Town Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, we're going to call to order the Fairfax Town Council meeting December 3rd, 2025. We're here at the Women's Club, which is 46 Park Road in Fairfax. And we're going to start by doing the Pledge of Allegiance. So those of you who would like to join us, please do. to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, and I think many people have discovered that there are goodies and coffee on the side, so please help yourself. And we're going to start out with a roll call.

Council member Ager here. Council member Garangeli here. Council member Kohler here. Vice Mayor Hellman here. Mayor Blash here.

Okay. And we're going to move on to approval of the agenda.

Um, I see actually, I have a motion. I would like to make a small edit to the agenda, which would move open time for public expression to after the presentation and insert it into the regular agenda between items two and three. So that is my motion.

I'll second that.

Okay, can we get a roll call vote? Council member Agar.

Aye.

Council member Ghirangeli.

Yes.

Council member Kohler. Yes. Vice Mayor Hellman.

Yes. Mayor Blash. Yes. Okay, so in case anybody missed it, we've moved open time for public expression to between items two and three on the regular agenda. Okay, so I'm going to move on to the land acknowledgement and then the meeting protocol. So the Fairfax Town Council acknowledges that we are located on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coastal Miwok people of present-day Marin County. We honor with gratitude the land itself and all of its ancestors past, present, and emerging. In the meeting protocol, the mayor shall maintain order at the meetings. The council has the responsibility to be a model of respectful behavior in order to facilitate the conduct of the people's business and encourage civil engagement in town council meetings. The council and audience are expected to refrain from using profane language and or ridiculing the character or motives of council members, staff, or members of the public, and to maintain the standards of tolerance and civility. Please turn off all cellular phones or place them in silent mode. Shouting, clapping, booing, stomping, or other disruptive behavior during public comment or council deliberation is discouraged in order to provide a respectful and comfortable environment for all residents to express their point of view. Clapping and all of that is, of course, acceptable for items such as police pinnings, proclamations, welcoming new staff and council members, and other celebratory announcements. The town council will review the agenda at 10 p.m. to ascertain which items, if any, will be continued to another meeting. Any matter not started by 11.30 p.m. will be continued to an adjourned or regular council meeting unless the council votes to suspend this rule. So we, again, for those who just came in, we're moving open time for public expression to between items two and three on the regular agenda. And I think we're going to move on now to the proclamation.

Hi there. This is my item to, uh, honor mayor Lisa Blash for her service. And it gives me a lot of pleasure to do so. So there are a handful of us who collaborated on the content development of this proclamation. So thank you. If you were among our small team, including Christine Foster, uh, Town of Fairfax Proclamation honoring Mayor Liesl Blash for exemplary service and leadership. Whereas Liesl Blash has served as a council member for the Town of Fairfax since December 2022 and mayor since 2025. Whereas Liesl Blash has been a resident of Fairfax for 13 years and moved to Fairfax for the very purpose of public service. And whereas Mayor Blash's enthusiasm and desire to get involved led her to join the board of Sustainable Fairfax, where she helped design a program to reduce car trips by leading walks to help the community discover pedestrian pathways and safe bicycle routes. And whereas Mayor Blash was instrumental in the creation and production of Fairfax beloved streets for people. And whereas it is hereby noted that Mayor Blash is exceptionally well prepared for meetings, often bringing pages of research notes and thoughtful questions. And whereas Mayor Blash leads with empathy and openness. allowing her to engage in difficult conversations and listen without judgment to other points of view. And whereas Mayor Blash brings the strength of analytical thinking with a deep understanding of complex issues, including housing, sustainability, homelessness, disability rights and much more. Whereas throughout her tenure as mayor legal, Lisa Blash diligently represented the town on a wide range of regional and local committees, including serving as the primary delegate to the transport or transportation authority of Marin. otherwise known as TAM, as a member or alternate to the ABAG, which is Association of Bay Area Government's Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority Board, Ross Valley Paramedic Authority, Ross Valley School Board Liaison, Safe Routes to School Task Force, and the Measure A Parks Committee. In her capacity as mayor, she also participated actively in the League Of California cities, the Finance Committee, the MCC MC homeless subcommittee and served as liaison to the Chamber of Commerce, thereby demonstrating her very deep commitment to intergovernmental cooperation and community focused governance. And whereas Liesl shows up for Fairfax. Her commitment to inclusion and making people feel welcome is evident in her joyful presence at every Fairfax event, celebration, or new business opening. And whereas the town of Fairfax has been served for the past year by Mayor Lisa Blash, who in that capacity has exercised the highest ideals of public service, bringing a quiet, calm, and steady leadership in a time of considerable challenge. And whereas throughout her term, Mary Blash has consistently demonstrated a thoughtful, collaborative approach, listening attentively to constituents, engaging respectfully with all viewpoints and guiding the town council with equanimity when the pace and pressure of public affairs might otherwise produce disorder. And whereas Mayor Blash's commitment to community was long evident, including her heartfelt advocacy for Victory Village. When she would bring homemade cookies shaped like small houses to town council meetings as a symbolic representation of warmth, welcome, and the importance of home in community life. I just got goosebumps. Whereas the moments of tension and harmful rhetoric occurred during the 20 regular town council meetings she presided over, Mayor Blash offered gentle reminders of our shared humanity, often using her public comments to call for greater kindness, compassion, and civility, values she continues to champion as essential to the way neighbors treat one another in Fairfax. Whereas under Mayor Blash's stewardship, the town has navigated complex issues, including California's new housing laws, multiple lawsuits brought against the town, as the town council acknowledges the tension and uncertainty that have arisen in recent months in Fairfax. And during her tenure as mayor, Fairfax made significant progress in critical infrastructure, including six bridge projects, stormwater upgrades, and the renovation of Ross Valley Fire Station 21. And whereas Mayor Blash intently focused on increasing community engagement with the town by hosting 11 mayor and manager meetups and took great effort to communicate widely via social media. And whereas Mayor Blash's tenure reflected a deep commitment to sustainability, community identity and public engagement, initiating the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee to promote safe, active transportation and ceremonially naming the spotted owl as the official town bird to highlight fairfax's dedication to environmental stewardship and whereas the citizens of fairfax are grateful for her unwavering dedication to public good for her willingness to engage in the background work of governance to bring clarity and calm where there might otherwise have been confusion or conflict and to uphold the dignity of the position of mayor And whereas Mayor Blash holds the distinction of being Fairfax's first openly gay mayor, that reflects the town's enduring values of inclusivity, representation, and pride in the diversity of its leadership. Now, therefore, be it hereby proclaimed that the town of Fairfax hereby proclaims Mayor Lisa Blash is officially recognized for her term as mayor and for her tireless efforts to lead with quiet strength, steady character, creative vision, and respectful governance. That the town commends and thanks her for promoting civil engagement, fostering community trust, in guiding the town through a year of important decisions with integrity and grace. That the town encourages all citizens to reflect on her example of listening, collaboration, gentleness, and steady stewardship as a model for civic engagement and local leadership. Thank you, Mayor Lisa Blash. Can we go down there and take a picture?

They're taking a picture first.

As is the tradition with the town council, when you are finished with your tenure as mayor, we offer you a plaque. And it says, in appreciation of your leadership to the town of Fairfax, with your name, Mayor Lisa Blash, with a quote. And the quote is, government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together. And this is a quote by Honorable Barney Frank, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, the first openly gay representative in the U.S. Congress. And I've heard you say this quote many times, and I know it's meaningful. It certainly has become meaningful to me.

Can I get one more?

Sorry. Liesl? Thank you. Okay. If Liesl wants to say something, she can use the microphone.

Okay. Here, I'll say it.

Well, is it on? Can you actually hear me? Yeah, OK, great. I'm like, wow, that's amazing. I don't know whether I should blush or faint or whatever. But that was really lovely, and I really want to thank everybody who took part in that. I just did want to say that I've been really honored to serve as mayor this year. And while it's been a challenging year, I've really cherished the spirited conversations that we've all had about the role of local government and the impact of state and federal policies on local government. and just I think our recognition of the necessity of ongoing and informed civic engagement. And so I hope that continues in the future, that we continue those conversations. The last year has really encouraged me to reach out more, although my initial instinct was probably to retreat a little bit in the face of some acrimony. And I just keep being reminded of what a colleague who's a leadership trainer said to me once about reaching for wonder. And reach for wonder was sort of his little mantra about when people disagree with you, instead of shutting down, you have to sort of reach for wonder and ask, what is it that they are saying? What is it that's different than what I believe? What can I learn from them? And so I've tried to repeat that to myself all year long. So I've tried to listen really closely to neighbors that agree with me, neighbors that disagree with me, and everybody in between. And those conversations have really deepened my appreciation for the kindness and creativity and intelligence and strength that exist here in Fairfax. And I keep being reminded of something that one of our local leaders, I think it was Susan Pascal-Boran, said about Fairfax having a culture of kindness. And I think it's something that we need to build on and reclaim and continue to realize that we can disagree and still be kind to each other. So I'm committed to serving Fairfax, all Fairfax residents. And I'm particularly interested in improving communication between elected officials and residents and between elected officials and between residents. And I'm going to continue to focus on that for the next year as a regular old council member. But I just want to thank everyone very much. This has been a really amazing year for me.

And Now I'd be happy to take public comment on this item.

I'm going to start with a public service announcement.

There's a big... Would that be more appropriate for public open time?

No, there's a big open-tiled SUV parked out in the sidewalk across the street. BTD 698... They can move it off the sidewalk. It'd be nice. I mean, people can walk in the street.

Okay. Well, we have members of our police force here. So thank you.

I just wanted to say to Liesl, I don't know how you do it.

I don't know how any of you do it. I don't necessarily agree with any of you. I don't necessarily agree with myself, but we all got to work together and get along somehow and how you deal with people, the acrimony, I mean, probably some of it's deserved in terms of we all do stuff that is less than stellar that other people can call us out and we avoid it or kind of try and slough it off. But I'm just trying to say you've gotten a lot of heat that you didn't entirely deserve. And it's been a lot to deal with. And I appreciate what you've done for the town and how you are and how you treat people. And I look forward to being in the community with you for another 50 years.

And I'm just going to say, if you're wanting to clap, I guess that's okay in this type of thing.

Lisa, Jody, Tim's Cascade Drive. I just want to add my appreciation. It has been an incredibly difficult year. And I think grace and equanimity are perfect words for the way you've handled things. It's just such a challenge to be an elected official. in this town in this past year, and you've just done just a stellar job. So I really thank you and look forward to working with you with BPAC and the Climate Action Committee and lots of projects over the next few years. So thank you very, very, very much.

Hi, Mimi Newton, Mono Avenue. Just want to echo what everybody else is saying, especially all the things in the proclamation that Stephanie read and remark upon your incredible resilience and strength and perseverance and stamina and all these qualities that make you a really strong leader. And as I've said before, leadership puts you in a position where you're the target for other people to you know, go after something that they're dissatisfied with. And I think you've really taken a lot of heat, as Sierra said, that was ill-deserved, not deserved. And the grace with which you've responded to that is really inspiring. I brought you some sage. I think you need some sage. So maybe I'll drop it off at your house later. But thank you.

Hi, I'm Steve Solmeyer, Oak Manor. I want to thank everybody, all of you. Everybody loves this town, all of you, all of us. And I think you've done a good job of advocating for what you believe in. I think you were advocating for what you felt was in the best interest of the town. But now that the recall is over, I think it's time to try and, as Abraham Lincoln said, bind up the nation's wounds, bind up the town's wounds. I don't think we can go on business as usual. So what I'd like to ask is that we rebuild a culture of kindness, but do so intentionally. And in that regard, what I wanted to suggest was maybe hiring a nonviolent communication teacher to come and lead a workshop that would be for the town council, the staff, and any residents who would like to be a part of that, to actually give us more skills on how we can disagree without being disagreeable, how we can articulate our beliefs in a way that they're heard and listen so that people feel heard. And that way we can actually have constructive, useful communication and collaboration. So if you'd like to ask me about that or talk with me about that later, please feel free to contact me. Nancy knows how to find me.

Great. Thank you. Next, please.

My name is Nancy Clothier. I'm also a Fairfax resident. And I would just like to thank you two ladies. And I feel like I've learned quite a bit through this period of time. And it's been very humbling. And I feel like I've grown a bit and found some better outlets for a shyer kind of person. And I just appreciate all the work that you have done for this community. And I, too, echo the sentiment. I hope that we can heal the rifts in our community. So thank you.

Thank you. Next, please.

Hi, Marlene Rogo, Cascade Canyon. Mostly, I just want to thank Liesl, getting to know you over this almost last year. I am just in awe of your ability to always take the high road and keep it together. And Stephanie's proclamation was beautiful, talking about grace and strength and your steadfastness. I don't know how you do it, but I have the deepest respect for you. And I love Steve's idea. And I know Nancy Clothier has brought it up before, nonviolent communication training. I think it would be terrific. And I look forward to seeing how the council hopefully works together in a kinder, easier way as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Next, please.

Hi, Michael Rosenthal. I was going to say a lot of the things that Marlene said, so I'll just second her comments. And it's been a very trying year. But one of the silver linings for me has been getting to know you, Liesl, and also Stephanie, very well. And so I know firsthand what class acts you both are. And I'm glad, Stephanie, that you used the word joy in your proclamation because I think the joy has gotten lost a lot in this past year. And in addition to participating in everything, Liesl, you were actually the very first person to buy a ticket for the Fairfax Treasure Hunt this year. So I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Okay, next please.

Hi, I'm Mad Dog. And Liesl, it's been really wonderful knowing you. And there's something that I think of out of the Grateful Dead circles, which is they are not the best at what they do, but they're the only ones that do what they do. And that's you. I don't think anybody else could have stepped up and dealt with what 2025 brought us. Thanks again.

Thank you.

All right, my name is Ethan, born and raised here. I have kind of a different kind of statement. If it's out of bounds, just let me know. I believe this is like the general.

It's just coming off really, really loud.

Yeah, so I wanted to respond to a claim that I heard a lot at the last meeting I went to. Which was a while ago, but it was that homelessness is not a housing issue.

Just a sec. So I want to hear what you have to say, but this is only about the last item, and then we're going to move to open time. Some people missed that because we came. Yeah, I'm sorry. But it'll be after between items two and three on the regular agenda. So stick around. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead.

I'm Mayor Blash. I just want to say as many times as we've had sometimes difficult discourse across the dais, I would like to acknowledge you've always been very polite to me and very easy to speak to when we're out in public. So I'd like to say thank you.

Thanks. Next, please.

Hi, my name's Wendy, and I am grateful to be able to be here tonight to celebrate you, Liesl, and as your friend and a former town person. with you. It's been really wonderful to watch you grow and, and witness you become the leader that you've become. And I really hope that in this next year, you get to do some of the things that you didn't get to do that you wanted to do this past year as mayor. And I just look forward to watching you continue to serve. And I'm grateful that you're still on the town council.

Thanks. Next, please.

Chris Kenton, Cascade. Liesl, I just wanted to say thank you for the dedication and the incredible amount of hard work that I know that you put into the job. That's evident in everything that you do in terms of the time, the effort, the research that you put into everything. And so to me, that shows a dedication to doing the people's business. And I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you.

Thanks. Next, please.

Hi, I'm Mark Vendetti from the Manor neighborhood. I just wanted to say thank you, Liesl, for all of your service, especially this last year. You've been such an inspiration to me for Grace Under Fire, and the proclamation was so beautiful. I had no idea you're involved in so many things. you know a lot of people who would have been under the stress that you've had would be retreating a lot and narrowing their their outreach efforts but you've been you've been still really really making the contribution and i just i want to thank you for that very much thanks next please

Hello, Liesl. I think you know how much you inspire me and mean to me, and I just wanted to highlight a point. I have prepared remarks later for a different agenda item, but I just wanted to highlight, as a founding board member of the Marin LGBTQ Center, as someone whose first job out of college was testing people for HIV in Marin County, But most importantly, as a little gay boy who grew up here in Marin and wondered if this was a world that would accept me being kind of weird and kind of queer. I don't want to get emotional, but I just wanted to let you know that like it really does mean a lot to a lot of community members. And I know that the Reverend Dr. Janie Spahr is amazed by you and you keep a lot of doors open and you keep a lot of lives and lights on. So thank you so much for your service. And we are very proud of you. And yeah, you're going to be a giant on the shoulders that we stand on. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Is there anybody online? There are two speakers online.

Oh, I'm sorry, PJ, just somebody. Okay, we'll go ahead.

Hi, PJ Pfeffer, Fairfax resident. I just wanted to thank Liesl again and echo all the kind remarks we've heard. You know, I think probably 90% of the times I've reached out to you, it's been because I disagree with you on something that the council is doing. But I appreciate your focus and the leadership you've had in these meetings and trying to actually get them through as reasonably efficient as possible. You know, it's difficult when you're in an elected position with a title like mayor and People don't realize that all five of you are up there volunteering your time for you're not actually being paid. It's all just hours and hours a week. You may be doing in addition to everything else going on in your lives for no reason. So it had been very easy for you to just walk away when meetings got uncomfortable and just say, I don't, you don't need to do this, but, but you didn't. And I appreciate that you did stick through. Thanks.

Thank you. Oh, we got one more in the room and then we'll move on to online.

Hi, Todd Greenberg, downtown Fairfax. I'd like to provide a balanced comment here, balance, even though I'm just one voice. I want to thank you for your service. It's a tough job for anyone to do. But in terms of answering your puzzlement regarding wonder and understanding other people i want to make note that 46 of the people disagree that voted anyway disagree with how you've conducted yourself i want to make note that it's my understanding and has been confirmed by others, according to the Government Finance Officers Association, that Fairfax does not, as you have claimed, have a balanced budget. I want to make note at... Yeah. I'll yield my time and note that I've been interrupted by a member of the audience and that you're cutting me off also. Thank you.

Okay. Um, you know, and I don't mean to cut you off. I actually just think we need to stay on topic, but people have gone off topic anyway. So, you know, um, if you want to continue, continue, but otherwise we'll move on to zoom. Okay. Let's go to zoom.

If I speakers on zoom, our first speaker is Dorothy followed by iPhone. Dorothy, you are unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Hi, I hope you guys can hear me. I just wanted to say thank you, Liesl, for all your work and Steffi, it's been such a pleasure to meet you. I think this has brought a lot of community and civic engagement, which is our responsibility and has connected me with a group larger than I can imagine of amazing people. Some have been speaking tonight. I'm just so happy to recognize them and to know them. And that's because of you guys. And I hope everyone starts to reconnect, starts to build the community back. And I hope I see you out more and more with more engagements that I know that you want to do. You guys are powerful, wonderful people. So I'm so happy about tonight. Congratulations.

Thanks. Next speaker.

I don't know.

The next speaker is iPhone followed by Renee. iPhone, you are unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Hi, I got here late, but I feel like I'm at a Trump cabinet meeting. So I missed the introduction of what was going on here. Feels like a praise Liesl and Stephanie. And I kind of confused on what that is because I, on the other hand, don't feel that you listen to the whole town. And there's 46% of the other town that you guys just partially, partially pushed away. So when you talk about aggressiveness, you guys were pretty aggressive yourselves, but I don't think that's being acknowledged or admitted. So that's irritating. But is this just a praise you guys moment? That's what Trump does all the time when he has cabinet meetings. Everybody goes around the table and says how great you are instead of really telling the reality of it, which... you have to admit some stuff and say that you guys were pretty aggressive too. And didn't listen to people the last for a couple of years and Stephanie, you for more, even more. So that's it. I'm done.

That's it. Okay. Thank you.

Next speaker. The next speaker is Renee. Renee, you're unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Hi there, everybody. Thanks for taking my comment. Liesl, I want to thank you so much for showing us what courage and grace and intelligence looks like in a leader. This year has been one of the toughest years globally and nationally and locally. And I want to thank you for guiding us through with a steady hand. When people came at you with ferocity, you responded with information and facts about some of the most complex issues and toughest state mandates and laws that Fairfax has ever faced. So thank you so much for standing tall when people tried to cut you down. As a woman, especially, and with a daughter who followed this year closely, I want to thank you for making us proud and for showing us what a woman who refuses to be bullied can accomplish. So thanks so much. I look forward to next year. I look forward to you realizing your dreams as a council member. I know you have many, and this town is lucky to have you. And thank you, Stephanie. You rock. Okay. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you. Is there anyone else online? Mayor, there are three more speakers. Okay. Can I just, before we go on, I should have caught it faster. I do want to make sure that when people speak, whether they're, you know, something we agree with or something we don't agree with, that we don't like, you know, yell out or shut them off. And I'm sorry, Todd, that happened. I think you maybe were a little off track, but I didn't mean to cut you off. So we'll move to the next speaker.

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

Hi, good evening. I just wanted to say to Liesl, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. I know we may not have always agreed on things, but I really, really, really appreciate that you've taken the time and effort to really listen to me. And I just want to say I'm so glad that you're still here, that you still got a smile on your face. And I just want to wish you all the best in the future. And thanks again for being here.

Thank you.

Next, please.

The next speaker is Naomi, followed by Eva. Naomi, you're unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Hi, everyone. I'll make this quick here. Liesl, I just want to thank you for your kind and brilliant, thoughtful, informed leadership this past year. You've handed all of these challenges so exquisitely, and you're so appreciated. So thank you so much. Look forward to seeing you around.

Thank you.

Next, please. The next speaker is Eva. You may unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Thanks so much. Yeah, I wanted to note that Liesl Blasch has been many of the things that she was praised for. I would like to point out that I think she's considerably cleaner nosed than Arnie Frank. And so I'm not really sure why that was appropriate. But I did want to gently push back on on the comment from Renee Goddard. I, too, am a woman and I'm the daughter of a war survivor, and I would have been very, very grateful. if Liesl Blash and Stephanie Hillman had been more stand up in terms of the ceasefire resolution that was brought to the town council. And I'll have more to say on that during non-agenda comment. But I think it's important not to misuse our identities to promote a particular narrative, but rather to think about If we're going to be feminists, then we should also be feminists defending Arab women and whether they're Arab Christians or Arab Muslims or whatever. It's simply inappropriate for people who said nothing about the genocide to suddenly champion feminism. It's not it's not it's I think I think something should be said. Thank you. Great. Thank you.

The next speaker is Chance. You are the last speaker online. You may unmute yourself.

Yes, good evening, everyone. Good evening, Council. Just wanted to chime in and thank you, Mayor Blash, for all of your leadership and for holding so much space with so much grace in this community and for just being a good person that wanted to step up and volunteer to help us figure out everything that's going on here in town. it's not easy these days and you've done an incredible job as mayor and, you know, everybody asks, you know, what's going on with the town? And I say, go watch a town meeting. And then when I check in with them later on, they say, wow, that Lisa Blash is, you know, really doing a great job. So I commend you for all your work leading us this year and all the bumps and bruises along the way. You're a really magnanimous person and I'm glad you've Been on the council thus far and for your years, Mayor, and look forward to your year ahead. Thank you. Take care.

Thank you.

Are there any more speakers? No, there are no more speakers.

Great. Okay, thanks. So unless there are comments from council members... Can I just make one quick comment?

I just want to thank you, Liesl, for serving as mayor. It's been an incredibly rough year. I've said this before, you're one of the kindest people I've met, very gracious, and... I wouldn't have been able to do what you did. So great job. And none of us are perfect. And, you know, without some sort of things that people don't like, we make decisions. So there are people that won't like those decisions that are made. But thank you for your service and for your friendship. It's been great seeing you in action through some of these really challenging meetings. Thank you.

Yes, I'd like to add something. Liesl, first of all, as you know, there's many issues we don't agree on. I will say that it's always nice running into you on the sidewalks of Fairfax. And I also want to comment on, I bet you were surprised tonight. I bet you've never been compared to Trump before. And there's a first time for everything. So it is a rough job up here. I guarantee that. So good job. And, you know, I look at politics, especially local politics, a little bit like sports. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we lose. And either way, it's, you know, at the end of the day, we're in the same town. We're all neighbors. And we all want to get along. And we want what's best for the town. And there's a lot of work to do to stop that. We need to stop as many more big buildings as possible. Because we have one through now, but there's a lot out there still that's possible. And I hope we can work together to stop the rest of it. Thank you.

Thank you. And just for context, he works downtown and he is diligently downtown almost every morning, sits out and have coffee and talks to people. And I'm often wandering around downtown because I live downtown. So we run into each other often on it's kind of pleasant. So unless there's any more comments, I'm going to move on to the next agenda item, which is, and thank you people for nice comments. I'm like a little dazed and like not used to that. I'm like, oh my God. It's very sweet. We're going to move on to our regular agenda, which is to adopt a resolution reciting the fact of the general election held on November 4th, 2025, declaring the result and such other matters as provided by law.

I will start. Thank you. Tonight before you is a resolution reciting the fact of the general election held on November 4th, 2025. The Marin County Board of Supervisors certified the election yesterday at their Board of Supervisors meeting. So we have supplied a supplement to the staff report, which was published with the agenda last week. That includes the resolution and the results from the special election that was held on November 4th, 2025. Like I said, the county board of supervisors supervised or certified the election results yesterday at their meeting. And now they have come before you for certification results.

via resolution and if anybody has any questions we're happy to answer them okay questions from council members if there are no questions i'm going to move to public comment okay uh last chance council members moving to public comment yes yep go ahead sierra salem i'm going to talk kind of fast

Don't ever move open time to the end. I feel like that is stifling shutdown and a censoring move. Here are the constituents who bother to show up. Fairfax is a town divided, just like the rest of our world. The recent local election or the town council at some 55% is no mandate, and there is work to do and undo. How do we get over and past ourselves and work together? We all face a bored cube with a proposed and very out of place and out of scale tall building, which will be a fiasco if allowed to happen. Yes, we need housing, especially affordable, which, by the way, this building is not for anyone who actually works at a Fairfax business and makes about $50,000. Everyone, please get and be involved and say often and act. Repeat with me. We will not allow this building to be built as proposed. We are not powerless. We can stop this. We do need reasonable mitigation measures on projects for height. Right.

Can you make sure that this is about the election? And then maybe some of the comments could be for open time.

This isn't open time.

This is an open time. Oh, it's about, we're just talking about certifying the election results, but these are all relevant things. So if you, and we're not going to hold it to the very end, but we are going to hold it to between items two and three.

I mean, I can come back for open time or you can allow me to finish this right now. It's up to you.

Okay, thank you. Thanks, Sierra. Sorry. Okay, anybody else need to comment on the item on the election? Okay, Mr. McIntosh.

I'd like to make, do we need a motion for this, right? Oh, I see.

Oh, thanks. I'm surprised that you'd interrupt me, but you know, there's accidents. I am kind of curious, and I appreciate that we're actually acknowledging the election results, which I think are very important. But I do recall when Frank and Michael were elected, that is almost pushed aside and very quiet. And I do think to be fair to all parts of the community that I think when there is an elected official or a change of gavel, I think we should be respectful to all parties. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Is there anyone online? There are no speakers on Zoom. Okay. We've got one more speaker in the room.

Hi, Todd Greenberg. I hope I'm not interrupted either by a member of the public in attendance or by the mayor this time. Seems to be a frequent occurrence. That being said, as I was saying before, 46% of the people provided no confidence vote. Talia Draheim pardon me if I'm not pronouncing her name correctly, has written in a very cogent brief letter that I would encourage everybody to read that's in the public comment section that talks about what I believe you made your campaign largely about, other than focusing on national issues rather than local issues. And that was about the one development, School Street Plaza, that is going to provide zero, zero truly affordable housing here in Fairfax. So what I want to know, before you interrupt me, if I could continue, I've got 47 seconds.

Yeah, Todd, I just want to make sure that this is about the election results and not about, which could be during public time.

It's about the election results. I'd like five seconds back.

Go ahead. Give him his five seconds back. Okay. Thank you.

So 46% of the people provided a no confidence vote. I'm trying to help you here with your wonderment. And I want to ask you to reflect rather than just defend yourself and ask why those people were so dissatisfied with you and ask you whether you are going to work in this coming year that you hold office to provide any truly affordable housing in Fairfax. Thank you.

Thank you.

We have one speaker online.

We have one speaker online, one speaker in the room. Here we go. Okay. Maybe two speakers. I'm not sure people are moving around. Okay, we go.

We've been inspired. Chris Kenton, Cascade. You know, I'd just like to say, sure, 10 points may not be a mandate, but it is definitely a decisive message. And the arguments were made. They were made with a lot of vigor. And the town decisively rejected the constant arguments and division. The town wants you to work together to solve our problems. I think Mr. Greenberg is right in pointing out the problem of affordable housing, but we can't solve that problem when some people continue to relitigate the same election over and over and over again. The reason why we have elections in a democracy is so that we can make a decision and move on. Not so that we can continue to be stuck in relitigating the same arguments over and over and over again. So I'm asking you from the town, all of you, let's move on. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so I think we're going to keep from co-opping during regular agenda items. And yes, Mr. Becker.

Similar to Mr. who just came before, just inspired. I was just reading the agenda from December 4, 2024, and there was one item on the proclamations for the outgoing council members, and then immediately thereafter, the regular agenda item was to adopt a resolution recounting the fact that the general election seems to be exactly the same. Fairfax in this special election actually did have a majority of its residents vote, which is unusual. We're at like 56%, not normal in this county. People like doing their percentages off of registered voters, but there's a lot of other people who live here. So, you know, I'd say 25% of the residents isn't a mandate, but nobody really gets a mandate in America with our lack of voting and our lack of actual representative democracy. Thank you.

Great, thank you. And there's somebody online? Yes, we have two speakers online. First to speak will be Dorothy, followed by Eva. Dorothy, you are unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Hi, I'm so excited I get to speak again. I didn't know you could take multiple turns. I am so happy with the election results. I'm happy that this is happening tonight. I do hope that we move on together. I think polarization is a threat to not just our democracy nationally, but also a threat to our town. And I hope that we really move forward together. And I hope every end at that table of town council decides to work together and to show it at these town council meetings because we need to see it. I think that's the reality. You guys work together. This vote happened, and I'm so happy that we're going to do this tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, please. The final speaker is Eva. You are unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Thanks. I apologize for the background noise. I'm on my commute. I just wanted the penultimate speaker, I think, was correct in pointing out that it is a representative democracy. You know, and I would like to just add that a representative democracy is not a democracy, as the speaker before him claimed. It is neither representative nor is it democratic. An actual democracy requires a lot more than what Americans are willing to put in. It's an onerous burden having an actual democracy. I would like to recommend Paul Woodruff's First Democracy. It's important because I think the word democracy is thrown around a lot in this country. And most Americans have no idea what the term actually means, what it requires. And it may seem a small point. But that book, First Democracy, was published during the Iraq invasion. And I don't think there's anything more relevant right now than reading it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Is there anyone else online?

No, Mayor. That's it online.

Great. Thank you. OK. Thanks, everyone, for your comments. We're going to move on to item two. Oh, I'm sorry. We have to have a motion. I'm sorry.

Yes, I'll make a motion to adopt a resolution reciting the fact of the general election held on November 4th, 2025, declaring the result and such other matters as provided by law.

I'll second. Council Member Ager.

Aye.

Council Member Garangeli.

Aye.

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

Okay. Thank you. Yes. I smell the barn. They're not going to be mayor soon. They sent us along. Okay. So to item number two, reorganization of the town council selection of mayor and vice mayor. Who's going to be presenting the staff report on that?

It's me again. So tonight we are reorganizing the town council. This happens every year where the seats for the vice mayor and the mayor are rotated. The council has complete discretion in selecting which of its members will fill these positions.

so it's a pretty quick staff report i'm going to hand the discussion and the deliberation over to the council and if you have any questions i'm more than happy to answer well um so i think we do questions and then we go to uh public comment and then we uh do the motion right okay so uh are there any questions at this point or should we move to public comment Okay, if there's no questions, we're going to move to public comment on this item. This is not yet open time. That'll come after this. But any comments on this particular item on the reorganization?

Hi. Good evening, you guys. Thanks again for opening this up for public comment. I am going to... uh recommend that the council nominate barbara kohler for the role of vice mayor barbara has not spent the past year fomenting division in our community she has not been ill prepared for a single meeting or a single one of the numerous governmental meetings she attends as part of her role as a council member uh ever not once has she been unprepared She's never been inattentive or ignored staff, guests, or members of the public during these meetings. In fact, I think she's consistently pursued the highest standards in representing every single Fairfaxian. I think we're really fortunate to have her experience, her attention, her skills, and her creativity on our council. And I think she would be the most effective person in the vice mayor role in 2026. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, please.

As I have before, I'm going to offer myself as mayor to save you guys the hassle of working on it. And short of that, if you can't decide, I would suggest, I forget what it's called, it might be the Mexican hat dance or something where you play that music and you could just go around and play some music and whoever's in the chair when the music stops gets to be mayor.

Okay, thank you. Next, Felicia.

Hello, I remember when Michael and Frank were elected to the council with an overwhelming majority in the highest numbers we've ever seen. And I thought that my optic point of view from the remaining three ladies on the council really was short-sighted and shorted the town. The three of you had an opportunity to try to heal the town instead of continue the great divide and making that divide even greater. You had an opportunity at that time for a fair rotation of Frank or Michael, who does have more experience than Barbara and Stephanie at the time, excuse me, Liesel and Stephanie at the time. I strongly recommend, independent of what the three of you have been discussing, that you think of what is best for the town. You think of the my optic point of view when you keep these things in the three of you. And more importantly, think of the general point of view on your actions. I don't think there can be any choice outside of Frank or Michael. Thank you. Great.

Thank you. Next, please.

Hi, Todd Greenberg. You have three votes that commonly vote as a block. So you can do what you want to do as some people have advised and observed. It's not necessarily the right thing to do. I want to ask the public and I want to ask you to consider tonight whether it's right to appoint someone as mayor who has repeatedly flipped off members of the public, who has repeatedly walked out early from meetings, who has caused such division in this community, I want to urge you to not, because of poor conduct, do not make Stephanie Hellman mayor. It's inappropriate. And 46% of the people think it's inappropriate. I also want to comment contrary to what Mimi said, even though Barbara Kohler is capable in many ways, Barbara Kohler herself has recently been mayor. If you want to be fair, which you claim you want to be, if you want to adhere to the staff report, Mike or Frank would be next in line to be vice mayor, if not mayor. Additionally, Barbara Kohler has also acted unprofessionally and disrespectfully to members of the public and walked out on them while they were speaking repeatedly. I want you to think, if you want to move forward and heal, about being fair, not doing what you can do and getting away with things, but doing what is fair and right for the people of Fairfax. Thank you.

Thanks. Next speaker, please. I want to mention that I've had to walk out to use the restroom. I do have a physical problem, and apparently one member of the audience decides that because I have to go to the restroom, I'm ignoring him. Thank you. Thanks. Next, please.

Hi there. It's my first meeting in person. I normally can't attend because I'm a chef and I work in a kitchen in Fairfax during this time, usually. I took it off so I could attend. I don't have a lot to say. I wanted to start off with, being my first meeting, it was shocking to see Mike Garangeli on his phone the entire time Stephanie Hellman was... kind of giving a proclamation for Mayor Blash. And I want to express my support for Barbara Kohler and Stephanie Hellman, not Dave Egger, who's also fomented so much division in this town over the past year.

Thank you. And it's Frank Egger, Dave Eggers, the writer, I always get his name wrong. Okay, next, please.

Uh, good evening council. I just want to express my support for Stephanie to move into the position of mayor. I think she's well prepared and can move us through this next year. I also would recommend Barbara Kohler as vice mayor. I have not seen the kind of preparation. Um. uh... by our two other new council members coming to the meetings being knowledgeable about what's in staff reports having fully read staff reports and and i don't have the faith in their leadership at this point for the position of vice mayor their reports also their monthly reports are often really scant i don't see that they've been participating on a lot of committees representing the town and getting a full sense of what it takes to uh be the vice mayor or mayor in this town in 2025 it's not 2020 or before that and so i just want to express my support for mayor hellman and vice mayor kohler thanks thank you next please i i just want to

voice my support for of all of the five council members in their most recent election uh the person who got the highest percentage of the vote stephanie hellman with 35 of the vote in her most recent election uh to be put on the council uh for mayor liesl burlash the next highest vote getter in the election putting them on the council at 27 is the outgoing mayor um i you know move to the town in the tenure of Barbara Kohler as mayor. I know she's fine. But, you know, everybody's got to work together. If the council votes for anybody to be vice mayor, that's fine by me.

Thank you. Next, please.

Hello, Mayor. Rick Hamer, downtown Fairfax. I support Stephanie Hellman stepping from vice mayor to mayor, and I would support Frank Egger as vice mayor for the next opportunity. Frank has lots of experience, and I believe it's his turn. so um that's the way we usually do things and rather than upsetting the normal course of things stephanie hellman for mayor frank egger for vice mayor thank you thank you next please good evening everybody larry bragman i want to support frank for vice mayor he's the biggest challenge

that the town is facing is School Street Plaza. And with all due respect to all of you, I think Frank has demonstrated the diligence and studiousness that it's gonna take to negotiate, resolve this issue. It's not going away. With all due respect to Chris Kenton's comment about not relitigating, We're going to be relitigating that issue because the developer has sent notice to the town that it doesn't intend to abide by the conditions that the town imposed. So no, the School Street Plaza project was not rejected as stated in the mailers that flooded the town right before the election. It was not rejected. And we are going to be relitigating those issues because that's just the way it is. And again, I've had many discussions with Frank. He's given me a lot of information, in-depth information, and we need his leadership up there. And we need somebody like him to help us get through this. So strongest endorsement for Frank for vice mayor.

Great. Thank you. Next, please.

Good evening, Council. Chanscotronto. Just wanted to come down in person to speak up in favor of Stephanie Hellman as the right person to become mayor. Just follows the regular procedure. And honestly, Both Stephanie and Liesl have done a fabulous job as mayor in the context of really doing engagement with good updates on Nextdoor and other places where a lot of other people don't want to necessarily be all the time. They do that public service for us. So, yeah, I think Stephanie would be a phenomenal mayor. As far as vice mayor is concerned, Frank Egger has received the highest vote count in the most recent election. I think he could... Do a good job as vice mayor as well. I think my only concern is if Councilmember Edgar doesn't like meeting with staff that really becomes problematic in terms of running a town So I think hopefully if he does get the nod and become vice mayor That could be a good sort of testing ground to see if he's willing to actually show up for the meetings with town staff to do the business of the town and And then, you know, judgment can be made next year about whether or not it'd be appropriate for him to become mayor. But I think in partnership with Stephanie, it would be a good team. I think if, you know, Councilmember Kohler is interested in the vice mayor position as well, she'd do a fabulous job. Maybe you all rock, paper, scissors for it or something. But yeah. At the very least, I think Councilmember Hellman and Vice Mayor Hellman would make a great mayor. And I think Councilmember Egger ought to be considered for vice mayor as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Chris Kenton, Cascade. In the context of this decision, I just want to clarify my remarks earlier. The 10% margin of victory I don't think was about School Street Plaza. I think that... a majority of people in Fairfax, both people who were for the recall and people who were against the recall, were decisively against large developments. The question is, is how do we get there? And so in the context of making a decision about vice mayor and mayor, I think we have to focus on somebody who is going to be committed to working with everyone on the council and not relitigating all the extraneous arguments about competence, about lawyer fees, about all these things. We need to have people who are focused on the people's business. I think what was rejected was the divisiveness. We all want to see a different development there, but we have to get there together, not by fighting each other. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, no, let's not clap, but I understand. Okay, so is there anyone online that would like to speak?

Yes, there are three speakers online. The first speaker is an iPhone user followed by Dorothy. The iPhone user is unmuted. You may now unmute yourself.

Hi, I'd like to choose Frank Egger for vice mayor. I think that you guys should be listening to the 46% of the town that didn't agree with the three-pack and their opinions and how they've been running the town. And I think if you really say you're for everybody, you would try to balance it out a little bit because having it be just a revolving door of three people is got us where we are now, in my opinion. So I would like it's like insult to injury. Deja vu. Keep going over the old thing. Get Frank in there. And I think you really. should be looking at the other part of the town that didn't agree with the three of you and put some balance. Otherwise it's just insult to injury and it's kind of a kick in the face to everybody else. That's it.

Great. Thanks.

Next please. The next speaker is Dorothy followed by Pamela. Dorothy, you're unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Hi, I just want to say I would love an all female team. I'm not afraid of it. I think that all three women have shown the professionalism I want to see. They come prepared. They come engaged. Stephanie, I'm so happy to have gotten to know you because I think you're such a boss and I hope people give you the time to let you excel in this role. Barbara Kohler is always prepared, always engaged, working and laughing with the table. She's amazing. Frank is hyper-focused. And from what I've heard, it seems like he needs to be more open. So maybe he'd be really good. Like he's hyper-focused on nature and trails and might bring in that 45%. So maybe we need it. So I would support Frank or Barbara Kohler for the vice mayor.

Thank you. Next speaker is Pamela. She is the last speaker. You may unmute yourself.

Hello, good evening. I've been thinking over this for the last day or two, and I really believe if you're wanting to promote healing and moving ahead, you need to have Frank as the vice mayor. He knows so many people in town. He has strong relationships. And I think it would really help us move ahead, as some people have been saying tonight. So I give, without a doubt, 100% to put Frank as your vice mayor. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Is there anyone else online? No, Mayor. There are no more speakers online. Okay. So we're going to bring it back to the Council for a decision. Being a data nerd, I just have to point out that it was 44% and 45%, not 46%. So splitting hairs there. Council Member Kohler.

Yeah, I want to say a couple of things. First of all, I definitely support Stephanie Hellman as mayor. And I want to also say to folks who were the recall proponents, it was a decisive victory. And I think I'm really frustrated and tired of hearing about healing the divide when we're not doing it and you're not doing it. And I know two council members up here supported the recall. That to me is very troubling. But I would be happy to serve as vice mayor if I am chosen for that. And it's really so we can move forward in a positive way. I'm kind of disappointed that everyone says we're not healing the divide. Recall proponents caused incredible divisiveness in this town. and provided a lot of misinformation. Whatever you think about School Street Plaza, the recall, if it had been successful, wouldn't have changed that. So let's move on. I want to make a motion to support Stephanie Hellman for mayor. And I want to also just say something echoing what Chance Cutrano said. It's time to start working with town staff. I am really tired of hearing the criticism. It's interesting to me that there's criticism of our town attorney and our town manager. Interesting that they're both women. I've been doing the kind of work, cleaning up hazardous waste sites, which was mostly men. Never even thought about being a woman, but I've seen that here. So I worked at all levels of government, and I've seen that here a lot, and I find it really disturbing. So nobody's perfect up here. And I also would like to say that I'd like to see all council member prepared for meetings to really think about what we pull things off consent. Let's try to get our comments into staff beforehand. I always do that. I don't want to surprise them. I don't need to show anybody that I'm working because I'm bringing up comments at a meeting. I try to get my questions answered beforehand. And so I just want to say definitely I support Stephanie. I'm making a motion for Stephanie Hellman to be mayor.

I'm going to second that.

We have a motion from Council Member Kohler to appoint Vice Mayor Stephanie Hellman to Mayor and seconded the motion by Mayor Blash. Council Member Ager.

Yes. The position of Vice Mayor usually moves into the position of Mayor. Vice Mayor Hellman has stated that she will not be running again come this November. So this is her last opportunity to become mayor during this term that she's serving. So I'm supporting her being appointed as mayor tonight. Thank you.

Council Member Karangelli.

Yes.

Council Member Kohler. Yes. Vice Mayor Hillman. Yes. Yes. Mayor Blash. Yes. Okay.

So bringing it back, we're going to move to vice mayor. And I think, sorry, council. So we're going to have comments from council member Geron Gilley and then council member Hellman. Yeah.

Okay. So in the staff report, and from what I hear from the public, The idea of the rotation is what would be fair. And Frank Egger, who had the most votes in 2024, kind of a landslide thing going on there. And by the way, you got to consider when it comes to percentages. If you have to bring them up all the time, which some people do, there's a big difference in three-person race versus a two-person race. It also matters how many people run. But that aside, Frank has so many years' experience, 40-plus years' experience in this town. A lot of the reasons why people have moved into Fairfax and love it and even fought against things like the rezoning and... school street plaza and things like that um but it was because frank and others before us had made laws and rules and plans that made fairfax unique and i think we need alongside stephanie frank would give a nice perspective a lot of knowledge and i think on a rotational basis That would be the correct thing to do. And believe me, Frank is very prepared. He prepares himself. I've seen it for the terms I served with him before. I've seen it this year. And I think he did that throughout his history. So either way, I support Frank Edgar for vice mayor. And I make a motion to... have Frank be the vice mayor.

Sorry, before we take a vote on that, can I just, I have some comments too, or do we have to take a vote on that? Okay. Am I next? Okay. So we heard a lot of comments and I appreciate that. So I'm just going to recap some of the comments that, and the notes that I took down that were meaningful. And I have a question for our city attorney. But what resonated for me is what's going to be most effective right now for our town. And I think universally we all want to move on. We want to heal. And who's going to be most effective in that role? And so before I kind of go into some of the notes that I capture, and I promise to be brief, I have a question for city attorney. May I ask Frank questions from the dais to help inform my vote? I'm asking the city attorney. so one of the questions i have is so it is problematic quite frankly um that we have council members that don't meet with staff and we have a lot of work a lot of challenges ahead of us and i want desperately to work together with a vice mayor that is committed to doing that and in my mind this role demands someone that will meet with staff weekly At least weekly. I mean, I spend three to five hours a week meeting with you all. And that's just staff. So am I at liberty to ask my colleague on the dais if he's willing to do that to help inform my vote? Because I'm more than happy to work with someone that wants to work with staff and work with. myself as mayor?

Well, I think that you can make those comments and you can say what you hope for or hope would happen. And if Council Member Egger wishes to reply to that, he can, but there's nothing that would require him to. And you are not conditional. Okay, then that's fine.

I would like to hear a commitment from my colleague, Mr. Egger, that that would be Um, something he would commit to meeting with the town manager, um, meeting with planning. We've got a lot ahead of us. As I said, um, one of the comments I heard was the three of us discussing, and I, and I just wanted to remind, um, the public that there's no three members of the dice that can speak about any topic. That is an action item. That's a violation of the Brown act. So I personally have not spoken. with anybody except for one of my colleagues up here about this matter, nor do I speak, or none of us speak with all three of us or all four of us. There's one Brown Act buddy that you're allowed to speak with, which hopefully is obvious, but I just wanted to highlight that. There's no three of us discussing any actionable items up here. I also heard fair. So what is fair? I mean, the pattern of practice has been Frank is in line for being vice mayor, and I want to support that. I very much want to support that. So the question becomes, will he step forward and work with the town staff and work with me in the face of all these challenges? And I think that's where I'm standing right now. I'm in a tough position as far as how to vote, and it's really critical what I hear from you. Next, Mr. Egger. Thank you.

Sure. You know, what's interesting is when I was elected, I was elected by folks who said, we need some changes here. So I've served for one year now, and I've been allowed to have one item added to an agenda in one year. The mayor... And the manager set the meeting, set the agendas. The vice mayor and the manager don't set the agendas. As far as meeting with staff, I'm downtown almost every day. I'm in and around almost every day. So I pretty much know what's going on. And the idea that You have to meet with the staff to know what's going on. You know, it's not necessarily true. The fact is I read every item that's in this agenda packet. I've read everything. I've gone through every single packet item. So I come in pretty much prepared. I've served on local orders. countywide, regional, state, and federal boards, commissions, and councils for 55 years now. And I do know how to deal with the staff, with the lawyers. I've worked with the Attorney General's office for nine years. I've dealt with their lawyers on a regular basis. So... The idea that I may come on the council and not want to help this town get squared away is just simply not factual. The town council has no authority whatsoever in hiring staff. It's been turned over to the town manager. We had some problems during the year that were not of our doing, and it took a long time to get some of that squared away. But anyway, I am available to anyone. I answer emails that come in all the time. I meet downtown with people. I just don't write up every time I have a meeting with someone. I don't put it in my report. but I can assure you I'm downtown all the time talking to people. Obviously, the mayor and the manager set the agendas.

Just on that item, one of the things that I intend to make... So for several years, we had an agenda-setting staff meeting. So the vice mayor, the mayor, the town manager, the clerk, and oftentimes the city manager attend that meeting. So that is a practice I intend to bring back, and I don't want to talk too much about that, but I'm not hearing an answer to my question, a direct response to that. So hopefully you knowing that that would be an agenda planning meeting will include the vice mayor. So knowing that, I'm asking you again, are you willing to meet with staff on a regular basis to help us move this town forward?

Are you saying the vice mayor has an opportunity to get something on the agenda?

I'm saying the vice mayor will be included in an agenda setting meeting with staff and that you will be invited if you are vice mayor. I'm asking you, could you please give an affirmative or a negative response to that question to help inform my vote?

Well, you know, if you want to call a meeting with the mayor and the vice mayor and the manager, I'll be there.

It will be a regular meeting.

I'll be there if, Okay. You're the mayor. You call on the meeting.

So I do want to make a quick comment. That's an affirmative. Did you get, okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

I'm done.

Okay, so I just did want to make a comment. You know, so I want to note that as mayor, I didn't put any items on the agenda myself unless it was during future agenda items. I think I might have put one item, which was the spotted owl, but kind of spaced out on that one. Seemed harmless. But, you know, so because I really wanted to have this town have some peace and start having some standard ways of getting things on the agenda. And I put a number of things on the agenda that were voted down. um, either when I tried to put them on the agenda or after they came up for discussion. So, you know, I feel like there's this sort of sense that somehow the mayor has all power and is like putting everything on the agenda. I didn't actually do that a lot. And, um, it is less common, um, for council members to put things on the agenda because so much of what we deal with is stuff that we have to do that just keeps the lights on. Um, I did want to note that, um, I like that we are trying to follow a protocol that we've had about who rotates into positions. But I have some concerns, and I think some of those concerns are just about being able to, you know, we say we want to have healing. Well, some of that healing means We need council members who are able to work with other council members and not, you know, attack them or, you know, to disagree. Like, we're all going to disagree, and I think that makes us a richer council. But that people can work together, that they're willing to actually work together, and that they are willing to talk to staff. You cannot do this job if you're not willing to talk to staff and get some background information before you come into meetings. I get a weekly update, and I ask additional questions when I need to understand something better. So I think that's extremely important. And I want to mention a little bit about experience too. So I was a GIS analyst 20 years ago. I was a great GIS analyst. I haven't touched the software since then. So if I went to apply for a job right now and said, hey, I want to be a GIS analyst and I haven't touched that software since 2005, I think employers would look at me a little bit askance, right? So I'd have some catching up to do and some beefing up to do, even though I might understand the concepts of geographic information systems for those of you who aren't data nerds. So, you know, I just would like to see anybody who's willing to, wants to be vice mayor, be willing to actually work with staff in a collaborative way, be able to willing, be willing to work with other council members in a collaborative way. And, you know, so I'm not sure I'm hearing that, but I hope that would be the case. You know, I've seen a lot of hostility towards staff, which makes me concerned because, you know, very hard to recruit and retain staff in general in the public sector, but especially with the amount of hostility that I think our staff has faced, and they've been amazing. So, you know, some of these things make it harder for me to make a decision. I'd really love to see people stepping into the vice mayor role, agree to go to one of the Cal City's, you know, new mayors and council members conferences, one of which is coming up in January. And, you know, there's new laws, there's new ways of doing things. There's a lot going on that I think people need to be up on in order to serve in this role. And so I've asked... Council member Edgar, if he would do that twice now, last year and this year, and haven't really had an affirmative answer to that. But I do think it's a really wonderful experience to meet council members from around the state, get new perspectives, get an idea of what they're doing, and just kind of refresh. So I'd really like to see that for somebody who's going to step into that role.

Mayor?

Yes, Council Member Garangeli. Thank you.

A follow-up comment. I made the motion for Frank to be Vice Mayor. I like Stephanie's idea on the meeting once a week, or I'm not sure, is that what you said, once a week? And Frank acknowledged that he would accept that invitation to attend those meetings at your request. I think the reason why I was born and raised in this town, so I didn't move this to the town because of Frank's work prior, I wouldn't compare it to, um, the, the analysis job at all. Cause Frank's been engaged with this town for the past 20 years. Um, after he, um, retired, let's say from office 20 years ago, but he's always been engaged. Um, But the reason why I think most people, if you had moved here in the last, whatever, 40 years, let's say, 50 years, it's because of Frank Egger and people like Frank who helped. It doesn't matter. It may not be true for everybody. But the reason why you love Fairfax is because what Frank and many others worked hard at doing. And so, once again, I think Frank... We'll rise to the occasion. I know what you guys are asking, and he already agreed to what Stephanie asked. And I would hope that we can have a second on my motion to make Frank vice mayor and that we move along and make Frank vice mayor. Thank you.

Well, maybe I'll have to second that. Somebody's got to second it, at least to see where we stand.

Okay, so do we have a motion and a second? We have a motion from Councilmember Gierengelli nominating Councilmember Egger for Vice Mayor and a second from Councilmember Egger. Councilmember Egger?

Aye.

Great, thank you. Councilmember Gierengelli?

Yes.

Councilmember Kohler? No. Vice Mayor Hellman?

Yes.

Mayor Blash. Okay, I'm going to say something before I vote. I would like to consider this a probation period, which is what a vice mayor is, really. You know, just that we really move forward with a spirit of collaboration and learning. And that if, you know, the next group of people that's on the council, when that's up for rotation, you know, they can decide whether the vice mayor is the person that's ready to move into that position. So I guess I will say yes.

Now that the council has voted, yeah, we'll do a reorganization, but let's, if you will, Mayor Blash, call for a break. There are snacks and coffee and refreshments at the table back by the door, I think, still, or maybe they've been picked over a little bit. And then the council members can switch seats. Great.

Thank you so much.

We are going to reconvene. okay so uh please bear with me i may be a little rusty at uh managing this meeting but if i'm not mistaken we are now at the point in the agenda for open time for public expression and this is the time for the public to address the council on matters not listed on the agenda so Each speaker is limited to two minutes. The council cannot take action or discuss items 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. So with that, please go ahead. Thank you.

Wow. I get to be your first whatever you want to call me. Sierra Salen. anyway you know folks online later can rewind and hear the beginning of my comments beginning a couple items earlier regarding school street we need to involve the residents of fairfax and one place to start is but to energize and changing our beliefs most of us a lot of people either don't know about it or don't think we can do anything about it We can change the seven-story building to a four or five-story one, but we have to be involved. Everyone please and get and be involved and get others to be involved. And say often and act, repeat with me, we will not allow this building to be built as proposed. We will not. We are not powerless here and we can change this. We do need reasonable mitigation measures on projects for height, setbacks, and traffic congestion. While we need proactive measures to promote new and affordable housing, we shouldn't have to subjugate the entire community's future to the profit motives of developers to get that. That was from a letter to the editor in the IJ today, that last part. I wonder what would happen if people's cars all broke down on Center and Sir Francis Drake at the same time in morning commute, school drop-off, And the roads were clogged up as in a fire. Who is paying for a ladder truck, bigger fire department and buildings? Who's taking care of the roads? None of us have the right ways everything should be. And too many of us fight, fear, resist, assume, misunderstand different others. We would do well to welcome and value the different viewpoints is adding to the whole. In nature, monoculture is deadly. Former long-time Marinite Jesse Colin Young used to sing, sing.

Come on, people now.

Smile on your brother. Everybody get together. Try to love one another right now.

Lovely. Thank you so much. You're out of time. Thank you, Sierra.

Go ahead.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Mayor. Mayor, I have a quick question about the screen. Is that something new?

One moment. Christine, do we have a new... We are using a different timer. Okay.

And it can't get much bigger than that. Why don't we have the... We like the gong. The little... With the pretty...

The harmony thing.

We... We can bring that back. Okay. Not in this moment, but we'll bring it back. All right.

We accept the feedback. Council Member Garangeli.

Just one other thing. We used to have, we changed to having closed captioning on the bottom, and I don't see that. Council Member Garangeli just reminded me of that, and I think that's important for folks. So if we could, there we go. Thank you.

Okay, thank you for your patience. Please go ahead.

You need to press the button. Sorry, press the button. Thank you. The thing's going to light up red if you've got it pressed. Somebody will help you. There, whoops, whoops, it's off again. Yay.

Hey, my name's Ethan, born and raised here. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, my name is Ethan. I was born and raised here. I just like to respond to some of the things that were said at the last meeting I went to, which admittedly was a while ago. But the idea that homelessness is not a housing issue, that was said a few times. So I just want to refute that idea. And to be clear, I'm not arguing that housing affordability is the only cause of homelessness, but to say that homelessness is not a housing issue is completely at odds with reality. So I'm going to cite all my sources. I encourage everyone to look at them themselves, and I'll just get through as much as I can. California Policy Lab, which consists of researchers from UCLA and UC Berkeley, writes that, quote, findings provide substantial evidence that unsheltered homelessness is a housing issue, a public health and health care issue, and a personal safety issue. Health Affairs, a leading peer-reviewed health policy journal, states that, quote, initiatives using the housing-first approach to permanent supportive housing have a strong track record of success. Quote, to substantially reduce homelessness and its many adverse health impacts, changes are needed to increase the supply of affordable housing for households with very low incomes. UCSF study called the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness states that, quote, participants' inability to afford housing was both the underlying cause of homelessness and the primary barrier to their returning to housing. Quote, any solution to homelessness must address the lack of affordable housing for extremely low-income households. The Harvard Gazette states that, quote, scholars, health care workers, and homeless advocates agree that two major contributing factors are poverty and a lack of affordable housing, end quote. So again, I'm not saying that housing affordability is the only cause of homelessness. But to state that homelessness is not a housing issue is completely out of reality. So I hope we can have some more fact-based discussions of this issue going forward.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, Michael Rosenthal. I know the staff has gotten trashed many times in recent meetings, and I just wanted to recount my latest experience at the town offices. Susan was out sick, and the people helping were really helpful. There was an elderly man who came in with a problem that was with the county, And they could have just said, well, you need to talk to them. But he was so distraught that they just said, you know, let me call them for you. And she took care of it. So that's all I wanted to say.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, staff, and fellow community members. Jody Timms, Cascade Drive. On the climate front, I want to thank the council for your support over this last year in supporting the implementation of the town's approved 2030 Climate Action Plan. i also want to show folks the setup that the fairfax climate action committee uses when we table which we'll be doing on december 14th at the crafts fair alongside the bpac committee so as the climate action committee works to educate the public about healthier and safer appliances we always set up this portable induction burner to entice folks to come on over and talk to us. We usually have a really colorful coffee pot on there, teapot on there too, so that they can learn more about moving off of gas for cooking and for heating. You can borrow these portable induction burners from the Fairfax Library, set them up on your counter, and give induction cooking a try. Or you can buy one of these for about $100, and that just might be a good holiday gift for somebody that you love. So I also want to mention that there's a new option in California now for potentially lowering your electricity costs, and that is called plug-in or backyard solar. if the home you live in already has a solar system in place you can now purchase and add up to six panels setting them up yourself in your yard or wherever you have sun they plug directly into a dedicated 120 circuit with an inverter and you don't need a solar installer or a new PG&E agreement to add up to one kilowatt to an existing system. This is something we've been waiting for for a long time. So the Fairfax Climate Action Committee is hoping to host another electrification fair, hopefully in May, and another EV show in March and May. And again, I just want to thank the council for all your support in helping us create a healthier town. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, Mayor. I'd just like to, since I criticize many things that I don't see are right, I just want to say thank you very much for lending your support to install Frank as our vice mayor. And I do think that's a great effort and offer to both sides of the town. Thank you.

Good evening, Todd Greenberg. Congratulations on being mayor. I've seen you make two struggle with two difficult yes votes, one to ban the camping in the park. Thank you for that. It's such a relief to so many people and so many kids in Fairfax, so many parents that that encampment is cleaned up. There's still some cleanup to do. There's still some trash in the soil. I'd like to ask for some help getting that done. I'd like to ask, as I have at prior meetings in the last two years, that the font size be increased to at least 12 point for those that have to struggle and pour light in the back to read these agendas. I'd like to ask that the mayor come out publicly with ranked goals. for this year, maybe perhaps a list of top 10 that can be guiding themes for the year so that it's clear where the town's going, what the missions are, what your items of import are. I'd like you to make a commitment to providing truly affordable, not so-called affordable housing to people in Fairfax that they can afford and to lowering the cost of housing. That's my personal request. I'd like to ask you to take the amount that was overly allocated to elections in the budget and dedicate those to road repairs. I'd also like you to find a way We're running at a rate of almost two times the legal budget for this year. Would you please find a way to reduce the legal costs? Thank you very much. I have hopes for you. Thank you.

Is this on? Hello. Good evening, Town Council. My name is Romario Conrado and I'm thankful to be here tonight. Just for some quick context about who I am so you don't think I'm just some random. I was born and raised here in Marin and upon graduating high school, I went to UC Berkeley and I majored in political science and rhetoric. After graduation, I became politically involved and I eventually moved here to Fairfax. I say this to highlight that I truly understand and respect all five of you. Despite common misconceptions about politicians, I know that this is often thankless work. Your victories are minimized and your failures are exploited. You take time away from your loved ones to be at times ridiculed by hostile and at times greasy community members with bad faith intentions. And still, given all this BS, you show up because you love this town. You're rooting for Fairfax's future and you're actually doing something about it. So bravo to all of you and thank you. However, it really pains me that I feel like two members on this council do not feel this way or promote the same ideology. I have observed two council members, both in meeting after meeting and community event after community event, bash the hard work of other three council members, and honestly, not really providing much in return. And so while others on this council and this town are collaborative and solution-oriented, I would just hope that folks would be more focused on building rather than destroying. And I'm not talking about housing. And I'll just end with a little Greek proverb that I learned just in this shit show of a political world. And it's that a great society is made when our leaders plant trees knowing that they may not benefit from the shade of them. And so I just hope that you all would know that we're here for the future. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Any other members of the public wish to speak? Thank you for turning off the mic. Do we have any on Zoom?

Yes, Mayor, we have four speakers on Zoom.

Okay, thank you.

The first speaker is Dee Lee, followed by an iPhone user. Dee Lee, you are unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Hello, Deborah Benson, Cascade Drive. Thank you for hearing me, Council Members, Mayor. First of all, I want to give you my observation of the tone of the meeting since that gong has disappeared. I think people are calmer, quieter. They're actually finishing their input sooner. I know that strong The gong sound, if I'm here watching online, my dog gets scared and runs out the door. And I think that that strong sound upends things in us as well. Sounds really powerful. So I would hope that we keep what we have now rather than returning to that. I just want to say I think it's a healing moment. voting Frank in the general realm of the way things have always gone in order as vice mayor. I thank you for that. And I take some issue with some of Council Member Kohler's remarks on certain members of the council being involved in the recall. Everyone was involved in the recall, you know, in one way or another in this town. My parents were divorced and my mother would say things about my father and And my sisters and I would go to my father and say, oh, here's what she said. What do you have to say about this? And you just look at us and he'd say, you tell your mother it takes two to tango and that would be it. And never in my experience in any disagreement is it any one person's fault. Neither side is absolutely right. And I think we need to we need to just put a stop to this blame making.

Thank you. The next speaker is the iPhone user. You may unmute yourself. You are unmuted.

Hi, congratulations, Frank. And I hope that the whole council has a successful, happy, peaceful year going forward with solutions. But my question is something on Miranda and the wall property. We had chance here before the property was turned over. And we said that we wanted a sign that said no smoking, no fires, no camping, no vehicles. Dogs have to be unleashed, no fireworks, no littering. And that it's only open sunrise to sunset. I brought it up with Laisel. I've talked to other people in the town. It just doesn't go anywhere. Like, I don't understand why we don't have a sign up there so that we can keep people from going up there at night. It doesn't make sense to me. And then the pathway, they already measured for a fence. They were going to put a fence down on Miranda because bikes have now made a path and they just jump their bikes and pedestrians walk up this hill and it starts mud falling down the hill, which. A few of us go and try to sloop up out of the street in the gutter. But there was supposed to be a fence put up there out of wood like they have at the park so that bikes wouldn't go down the face of the hill and then just jump right into the in the road. It's a it's a blind turn there. So. I don't even know. And you can't cross talk. How do I know if you guys are going to do something about it? But at this time, we wanted to have a deal made before the property was transferred that we would have a sign up here that said, no smoking, no camping, no fires. And Liesl even knows because she said they couldn't do the campy one until the lawsuit was finished. And I haven't seen him move forward or anybody reaching out to get it done. I have an example. San Rafael has one. San Anselmo has one. I don't know why Fairfax doesn't have one. And I hope you guys can make that happen. And it has a code on the bottom of it. I guess what the municipal code it is. Thank you.

The next speaker on line is Ava, followed by Cindy. Ava, you're unmuted. You may unmute yourself.

Thank you. I just wanted to point out that I think this recall thing has been cast in a very kind of black and white way. And it's not quite accurate. And I want to point out why. It's been presented as a kind of, you know, here are these fractious people who took on the majority on the town council and, you know, it became this belligerent mess. I want to point out that there's a very open aggressiveness in how they took that fight on. And then there's a passive aggressiveness, which countered it.

And I was hesitant to get involved in any way in the recall, even though I was asked to by someone on council.

Because I noticed that a lot of the JCRC Banjo members, that's the Jewish Community Relations Council, were engaged in this. And this is amid a genocide that the JCRC has been very active. willfully, flagrantly, and shamelessly promoting. The genocide continues. There's no ceasefire. In fact, Israel is expanding its war into Syria, Lebanon, Yemen. It's a disaster. We've spent we've sent tens of billions of dollars to Israel to continue to genocide what is now estimated at 680,000 civilians. So when Mr. Conrado, Romario Conrado, gets up and says, oh, well, there's this, you know, there's this other side that doesn't, you know, that is just not open. Well, I'll be writing about this at MarinCountyConfidential.substack.com. But look, you don't even have to look that closely at the major players that came in against the recall. And it's deeply concerning. Thank you.

The next speaker is Cindy, followed by PJ. Cindy, you may unmute yourself.

Hi. Yeah, what I wanted to just say is that I agree with Ciara a thousand percent that the main thing right now that I think we need to come together and focus on is preventing School Street Plaza from moving forward as the developer and the lawyers on that side would like. I think that that's something that if we stand together and put our ideological and political differences aside. We actually can do what's in Fairfax's best interest. And I also wanted to say something briefly in response to the last speaker that has me a little bit concerned because when we're talking about genocide and you know, the Jewish Community Relations Council that has nothing directly to do with Fairfax. And I get a little bit concerned that people start going off onto tangents that are really counterproductive. and are causing more divisiveness by taking ideological stands on things we have no control over. So I would really, really like to urge the council to stick to dealing with issues that we can change that have to do with our interests as Fairfax citizens and that deal with our infrastructure and things that we actually have control over here. Thank you.

Thank you. PJ, you are the last speaker online. You are muted and you may unmute yourself.

I thank you. Just want to reiterate. You know all the concern about any one development that was enabled, frankly, by the repeal of the rent control and trust cause ordinance. Ordinances which would have prevented all of the evictions from School Street Plaza, from other sites in the town, would have kept rents affordable, which people are now claiming during the campaign against these ordinances. The line that the reactionary group was going with was that it's going to stop people from building more housing and really you just need to build a lot more housing in Fairfax. And now obviously that They've gotten those out of the way. They're, you know, oh, we can't build more housing. It's, you know, that doesn't help make things affordable. It's obvious who's making bad faith arguments here and who's being completely inconsistent. To the prior caller's point, I think, pointing out the... many decades long ethnic cleansing operation by Israel's relevant to everybody. I've Israeli family members. I'm a Fairfax resident. We have a group at every town parade that comes and puts up horrific images. But That aside, we also heard one comment earlier in the evening about Lincoln's speech healing to divide. And just want to point out, I think the consensus of the current historiography is that Lincoln's lack of. uh holding the separatists and the confederacy and the leaders of the confederacy is accountable is what um sabotaged the reconstruction effort and led to the continuing lack of civil rights for black people for women um and the lack of democracy that continues to this day in this country thanks

Thank you. Is there any more speakers? There are no more speakers on my mayor. Okay. Thank you. We'll close out open time. and move on to item number three which is we have two resolutions for adoption the first is authorizing the town manager to execute a third amendment to the professional services agreement between the town and fairchild brahms design And the second is a lease agreement between the town and the property owners of 21 Park Road for the Fire Station 21 remodel project. And with that, Kristen, take it away.

Good evening kristin Arnold public works tonight i'm here to go over two items for the fire station remodel project. We also have fire chief mahoney and our architect JESSICA fairchild on zoom tonight to help address questions. So this project has come before council numerous times over the last couple of years. The most recent action was in October where council approved the loan with the county to complete the fire station remodel project. Since then, staff has been working towards submitting plans for permit review and planning the temporary fire station. Tonight's presentation will cover two resolutions for the remodel project. The first one I'll go over is an amendment to the architect's agreement, and the second is leasing 21 Park Road as temporary offices for staff. So the first resolution is to amend the town's agreement with Fairchild-Brahms Designs as the current agreement ends once permit drawings are submitted. This amendment, oh, wait. This amendment will cover the architect services through permitting, bidding, and to the end of construction. More specifically, the scope includes responding to plan check inquiries, developing a bid schedule, responding to bidder RFIs, providing addenda if needed during bidding, attending meetings, and providing updated drawings as needed. During construction, the architect will respond to RFIs, review submittals, and change orders, issue architect's supplementary instructions as needed to the contractor, attend weekly meetings with the contractor, and perform site observations along with providing field reports. Lastly, the scope includes closeout assistance, so preparing a punch list, performing walkthroughs for follow-up, and then providing final drawing files, which incorporate RFIs and supplementary instructions. This is the third amendment with Fairchild-Brahms design for this project, and it will add $84,996 to the agreement. These costs were accounted for in the project cost estimate presented at the October 15th council meeting. This amendment brings the total not to exceed amount with Fairchild-Brahms design to just under $158,000. staff recommends that council approve adding these services to the agreement as they will provide coordinated architectural and engineering support throughout permitting bidding construction and closeout and will reduce the risk of delays change orders scope gaps and contractor disputes through consistent oversight timely responses and consistent field observations As we move to the second resolution, I wanted to provide a bit of an update on the temporary living quarters. After thorough evaluation of multiple options for living quarters, staff and Ross Valley Fire Department settled on using the community center for temporary living quarters. The community center is the most economical option that meets the fire department's needs. This raises the question of where to temporarily relocate staff. During the evaluation process for the living quarters, staff conveniently learned about a house across from the playground that was available to rent. While the site was not suitable for the fire department, Largely due to a narrow driveway which cannot accommodate a temporary engine bay, and due to safety concerns of the personnel crossing the road to reach the engine, the house became a great option for temporary offices. Staff is recommending leasing 21 Park Road. The house has enough space for the five employees that need to be relocated, and I believe there will be enough room for the conference table as well. The rental agreement will be month to month. It includes all utilities. The monthly rent is $3,500, and the initial agreement will be for 10 months. So it's a total of $35,000 for that 10 months. A few other options were evaluated, and this arose as the most suitable solution for temporary offices. The $35,000 was also accounted for in a cost estimate presented on the October 15th meeting. So with that, staff recommends adopting two resolutions, authorizing the town manager to execute a third amendment to the agreement with Fairchild Brahms Design and a lease agreement with the property owners of 21 Park Road. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Council Member Kohler.

Yes, thank you, Kristen. And I'm not sure if this question is for you or for Fairchild Brahms. But, you know, I've done a lot of project management in my day, different kinds of projects, but I'm a little surprised that we're The items that we're talking about for this amendment wasn't included in the original project schedule. I mean, things like coordinating permitting and answering contractor questions and punch To me, that's kind of basic, and so I'm kind of questioning, okay, we're here now, that's fine, but I'm just wondering why Fairchild Brahms hasn't provided a detailed project schedule that covers some of these things, which are, you know, just kind of typical in a project. Obviously there are things that can come up that we hadn't foreseen, but I'm just wondering, is this a question for you? And I know you came in on the middle of this and I know everybody's been very diligent working on this. I'm just wondering, Do we need a broadened project schedule that really covers everything we think could happen through the end of this project? And anything unforeseen makes sense to me to say, oh, we have to do an amendment. But I'll let you talk.

To some extent, that's a little hard to answer because I wasn't here when the original. Right.

So maybe it's fair to answer since she's on the line. Kristen, do you want me to answer?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

So when we first started this project with the town, we were specifically asked in our proposal to exclude sort of this end part of the project from our original agreement. Um, you're right. I mean, all of this is sort of normal parts of a agreement, but we were specifically asked to not include it. Um, I think maybe there was, I don't know exactly why, but, you know, maybe there was some idea that the project wasn't going to actually. Move all the way through into construction.

Okay, and maybe just to follow, and I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name.

Jessica Fairchild.

Oh, hello. Thank you. So are there other things that are part of normal construction that you foresee that we aren't including here? So other than unforeseen things that could happen, Do you think now this is kind of the end of the line as far as finishing construction and the punch list, et cetera?

Yes, this would cover the architectural services and engineering services through the end of the project. We had in our proposal, there were some assumed timeframes. And as you said, if there's some unforeseen changes, situation that comes up um but yes it does cover um the only thing that that um would potentially be outside of this is there was some discussion of more of a project management assistance but we're that's not included in this right now and that would be that's not normal architectural services

Okay, and then just one more question. Looking at the schedule, do we believe we're on track for awarding the construction contract and starting construction June, July 2026, or do we need to amend that schedule at all?

Not that I know of. I mean, the schedule was, and Kristen can talk about this as well, like this was developed sort of with the town. And the schedule is obviously also potentially based on the actual awarding of the contract, which has to go through the public bid process. But as of right now, yes, the schedule is.

Okay. And as someone who's seen the project plan, just keep in mind that every row on this probably has 40 or 50 rows underneath it. So this is a very condensed.

I understand. Yeah, I've seen this. But one question for Kristen. It looks like and first of all, thank you and staff for finding the house across the street. That's great, fortuitous and good work. I'm just wondering, are we being prudent saying 10 months? What if something happens and it takes a couple more months? Do we have an option to extend if need be, not at a jacked up price? I'm just wondering.

Yes, I've talked to the property owners about this and they almost brought it up initially that they understand that construction tends to run long and they're more than willing to work with us if we run over and the contract will allow for a month-to-month extension.

Okay, and at the same price? Have we talked about that?

I believe so, but I may need to double check.

Okay, I think that would be a good thing for us to have some kind of, you know, some kind of ability to extend if need be at the same price. So I would just ask that we try to do that in our lease agreement so that we're not, you know, subject. And I'm sure they're wonderful people, but we're not subject to someone saying, oh, you need this. So now it's going to be $5,000 a month. So thank you so much. And I want to just thank the team for all your work. And I know Mayor Hellman has been involved in all these calls, so appreciate it. Thank you.

I have a question, too.

Go ahead, Council Member Garangeli.

Okay. So amendment number two was the $9,500 additional monies. I think that was voted on by this council. And I think the amendment number one was prior. And of course, the original agreement was prior. And I'm just trying to wrap my head around the idea that I thought all along that those numbers were going to actually take care of what needed to be done. I thought that was substantial monies, and now it's like 300% more money.

Nothing to the 1.5 that we all signed off on has changed. There's no more additional funds. This is all under the ceiling of 1.5, and Kristen has stated that a couple times in her presentation.

Right. I understand about the 1.5, although I thought it was 1.7 now.

Sorry, 1.6. That's okay.

Yeah. All right. So it's one, but it does keep going up. And just what concerns me is. within that 1.7 now, I think it started off at 1.5, was when I see things like, here's the original agreement for 47, and then two amendments later, it's 73,000, and then the third amendment is more than the $73,000. It's not 300%, by the way. I made a mistake there. But it seems like a lot of money. So I have a question for... everybody involved that's working on this. What are the chances that the project can even be done for the $1.7 million?

I don't know. Let's just keep it to the facts. It's 1.6. Okay, 1.5, 1.6.

I'm exploiting the difference. Okay, it's 1.6. My apologies. I don't see it here.

But yeah, I think the point is we don't want to get nickel and dimed.

So is there a chance that this is going to cost more? Are we going to find out later that, hey, guess what? It's not 1.6. It's 1.9. Where does this end, I'm wondering?

So when we put together the cost estimate in October, we did our best to stay conservative so that we do not go over the $1.6 million. You can never promise in construction that something unforeseen is not going to happen. But we really did our best to plan for those unforeseen items. And this amendment was not unforeseen. When we put the cost estimate together, we included this cost in the $1.6 million to make sure that we had the budget To add this to the agreement and Kristen 1.6 includes a 15% contingency correct Yes, the The contingency isn't an exact 15% of 1.6 because some costs were left out of the contingency. So it was Yeah, it was

There's a healthy, there's a healthy contingency over 10%. Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. Anything else, Mike? Okay.

Go ahead. Yeah. So, um, I want to thank councilor member of gear and Gilly for asking those questions. Cause those were some questions that I had. So that takes care of that. I guess I just wanted to go back to the one point. So, um, sounds like we did budget for this. So this is not above and beyond what we already had. I think it's just sometimes surprising for us as council members are like, Oh goodness, there's another amendment. Um, w are there likely to be more amendments? I think there was a mention of a project management system.

I am looking at hiring a construction manager to help with this project. Fairchild Brahms Designs offers that service. So they've provided a scope. We're just Not at the point where I'm ready to present and ask for it. Okay. But there is a chance that there will be a fourth amendment for construction management services. Okay. Thank you.

That's in the 1.6.

Yes. Yeah, we accounted for that in the...

But the transparency is important, right? Because I think amendment sort of infers that there's, you know, it wasn't expected or it was, you know, and what we're hearing is quite the contrary.

Yeah, yeah. It can be both, but in this case, yes, we very much have planned for these. Okay, go ahead.

Thanks, Mary. Thank you, Mary. Just a couple questions. Is six months a reasonable time to figure it could be completed, the project? Could be completed about six months of actual work?

Jessica, do you mind answering that one?

Sure. Sure. We think so, given the scope. You know, it's an existing building. The final sort of timeframe is when you go when the project actually goes out to bid and there's an actual contractor on board, you know, they're There may be some issue that they bring up, but in terms of sort of our best guess in terms of time, that seems reasonable. I was just going to say it is an existing building, so... when you're opening up an existing building, there's sometimes unforeseen conditions that could delay that. But I think that given the scope of the project, that's a reasonable timeframe.

Thank you. Just a question to staff. The firefighters will move into the community center building. Are we going to have to add showers and another bathroom to that building?

Yes. There's two bathrooms in that building right now, and both of them will get temporary showers installed.

Okay. So one of them is the children from outside could come in and use it. Will that change?

Yes. We are going to have to close the bathroom to the public. Temporarily? Yes, temporarily. Just during the remodel project. Our plan is to rent a portable bathroom that we can put right next to the playground. Perfect. Okay.

And the good news is that bathroom.

These work anyway.

Will be updated to some extent.

Yes, ideally after the fire department moves out, because we have to install the temporary showers, the floor will be ripped up. So the floor will need to be redone afterwards. So hoping maybe there's a couple other things we can replace.

Do we have an estimate yet for those costs?

Yes.

It's all underneath the 1.6. It's all in the same ceiling.

Yeah, it's all included. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

I, in the 1.6 budget, I budgeted for. Bringing in a whole new trailer and that was. The most costly option and that's what we had budgeted for. So the community center, right? There was a couple hundred thousand dollars allocated to trailer.

Just one last comment. 21 Park has a car in the carport with a cover on it. Is that temporary? Will we have parking for our employees at that location?

It would be tandem, but... We'll be able to fit two cars in the driveway. They are going to keep use of the garage and keep the car there.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, let's move on to public comment on this item number three.

In a spirit of saving the town's money, I am pleased to extend to the fire department either a container or a temporary erected building to store like the sea graves, since that doesn't come out all the time. And possibly, the reason I use possibly because I don't know what it is, some of the equipment that's not readily pulled out. So in other words, things that don't need to be in the bays at the fire department building that will slow down the construction process, I can offer that to the fire department without cost. So that way, again, within your 1.6, you should be able to have additional money to allocate to the construction. Thank you.

Hi, Todd Greenberg. I would like to thank the owners of 21 Park for making that available to the town's fire personnel at a reasonable rate, making it available to the town at a reasonable rate. Uh, just a point of clarity here, a little housekeeping item on page two of this report and the paragraph that speaks about lease agreement, temporary office space, temporary office spaces, obviously different than a temporary housing space. And this refers to community center initially, And then in the next paragraph down, it says a housing across the street from the community center at 21 Park Road. In the discussion here, it seems like we're talking about the community center. And we're talking about housing at Park Road, but we also talked about housing at the community center. Could that be clarified for those of us that don't understand? Pardon me for not reading this correctly if I haven't, but I'd like a little clarity there. Then additionally, the mayor has indicated that there are single lines that refer to 50 other potential lines. Maybe it's 20, maybe it's 50. Is there some reason that all of those sub lines aren't included in this light package? Is there some reason there isn't a lease? contained herein and there's no discussion about a security deposit and then it talks in numerous places about not to exceed you know there is a contractor will the contract have that in it does it have that in it is this got the potential to be a seven million dollar bridge type fiasco uh i'll give you an example here where uh cost overruns were already questioned on the dais. On page... That's time. One, there's talk about a new route.

Thank you. Are there any members of the public who want to speak on this? Okay. Moving on to Zoom. No, on Zoom. You know, it just occurred to me that because of the scope and size of this effort, we might think about having... a project page on on the website where we have all the contracts and you know we're going to be looking at another amendment and this is going to evolve for for a bit so that's just just it's an idea and yes of course we do have contracts and those have already been provided under different um meetings but um i just wanted to clarify so we have town staff working out of the community center today and they will be displaced by fire personnel once this project gets underway and that's going to be coming the living quarters for the fire service and so the staff members primarily finance will be displaced and they will be relocating across the street at 21 park is that correct yes okay great so that is clear uh was there anything else that you thought we should clarify that you heard No. Okay.

Um, I just, I'm ready to make a motion.

I just want to thank you and Heather, um, for thinking out of the box and how really creative these solutions are and they have been cost savings. So I just wanted, you know, we don't often see this kind of creativity and, um, um,

I should state these were not my ideas.

No, but you pursued them and made them happen. You absolutely did. And it was a lot more work than you had originally signed up for. So I just want to name that and I'm excited about it. And I'm glad that we're not going to have some big trailer as well. So thank you.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt two resolutions, the first authorizing the town manager to execute a third amendment to the professional services agreement between the town and Fairchild Realms Design, and the second, a lease agreement between the town and the property owners of 21 Park Road for the fire station 21 remodel project. I'm going to second that.

I also just want to say I love the idea of a project page for this for transparency.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You third?

We have a motion from Councilmember Kohler and a second from Councilmember Blash. Councilmember Blash. Yes. Council Member Ghirangeli. Yes. Council Member Kohler. Vice Mayor Ager. Aye. Mayor Hellman. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Kristen. Moving on to item number four, we are considering an urgency ordinance of the town council of the town of Fairfax amending chapter 7.048 residential accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units. of the Fairfax Town Code relating to accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units to comply with recent changes in state law and finding the action to be statutorily exempt from CEQA and public resources per code 21080.17. Take it away, Jeff. Great.

Thank you, Mayor Hellman, Vice Mayor Egger, and town council members. So this is an annual event from the state. They kind of tweak the ADU regulations and then send it out and ask us to adopt it. And then if we don't, then our ordinance gets tossed out and their regulations are enforced anyway. So if we adopt it on schedule, then we get to keep

A little bit a little closer. Yeah.

If we adopt it on schedule, then we get to keep a little bit of a local control and keep some of the few special things that we have in our ordinance. And I'll go through those in addition to the changes for state law. So tonight we're asking you to do two things. First is to determine that the action is exempt from CEQA, kind of a standard CEQA exempt finding. And then the second is to adopt an urgency ordinance. And by adopting an urgency ordinance, it buys us a little bit of time to kind of go through the public hearing process. So if you choose to adopt it tonight, then we'd go to the planning commission later this month for a public hearing, and then we'd come back to you Early next year to kind of re, adopt it and there might be some minor tweaks from the planning commission and those would be okay as long as they're still kind of consistent with the state law. So, the. Okay, so I'm just going to go through these really quick. The state laws that were adopted this past year 1 is actually. A pretty good idea, in my opinion, if the governor declares a state of emergency, like if there's a flood, earthquake, fire, some disaster, then homeowners can kind of build the ADU first and then kind of go back and build the house second. So there's kind of a little bit of ability to do that because an ADU can be built, it's much smaller, it can be built much faster than rebuilding the main house. So that's an idea that was proposed and then signed into law by the governor recently. The second one is they are limiting that JADUs can no longer be used as short-term rentals. And so we currently have a provision that kind of did it half and half. We allow JADUs to be used as short-term rentals, but only if they were permitted prior to January 1st, 2020. So the state has said, no, no JADUs can be used as short-term rentals. So that's no longer an option for JADUs. You can still do it for ADUs that are built prior to 2020 for now. The next one is,

They have very specific... Can I just ask you a question? I'm sorry to interrupt, but you just mentioned that for ADUs, you can use them as short-term rentals if they're before January 1st, 2020, but when I asked you this question, you said that the state had changed it for ADUs as well.

Yeah, I was incorrect. I went back and I looked it up.

Okay, so we have an error in the urgency ordinance.

Yeah.

Okay, thanks.

Yep. Now, we could choose to... ban it for all. We could just make it a blanket change across, but the state law only requires that we change it for JADUs. So the other items, I'm just going to focus on the big stuff here. There's a different definition of how you calculate square footage. Like currently it's very easy. You just measure the outside of the building fits twenty foot wide by thirty feet long twenty by thirty and that's your square footage now it allows the calculation to be done on interior living space so you subtract out the garage and uh... anything at the porch and walls and anything that isn't interior living space. And then that's your allowance for how big the ADU can be. So it allows ADUs to be just a little bit bigger and it creates a calculation nightmare for staff. So thank you very much, HCD. The There's also new rules for, it was kind of fuzzy in the last updates about if you could combine ADUs on the same lot. And so that's been clarified. You can't, there's some new rules. So on this, on page three of the staff report, generally you can combine one and two, which is a converted ADU and JEU to create it on a lot and a detached ADU. Those can be combined and you can also combine a converted ADU on a multifamily dwelling and a detached ADU on a multifamily, with a multifamily dwelling. So they're allowing you to, they've clarified what you can combine. Then the last, major thing they did is, and this is pretty similar to last year, but they added some steps and clarified it a little bit. They created a very specific process for how the ADUs are approved. Then this is on page four of the staff report. There's the completeness and then the approval and then there's an appeal period, but it's all very specific and spelled out in the ordinance. Then in terms of kind of unique things that we have in the code.

Jeff, before you did that, I think there was another issue with JADUs. Before it required always owner occupancy. But now maybe you could touch on that. That was another state law change. If they have a separate sanitation, if the JADU has its own bathroom, basically, then it doesn't require owner occupancy.

Correct. But if you share a bathroom and it's a day to you, then owner occupancy is required.

Sorry for interrupting.

That's a good one to point out. So that's a big change.

I'm sorry. What's the change?

So it used to be that you always had to have owner occupancy of the main house with a JADU. Now, if the JADU has its own bathroom, it isn't required to have owner occupancy in the main house. So you could have Frank, who didn't own it, in the main house as long as they have their own bathroom. That was a state law change. Got it.

Yep. So in terms of some of the things that we are keeping, and we move this provision towards the beginning, well, we added a definition of director because there's a director in the code and there's not, it's not clear who that is. We also moved this provision under processing fees that gives the amnesty to kind of pre-existing ADUs that they can come in with a 50% reduction and they're not penalized for not having a building permit. We just want them to legalize it.

And we extended the... And also all ADUs and JADUs get 50%, not just the amnesty ones. We made the 50%.

Yeah, that's correct.

Sorry for interrupting, but I kind of know this way too much.

Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. I'm reading it wrong. All ADUs get the 50% reduction until 2036, and there's no penalty to legalize an ADU until after 2036. And JADUs. And JADUs, yep. Okay, what else we got here? And then they did some restructuring that supposedly makes it easier to follow. They divided into kind of class one and class two ADUs. And class one is the more ministerial approvals and class two is still ministerial approved, but it has extra local development standards that apply. And I think that's about it that was changed. Yeah. Anyway, so I think that's the summary. If you want to really dive into it with more details, we can do that.

I think I would just mention that we have a supplement because the original package had some errors in it. So the supplement that we received with the red line clearly corrects what was in the original package. And thank you for doing that. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Can I just ask, so there still needs to be an additional change apparently made to this, as you noted earlier? So there's...

It used to be that all ADUs that were built before January 1st, well, all of them, if they were built before January 1st, 2020, they could be used as short-term rentals. State law changed, and it made it that... all JADUs could not be used as short-term rentals. And what happened was in the change in the supplement, it says that jadu's that's the state law change but it also includes adus that it says they can't be used as short-term rentals now the state law didn't change that and we had it in our short-term rental ordinance that it would be only those before january 1st 2020 could be used for short-term rentals so When Jeff provided the supplement, I asked the question, why are we including both? Because it was my understanding it was only the state law change for JADUs. And so he had gotten back to me, I'm sure this is way too convoluted, saying state law changed both. It didn't. So if we want to stay with what we did before, The JADUs have to change. No short-term rentals there because of state law, but what we did before for ADUs said that those built before January 1, 2020, couldn't be used as short-term rentals, and that's in state law. And what we have right now is that no JADUs or ADUs could be used as short-term rentals. And that may be something that we want to do.

You're saying we could strengthen it in terms of disallow or tighten the restrictions on short-term rentals, or we could loosen it?

No. Okay. So state law just changed. I know. Okay. So it only affected JADUs. Right. Our thing for ADUs said that only those built before January 1st, 2020 could be short-term rentals. In the supplement, it says both. Neither JADUs or ADUs could be used as short-term rentals regardless of when they were built.

So can I just say that... I'm going to have some comments about that after public comment. And I just wanted that to be clarified as to what we had before, what is before us now, and whether or not that we might, you know, depending on what we decide tonight, there might need to be a change noted when we read it, you know, when we move to pass it. So thank you. I'll address it more later, but thank you for clarifying.

and i've and i've identified the change that would need to be made we would just need to cross out um what page are you on it's on page 14. it's section it's way at the end it's i non-conforming zoning code conditions building code violations and unpermitted structures and then it's subsection 2b exceptions Right now it says nonwithstanding division above the town may deny a permit to legalize an existing but unpermitted ADU or JADU that was constructed before January 1st, 2020. What?

That's not dealing with the short-term rentals. That looks like another error in there. That's a different section, and I think that looks like another error that I missed.

So we would need to change that one.

Yeah, it's, I don't know where it is, but we'll find it later.

My eyes went to that because I saw that. Okay, well, I can, I'll keep looking because it'd be good to kind of get this leaned up tonight.

We could probably find it later. Do we have any questions, clarifying questions from the dais? Or can we move to the public comment and then we can have some deliberation on how to move forward? All right, let's open the public comment. Or is this a public hearing? It's a public comment, right? Public comment.

Thank you very much. My first comment is, where is our due process? So the staff report was provided to us in the agenda packet on Friday. And then early this morning, a red line version was provided again. So very few people probably even know about it. I understand the need to be in compliance with state law so we don't lose all of our custom and tailored needs and wants around the ADUs and JADUs. However, we have a tremendous amount of staff. We've hired Bryn, I believe, as our housing specialist. I can't believe this would be thrown to us at the last minute to stay in compliance before the change of January 1st. I encourage town council to give due process and allow the public input with the amount of time to read a 15 page document, not just when you hear about it, maybe for me speaking right now, so that the town come back and listen to the first reading, have an opportunity to input, because even the reading that we're hearing here from Jeff, It's being changed on the spot. There is no complete document for the public or a complete list of what was changed and why so that the public can actually weigh in from an educated point of view. So again, without due process and doing this properly, I object to this being crammed through as an emergency ordinance. And I wish the council would really consider that and bring it back. We can properly tailor it. So it's in compliance by a first reading, second reading, and then a third 30 day adoption. So we might lose three hearings, but it engages the public. So please follow due process.

Todd Greenberg seconding what Mr. McIntosh just said, aware that there could be some potential loss or default to state rules. I would question, I'd like clarity here, if we did move to state rules, could we then readopt some of what we want for fairfax or would we lose what exists that needs to be clarified for the public um and there's some issues here um there isn't due process there's insufficient notice to the public the red line that i requested at the prior meeting was only provided today council members most likely and the public hasn't had sufficient time to see this i would recommend that you move to a special meeting for this two weeks from now or something like that. There's flow charts that are needed on how this works. ADUs are being discouraged in Fairfax. I've asked multiple times over the last two years for updated data on both ADUs permitted and ADUs with certificates of occupancy. The planning director indicated, well, it's apples and oranges. We changed our methodology, but the data still hasn't been presented. I would hypothesize that our ADU production has actually gone down. That does not help housing affordability in Fairfax. It refers to health and safety code in here, but there's no code citation. Well, if you look at the code, wow, there's a lot there. Is there any help for all the people in Fairfax that Barbara Kohler hoped to help by providing an amnesty for those that have ADUs or JADUs? Because it looks like, according to this, they have a lot of repair costs that need be done. Can the council please consider fee waivers, and an assistance program for those that would like to provide affordable housing to people in the form of ADUs and JADUs?

That's time.

Any other public comments in the room? Okay, seeing none. Do we have any on Zoom? Nope. Okay, we'll close out public comment. Janet, would you mind just in layman's terms explaining why we have an urgency ordinance this evening, explaining what you lose if you don't proceed this evening? I think it are kind of confusing. I'd be happy to. Thank you.

So come January 1st, 2026, state law will take effect. If you don't have an urgency, if you don't have an ordinance in place, there's no time to do two reads in 30 days. And so this is a template. that has been prepared for a number of different clients by Best Best and Krieger, and they provide this to all of their clients so that you can take the new requirements and you can added into your existing, taking out what's no longer allowed, adding in the new requirements, and so that you can retain your customization that you had prior that's still allowed. As they do and have been doing now for many, many years, the state gets progressively more strict as time goes on as far as making uniform requirements rules or laws about ADUs and JADUs. And so every year, or every two years at least, we see this come, and it comes very quickly, and we have to analyze it, look at it, develop the template, and then we received the template not too long ago, and we've been

We've been adding it into ours. If we do nothing tonight, then what happens?

Well, come January 1st, you will have state law only. You will not have your customization through local.

And you can't go back, let's say, in March and say, okay, we want to readopt all those customized. The ship has sailed and you can't go back. Right. You lose it. You lose it.

you lose it. And so what we're going to do is called the belt and suspenders approach. So there'll be more time to look at it and talk about it and discuss it. This is an urgency just so it's in place by January 1st. We're also going to come back and go through the normal planning commission and then up to council planning commission. That's really helpful.

It's a mechanism to just protect what you have. It's clearly suboptimal, but it's a very, very common practice.

Yes, everybody's doing it right now quickly, but it will come back and people will have the opportunity to talk about it. Not that it would really change much because we're stuck with what the state tells us we have to do. But, you know, you can. There's opportunity to look at it. Planning Commission will look at it. They may make some more changes. They have to be in conformance with state law, but they can. And they'll come back up here with a recommendation to counsel. And you'll again look at it. and adopt it, and then 30 days later, it'll be in effect. But that urgency starts January 1st, and so it runs in effect until your other one comes in. And it's to hold the place, to hold stuff in status quo.

As far as short-term rentals, I know J-Do's are out now, but the ADU and the customization that we have today as far as those that are built prior to 2020... What flexibility do we have to move that around or do whatever? Is there any?

We have to be in conformance with state law. So as long as state law has not occupied that field, we can change it. But when they have and when they do, we don't have the ability to change it.

Just to clarify, it was a few years ago the state changed for ADUs and said anything built after January 1, 2020 cannot be used as your short-term rental. So that's old. And when we looked at short-term rentals, we felt that that was appropriate to allow those that were built before January 1, 2020 to be used as short-term rentals. And we had that discussion then. And Jeff, that's on page seven.

Okay. Okay. So I was going to say Mayor Blash. Council Member Blash, do you have some... Yeah.

So I just wanted to say that if we can make some of the cleanups tonight to this, because we have to, that would be great. I am concerned about anything that would change what we already have about... ADUs in our town code that we don't have to change because there hasn't been ample time for the public to hear, and this has been a really touchy issue. So I don't want us to make changes on the fly, if that's at all possible, that we don't have to make without having ample public discussion about it. And I did want to clarify to one of the comments that we heard that the state has a website that at least provides updates on ADU production. I think it's only annually, but we do provide that annually in terms of the types of production that we do. It's called an annual progress report, and it includes, you can break it down by type of unit.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Go ahead, Vice Mayor.

We actually need, we need the new affordable housing that would come out of ADUs more than we need more short-term rentals. I think keeping both ADUs and JADUs in this ordinance, it matches what we've been doing. And I think we need the affordable housing much more than short-term rentals. That's all.

Okay.

I just want to say I agree with that. I'm just concerned about how we have moved on issues in the past and people have said they hadn't had ample time to understand what was happening to their property. So that's my only concern. I do agree, however, at least, you know, in theory with what Mr. Eggers said.

Well, currently they can't, it's got to be, they can't have short-term rentals, right? Yes, they can. Today? Yes. Our current ordinance?

In the current short-term rental ordinance, it's before January 1st, 2020, ADUs could be used.

I'm talking about built after.

Yeah, if you build it today, no, it can't be short-term.

Okay, so I'm just saying, if we keep the same language for built after. Yeah.

That makes sense.

So I'm ready to go.

Okay. I would just say so that when you mentioned 11, page 11, that is actually important. That is our old language. But the page that talks about the short-term rental issue is on page 7. And I would suggest that we go to what's in state law, which is for JADUs. They can't be used for short-term rentals. no matter when they were created, but what we currently have for AGUs is those before January 1st, 2020 can be used as short-term rentals and those after cannot, because that's also state law and that's the way we did it in the short-term rental ordinance. And we had a lot of discussion about that. I think capturing what was talked about is making changes on the fly. I think we have an opportunity, because we're going to have to go into the short-term rental ordinance in the future to change this, Jay. Do you think we could have a more fulsome discussion then? And I will also say for people in the audience, there were very few changes that were made for this supplement and we got it very late last night and I read it last night and some of those were because I asked for them. There was some confusion, but this is an urgency ordinance and we do have to move forward to protect what we have. And years ago, as Todd mentioned, I brought the amnesty as well as the 50% fee waiver for all ADUs and JADUs. And I frankly cannot support the idea of 100% fee waivers. We are not recovering our costs fully to begin with. Even if we did 100%, we don't recover our full costs. And, you know, staff have to work on this. Our planning director has to approve these over the counter. So I think our amnesty ordinance, and one of the things we did in this change, is kick it forward to make it 10 years again. When we took this up a couple of years ago, I asked that we kick it forward so it would be a 10-year amnesty, and I think that's something... We should continue because there are people who built ADUs that were illegal, and we want them to be able to come in and feel comfortable about legalizing those. So thank you. So I'm actually the one behind some of these more recent changes, and I think it's really in good shape. And other than that one change on page 7, number 4, the rental term, which I just discussed, and maybe we would read out if others agree to that.

I can... I have some proposed language if you want it.

Well, why don't we do that if and when others agree?

Right. And was there not a change on page 11 too or not?

No, that was an error. That's supposed to be there. Thank you.

I have a comment. The state, once again, keeps controlling what we do in our town. And my perspective on the short-term rentals versus long-term rentals is it should be up to the person who owns them and the person that owns the house because in some cases short-term rentals helps people pay for their actual house right right okay but And they, I just don't understand. I think there's a need for both short term and and and long term and I think it should be up to, and I know the state wants it only for. They want to do away with short term rentals. No, that's not what's being said.

For JADUs, they wanted to get rid of those as short-term rentals. Right. But they haven't. That's what we're talking about. Just JADUs. And then for short-term rentals for ADUs, they only made the change that it couldn't be for things built after January 2020. So staying with that, and I want to just mention, Mike, before you were on the council, I'm the one who brought short-term rentals. With the idea that it helps some people stay in their houses.

Right.

And pay their mortgage.

The only other thing I want to add, I'm sorry, is that this feels, I understand that we need to do it to save what we already have. What we already have can't be brought back into the mix. You lose everything. Okay. Um, the, uh, no, I'm not quite done. Um, when did we find out that these rules had changed? I just want to know how come we're so rushed. I believe they were changed like a week ago or something.

No, I believe they were, they were signed by the governor in September, I believe.

Um, no, he had to imagine mid October, October. Yeah.

And then the, um, the housing group at BBK takes them and there's a bunch of them and there are different things that are happening. But this one happens pretty frequently. They take it and they analyze it and then they develop a template that people can use, all of their clients can use. And so it's a shared service. It's a shared cost. It saves money. Instead of me taking the law and looking at it and doing it separately or any of their other city or town attorneys doing that, The housing group takes them, creates a template that people can then use with their existing ordinance and stay in compliance with state law. And so it happens pretty quickly. I think we received it just a few weeks ago in November.

Thank you.

Great. So I just wanted to quickly add before we go to the vote that there's a difference between an ADU and a JADU, and they're kind of different animals. So a JADU is a junior accessory dwelling unit, which has kind of a really specific definition that I'm not going to do right now. And an ADU is a different type of an accessory dwelling unit is different than a junior accessory dwelling unit. And so that's why they're kind of making the distinction here. And a lot of times the junior accessory dwelling unit is smaller. It's part of the main house. It might share bathroom facilities with the main house or not and have less full kitchen facilities. So that's why there's the distinction between these two things, which I think we all start referring to by their alphabets rather than, you know, by what they actually are.

With that, I will entertain a motion.

Well, if we have an agreement on kind of the rental term, I think if Jeff could read out what we have on for the paid on rental term on page seven, number four.

I have something that's probably not going to win any writing contests, but it says no JADU may be rented for a term that is shorter than 30 days. And then cross out this prohibition applies regardless of when the ADU or JDU is created. We don't need that sentence anymore. And then we add a second sentence that says, no ADUs built after January 1st, 2020 may be rented for a period shorter than 30 days.

It's kind of repetitive, but we can- I think that went to writing contests. So I would make a motion to- first of all, using the supplement, because that is our document, to adopt the urgency ordinance of the Town Council of the Town of Fairfax amending Chapter 17.048, Residential Accessory Dwelling Units and Junior Accessory Dwelling Units of the Fairfax Town Code relating to accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units with the change that was just read out on page 7, number 4, rental term. Second.

We have a motion from Councilmember Kohler and a second from Vice Mayor Ager.

Can I just make a quick comment? Since this is an urgency ordinance, it's going to take at least four votes this town council to pass.

Councilmember Blash? Yes. Councilmember Garangeli?

Yes.

Councilmember Kohler? Yes. Vice Mayor Ager?

Aye.

Mayor Hellman?

Yes. Terrific. And thank you, Jeff. Yep. And I understand this will be coming back around. Moving on to item number five, we have adopted resolution authorizing the town manager to purchase and outfit one police department utility terrain vehicle for an amount not to exceed 75,000. And I see we have our police chief here with us.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, and staff. Rico Tabaranza, Chief of Police at the Fairfax Police Department. Tonight with me is Sergeant Eric Conrado. He was the person that I tasked to do the research, the study, and to come up with a recommendation to get all the facts straight so that we can make this recommendation tonight. So I'll start with an introduction, and he and I will be open to answering any questions you may have about why this was selected and why we're making this recommendation tonight. So since the town of Fairfax successfully acquired the 100 plus acre wall property in 2024, the Fairfax Police Department has made efforts to patrol and respond to calls for service on that wall property. both on foot and on existing fleet vehicles that we have. Staff have identified that the existing Fairfax Police fleet does not have the necessary capabilities to effectively, efficiently, and safely patrol and respond to calls on the presented landscape of the walled property. When unforeseen weather-related challenges such as saturated, thick, muddy trails on steep hillsides or lighting challenges for transportation issues arise, Fairfax PD will need to request specialized vehicles and services from outside agencies to assist with safe evacuation or rescue. This will result in delayed responses and pose a risk to public safety. Further, it will delay the deployment of life-saving medical assistance and transport, which are critical for rescue when patients need them. Staff have researched and identified the essential vehicle and supporting equipment to assist the Fairfax Police Department, along with Ross Valley personnel and additional responding agencies in safely transporting patients or detained individuals and allowing responders to respond with confidence and in a safe manner. This exact vehicle proposed is also multi-use and easy to maintain. The vehicle can be used on the wall property and for additional assistance with other town needs, such as storm and flooding response, inclement weather, on fire trails and steep hillsides, and town paths. The UTV can assist with the Department of Public Works with storm-related and drain clearing needs, allows Fairfax PD to monitor terrain and prevent camping and to enforce town anti-camping ordinances effectively on that 100-plus acre property. So with that... It is our recommendation to adopt a resolution authorizing the town manager to purchase and outfit one police department utility vehicle, UTV, for an amount not to exceed $75,000 and appropriate that $75,000 from the Field Equipment Vehicle Replacement Fund, 03923921 for this purchase. And we're open to any questions you may have about that.

I'm sorry, I didn't see who writes. I'm just going to go. Did you have advice?

Thank you. Sure. I'm in rural communities all the time, and I haven't seen one of these vehicles in any of these little rural fire departments before. But is there anyone in Marin, any police agency or fire department in Marin that has one that you've seen?

Well, we actually borrowed one from the water municipal watershed. The chief of the watershed district came in and brought a vehicle with us, and we explored that area along with our manager. And we saw the challenges that's presented there. We've also attempted to use the vehicles we currently have that have off road capability. And it is not safe to operate those vehicles there, especially when some of these risks that I or landscape. challenges are present, especially with the weather around this time. And the biggest challenge for us in our needs here at the Fairfax Police Department is that we need an ability to get there and to transport. When we're there and we need to, let's say we have a patient or a medical need, and we need to transport a person back to the roadway. We need a safe mechanism to either use a flatbed or something to attach them safely on a vehicle along with us and fire personnel to get back to the road so we can transport them to the hospital or anywhere else they need to go. In order to do that quickly, and let's say there was a need that was immediate and very urgent, right now we would have to make a request for these vehicles from other agencies. There are other agencies that have this, like the County of Marin, the Watershed District, and other agencies that have a much larger fleet.

So is the trailer included in that price? Yes, it is. Do we know where we're going to put it, where we're going to house it? I mean, you don't want it sitting out in the rain.

No, we will be housing the vehicle at the Fairfax Corporation Yard. And the trailer, it can be – we've already made arrangement with other agencies that they would be willing to house the trailer should there be a need to not store it long-term here at the Corporation Yard.

And we also have the Elliott Nature Preserve. It's now owned by the county because Fairfax gave it away, but the fact is it's in our jurisdiction. Any crime committed there is a Fairfax Police Agency issue. We've got the jurisdiction. Thank you.

Yes, and it allows us to respond on a mutual aid situation as well for, let's say we have a missing overdue hiker or anyone like that in our trails, in our open space area, especially at the end of cascade, we're able to respond quickly and then allow those resources to come afterwards and we can respond and help with that.

Go ahead, Council Member Lasch. Okay, so yes, Vice Mayor Egger asked one of the questions that I had. So I'm just curious, like other towns that have open space, like say San Rafael or San Anselmo, I understand they have like a different police department and everything and situation than we have, but do they have these kind of vehicles and do they use them? And if not, what are they doing to patrol or transport people that get hurt on their open space properties?

I've told myself that I shouldn't hug the mic today, so I'm going to let Sergeant Conrado answer this question.

Good evening, everyone. Sergeant Conrado, Fairfax PD. So a lot of the departments in Marin County are much larger than Fairfax. There's other, you know, San Rafael, for example. I believe they have a dedicated ranger that they assign for certain open space areas and whatnot, the Marin County Sheriff's Department. works alongside their county parks. So they utilize these vehicles as well in a similar capacity that we would be planning on using this on the Walt property.

Great. Thank you. And let's see. So that answered one of my questions. And then it seems like you know, when we look at using this vehicle, you know, my questions about it were about, like, you know, we seem to have a very small amount of our own actual open space with passable roads, but it seems like we would also be using this for things like the Elliott Nature Preserve or other areas that are not necessarily part of the town of Fairfax, but over which I think our police would be doing some work. So I guess the two other questions I have is, you know, is this primarily for transporting people with injuries, primarily for patrolling for illegal activities or a little of both?

Yeah, so it's going to be used for both. So our main purpose for the UTV is to have access to the property. There's been occasions when we have patrolled there with the current vehicles that we do have. It's not the friendliest roadway for those type of vehicles.

You're referring to the wall property?

Correct, for the wall property. So when we've patrolled the wall property specifically, the roadway or the fire roads that are up there are not – designed for regular vehicles. They're not designed for a larger vehicle like a truck or anything. So this UTV is a smaller vehicle that's capable and specifically designed to go on sort of terrain like we have on the wall property.

Okay. And then the final question I had is if we are using it for sort of mutual aid and assistance to other agencies, is there any possibility of cost sharing?

Potentially. This is something that we've discussed with other agencies, and there are mutual aid agreements that do occur within agencies, so that's definitely a possibility.

Thank you. Go ahead, Mike.

Okay, thank you. Who responded to emergencies on the wall property prior to Fairfax owning it? We respond to those calls. Okay. And what about surrounding properties that are similar terrain as the wall property? Do you guys respond to those as well?

We respond to various calls. If they're neighboring agencies that share kind of a border with us and we're requested, we will go and we will respond.

You know, I always like the idea of providing as much safety as possible, but is there a track record of the fact that we used to respond to emergencies on the wall property and the surrounding areas? And how much do we actually need this particular vehicle based on the history of emergencies and that type of thing?

Because the wall property used to be private property, it wasn't our obligation or our responsibility to patrol that area. So we would only respond by call, like if the property owner allowed us to be on there or if there was an urgency that we could enter the property based on a public risk or something that gives us probable cause to enter. But now since it's now owned by the town of Fairfax, we have the obligation to patrol the area routinely and regularly. often and also try to adhere to the laws that we're now trying to enforce, especially the ones about trying to establish a presence so that there is no camping in that property. When it used to be before private property that we would just get the owner's permission to get on there.

On the liability aspect, you have a vehicle like that making runs for emergencies. We know the vehicle is $75,000. Tell me, there must be some different insurance involved to operate this and to respond to such emergencies?

Actually, we looked into this, and it's going to be covered by our same pool of insurance, Bay Cities. We already reached out to them, and it's pretty much when we acquire this vehicle, we would just contact them and provide them the pretty much event number and all the information about the vehicle, and it will be covered. This vehicle, the one we selected, is specific to pretty much be like a vehicle. It doesn't require a specialized license. It doesn't require a specialized type of maintenance. There were other options that, of course, in the spirit of trying to find an alternative, like an electric alternative. We considered and researched those options, but unfortunately, some other options like that require that a vehicle had to be serviced at a specific place. And most often, these places were out of state and required them specifically to service it in order to warranty the vehicle. This one that we selected can be serviced by, let's say, Peruva or some other vehicle place like that, a mechanic that can service it anywhere it doesn't have to be transported and be costly in transporting there and also we can drive it with just our regular driver's licenses that we can operate using a normal vehicle one last question in addition so we're getting this because of the wall property but how else do you see it being used here to support Ross Valley Fire Department in any of their needs. Should they need a vehicle like this, the Department of Public Works, when there's storms or areas that we need to get to and bring them, because this vehicle can seat many persons, including in the backseat. So there's, how many seats in there? Total?

Four.

So there's also a way for us to transport and help paramedics transport patients in the back. There's a flatbed area where you can secure a person and medical other tools there that you can hang, let's say an IV bag and things like that, that attach to it. So not only are we helping the fire department, we can help medical personnel. Department of Public Works, the open space rangers, and also those that are like for rescue and people that are missing overdue hikers in other areas surrounding Fairfax. Thank you.

So I think Council Member Blash asked this question. My question is specific. Does Central Marin Police have one of these vehicles? My concern is that I know because at least last I heard they still didn't have a car parked in San Anselmo that we're responding to a lot of incidents in San Anselmo. And San Anselmo owns quite a bit of open space. At least 100 acres in my experience. So I guess mutual aid, we don't get paid for that. That's what we do. But I just don't want us in the situation where we're responding to things on San Anselmo open space. Some of that open space is even more impassable than the wall property. And if they do not have such a vehicle, I'm hoping that you will talk to Chief Norton about procuring such a vehicle. And, you know, I don't want to sound heartless. I want us to help people. I know we have saved people's lives because we've responded. But I want us to also think about, you know... I just don't want us responding to Central Marin and that 100 or more acres of open space, ball till, et cetera, that shouldn't be our main focus. Our main focus should be what we can do for Fairfax. And you've discussed some of the things that we're going to do. Okay, I've talked too long. Do they have one? And if they don't, will you talk to Chief Norton about procuring one?

I don't have the answer as if they have one right now. But what I can tell you is in the spirit of mutual aid and assisting other agencies, when there's a true emergency where lives are at risk, yes, we will help. But as far as responding to their calls proactively or to be assigned to their calls because they don't have it, that's not the purpose of mutual aid. So, yes, we will have that conversation with chief. Norton, if that's the case, where they're utilizing our vehicle for more of their calls. But, you know, I don't think that's the intent, their intent either. It's, you know, if we have something and we can help others, we will use it. And none of the chiefs that we work with here in County Marin, you know, exploit each other or anything like that for other services we have. We just have a great working relationship. Already with just borrowing resources. It'd be great for Fairfax to be a help to many of the other agencies because most of the time it's Fairfax asking the larger agencies such as Central Marin and others around this for help because, you know, we have basic equipment too. So in order for us to help others and then, you know, when they when they can help us, we asked. I think that would be a great working relationship. Yeah.

And I completely appreciate that. And as I said, I don't want to sound heartless, but I believe you're still chief of the police officers, police chiefs association. I would hope you would bring this to them and suggest that others procure a vehicle like this if they have a lot of open space. Thank you.

That would definitely be a bragging point for me as soon as we acquire this.

All really good questions. Okay, let's make it quick because we are running late.

Okay. Is there going to be distinctive paint or is it going to be green? Are you going to have a light bar on it? It'll be equipped with radios, right?

Lightning McQueen or...

So it will be equipped with a lighting system. I don't believe we're going to be installing any sort of radios because we do have our portable radios already. So when we drive those vehicles, we want to make sure that, you know, we're just ready to go if we're patrolling out there. And it's also very, it's a much limited space. So the use of radio is not necessarily needed in terms of usage because we do have the portals, like I said.

Will someone actually know it's a police vehicle when they see it pulling up in front of them?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay.

It'll be branded Fairfax Police. It sure will.

Okay. And we also have Sky Ranch. You know, it's partly in Fairfax, partly in San Anselmo. So there's a lot of them.

All right. Let's move on to public comment.

Before you do that, Mayor, could I make a motion to waive the 10 o'clock rule? Oh, sure. Second.

Second.

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

Yes.

Vice Mayor Ager? Aye. Mayor Hellman? Yes.

May I? Thanks. I do hope the Council is supportive of getting this vehicle. Pairing off what Council Member Blash said, which I do hope you guys will incorporate it, whether it's, because I don't know the vehicle, but like a tractor, if it's a diesel, if it's gasoline, whatever it is, there's generally a life expectancy of it. I would like to see that we amortize that expectancy down to the hour and or miles. so that when we do offer mutual aid we are being reimbursed at a fair rate and a fair rate should also include a little bit extra for the insurance and the extra wear and tear as well as the administrative cost to make sure we get the mutual aid responded back to the community that should also go directly to the police department and not into our general fund because this will be an expense from the police department but i always see the police department getting criticized like how expensive they are if the mutual aid income is put back to the police department, it lowers the overall budget of the police department. So it becomes much more palatable to the general community. But again, I very much support we have this vehicle and I think we could actually not that that's the intent, but actually make a little profit on it by offering immediate response to our neighbors. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, Todd Greenberg speaking, downtown Fairfax. I'm in support of any tools that law enforcement needs, but as you all know, I'm in support of smart decision-making and cost-effective decisions. On that basis, I'd ask whether there's a possibility that's been evaluated by our finance director who's not here, About a cost share and how that would work with these different jurisdictions that have been mentioned that might also use it rather than seeking reimbursement. Maybe just as we share the Lyft boom truck with San Anselmo right now. And that works out quite well. Perhaps this could be a joint purchase and save the town some money so that the additional funds could be used to repair our roads, which is for many priority number one, aside from public safety, which actually incorporates public safety. Two, what about getting grants for this rather than using existing town funds? Has anyone evaluated that? Has the town manager looked into that? I would think this is a prime candidate for grants. And if grants were explored, there might be additional ATVs and other vehicles that are even more suited for the steep areas of the wall property. Safer for law enforcement to respond there. Additionally, I see one set of bids here. I suggest that this go out to at least three different vendors, dealerships to get bid upon. That's it. Thank you. Bye.

Are there any people on Zoom? Okay. Close the public comment. Chief, do you want to respond on the question regarding grants? I know you're pretty thorough about these things and familiar with the landscape. Or is it Sergeant Conrado?

So this is, to my understanding, this is where the funds are going to be pulled out of, or it's already been budgeted for. So we're not taking away from anything that we don't have or requesting more than what we're specifically asking for. There are grants out there, numerous grants that we could theoretically apply for. In this instance, this is something that... You know, we acquired the wall property and therefore, you know, we were now preparing to patrol the property. So for us, it was making a lot more sense to go this route opposed to going, excuse me, opposed to going through grants.

What grants do you know about, and would you have to apply for the grant prior to the acquisition, or can you subsequently apply for the grant?

So I don't know the specific grants. I know that there are federal grants that are available, and I'm certain that they're a pretty lengthy process and specific to the vehicles and specific to what you're going to be purchasing, whatever federal money that you're getting.

Yes.

And just to add to that, normally grants are driven by statistics. And because if this is something that is new to Fairfax and we normally didn't have land.

But you have to differentiate the need for it with data.

Yes. So this will allow us to provide the additional statistics and data. having a record of patrol responses, calls for service, extra patrol, and things like that. And then that way, in the future, maybe either retro or in the future for additional necessary needs for equipment or anything like that. Now we'll have the stats available to try to apply for a grant and qualify for it.

Okay. And when you say it was budgeted for, was that part of the wall property or just part of your fiscal year budget requests?

Last year during the budget planning phase that we've had, it was allocated to Fund 03923921, the Equipment Replacement Fund.

Okay. I have no recollection of that, but I do believe you. So we knew we needed this when we... purchase the...

Yes. Although the wall property wasn't purchased, the writing was on the wall, and we could see that there would be a need for this because we were exploring that area as it was a private property when we'd respond for calls for service, especially during night, and we were already seeing that there was going to be a need there, especially in night response.

Okay. I'm seeing Vice Mayor wants to make a comment or question.

A quick question. Are any of these on a state bid? You know, we constantly look at state bid

for police vehicles etc have you seen any of these on a state on a state bid at all this was so specific and and so i mean you did a lot of research and trying to find a dealership or someone that would even give us a discount uh we we went to our outfitter who works with a lot of Police agencies, fire agencies, and other jurisdictions that have such a vehicle. And we went with who they were asking for that would provide the one, the quickest turnaround and providing the equipment and also the best price for it. So it's, they did the work for us in pointing out who would be the appropriate people to reach to, to get the best price. And then in this case, I think we received a discount as well for being an agency.

Hey, I am ready to entertain a motion.

Okay, I just had one more question. So, sorry, I had another question. So, you know, I think Mr. Greenberg raised this too, and I think I raised it earlier, but I just wanted to get a little clearer on the whole idea of cost share. And, you know, I know that San Anselmo has a different model of policing than we have, although they are our neighboring cities. a community that has a lot of open space. And there was a mention of the fact that we have, I think, the truck that we use to put up banners and things that we share with San Anselmo. Is there any option for that kind of arrangement with this? Are they even interested in that? Is that something that we should wait and find out? And what sort of urgency is there to procure this vehicle now?

The urgency is because we need to be able to respond now because we don't have an alternative option except for waiting for an outside agency to provide us the service that we don't have to provide that service to our community. So the urgency is we don't have an option to be able to respond there at night in low light when it's raining, when it's storming, when there's floods. And so that's the urgency to get it now. As far as the option to get cost sharing, that's always a possibility. It's almost like when we see the benefit of this resource, not only to our agency, but our surrounding agencies and other agencies that may call upon us for their needs, then we can evaluate, hey, look, other agencies can benefit from this. How about I come up with an idea in order for them to maybe split a cost in our yearly expenses or maybe provide a certain amount in their budget to pay us so that they can rent the vehicle from us from time to time or on an as-needed basis, similar to kind of what we do with dispatching with other agencies.

Okay, and that's really helpful because I think one of the questions I had is, the other thing Mr. Greenberg, or maybe it was Mr. McAdosh, raised was whether or not you get reimbursement for mutual aid. I'm not really sure how that works. And then if you purchase this and then people can get use of it for free, are they going to be good and kick in later on?

I think we're looking at two different things. So mutual aid is there's no charge. We don't send a bill. I think what was being referenced by the public comment was that the police department is not a revenue generating agency, although sometimes our services do generate revenue and like dispatch. And when we receive the checks. and the payment from these agencies for the services we provide, it does not return back to 411, the police budget. It comes back to the general fund. So what the public comment was referencing was that because we're, in the future now, going to be budgeting for maintenance, costs for repairs and things like that, and for the repairs caused by providing services to other agencies, will we get money back to the 411 where we'll be budgeting from and using those money instead of that money that they'll be giving us going straight to the general fund. You know, it's most of the stuff that we get back, you know, the generate revenue through our services, don't come back to the general fund. But I think that's, that's the point of how this is all financed in a way it's not supposed to come back.

If I can, if I may just add, so 411 is a subset of the general fund. The police department is a general fund. Um, agency, if you will. So, um, uh, the way I think there's been a lot of confusion about this generally, but, um, the way that all municipal budgets work is that, um, monies come in for most of the services that the town provides. Those are general fund. We have only general funds in the town of Fairfax. Other jurisdictions may have what are typically referred to as enterprise funds or business funds. And that would be something like if you have a sewer district or a sewer agency within your town that is under the town, is part of the town, and you charge fees for the service, then those fees stay within that enterprise fund. But we specifically would never suggest that the police department become an enterprise fund because it's a, it's a social good and we don't want to be in a situation where, um, we're accused of, uh, you know, um, giving tickets because we need the money, right? We give tickets because it's enforcement of the law.

Okay, that was all very educational and informative. Thank you for your time and for being here late in the evening. Learned a lot. And yes, I would like to entertain a motion.

Okay, I'd like to make a motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the town manager to purchase an outfit one police department utility terrain vehicle UTV for an amount not to exceed 75,000 and to appropriate 75,000 from the field equipment Vehicle Equipment Fund 03-923-921 for this purchase.

I'll second that. I just want to add one thing to the second, and that would be that we pursue shared expenses once we get after the fact, basically, kind of like we do with the dispatch. Thank you.

We have a motion from Council Member Kohler and a second from Council Member Garangeli. Council Member Blasch. Yes. Council Member Garangeli.

Yes.

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

Yes. Thank you again. Looking forward to seeing it. Okay, we are now moving on to the consent calendar. Before I proceed, I just want to remind everyone what time it is. And I'm going to talk about some structural changes to the agenda that I plan on making next month. But one of the things that I'm very intent on doing is running an efficient meeting and not making decisions on behalf of the town after, you know, 10, 30 or 11, I don't find to be particularly reasonable or fair to anyone. It's not fair to the public. It's not fair to us. I'm not at my sharpest at 11 p.m. So for whoever made the comment that I leave meetings early, it's because I don't... I'm not functioning at 11 p.m. in a way that I think is fair, reasonable to be making fiscal decisions and other decisions on behalf of the town. So if you want to pull an item of consent, you're perfectly allowed to do that. My request is that you prepare in advance what your questions are. You send them to staff. You get your clarity. and you can share with the public what that clarity was and summarize it but for us to get into nitty-gritty on some of these things um i'm still adjourning this meeting at 11 o'clock so more on that later uh the consent calendar is uh can we can approve all items in one action or the council or staff can remove any items for separate discussion and voting Public comments for consent calendar items are taken collectively, not item by item. During this period, speakers may address any item on the consent calendar with each speaker allotted up to two minutes and limited to one comment session. So with that, anyone have any questions or items related to consent?

I just wanted to make a couple comments at appropriate time, whatever that is.

That would be now.

Okay. No, I do check the legal each month, and this month the legal is down. It's $35,000, not this month, but October, $35,350. That's two law firms, our current town attorney, and a small amount from another law firm. On the...

Did you refer to the item number? Are you on A?

I was just going to jump around a little bit.

So that we can follow along, what are you commenting on?

Okay, so here is item 6E, and it's about... A memorandum of understanding with MMWD regarding collaboration enforcement of regional conservation programs. And I've just always supported rainwater catchment systems for Fairfax and for wherever. And I think MMWD ought to be getting more into rainwater catchments, rainwater catchment systems for single family homes and duplexes in Fairfax. I'm just throwing that out there when staff is talking to MMWD. And that's what I have here. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. The Climate Action Coordinator position and the Climate Action Coordinator to the Board of the Hazardous and Solid Waste JPA for the County of Marin, do they deal with issues like cleaners, like We had, we had Piccarado had some, had some, some toxic stuff spill. It got into the building and they had to, they had to work on it. Does, does that, does that committee address those kinds of hazards? I don't know.

No, that's waste generated by residents primarily. So they're not a regulatory agency for spills.

They're pretty limited in how far they go with hazardous material.

Household hazardous materials.

Okay. Seeing no other comments or questions. Okay. I'm going to open public comment for consent.

Good evening. I'd like to note that the other member of the public audience is outside speaking with the officers on duty right now. You might want to reserve some time for him. My name is Todd Greenberg. I'd like you to pull item 6A on the consent calendar along with 6D and F. noting that I've had little success having items pulled before. I'll be as quick as I can. I'd like you to allow me to speak at length on 6A, if none other, as a separate item, please, which is the financial reports. There's some important information there. On 6D, when will... The signage be posted, permanent signage. That's 6D. 6E, how does this affect housing? I'd like that to be delineated and discussed here. And 6F, there's an error, I believe, in this. Bruce Ackerman is not a council member. Pardon?

The staff report is incorrect. It says council member... Thank you. Please proceed.

Okay. 6A, I'd like to be able to come back and speak further on this. This is the financial report. We're over budget. We're tending over budget by approximately two times at this rate. We've got... one-third approximately of the financial year has passed by, and there's four or five different spots in this report that legal expenditures exist that I'm aware of, and I think there's more. We are running, combining those over two times their combined budgets. That's time. On a record pace.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Thank you, council. I would really hope that the council can consider going back to the good old days, but I think as little as eight, maybe 10 years ago, when the public had an item of concern where there was a contentious item and somebody made a request to take something off of consent calendar, it was routinely done. And it'd be put at the end of the calendar. It'd be discussed so the general public could be a participant and participate in what the decision was and understand it. And I really wish you'd encourage that. I do thank Todd for all the research he does for the finances. And then poor Michael being up here having to always answer them. If some of these things were openly discussed, yes, people, myself included, would have questions. But the general public would say, oh, we have a better understanding of what's happening. And in the end of the day, there would be less PRAs, less contentious little comments and stuff. And we'd have a better participation with the town. Thank you.

Anyone on Zoom? Okay. We'll close the public comment.

I'd like to move the consent calendar.

Can I move the consent calendar? Yes. I'll second. We have a motion from Council Member Blash and a second from Council Member Kohler. Council Member Blash. Yes. Council Member Garangeli.

Yes.

Council Member Kohler.

Oh, I get my first name. Yes.

Vice Mayor Iger. Aye. Aye. Mayor Hellman.

Yes. motion passes. Okay. Moving on. Council member or council reports are provided. And let's go to future agenda items. This, by the way, is an item that will be moved to the beginning of the agenda moving forward. I think it's important for um folks to hear about and uh for us to have a common understanding of what's on the horizon so um with that heather could you share just some one or two of the major agenda items that are on the horizon that we can expect in january and february sorry to put you on the spot

Yes, we are planning a presentation and model ordinance on minimum prices for vapes and tobaccos. That's a countywide effort to prevent children from becoming addicted. That's one of them. And if you'd give me a minute, I can pull up the rest of the list.

As you're doing that, are there any requests from the dais on group agenda topics?

I believe that ordinance includes more than just that, and I have asked that we include prohibiting ZIN as part of that.

Yes, thank you. I do have notes on that and have already communicated with the county as well about that. We also we want to do a brief presentation on the recent gas tax audit that we had and that audit happened. was clean and um not only um delved into this past fiscal year but they actually um since they haven't audited us in 20 years before that they actually went back through all those 20 years so um i think that's important for people to um to know and then um we'll have some other you know standard quarterly reports um so in my um uh My plan is to provide you with more of a year-long sort of projection of some of the items that will come up because something that we talk about a lot in the strategic planning retreat that we do every year with the full council is there's probably 85, 95% of the work of the town are things that are prescribed. They're California laws or they're laws that your council has set in place and we need to follow up with. So we want to make sure that the council and all of the community really has visibility into that and understands how things are coming to the agenda.

Great. Thank you. So, just another couple of things. So, another thing that I want to keep very brief, but I think is important for the community is that I want to get back to making brief announcements. So, this month, obviously, we're entering into the holidays. There's a lot happening. There's some really exciting, fun, wonderful events. Events happening this month, and we should be sharing that in all ways possible. So if we can get back to printing some of those key events, um, on the agenda, that would be wonderful. But, um, I know we have the winter fair. I want to say that's on the 15th.

So we have the, uh, the, the. The street festivals on the 13th. I think the craft fair is on the 14th. We also have the Chamber of Commerce annual party on the 9th.

And then I think the craft fair is December 14th.

And next Tuesday, if I'm not mistaken, I'm pulling it up right now. Sorry. The Hanukkah celebration is on the 18th, which is a Thursday. And the winter fair is on Saturday, the 13th. But when is the crafts fair? 14th. The 14th. OK, so that weekend of the 13th, 14th, we have a lot going on in town. Did you want to?

Can I just just a quick question? I know the staff advised us yesterday of an appeal of the town's Uh, conditional approval of school street Plaza that that was came to the council. Uh, will we be will that appeal become before the council in the very, very near future? Is that going to be a future item?

Yes, in January, probably.

late January.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. One more item. The Ross Valley Fire Department is hosting a toy drive. So at any of the Ross Valley fire stations, if you want to bring a toy, that would be wonderful. They give back to the community. Any other announcements?

So I know that we are celebrating John Tierney at some point. So I don't know if that's an announcement. I don't know the details. But I also wanted to note that we will be tabling Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee, which is a town committee, will be tabling at the Good Earth in the coming weekend and also at the Craft Fair. And we are encouraging people to fill out a survey which looks at bicycle, pedestrian, and wheelchair use in town and ask people to make suggestions about what they would like to see. And so I'm really encouraging people to visit the tables when those are up and you know, make sure to fill out that survey, whether you go to the tables or not, it's also online and we'll be continuing to promote that through the coming months.

Great. Thank you so much for mentioning that. I think we're done with that piece. And then town manager reports.

Well, you totally still stole my thunder there.

Okay.

So the one announcement that I think maybe I'll just repeat is that the BPAC has been very successfully meeting. There's currently a survey out there, so we want to encourage everyone to take the survey. You can reach the survey by going to the town's website. and looking for the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee webpage, and it's right there. We've also been putting that out on socials and newsletter. And if you have questions, then you can email either Liesel Blash is the liaison or Jeff or Bryn who are on the planning staff who are working on that.

Great. Thank you so much. And thank you for mentioning John Tierney. We have a very long-term member of staff, Public Works. John Tierney has retired and he will be receiving a proclamation and we're having a staff honoring him this Friday, correct? Or next Friday?

Yeah. So the, the proclamation is in this packet and that's, he didn't want a public.

Very modest. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, thank you, John Tierney.

And as an adjournment this evening, I guess we don't have anyone we're honoring this evening. Okay. Well, I wish you all a warm and safe holiday and we will see you next year.

Can I just ask that we get copies of the proclamation for John Tierney because that wasn't in the packet? And also, I wouldn't mind seeing a copy of ex-Mayor Blash. It's always nice to see those. We usually get those on the dais. Thank you.