would be a good business for you?

Because of the demand, that was very clearly apparent. You know, there was probably 4,000 or 5,000 transactions a month. And that's, again, whether it could be... If that represented half of the available market, that's still plenty of an opportunity, right? And you're absolutely right. It has only been a month. But, I mean, some of you saw me out there for seven months or six months, like, working almost every day on the construction. And it was probably... you know, three to 10 people a day would stop by and kind of kick the tires and ask what was going on. And I mean, not a day went by where people weren't saying, wait, this is going to be medical only? Like, what the heck? You know, and again, that's what I applied for. That's what the business is today. I'm not complaining about that. I'm just essentially... carrying the message that there are hundreds well over a thousand people out there that would like to see it otherwise and i'm not i'm not able to give them a clear answer on what that process would look like i i think i know it but again that's you guys went through more of that process and i'm the only one still sitting here nobody else was here during all those discussions and i will say that at the time i know there were some folks in the audience that were here

But I will say at the time, I was advocating for recreational storefronts. I was outvoted. I was advocating for more locations. I was outvoted. And I'm not, I still haven't changed my views, but I'm just kind of concerned that, you know, we, you know, in looking at your transactions per day, it goes up to about 200 in some cases.

That would be a weekend perhaps, but yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, I guess I'm, I just feel sort of disappointed because I think you are a good businessman and, you know, I think you're also tough and if people come in and say you're stupid or whatever...

I'm not crying about it.

And I also see on your website you have an easy way for people to get online. You even have a discount to get a medical card. So people don't want to do it. That's their business. And you do have the option of delivery, which I think you told me is not a real moneymaker because of the traffic. But I guess I'm just questioning, when we talked about this a couple months ago, I said, why don't you wait a year? You know, we had folks coming in saying we don't want them here. And you said you want to be a good neighbor. And I know you created a beautiful building. But I said to you at the time, why don't you wait a year and let people see that you can run a good operation? It's not going to be the horror stories that people brought to us. So I'm just wondering, why are we bringing it right now? Why didn't we wait and give you an opportunity to have your track record? And I think you can do that. So I'm just wondering, and I'm sorry, because I've been a supporter, so I know I'm being kind of harsh, but why are you bringing it now? Why didn't we wait and let you operate for a while, like a year?

Well, I guess in speaking, in trying to learn about the process, my understanding would be potentially a lengthy process, right? So even if it is a year, and if myself or any other permitted operator had to be beyond reproach by then, that process would have to start sooner than later. And again, I'm not here to say, hey, vote on this tonight. I don't think that's viable. I'm assuming there's not support for that anyway, right? So for me, it's just really being able to turn to... There'll be 40 people asking tomorrow, right? And some of you have met some of my staff. They're very lovely people. They're very excited to be working and very knowledgeable. And 70% on some days of their day is not doing their job as it was intended. It's just informing frustrated adults who are responsible that they can't come into the store past the lobby. And they're going to have to leave. And they can sign up for a cannabis card. And you're absolutely right. We have those resources available. I'll make someone coffee while they're waiting. 90% of those people don't want to hear about that. They think it's a stupid rule. They think it's from the 90s. I'm just carrying the message, right? I'm well aware. A lot of people are willing to go through that process. They'll sit in their car. They'll do it. They'll come back in. That's fine. But in general, most people don't.

what portion of that population is willing to pivot and accept delivery?

Maybe a 10th. In my experience, like delivery is much more niche. Like the type of, it's like some people like going out to restaurants, maybe a 10th of those people want that same food delivered to their house. It's somewhat similar. You know, I've not ran restaurants extensively, but, but, Some people would never want to come to the store. They want it delivered. That's it. Some people, when it's a hassle for them to come, they want to place a delivery. But in general, there's people who just want the social interaction. They want to have a conversation. They want to see what products are there. They want to discuss specials. They want to chit-chat out there. But you can do that, right?

You can shop and say, I want X, Y, Z, and then have it delivered, right? You can't do that.

No, that's technically not legal.

You have to do it online. Yeah.

I mean, I could issue someone a guest visitor pass, and by law, assuming they're 21 and older, they could come into the sales floor and look around, and that's it. They could go home, they could place an order, but I mean, that's the same whether it's a bureaucrat from the state, whether one of you wanted to come take a visit, whether a neighbor wanted to pop in. We are allowed to let them in. We're not allowed to make sales to them, though. And again, we've they place their order there. It kind of doesn't matter. I mean, I guess they could sit in the parking lot and order it from their phone and then go home and we could dispatch the card of them there. That's the same as someone sitting at home and placing an order. And again, that's, more of a niche so so that's something we're doing and i'll probably get another people like driving down the street and then ordering online and having that aside you know the first couple weeks we did have a few people have placed orders and then changed the address and kind of saying oh i'm i'm you know here and then someone realized it's like down the street that we've figured that out pretty quickly and that's obviously not a viable business model anyway yeah

Okay. I have a couple questions and comments, but I'm going to let others. Vice Mayor Edgar, do you have any questions?

You want some comments or just questions?

Just questions for now because we're going to open public comment.

Well, okay, a question. I guess the question is, you know, we have an agreement with San Anselmo. It was a resolution, probably Fairfax Authority doesn't even enforce it anymore, that if there's an application for some kind of a development or a business or whatever that would impact San Anselmo's traffic, that we would notify them and give them an opportunity to speak to that issue. Okay. I don't know if we notified Santa. The sidewalk and the street at 1601 Drake are in Santa's Elmo. I think they need to be notified of this proposal. I could dig out the resolution for you someplace so I can find it.

Well, there's no action taken tonight. We're just hearing a petition, but thanks for bringing that up.

This is a resolution passed by Fairfax, and San Anselmo passed a resolution just like Fairfax. If there's an impact going to happen, we're going to give you a notice.

Very relevant. Thank you. Go ahead. Councilman blush. Okay.

Um, all right. So I guess, you know, I, I have received a lot of letters on both sides. And so I'm just going to run through some of the things and maybe ask some questions. So, you know, I get, cause we've gotten a number of letters that say, this is stupid. Like I got to walk to Marin Alliance and they just gave me marijuana. Um, so, you know, I get that that maybe was happening probably a lot. Um, you know, I'm wondering like when you were kind of estimating like how much, you know, you needed for your business and what you might be able to bring in, were you taking into account the numbers that you heard from that dispensary or, you know, what was it that kind of led you to believe that you were going to be, that it was going to be, I mean, I'm just concerned about your viability, that it would be viable for you to have a just medicinal storefront and then the delivery, like, did you assume that that was going to be enough to keep you afloat?

Again, it's a very fair question. So just to be completely transparent. So I sat in the parking lot at Frog's three and a half days with a clicker for hours. You know, I did some work, right? And again, this is what I've done in other municipalities years past. I've been hired to do it for restaurants that were thinking about expanding and literally just ticked off clients the same way like a bouncer at a bar would keep track of who's inside. What I didn't do to my own detriment, apparently, was... I would have felt it was inappropriate to approach any client of another business and interrogate them or anything like that. So it was an average of, I'd say, 160 people a day when I was observing, which was two weekdays and one and a half weekend days. So it's on track with what that operator had stated she was doing. And then feedback I'd have gotten for years was just like, if someone had a... A different restaurant with a different offering for every person that goes to this store, probably one and maybe three people would go to another store, which to me is a great opportunity to open a business, which is exactly what I've done. Right. And again, that's if I'm not successful, that's no one's fault but my own.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Cause I think you sort of explained that, but I didn't totally get it before. And then I guess, you know, so, I mean, unfortunately in some ways you're kind of a victim of like, you know, perhaps another proprietor didn't totally follow the rules and now you're trying to follow the rules and you estimated your intake on what that person was doing. And, um, you know, people are hoping that you will follow the rules, um, better because, you know, there's a lot of concern in that neighborhood around you that, um, somehow things will get massively out of control and, you know, they'll be impacted. And so I guess I'm just wondering, like, if you give it some time, do you think people are going to start getting smart and saying, okay, I need to get a medical marijuana card or do delivery because otherwise I'm going to have to drive to Cotati or San Francisco or something? Do you think that that's eventually going to happen if we just give it a little time? Or do you think they're just going to take their business elsewhere?

I mean, it's been a month, but it's slowly trending down. I'm pretty big on falling numbers. And again, that's nobody's fault. That's just sort of the market's reaction, if you want to call it that. I guess I would say with respect to these concerns, it's going to become mayhem down there. We are seeing 50 to 100 people a lot of days. The reality is maybe 70% of them have to be politely told no. I'm so sorry, no. And honestly, a lot of them, they're barely in the door and they say, oh, hi, ma'am, do you have a cannabis, do you have a medical recommendation? They say, no, do I need one? And we say, yeah, and we go into our spiel and they're already like storming out the door. And then we're not going to chase someone into the parking lot and say, oh, it's $29, you could do it online, you know, I'll get you a sparkling water while you do it. That's just what's happening. So I guess my point is the traffic impact, for example, if that's a concern, that's already happening, right? Like, To Frank's point, I did a traffic study. I'm unaware of San Anselmo having different criteria by which to judge that. That traffic study was done based on adult East Lodes, not because of some veiled intent I have. Those are the only metrics that traffic engineers have available to them because of how rare a medical-only storefront is these days. So it's already passed muster with respect to all that sort of stuff. And again, just from first-hand experience, like... This isn't a flood of kids that would be coming in. I mean, I'm turning away people in their 60s regularly, and they just, quite frankly, don't understand the rules. They think it's just bad practice on our end.

Yeah. And then at the final thing, so I'm just, you know, bring this up because I, you know, I see all the letters. I've read a lot of letters, both in support and then, you know, some folks complaining. And I had like two neighbors in particular, right. And say, you know, there's these cars running in the red zone across the street from wherever. And, you know, staff is running out and doing that kind of like dropping the bag in the car and saying it's a delivery service. Um, but it sounds like, you know, so I don't know if that's what's really happening or if you're talking about the situation where people were saying they wanted something delivered and said they lived somewhere in the neighborhood and it turned out that, I mean, I think that has happened and that's not going to happen anymore.

You know, I did find out about a couple of instances like that. That's definitely not an ongoing thing whatsoever. That's not our business practice.

Okay. Anything else? Okay.

Uh, council member, you've been in the industry a long time, right?

That's correct.

And you know that retail sales far out sell the medical cards now throughout the Bay Area. Oh, yeah. Right? I have a business in Vallejo. There's plenty of those places over there. And I know people that go there. And it's all about retail sales. So knowing that, clicker or no clicker, makes no sense to me. You know that 80% of everybody is using retail sales. They're not getting medical cards. That's the 90s, like you said. But you still signed up for a medical card only business. So that's all I'm pointing out. I think personally, I think that's possible. It almost seems like a business plan to get this opened and then campaign again. to get the retail sales, which is why I go back to what I asked first, which is why you just didn't say that's what you wanted to begin with. Because you knew that 80% of all sales are retail and 20% are medicinal.

So it doesn't make sense. Well, looked at the county's numbers, they've tanked like 75% in the last five years. I'm not going to point fingers at why that was, that they weren't required anymore. So you know, you knew going into it. I didn't know. Unfortunately, I've paid for the education is what I'm here to say. So to your point, like, was it my business plan? No. Do I think it's the, would I rather be an adult use store that still accepts medical prescriptions?

But you did know 80% of everyone uses it as recreational.

No, I guess I ignorantly assumed the transactions that were occurring a thousand plus a week in Fairfax were legitimate.

Stop talking about that place and think about what you knew without that place.

Yeah, that there's a great market, that I'm capable of compliantly serving it. I think I'm professional at what I do. I think I've executed on what I said I did. I think I showed respect to the process with what I applied for. And I think following the rules that I've been permitted to operate under is precisely what I'm doing. And if there is a process by which the community, not my ambitions, could... requests that they be changed exist, I guess, again, I'm here to better understand what that process looks like. And if the majority of our community is opposed to that, well, that's all I need to know. And if you guys don't care if a bunch of them are for it, well, that answers it as well, I guess. But again, I don't know what to tell people tomorrow when 30 to 50 people are going to say, well, what the heck? Why can't I come in here? I'm 63. And that's not how it's been or that's not how it is anymore.

I can help you with some talking points, but let's move to public comment. I just have one quick question. I'm going to have some comments.

Have you thought about putting a sign in the window that makes it clear that this is a medical storefront? Oh, so they don't read the sign?

Some people do. One in three probably walk up to the sign, read it, scowl, and they storm off.

okay but anyway all right let's go to public comment okay thank you guys hi todd greenberg how long was that special presentation based upon a citizen petition submitted i want to point out that was viewpoint discrimination mayor hellman allotted five minutes to me back in June and then didn't allow me to give my presentation with slides, yet she allowed Mr. Kaufman unending amounts of time. We'll get the time from the video later. But aside from that, I want to have you ask certain questions that didn't come up at the dais earlier. I want to point them out. What I'm hearing is that Mr. Kaufman would like to change things, that he has some frustrations, but I didn't hear him talk about possibly promoting his business in a different way. There's a sign in the window. Okay, so not everybody likes a sign. Maybe he needs different signage. He could be advocating at the state level. for a change in licensing that would allow him to do more business. That's probably, rather than asking Fairfax to relitigate this and to spend endless time on it and lots of other people in the community to come in, that's probably a more effective way to do it. But I'd also encourage him to consider promoting his business in a different way and getting people to be compliant and get cards. Maybe they've fallen out of compliance for some reason. Maybe they need a $28 benefit or a $29 benefit so that he'll pay for their medical marijuana cards and he doesn't need a change in the actual licensing here. So I think we've just wasted our time prematurely, as Councilman Kohler pointed out, And it shouldn't be happening this way.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening. Susan Adams on Temel Pius Road. I had a question first for the council. Someone mentioned that this was the only town that had an only medical marijuana dispensary. So my question then, sorry, I don't want to make it dumb, is Out of 58 counties in the state of California, we're the only county that only allows medical marijuana. That seems to beg the question about maybe we're out of touch with current state of affairs.

We're the only city for the county in Marin County that have a medical storefront. There are plenty in the state.

No, but are we the only town that is... that only allows medical marijuana dispensaries not recreational that's i guess that's my question no about all okay okay okay i just think okay thank you um I guess I'm concerned that if people feel that the only way to get recreational or other materials is to use the idea of a medical card undermines the concept of what is medical needs. And just seems to me that if they're using it for recreational purposes, they're using it for recreational purposes. If people are disabled and they feel this helps them, then recreational deliveries make sense. But for everybody to have to have it delivered seems like an unnecessary burden. Thank you.

Hello council members, my name is Gabe Robinson, I'm a Fairfax resident and I live adjacent to the floor and we'll let you know and close to the council considering this petition.

The floor zone have been open for a few weeks and this feels like a complete bait and switch.

Excuse me, this feels like a complete bait and switch and the proposed change will negatively impact our neighborhood. I don't feel Mr coffin is shown in any way he can address our concerns about traffic parking or safety and he's rushed this petition before you without a word to his neighbors. Mr. Kaufman has been soliciting form letters and signatures for this petition since before he opened his doors. And I believe this shows he's operating in bad faith from the beginning. I pointed out to members of this council that even before this location was permitted, his website promised a, quote, boutique-style cannabis retail store, end quote. And when I questioned him directly, he stated to me in an email in July of 2017, 25 I quote when I say boutique I mean the store's aesthetic for medical only retail like a clean professional pharmacy the adult use part is delivery only When Mister coffin was seeking his initial permit he went door to door in our neighborhood offering blandishments and promising that was intended only as a medical dispensary. To soften concerns over the impact the business would have on the neighborhood when I've spoken to my neighbors about this proposed change they're shocked and they haven't heard peep from Mister coffin. Call this a bait and switch called the camels no speaking under the tent whatever you call it this isn't right thank you.

Good evening, mayor and council members, Kelsey Fernandez. And I am here for both Fairfax families that live next to the floor and also San Anselmo families, because as council member Ager pointed out that there. We're so close and really particularly with something like this, what impacts the residents closest to this? They are both in Fairfax and in San Anselmo. So I did send an email. to all of you that had some studies, some peer-reviewed research about the impact of a cannabis storefront on youth. And the findings I think are really important to consider when you're looking at whether you will consider expanding the use. And the findings found a link between the location and proximity of a cannabis storefront and adolescent use, adolescent problematic use, and also the impact of those which were psychosis, bipolar disorder, and also depression. So Those studies found that simply having the storefront in a location close to where children live and learn is going to have an impact on those regardless of what the age is to enter the store. And so these families that are living next to the floor are the ones that are going to be the most impacted because the closer to the storefront, the greater the impact. And so I would just, I know Mike, it sounds crazy, doesn't it? Just the look on your face is like, really? Yeah, but it's this, the data's there. And I would just ask that before there's any consideration of expanding the use in the town code in Fairfax, scan the data and the impact on these local families. Thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hello, this is in relation to the strong application that was made. There was fraud in that application with a description of the impact at Archie Williams and young people with cannabis. Okay, sorry about that. Quite recently, I had a parent take me to meet the principal at Archie Williams. Her son was having a real problem with addiction to marijuana rather than paying attention to school. Had a sit down with the principal. Principal, this is starting his third year. And he told me when he came in, he told the board, that he had never seen data at Healthy Kids Survey like he had seen at Archie Williams. And there was definitely something wrong. He had never seen data like that. He worked in Southern California before that. So the data that was presented in the application was fraudulent about the interpretation of the California Healthy Kids Survey. I'm pointing this out because it's a shell game with somebody said this, somebody said that, here's the numbers. Feels like Mr. Trump's arguments about somebody said this, so therefore we should have a policy. I think it's BS. Martin is playing a shell game with numbers. I think it is a bait and switch. And I think it's sleazy as hell.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, it's Charlotte Fuller from 235, still wearing the red wig. I have been to the business in question. I gave an elderly man a lift there. He was very confused. He'd gone to Lynette's place over by the ball field. Now it was all closed up. What was he going to do? He really needed his cannabis for anxiety. I said, my friend, I'm hoping a wire comes through to First Federal Bank, but okay, I'll give you a lift. I went to get in his car and drive him. He said, no, I'm driving. I said, okay, my friend, as long as you're not too anxious, I'll guide you. I guided him. We got there. It's a beautiful cannabis place. It's well-named. It is a boutique. And it is medical only. The man did not have a smartphone. I did all his work with him for him to get a doctor to give us a call back so we could do it. Took much longer than expected, unfortunately. You're here, right, owner? Owner?

Owner, I'm with you.

I'm with you and I'm with everybody. So I just want to ask a question. Can we all agree? Sometimes a substance is good for one person, not good for another. I have noticed since coffee, designer coffee was introduced, road rage, road rage skyrocketed. Does that mean everybody who drinks coffee goes crazy on the road? No, but some do. What I want to say is there is a difference. If I was a family member with somebody sensitive to marijuana who'd kind of lost their... stuff because of an addiction and it can be addicting i've known uh adults who are addicted not myself luckily i have other issues haagen-dazs and so forth nicotine nobody's perfect okay i guess that's my time we have a lot more i'm sure thank you

Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Jeremiah Mock, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco. I've spoken with you before about cannabis, well, about nicotine use and tobacco. I just want to relay to you first that last night, Corte Madera Town Council voted majority in the first reading to end the sale of all tobacco and nicotine products, and that built on the momentum that you created here. It's really important to understand that in the current era, there's a tremendous amount of co-use between tobacco, nicotine products, and cannabis products in our youth population. And so we can't address one without addressing the other. It's simply too much of an entangled, entwined problem of substance use in general. I just want to impress upon you that what Councilmember Kohler said is extremely important. I gave a talk at the American Public Health Association that was based on a work that i've done with dr matt willis called against the odds where we gave a national presentation about how moran county against the odds had had all of the jurisdictions pass ordinances that were consistent and fairfax made an allowance to grandfather the moran alliance but otherwise that we would not allow Retail storefronts because we have a tremendous problem with UC youth use of cannabis and today the products are dramatically different from what they were at that time and that decision is really critical because We cannot afford in these communities to have any jurisdiction break ranks with that compact if you will of that was agreed by all the jurisdictions. So I would encourage you to hold the line and not break ranks. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. I don't see any more speakers in the room. Any hands on Zoom?

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

Hi, Cindy Ross again. And I want to start off by saying that I really support medical marijuana use. But what I'm really concerned about is that we're here yet again talking about, you know, all these issues about, you know, cannabis and legalization and all this stuff. Couple of speakers before talked about bait and switch and I hate to use that word, but I feel like I really do feel like that's what's going on here and I'm also really concerned that you know, I I know you can't publish names, but when I looked at the petition and I didn't recognize a number of the names. I looked some of them up, and they don't appear to be people living here in Fairfax. Here we are again. I know Barbara's talked about 23 meetings. I'm just really kind of frankly disgusted about it already. It's like enough already. I feel like Mr. Kaufman got what he asked for. It's just been months and years, and I'm just really tired of these drug wars. I'm tired of competing dispensaries. I was actually really proud that Fairfax had the Medical Marijuana Alliance. You know, but I just feel like I want to say absolutely no. Either be appreciative, do the clinic, do the dispensary the way that it was approved, or else just don't do it at all. But I just really don't want to waste any more time of this. You know, people that need to use marijuana can get a card. They can get, you know, approval by their doctor, and they can use their medicine. They can do whatever they want to. If they want to, you know, if they want to do it recreationally, they're going to have to pay more, and they're going to have to get it delivered. Thank you.

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

Thank you very much. One of the things I'm most proud of is my longtime work on local control. From 2013 to 2015, I served on the California League of Cities Public Policy Safety Committee. And when the Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, came up and it was coming up and it was passed in November 2016, I sat on that 40-plus member board chair And it was me who made the point that we cannot have the Alcohol and Beverage Commission in Sacramento control this only because they were bad at it with alcohol. And so we had to have local control because I believe in local control. And so we put into that law or suggested we did to the legislator legislation that local control had to be concurrent. And that's why maybe saying someone doesn't want one. Maybe Fairfax does. I'm fine with whatever decision is made. My simple point is this. Let's put this on the ballot and let the voters decide what they'd like to do. Thank you.

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

You know, we're an addicted society. Take your pick. Money, alcohol, sex, pot, television, cell phones. Pot today isn't your grandma's Oldsmobile or pot or whatever. It's like go from 2% to 30%. I mean, pot these days, if I wanted to take psychedelics, I'd take psychedelics. But, you know, if you want your own pot, I mean, you want pot, it's easy enough to grow your own, isn't it? As far as that goes. And then there's the whole bait and switch, which it really is. And then there's education. And, you know, how do we protect the youth? Because it does have definite effects that are not good. I mean, there's one thing, you know, having high school kids smoking 2% pot and Colombian gold or something from the 1960s. And that's a pretty different thing than 30%, you know, super skunk, you know, rainbow, whatever. Our brains just aren't built for it. But, you know, anyway, it's a bait and switch. I don't really support that. And good luck.

There are no more speakers on zoom. Okay. Closing public comment. I have a few comments. I didn't speak earlier.

Um, I don't know that I have any questions, but, um,

So, Martin, I do, Mr. Kaufman, I do think it's too soon to be coming back, and I think you've heard a lot of comments to that effect. It feels like, you know, perhaps this was your plan all along, and that doesn't feel good to any of us, right? And your business case and your application was all knowing what the policies were here and you're absolutely right if we were to you know green light some changes and send it to the planning commission you'd be eight months plus you know looking at it so there is a long lead time but i think the community needs to feel the effects of this business right and it really has hasn't even been six weeks so um it's been plenty of comment on email and this evening that you've heard. So I do hope you respect that sentiment because it has been loud and clear, at least to me. As far as the landscape, I wasn't around. Those 23 meetings happened almost 10 years ago. So I don't think that they're as relevant or pertinent. I think nobody wants to deal with it again. Nobody wants to kind of open that can of worms. But The landscape has changed so much for good and for bad, right? Like the potency of these products is causing real harm to youth and adults. and i think that's something for you to consider if we were if we're if we are to continuing to have a community dialogue about this i am what miss fernandez has sent us in terms of the data i'm thinking about the tobacco industry way back when they knew the harms they pretended they didn't and then you had these these major milestone lawsuits when then the regulations changed, right? We just saw $17 billion lawsuit against META. So as a parent, you know, we kind of, you know, we saw documentaries, we've been hearing, you know, about harms, but now we know what they knew, right? And I'm feeling... really terrible as a parent that my kids are addicted to social media, addicted to their phones, and what could I have, should I have done, right? And I'm sort of feeling the same way about weed. I grew up in Marin County. It's pervasive. I was exposed to it as a young person. But it was a much different product back then, right? And I think we all respect the work that, you know, Fairfax and Lynette did and kind of pioneering this industry and medicinal. That's what we have in place right now. But I would encourage you to think about, like, how to work with this community if you're willing to. I'm not even going to ideate, but the products that are like 40% THC, I mean, there's studies that are causing psychosis, and it's really, really concerning. And I think, you know, I know you're a parent. I saw your daughter at the ribbon cutting. And I mean, I encourage you to be a leader in this space and acknowledge the facts, acknowledge the data. Right. And if you're going to be a leader in this space for the county, like what is that? What could that look like? Because I do think at some point in time you'll probably get the support. But why don't you work with the community on that and start having those conversations now? That would be my advice to you. But I'm not. seeing or feeling the appetite for any change right now, I think, um, you know, we'll continue to get the emails because that's how we're getting set. That's how you have your website set up. But, you know, as far as talking points to give your customers, you know, it's really not that hard to get a medicinal, you know. And I guess I just want to close and say that, you know, as a parent of a 17-year-old who turns... 18 soon i also think it's really weird that he can walk into your store in a couple months and buy weed whereas if we didn't have medicinal he could not until he was 21. so there it's weird it doesn't make sense in that way recreational retail requires 21 right and the medicinal is 18. So it doesn't make a lot of sense. We do need to fix it. I don't see that there's an appetite to do that, but I would encourage you to be, like I said, a leader and have these conversations with people on all sides of this issue because there's very informed people in our community about it.

I just want to add one thing. Martin, I think you've really tried to put together a good business, and I think you heard the message. This is premature. And I also want to say that people shouldn't disparage you. You did this in good faith, and... I wouldn't have brought it so soon, but you did that. And I want to commend you for trying to do a really good business and follow the rules. And other businesses may not have done that. So thank you for coming tonight. And, you know, let's see what happens over the next year. And it's going to be a new council, so we'll see. But, you know, we'll see what happens. But thank you so much.

Okay, moving on to... Can we other people comment? Oh, sure.

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I just wanted to put out there that I think somebody mentioned concern about the fact that the signatures were not for people in Fairfax. Didn't they get verified by the county or somebody, the 25 signatures?

Yes, they did.

Okay, so, you know, put that aside that those were Fairfax residents. You know, I actually kind of like the idea of putting on the ballot, although that's not what we're talking about right now, but this has been such a contentious issue. I'd be really, or doing, you know, I mean, I'm a big fan of doing, you know, Biennial like surveys of the public to get a take on like what it is. They really really support You know and add a bunch of other things on there So that's probably not a decision I'm gonna be able to make but you're just putting it out there that sometimes it's really nice to get the pulse of the community on something where their attitudes may have changed or we may have not gotten their overall attitudes because we get the most passionate people coming in here on either side of the the You know, I think I talked to Mr. Kaufman early when he was opening his shop and sort of thought that I said that I thought hearts and minds in the community might be changed if he was open for a while and ran a really good business and really like made the community feel like it was a fun, lovely part of their community. So I'm hoping that that can still happen. I am worried because I know that there are a lot of challenges to dispensaries actually being viable and that that is driving more business out onto the street. So I don't like that that much. It's a lovely business. I just feel like this petition is maybe coming a little too soon in the process. But I understand the frustration about people reacting in shock that they thought that Fairfax always allowed people to just come in and buy marijuana and that somehow this new shop is open and something changed. Either the town council or the business owner is doing something crazy. Um, but in fact that this has always been the law and maybe people were not actually following it. So I think it's a hard place to be in that you're the person being hit with that. Um, I wanted to put out there that, you know, we always talking about, we like funky Fairfax or we're Mayberry on acid or whatever, that, that marijuana has been a big part of Fairfax's history and culture. And, um, You know, I probably would have been open to recreational shopfront dispensaries if I felt like the public was really into it and it was in the right place. We got a really compelling letter from another business owner nearby saying that she felt that having a dispensary that was viable would drive business to the east side businesses. So, you know, I take that into account, too. You know, there's a large number of residents that want recreational marijuana. It would generate tax dollars for the town. You know, there's a lot of arguments about whether or not it's more dangerous than other types of drugs and substances that we make readily available to people in town, which I'm not going to go into. And those are legal and they also sometimes drive crime and addiction. I also know that people can use responsibly. I mean, I grew up with parents who used marijuana. And finally, You know, I just want to say that we can see from the large number of letters that we've received that there's a real demand for this type of establishment. But I think that it's premature to bring it forward at this point. There will be a new council. It might be something you want to ask as residents of people who are running for town council. You know, where do you stand on the issue of opening a recreational dispensary in Fairfax? And so people on both sides could kind of get a gauge of where their potential candidates stand. Um, but I think that, um, the council should maybe revisit this next year or set a time to revisit it. Um, when the floor has had a chance to further establish itself and there's a new council.

Vice mayor anything.

Yes, quickly, if I may. I'm in Sonoma County four days a week working, and whether it be Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, there are a lot of recreational marijuana stores, recreational cannabis stores. I see signs out there, 40% discount, 30% discount. I don't think any of them are really making any money. What's interesting is that they're not in and around residential areas. They're in big commercial areas. And so that's another issue here is exactly the location. Sir Francis Drake is there, but then the little side streets are little residential areas. That's an issue for that community. Anyway, I think it's maybe review it in a year. Thank you.

Okay. We are past 11 o'clock and we still have consent to get through. I hope we can do this swiftly so we don't have to stay much later. Does anyone have anything to pull?

I just have a comment on one thing. Okay. Just on the letter on G, the letter to Marin County Board of Supervisors regarding Measure A. That's a great letter, and I think we should make sure we copy the judge for that grand jury report. Just going to Marin County Supervisors is a good idea, but it's possible the judge may actually look at it.

And I'm going to mention really quickly that on my council member report, I do have one meeting that I intended to go to that I didn't actually go to. So age-friendly, in case anybody cares. I wasn't able to attend that meeting, but we have to submit our reports in advance. So I'll correct that next council meeting report, council member report.

Okay. Are you going to pull something?

Well, I just want to speak on two of the items. And I was going to pull the... The financial, but if I could just maybe speak to it quickly at work rather than pulling it. Okay. So on a couple of the items, there's one for the minutes. And I just want to mention this. When I read the minutes, and I don't know who's preparing our minutes these days. Who is the person that prepares the minutes? Do we know who?

Staff is doing that in the clerk's office.

She's raising her hand. Oh, okay, okay. So when I read the minutes, I read all the minutes, and it says a council member said, a council member said. I think it was seven different times in those two sets of minutes where a council member said or a council member asked, but it doesn't name that council member. you know, if the minutes are going to be really, really valid, I think they got to name that council member. I know at least one or two were made, but I think the council member's name has to be in the minutes. That's one thing. Okay. On the letter to the governor regarding AB 1383, the League of California Cities is opposed to it. And this reverses our previous position, I guess. So, you know, one of the biggest tax costs... What is the question or comment?

Just can you...

Oh, well, this is going to... Do you want to pull it, or do you have a quick comment? I'll make a quick comment. Okay, let's do that. Okay. This will allow pensioners from cities and counties to receive up to $185,000 a year in pension costs. In pension benefits, it does lower the pension age. But right now, Fairfax is, I think we have 2% or 3% at 50. So that's not the age, but it's the dollar amount. The biggest part of the tax bill, almost for Fairfax, one of the biggest parts of the tax bill is our pension override. And I think this is just going to drive it if... If AB 1383 passes, it's just going to drive our pension costs even higher. So I would not send that letter to the governor. That's that's two things.

And just on the on the financial on consent, though, you're not pulling it and wanting to vote separately on it because we're going to be voting on that.

OK, well, they're fine. Pull it up. I'll pull both of them that I mentioned. You don't need to pull them. I'll pull them. I don't want to mess up your system here.

So let's pull F. No, we're saying let's just take a separate vote on the 1383 item since you don't want to send that letter.

Okay.

But I think we've beat the horse on the minutes.

Okay. Well, you know what? Either the minutes reflect what happened at the meeting and who said what, or why do we even bother? I mean, that's really... Seven times it says a council member said. I mean, if a council member can't put their name in the minutes, what is this about? What do we hear about? Anyway, on the financials, let me quickly mention the financials. We do have... The final for the year on illegal, and illegal this past fiscal year was $1,047,624. So we were over a million dollars in legal expenses. For the town attorney, it was $318,000. $304. So that's over $300. So we've got to get a handle on our legal costs here. That's all.

Okay. Thank you. So we'll open public comment on consent.

Todd Greenberg, you've got to get a handle more on than just legal costs. The town's operating at a deficit for the past five plus years. The town's reserves are financed. This town is technically broke. Why are we spending more money that we don't have? Second page on this report shows a $660,561 deficit planned for this year. Regarding the meeting minutes, I object to what has been presented here for the reasons that Edgar just spoke of. And in precise notes, here it says, Todd Greenberg spoke about the ballot measure campaign and scope of the measure. That masks what I actually said. I objected to the ballot measure advocacy. Why can't we have accurate meeting minutes? We're paying two or three times what we used to pay for them, and they're not accurate. Regarding AB 1383... There are many groups that oppose this. How come we don't have a cost impact from our finance director on what would happen if AB 1383 were passed in terms of how much more money Fairfax is going to have to come up with? Finally, regarding Measure A, Joe Frenizek, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, from the Open Space Committee came here earlier to brief us basically on how if the changes that are being proposed for Measure A go through, we're not going to get the money from Measure A that we used to get. So I'm really disappointed he didn't get to speak and present that to all of you.

I too would like to speak to my opposition of your changing an opposition to your letter previously submitted in opposition to 1383. I don't think it's good legislation. I think it's going to cost the town more money in the long run. I think it's going to expand services that you'll have requirement to fund. So I hope you understand. We'll pull that item and not send your letter of rescission in. I think you made a prudent decision the first time to speak in opposition. Thank you.

Anyone online? Okay. Closing public comment.

So I'll make a motion to approve consent minus item F that we're going to take a separate vote on.

I'll second that. We have a motion from Council Member Barbara Kohler and a second from Council Member Blash. Excuse me. Council Member Blash.

Yes. Council Member Ghirangeli.

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

yes all right i'll make a motion uh on number f uh that we approve sending the letter i'll second i have a motion from council member kohler on

Item six or seven F. No, it's X. Oh, I'm sorry.

It's F. I'm sorry. Okay.

And a second from Mayor Hellman. Council Member Blash. I'm going to abstain. Council Member Garangeli.

What did we just vote on? I vote no. Okay. So Council Member Garangeli voted no.

Can you put your vote into the microphone one more time, Council Member Garangeli?

No.

Council Member Kohler?

Yes.

Council Vice Mayor Egger?

No.

Mayor Hellman?

Yes. Yes. What did Council Member Blash vote? She abstained.

So we have a tie.

So it fails. So we don't send.

Motion fails to pass. Correct. So the letter will not be sent.