City Council - Special Meeting

All right. Good evening, everyone. It's 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026. We will be opening the special meeting of the Larkspur City Council. Madam Clerk, can we get a roll call, please?

I am here.

Here. Here. Here.

Here.

Here. Great. All right. So what we will be doing for the first for the special meeting is interviewing for Planning Commission and Heritage Preservation Board. And so we're going to move to the table in front to conduct the interviews.

I don't know if everyone is here for the interviews, but if you are here for the regular meeting, that won't start until 630. So if you all want to...

You all are welcome to sit through the interviews, but if you don't want to, you can leave and then come back at 6.30 where we will be convening the regular meeting of the city council. Thanks.

Well done.

Okay. Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Okay, great.

All right. Great. So we will be interviewing for Planning Commission. Mr. Matt Repar. Great. Please welcome. Don't worry, we don't bite. Well, maybe I do.

All right. Well, welcome.

Yeah.

Can he hear back there, the mic? Can he? I don't know if he can hear. He'll tell us if he can't hear.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Yeah, I think so. Green LED. Test. I feel like a radio.

Hi there.

Welcome to Smooth Jams with Matt.

Great. All right. Well, welcome, Mr. Zepar. Did I say Zepar? Is that right? Okay, great. Welcome. Thank you for applying for Planning Commission. You know, what we'll do is we'll just go around and ask questions. But if you could maybe speak about your experience and why you're interested in applying for Planning Commission. Sure.

So like Planning Commission has always had a little bit of interest in my head. Catherine mentioned a couple of years back. It seemed like something I would love to do. I didn't have quite enough time with fresh kids the last time the opening came up. But for me, building planning permits, that whole process is something I actually kind of unironically love. So much so that when people have pulled permits or pulled up different planning applications, I've had to convince them that I actually am super interested and have pulled up the permits, walked through it, walked around, looked at the different sites that are in progress. So in terms of active building, that's super fun for me to see as an interest and a hobby. From the more long-term focus, I've got two daughters that are three and five. I love Larkspur as a city and I love seeing the different things that are really unique about Larkspur and what makes it awesome. I'd love to see that continue to grow and build out in a way that makes not only the house we have a great place to live, but also all the other places that are coming up in the city as well as all the different projects that are in progress around town. So happy to amplify any of those statements or give anything more detail, but that's kind of the high level interest.

Great. Thank you.

A lot of the planning commission issues are almost neighbor versus neighbor, meaning my right to do something with my property versus my neighbor's right Do we have an unobstructed view or whatever it happens to be? So it's sort of property rights, you know, freedoms. Those are kind of the issues. I'm curious, you know, how you look at those in general, you know, weighing, you know, how to decide those issues.

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. It always comes down to there's this shared resource we have and my vision for what that shared resource should shared resource should be is slightly different than what yours is at the moment um i found a lot of those disputes can sometimes be handled by people actually talking and trying to work that out um i assume the planning commission is not actively mediating that as much but there is an amount of you know understanding the people portion of that as well from a strict walking through the legal interpretation of whose rights end up being the most important. I think it always ends up being a bit of a case-by-case basis. Some of that is going to end up what the actual impact is, what the rules and regulations say in their specific wording, as well as what the intent of that regulation might be. I think it's always one that ends up being a case-by-case basis with hopefully something you can work through with people to make it a win for everyone. In my current negotiations with my three and five-year-old, I lose more of them than I am happy to admit. But in my work experience and my previous careers, I've handled big, chaotic negotiations where people have very strong opinions and neither one is necessarily bad. There's two strong opinions both towards a common goal. I'm trying to find where those overlap and where you can help find that overlap. I think that's really the best way to approach a lot of those.

May I ask a follow-up question on that? One of the issues that we're dealing with is precedent, in the sense that once you give an exception to one person, how do you not give the same exception to the next person? And then when you're giving exceptions to everybody, what's the point of having the rule if everybody's an exception? So I was curious your take on that. If somebody comes and says, yeah, I know the rule set can't do this, let him do it. So why can't I do it? How do you handle that situation?

That's a good question. I mean, I feel like I'm going to use the easy answer of like, it depends each time. But I think it does depend each time. Some of those exceptions, like, I don't think it's wrong to say at some point, like, yes, that exception was given. That was not the correct exception to have given. And as a group, the city council's guidance and you know with the current planning commission we are not planning to give that exception again um that obviously is not something you want to do willy-nilly that's something you want to be very thoughtful about and you want to approach you know having a really good solid basis for that um that being said if there's not a great reason to not give the exception um and people are asking for similar things i think it's worth going back to groups that actually make those rules and say, like, we haven't enforced this ever. Maybe we should actually update the rules and then move forward with that as a new baseline. But yeah, I guess if that makes sense or anything. It makes perfect sense. Thank you.

You're going to ask a third question? No, no, no. Just a caveat. I know Matt. He lives on my street. I've been poking at him for a couple of years to run for Do Something and with the little kids this time. So just so everybody knows that. I know where he lives. Well, I know where everybody lives, right? So to be on the Planning Commission, you don't have to be an architect and you don't have to be a structural engineer or anything like that. And we have had many people who are just firmly committed to looking at homes and development in Larkspur. But there is some technical expertise a little bit that needs to be done. You need to read plans. You need to read geological surveys and things like that. Do you have any experience in... that technical aspect, other than your own home, because I know you did a big remodel.

Sure, sure. OwnHome is a big part of that experience for sure. Some of that is also just in terms of reading technical documents, technical drawings, hardware engineer by trade. So certainly building codes are different than circuit path diagrams for electrical analysis. But in terms of doing technical analysis of designs based on data sheets and rules and regulations, that is a big thing of what I've done in my professional career. Also on the more home remodel side, there's different ways to approach a home remodel. Some people hire the architect to drive everything and that goes really well. I'm a bit more of a dive into the plans, work through it with the contractor, kind of be a little bit closer to the ground. So in terms of actual construction experience, I've certainly read through my own plans and suggested changes and driven that as well. So I feel very comfortable in a set of blueprints.

Great. Thanks. That's good. How much time are we doing?

Probably like 10 minutes because we have three candidates. Okay. Maybe one more question.

I'm wondering if you followed any of the more visible planning issues, like we had North Magnolia. I think there was that property on Palm Hill. you know, the very large house, you know, it's probably one that you know.

I can see it from my house. Perfect.

So you're talking the one.

Alexander.

Yeah. They've certainly generated some, you know, thing. And I'm curious, you know, if you follow that or if you have thoughts about, you know, the direction of that or, you know, how you kind of might just as a spectator, you know, wait in or, you know, just imagine, you know.

Yeah. I'll admit I didn't follow those too closely. Um, three and the five-year-old thing, not to blame them, but it's a big time there. I'd say if there's any particular conflict that you were curious about my take on it.

Well, one would be height. So North Magnolia was 54 feet high. We had the room packed and people were telling us to do our job. And that was an appeal from the planning commission who got just as much friction. And I guess Scott kind of asked the question neighbor per neighbor, but my thoughts are, how would you prepare for that? What are some of your guiding principles?

Yeah, that's a good one. I think before I would make that opinion on what is good or bad in that situation, it's certainly like getting into the neighborhood. You can look at the story pole should be up. You should be able to see the heights relative to where everything is. I do find that I've got a pretty good eye for what things will look like when they're finished, having seen some construction go up in my past, trying to understand what the actual impact of the neighborhood would be. And then there will be comment sessions for planning committee for people to come in and actually give their opinions. I think it's a little bit of just trying to weigh what people's particular current angst is versus what the overall impact of the neighborhood neighborhood would be. We'll try and make the best decision that we can. It's really, again, it's kind of vague, non-answer answer, but I mean, it ends up being a good chance to go. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Well, thank you. Yeah. We really appreciate everyone's.

Thank you for applying.

Thank you, Matt. Okay. Next, we are going to meet Andrew Kingsdale. All right.

You guys get to ask questions.

Hi, Mr. Kingsdale.

Thank you for having me.

Great. Okay. Why don't we just assume that we've all read your bio. Thank you very much for including all the detail and the experience. So I'll start on this end. We'll start with Sarah and we'll ask questions. Great. Thank you.

Hi, Andrew. Thanks so much for submitting all this information. It's an impressive experience that you've submitted. Are you familiar with Clarksburg's general plan?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. What are some of the goals you think are important in the general plan?

In the general plan?

Yeah.

Well, no way. By law, all general plans have to include certain elements to them. So there's land use, there's transportation, there's safety issues, like addressing, in particular here, fire safety, flood safety. I think that they are all super critical. I know that this is an exciting time for Larkspur because of the state mandates that are coming down, housing, FHRA, affordable housing issues. And I know that this council has taken a lot of steps already, done a lot of heavy lifting with passing, well, recently updating the general plan with the housing element, included the overlay, the housing priority overlay, which is critical. So we've already identified some important planning, potential planning developments that are in there. And I think it's going to be upon the planning commission to help implement some of these broader goals that have been stated in the housing element and in other parts of the general plan, along with, I would say, environmental issues I think are particularly important. So recently they updated, I think it was 2021, the climate action plan, which is not part of the general plan, but they overlap in a lot of ways, a lot of same goals. And those are certainly critical issues as well.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Gabe? I guess maybe the same question we asked before. You are an attorney and you may have followed me, so you've mentioned some things. Maybe I'll shift the question a little bit. One of the things that has changed for the Planning Commission is there's more ministerial type. You have to work within SB 30 and 35 and some of the different rules. This is kind of wrapping in Scott's question. A lot of neighbor-to-neighbor conflict You know, a pretty restrictive regulatory framework. How do you navigate that?

Yes. Yeah. So I think at first, as a planning commissioner, what I would try to do is encourage people to talk about themselves and my neighbors. I'm actually in the process of undergoing, of renovating my home, building my dream home here for the long term. And I did a lot of outreach and I'm not saying that made all the difference, but I do think in general, the more that we can get neighbors talking to each other, the better. Secondly, I would say that it's really incumbent on the Planning Commission to understand facts, to understand, to hear people, gather information as much as possible. As a lawyer, you've got to understand you're trying facts and you're applying to the law. So you've got to know what the facts are and you've got to really know what the codes are, the codes and the general planning. I think that the Planning Commission does a great job at that. I'm always impressed when I hear them and they say to a project applicant, you know, I went down to your parcels. I saw it, and here's what I saw. And they'll ask smart questions about that. You know, that's the kind of Planning Commission I aspire to be. And then I think I also appreciate what they're doing in terms of the FAR, in terms of amending that. I think it's really critical that we have updated, modernized codes with objective standards. I think that, as you know, if you have to interpret it, what are significant impacts? That's a lawyer's treat. Any lawyer can argue one way or the other. But if you put more specifics to what those impacts might be, then it's clearer. You're giving clearer guidance to general public. They don't waste their time coming down and appealing hearings that maybe they don't need to because there's clearer guidance out there. So I think updating the codes as being done with the FAR is important.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Hi, Andrew. Hi. Another person I encourage to apply. Thank you very much for doing it. I'm out there shaking the rafters to get people to apply for some of these really important roles. So I guess it sort of speaks to some of the issues, neighbor relations issues, because you live on a street that actually had a decision made by planning commission that was appealed, Francis.

And we had this room full of individuals from

and pretty upset about certain design ideas that this homeowner wanted to put in. That happens a lot in Larkspur, in my opinion, in my experience, because everybody has certain expectations of what they think should be there. How do you think you would balance those needs that a homeowner presents as their dream house with what a neighborhood might say we don't want?

It's very difficult and it's emotional. And I think that, you know, I come from a line of judges. My grandfather was a judge. My uncle was a judge. And I clerked for a judge. And so I've seen how judges have to balance high emotions among competing interests. And so I think that a lot of it is making sure people feel heard. listening to the facts and trying to understand what the precedent is so that you're not giving one patient, nobody feels like they're being favored over the other. You know, if you're going to apply the hillside, the steep slopes, the slope rule one way, you're going to give an exception there, then you got to be prepared to do it for the future. Yeah. And so knowing that precedent, helping people feel heard, and listening also to experts. You know, I think the Planning Commission has staff that can provide guidance, which is really important, who are very educated on a lot of these issues. And so you can rely on them, you can rely on experts to provide input as well. So various tools.

Thanks. Great. Thank you. And Scott? Okay, quick question. Yes.

Okay. First of all, thanks for being here. Question is, being on a commission or council is very different than being a lawyer. For litigation, it's more like being a mediator. It's more like building consensus. And I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit about your experience when instead of being a one-side advocate, you're more of a bridge builder kind of experience you have in that role as well.

Yeah, thanks for the question. I do feel like I've been a consensus builder in the past. I'll just give you one example. I was president of a homeowners association in San Francisco. It wasn't huge. It was eight units, but there was some significant capital improvements that I needed. It took a lot of work to get everybody on the same page as to what those improvements might be. Frankly, I'm willing to contribute to them. It took a lot of one-on-one meetings, a lot of group meetings, a lot of my own educating myself about what the improvements needed to be and what was the best path forward so that I could provide my best advice. I think it's important to try to find that middle ground so that we can move forward and make progress.

Great. Thank you so much for coming in and applying, and we will get back to you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. Okay, and then Tricia Lacey. Hi, Tricia. Welcome. Okay, so we see that you're interested in applying to both planning and heritage. So I think we'll maybe just combine. Do you have a preference for one or the other? Do you have a preference?

I don't really have a preference. Okay. Although, quite honestly, after hearing how these people seem a little bit more experienced in planning, I think Heritage Board might be a better fit for me.

Okay. That was totally fair. And thank you for putting in an application. And I know that you filled out, I think, two of these.

I wasn't sure if I could just use the same.

Yes. Thank you very much. Okay. So why don't we focus on heritage? Sure. And I thought you... we're very articulate in your application in terms of why you were interested in serving on heritage. And I think our experience with heritage is a lot of times, again, you're in the middle of, you know, homeowner wants to do something and then it's really not, you know, and then the city is interested in preserving the historical aspects of it. So you are in the middle. and having to make decisions about what a homeowner wants to do to their property. So how would you navigate a situation like that? Delicately.

I live in an older home that is not designated as historic. It probably could have been, but the previous owner's Actually, it absolutely could have been. The previous owners did a significant remodel in 1989, so therefore it was disqualified. But I have lived through two remodels and I know how expensive it is and that can be really stressful and emotional for homeowners. So I have a lot of empathy. But at the same time, what I love about Larkspur, what I think many of us love about Larkspur, I did review the general plan and I was pleased to see that it is... something that is important to the city is its historic character. And so needing to balance that. Great. Yeah. Thank you.

I'll defend that we're neighbors. Just to be transparent, we are neighbors. So I'm thrilled that you're interested in heritage, frankly, because I think, um, you're sitting in a building right here that is one of our key buildings that's going to need a lot of thought and community engagement. And Stephanie and I sit on that committee now to figure out how we reimagine this space now that the library's moved and what its potential or problems are and who's going to pay for that. So your background working at San Domenico Dominican University. Dominican University. I knew it was that one. Within the president's office for philanthropy, I think would be a really nice fit. But where do you kind of see how community engagement starts with a historic, not only just a historic property, but just our core downtown, which has its reason why we have a historic heritage board, is the preservation of that.

Can you clarify your question just a little bit?

I'm just thinking this is a big project we have to take on. And heritage is going to be a key part and planning. But heritage is going to be a key part in really crafting the conversation about how this building is reimagined. Have you had any experience with that, with community engagement for projects?

That's a good question. I mean, my community engagement work has been largely focused around children's activities. And now my kids have gotten older. And so I have more time. So, um, it's not really the same, but, um, spark the coordinator of Larkspur school foundation, uh, a friend and I, organized as a fundraiser, a annual garden tour. Oh yeah. I was going to participate on that.

Yes, that's right.

I did. I reached out to you. So it's something I've been thinking about and I've been thinking about a rebooting, but as a fundraiser for Larkspur, but also I think Larkspur used to do historic tours and thinking about whether that's something that we should bring back if there's interest and If you can educate people about the history, they will find more value in it and that this building would be part of it. The downtown corridor could be part of it. If you point out the gardens and beautiful gardens, people do start to have more appreciation and want to preserve it. In terms of uses of this space, I think really surveying the public. I think that Mayor Andre did a great job using social media to survey the public about the farmer's market. And so using that model to survey the public about uses of this building in fact i was sitting in this room and realizing that one of the times i was here was for a kid's puppet show 15 years ago so just thinking about all the different ways that these spaces are used and then also how you balance this with the flexible design of the new library because it does have all of those um those large spaces so what what is the need what are the needs that the community has for this this building and and what have How are other towns and other areas utilizing their city halls that we could use as a model? Thanks. Thank you.

I really think the city hall question is great. Maybe just a really general question for you. What interests you in this and what as, you know, what's your vision of Larkspur, you know, knowing that Magnolias kind of are, you know, are somewhat of our identity, you know, between the Lark Theater and, you know, St. Pat's and Salt, you know, do you have a, like a broader vision or, you know, what do you, what do you see, what interests you most?

What interesting. I mean, my reason is that, truthfully, I love Larkspur and I feel like I have an opportunity to to get back. I've lived here for ten and a half years. I've raised my children here. We've utilized so many of the resources, the bike path, the libraries, the parks, public schools. And in terms of a vision, I truthfully, I wish that Larkspur had a more of a community hub. If you go to Mill Valley, there's the Depot and they have comedy and art shows. And if you go to San Anselmo in the summers, it is popping with, and they're able to close down streets. We're never going to be able to do that on a regular basis because of Magnolia being a through way. So I understand that, but I do think there's an opportunity that Larkspur we could improve the downtown and have more community engagement.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Great.

Anyone say anything? Any other questions? Scott, you got a question.

I know you have one. So the challenge for the Heritage Board is balancing the old versus the new. The tradition versus modern. How do we keep the feel, but yet modernize in the sense that you've got double-paned windows. They didn't have those 100 years ago. How do you see that kind of meshing, your vision of somebody says, hey, I want to modernize. What is your view of kind of what is okay modernization versus that's changing the character? Does that make sense of the question?

Yes. Okay. I don't think that buildings have to be museums. I don't think that everything has to be exactly the same preserved. I think it can be in the spirit of the time. And And I think that the reality of fire prevention and needing to have insulated windows and efficiency is also really important. So I think if the overall aesthetic honors the past, then that would probably suffice for me, but it's obviously going to depend on the specific situation. Great.

Yes. Wonderful. Thank you, Tricia. That's great. So thank you for coming by and I don't know, any more neighbors? All right, great. Well, so I think we will deliberate at our next meeting and then make the appointment at our next meeting. So thank you all for coming down and applying and then we will make a decision. Yes. All right. So we were going to adjourn this meeting at 6.32 and we will convene the regular meeting. Everyone, it's 6.34 p.m. on Wednesday, June 3rd, and we will be convening the regular meeting of the Larkspur City Council. Madam Clerk, can we get a roll call, please?

Council Member Kandel.

I'm here.

Council Member Margulies.

I'm here.

Council Member Way.

Here.

Vice Mayor Paulson. Here. Mayor Andre.

Here. Please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. All right, welcome everyone. I think just given the very packed agenda that we have tonight, I am going to move, let's see, item 7.1 on archaeological resources to the end of the meeting. So if anyone is here with respect to item 7.1, I'm going to move that to the very end of the meeting. All right, and now we will open it for public comments. This is the time for members of the public to address the City Council on items that are not on the agenda or the consent calendar. So if you have a comment, please step forward to the podium, state your name, and you have two minutes. Thank you.

Thank you. Sarah Harrison, I was here last meeting again bring to everyone's attention my concerns about the scaffolding that continue to be in front of my building. 43 Magnolia Avenue and the lack of progress having had the project start some say September, for me it was November. And I'm really hoping that there's been some movement and some direction and possibly some conversations with my current landlords on getting the scaffolding down or work to progress. So, because it continues to be a problem. I can show you photos. So if you have a desire to actually see what I'm talking about, I am happy to bring that to your attention. I just need you to tell me when and where. It is... It is heartbreaking to me to go to a job, a career that I have loved for 30 years in the last few months based on the condition of my current work environment. So I need your help. And all I can ask is for you to help me, please. And I won't mention how I help you because I think that's pretty self-explanatory. Thank you. Great.

Great. Thank you, Sarah, for your comments. And I'd just like to say that I did reach out to the property owner. I cannot respond from the dais on your public comments, but I'm happy to reach out to you at some point this week and let you know. But we are trying to move forward and make progress on that project.

Thank you.

Anyone else have public comment? Yes, please step forward.

Hi, I'm Melissa Shirley. I own the barbershop on Magnolia. Like Sarah, I also share concerns. And working in a barbershop, everybody talks to me. I've called everybody on this board. I've sent so many of you emails. And it's just been very frustrating and, like Sarah said, heartbreaking. My barbershop is a person to me. It's a person in the community. We've been here for 105 years. And like anybody else in my family, if they were hurting and stuck in the dark, I would fight for them too. And I love my community so much. I show up every day. And I'm so happy to be here. And I don't want to leave. And I just want you guys to see my face. I'm the person emailing you. All of the members of our community come to my barbershop. And I get asked about it. Every hour on the hour, twice an hour. And like Sarah, I'm also very concerned. I'm sure many people in this room are as well. Magnolia Avenue, I heard you say, is the characteristic of our town. It is. And half of it stuck under a dark, ugly wall. tunnel now. And like, I just want to express how much I love my community and I care so much. And like, I just hope that that shows. And I, yeah, like I said, I'm just here to say that and please help us. We really need some help. Thank you so much. Okay.

Thank you. We hear your concerns and we are doing our best. Thanks. Anyone else like to make a public comment? Welcome.

I'm a business owner of 485 Magnolia. If the scaffolding could just be removed, I don't see why it's there. We just need some reason of why it's there. It's not doing anything right now. So it'd be easy to just remove it and then fix it when it's time to build whatever they're going to build back again.

But we're all suffering. We hear that. Thank you. Anyone else have any public comments? Seeing none. Do we have any public comments online? from our zoom audience members and there's no public comment okay great thank you all right so i will close public comment at this time and we will move to item 3.1 which is a presentation and update from the chamber of commerce can we get a presentation great thank you welcome marty

Hi, thank you very much. Thank you. I'm Marty Murphy, executive director of the Larkspur Chamber of Commerce and a resident of Larkspur since 1999. First of all, thank you, Mayor Andre, council members, city manager Dan, and staff for your time. I will be brief because you've kindly received our performance report and funding request. So I just wanted to take, and I knew it was a packed agenda, so to be respectful for your questions, feedback, any guidance, which I welcome always. A quick highlight of what we've been doing over the past six months. The regrowth and rebuilding that we started in mid-late 2024, when I started, has really continued on the first six months of this year. We currently, for highlights, we have 10 board members now. And I would like to take a quick moment just to introduce those who were able to join us tonight. We have Karen Davis, who is the owner of Magnolia Salon, has been a downtown business owner for 20 years. She just joined us. Glad to have that downtown Larkspur presence, which is so important. We have Brad Stevens, who is our new treasurer, already leaning in hard.

We have...

Bernadette Sullivan, who she and her husband, Chet Sullivan, are the new owners of Corbett's. I really appreciated that North Magnolia representation. And they also generously helped us do the tree lighting donations last year for holiday. So thank you, Bernadette. We've got Julie Richards, who, as you know, has worked hard for us for a number of years and just turned the Treasury reins over to Brad.

And did anyone else sneak in at the last minute?

Yes, of course. And importantly, Anna Sullenreich, who is with MarinHealth. MarinHealth is a silver sponsor of the Chamber, and Anna does a lot for us and is our secretary there. And I also wanted to thank, in addition, David Hollander is a Gold Prosperity Partner with us at Liberty Group downtown and has been very generous and helps also make our events possible. Thank you, David.

And also, Marty, Lori's in the back there. Oh, there. Yes. Oh, sorry. Lori, who's been a wingwoman for Battle of the Bands?

Lori, you're like me. We are high-challenged. I'm sorry. Lori is amazing, and she's at owner of The Hut on the Pathway, as well as Hachidori Studio in the American Legion, so another downtown representative. And then secondly, in terms of growth, we've had eight new chamber members since January. We bring it to 98, which is exciting and growing. Importantly, two of those were Pico, restaurant Pico. We just helped them celebrate. Thank you, Mayor Andre, a ribbon cutting for their 20th anniversary. And also Silver Peso, who... Thank you for your help in getting that open. I worked with him as well. And a ribbon cutting happening this week for that. So very important. A second point of, a third point of growth is our social media, which is nearing 3,000 followers on Instagram and active on other venues. When we did our survey in January, over 84% of both members and non-members in our community surveyed said that that was the most important benefit they needed from the chamber because they don't have the time or the money to do a lot of their own marketing and promotion. So we are growing that. I do unique content five to seven times a week for any vendor who wants it and many collaborations. Then also, the second most important thing on the survey were our member mixers and our business-to-business connections. We enjoyed a February mixer at Hays Valley Medical, and excitedly, in a renewed, and thank you, Scott, collaboration with Bonaire Center, Bonaire sponsored us for a chamber mixer at McConnell Designs in April. I'm going to continue that partnership in August with a collaboration with Bonaire where we will have several of their health and wellness Businesses meet up at Aesthetics in the Drake's Landing shopping center for a mixer as well. And there's more to follow. The expanded and renewal collaboration, which we all talked about at the last council meeting, importantly so, has been happening. Again, a very strong renewed partnership. And we took, appropriately so, your guidance to heart with a new business advisory council. I'm enjoying working with Elizabeth Pontius, Director of Marketing at Bonaire Center, and Marjorie Bauer of Boulangerie Shop, who's been in business since the 90s in downtown Larkspur, is our downtown Magnolia Business District Advisory Council member. Thank you.

Sarah knows.

And partnerships. My OGs. And Sarah, amazing chamber member as well. No, seriously, the girls keep me good. And then lastly, on the major points, is that our events continue on. Battle of the Bands, happening this Sunday, which was retooled and renewed to be more family-focused and more welcoming to the community, very Larkspur-centric. Silver Peso, Internos, Squared Pizza, Left Bank, my community partners, Larkspur Community Foundation. It's really based on music and community event, free childcare at Andrews, retooled from more of a, not a free beer tent. um and then we also have a coming up the wine stroll on august 29th proposed pending support um we importantly changed that to august 29th on a quick note this year labor day falls on the first week in september and we're very excited that our close partner the larkspur community foundation is doing the rose bowl dance on the 18th 18th 19th september It's important to us to give a few months apart because I work very closely with Marianne Thompson, their marketing and media person, and I want to do everything we can to promote them and the rest of their music in the park series. So we spaced it out accordingly. And then finally, we'll have again holiday on Magnolia. We had the first ever Mother's Day on Magnolia this May, highlighting that. That was a very successful way, unlike Holiday Magic, don't close the streets, get some carolers, get some local, we had the scouts, do events that don't close down the street and impede our merchants, but draw additionally. So those important collaborations, Bonaire, Community Foundation, Parks and Rec, Wrecking Crew, Jean has been a great supporter. Those have been expanded and you can't have a whole community and business success and it's a chamber without those partners and we have them. Also Zero Waste Marin, Marin Sanitary will be at the battle and share with us knowledge about recycling. They're donating the clear streams, saving us money, which is fantastic. So in closing, we have covered gratefully a lot of ground, and I took your guidance and good feedback to heart from January, which is important. You can always be better. And we keep hopefully getting better and better. The numbers show that. The strength of our new board shows that. So in closing, your ongoing support has always been essential, and we can't do it without you, your guidance, and, of course, your funding. And we do need the funding which we would use for the wine stroll this year and for our continued activities through the entire 12-month fiscal year, our amount requested. So thank you very much for your time. I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to be here. I welcome your questions, comments, and certainly always guidance. Thank you.

Thank you, Marty, for your presentation. I'll open it up to our council members for any questions.

Yeah. Marty, thank you so much for your presentation and for the summary of all the work you've been doing and for taking our guidance to heart and for getting the advisory council established. I was really happy to see that on your report. Also happy to see the new memberships. And so, you know, it looks like you are doing a lot of great work. I just had two questions. One was originally when we talked about this advisory council, we did talk about representation from each of the business districts. So what I see here is downtown corridor and Bonaire, but nothing from the East Larkspur business or North Magnolia. Do you have any plans to recruit additional members for the advisory board from those districts?

That's a great question. So Bernadette Sullivan is actually on our board, so she's on North Magnolia Corbett's. However, I would be happy to continue to partner with her on that. We have not yet selected someone. I'm hoping Tony Martinez of Internos, who is joining us at Battle of the Bands, and I've been trying to do a lot to promote his business, which has had many challenges of their own, to maybe recruit him as an additional advisory council member. I'm at least glad for starts that we have Bernadette, who's on that corridor. Regarding the east area, the industrial area, Carla Cervantes, who owns The Grateful Dog, and I spoke earlier, Last winter, she's a member, she's wonderful, very supportive, and she was about to consider joining the board and so forth, and then as you may know, the King Tide floods flooded her business. I actually worked with her and the SBDC for her to apply with loans, the SBCD, very close partners with Miriam and Jody there. And so the problem was it was too much on her plate to both refurbish her business for flood abatement to join us. But she is someone I hope who, and I was going to give her a few months to rebuild, that I will revisit this summer. She was very willing and interested to be part of the chamber. She just was unable to do so after the flood, which was unexpected. So I appreciate that. And I think we need to continue that lean in and that nudge is welcome. Thank you.

Great. And then just one follow on question to that. It mentions that you meet regularly. What have you designated as the role or mission of the advisory council? Once you have some members now, hopefully you will continue to build on the membership as part of the council. What do you want the advisory council to do? What is its role? Specifically, how have you established it? What kind of role have you given it?

That is a very good question, because this really should be, are we serving those business districts? A great example of that is with Bonaire. They have their Brits by the Bay event this weekend, which on Saturday, which I just promoted. And by collaborating closely with them, one of the biggest things I've been doing is finding out, let's make sure there's never even a small event downtown that's you know conflicting with them and also what events do they want support and promotion for so for example today I just shared on social their Brits by the Bay they just posted about Battle of the Bands but importantly we made sure back in January that I would have had Battle of the Bands on a Saturday which actually talking to merchants and Marjorie downtown, that's not a good day in this case to take away business from downtown. Sunday's a better day for our merchants or so most of the merchants' feedback was. And also that I don't conflict. or impede someone else's hard work and effort in our business districts. And that was some court or last year battle of the bands happened when Fairfax and Nevada were having events. So I speak with my Marin County chambers of commerce. People don't have as much as possible things when other people are so we can support our districts. So thank you for that question.

Excellent. And then one last comment is, you know, I appreciate the big events, the Battle of the Bands and the Wine Stroll. Is it possible to create smaller, like the Christmas caroling and Christmas lighting event, the Mother's Day event, maybe a few more of those spotted? Like I noticed there's nothing for July yet.

July 4th parade. We're working on that. Yes, another event.

Piggyback off of that for the downtown merchants, something that they're doing, piggybacking off of the July 4th parade.

You know, that's a great idea. And Max Perry at Silver Peso, and it was something Rebel Lee did prior to this closure, was having, you know, he and I have spoken since the spring when he had hoped to open earlier, is doing some sort of, if you will, you know, concerts there, but it would be within, again, the safe confines of his parking lot and creating more, you know, just some bands. We've talked about that with Citrine, just set up a band. So just have things work and it doesn't impede. Close down the street. doesn't block pedestrians and importantly shopping, but have some bands, some music. So I'm hoping that we can fire that up. And we're also, you know, talking about some way to work with, you know, farmer's market and other things. But that is something I'd like to see is get more music because I know six, was mentioned, San Anselmo, that can we get some of those things at low cost, a band that plays for free, a merchant is able to provide a venue, and except for some of my time to organize, you know, we can add more of those. So I would love to do that. It's finding the venue without closing the street or impeding our merchants.

Great.

Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

I just want to say thank you. The chamber was a hot mess for a while. I'm going to cry. And I was one of the harshest critics because I wanted to know if the chamber was going to get money from the city. I wanted to make sure it was actually being used for all of the merchants in the city and all the different areas. And for a while it wasn't. And Now it is, you know, and now I think there's much better representation. I think, you know, people are voicing what they need. You're hearing that and you are responding appropriately. And I just think it's night and day, you know, at the chambers like that. So, yeah, so just want to say thank you.

Thank you so much. If you yelled at me, I was going to quit. No, seriously, Scott. And I really, you're, Scott, not everyone knows, greatly facilitated. And you all allowed me to receive guidance and have some assistance with that to incorporate what I think were some important call-outs. So thank you.

You know, Scott sold my thunder because that's exactly what I was going to say.

We're usually on the same wavelength.

Now, I'm not going to take any more time, but thank you. I mean, we spoke a week or so ago. I shared my thoughts about how that memo should be outlined to better show your accolades and the work that you've done. I agree with Scott that we have had a turbulent time for a number of years. I've been party to, well, I guess in 2019 before COVID, it was already having issues. So you've recovered this organization tremendously. So thank you. I don't want to take any more time.

Thank you very much. And I don't want to take any more time because you have a packed agenda, but I welcome any other comments. Thank you.

Yeah, Marty, thank you. Just a quick one. I was interested in the result. 84% of respondents identified marketing and put promotional as the most important. So how much of your budget goes towards that?

That's a great question. The good news is that it's mostly used through my hourly time with creating social media content, which I'm getting faster and faster at, which allows me to post on multiple events. And I do try to keep my hours tight to part-time within budget because that's what we budget for. And so the other thing I've done with that is try to get collaborations, Marin Dish, Marin Magazine, Marin Buzz, That's it, except for my time, which is tight at no additional cost. That said, I would like to, as we do the wine stroll, we keep other costs buttoned down, start to get some monies. I have opportunity. I would love to create... like a page in the IJ for my downtown merchants and holiday. I would love to maybe partner with the city and some, you know, banners and things that if we can keep running a tight ship and raise more money through our events, I would like to do more of that. But it's mostly my time. And then, of course, I did spend monies on the banners, as I do every year for Wine Stroll and Battle of the Band. But I try to keep that as tight as possible. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Great. Thank you, Marty. Again, I will echo Scott and Catherine's comments. I know that you put so much of your heart and your time into this, and we're very grateful.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you. All right. So I will open it up for public comments. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment or have any questions? Okay. Seeing none in the chamber, are there any online?

Our Zoom audience, and there's no public comment.

Okay, great. All right. Well, thank you, Marty and members of the chamber for attending the meeting. There's no, there's no decision that needs to be made at this point, but we'll be talking about the budget later on. But thank you very much. Okay, so we'll close item 3.1. And now we'll move. Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. All right. So seeing that we have a number of people in the chamber, you know, can I just get a show of hands of which item people are here for? And if are most people here for item for the budget, if raise your hand, if you're here for the budget. Okay. Ross Valley paramedics. Chief Martin. Okay. The farmer's market. Okay. So the farmer's market is going to be later in the agenda. So I know a lot of you are here for that. If you want to go somewhere, get dinner, and come back, but it's probably going to be at least 45 minutes at least, maybe an hour before we get to that item. City Manager, are you going to say something here?

Not restricted, Madam Mayor. You could change the order of the agenda.

Do you guys want to change the order? Okay.

It's the mayor's discretion.

Okay. All right. So why don't I move item 8.2. We will move that up. But we can't because the vendors aren't here. So we need to wait for the vendors to be here. So if I can, when they're here, I'll move that item up. Okay. So we'll try to get to that as soon as we can.

Okay.

All right, so now we'll move on to item four, which is approval of the consent calendar. Are there any members of council who want to remove any items off the consent calendar for discussion? Any member of the public want to remove items? Okay, great. Can I get a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar.

I will second that motion.

Great. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Great. Okay. Consent calendar passes. Thank you. All right. So now we'll move on to number five, city manager's oral report.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just a few housekeeping items for the council and the public. The first is on the consent calendar. You did pass the resolution calling for the election for this year in November. So I encourage anyone who might be interested in running for office for one of the council member seats to reach out to the city clerk, Allison Fallis. Her contact information is on The website will be putting up information about the election schedule. Ms. Fallis is available by appointment Monday through Thursday. So even if you're just interested, she's the resource to ask the questions that you need to ask about process. And then secondly, just as a calendaring matter, a reminder for the public, we announced this at your last meeting. It's our practice and tradition to allow some summer break for the council. And so again, After looking at your calendars and our work calendar in terms of your project load, we will be going dark, meaning not holding the regular meeting that's scheduled for July 15 and the regular meeting that's scheduled for August 5. So that means we will meet on July 1, and then we will not meet again until August 19. So with that, Madam Mayor, I turn it back to you.

Great. Thank you. All right. Any council members have reports?

We have a long meeting, but just very briefly, the Marin County Mobility Hub was released, and Larkspur is really one of the key municipalities that might be affected given the ferry and whatnot. So I'll bring more at the next meeting.

Great. Is that through TAM? That's through TAM, yeah.

And we have a deadline of July 1. So actually, you know, I'll probably talk offline about, you know, for a review.

Okay, great. All right. All right. So we'll close council members' oral reports. And that moves us to public hearings. And I am going to move the archaeological resources to the end. So let's move to item 7.2, which is the fiscal year 2026-2027 capital improvement program and budget. Can we get a staff report?

Yes, as Mr. Skinner comes up here to join me, for the benefit of the public, the council goes through a rather extensive process across four meetings to review and prepare for this evening, which is to hold the public hearings to adopt the city's budget for the upcoming fiscal year. As people who have seen the agenda will see and will be talking about over the course of this public hearing, there are quite a number of resolutions to be considered and passed. I do believe they can take them up as a slate of resolutions when we get to the budget part. But first, it's our practice to go through the capital improvement program and ask any questions of the Department of Public Works who are represented this evening by Director Skinner, and I'm going to turn it over to him.

Great. Take it away, Mr. Skinner.

Good evening, Julian Skinner, Public Works Director for the City of Larkspur. So tonight's presentation is part of a public hearing to consider adopting the fiscal year 26-27 city budget, and specifically this presentation is focused on the capital improvement program that is part of that budget adoption. I'm going to quickly run through some of the projects. I'll start with a little recap of some of our completed projects and then get into some ongoing projects and then talk about the new projects that are proposed for funding in fiscal year 26-27 and then run through the funding associated with those. This slide here shows a couple of photos from our completed library project. As you know, we had actually six capital improvement program projects around the library based on how the funding was set up. So the library opened a few months ago, is open for business as a photo of the inside and then of the opening day. And then there's a photo of the battery backup that's behind fence. So a lot of people probably haven't seen that, but there's a lot of sustainability features that are built into the library, including all the solar panels on the roof and then these battery backups here. We are keeping one of those six library projects over into the next fiscal year because we have the monument sign, as you recall, and the water feature that are scheduled for installation later this year. But the other five projects will be closed out with this budget. Heatherwood storm drain pump station. This was also recently completed. This was a project that we completed in conjunction with the Ross Valley Sanitary District. This was a leftover from when the city operated the sewer system in Larkspur. There was one pump station here in a building that had both sanitary sewer that is operated by Ross Valley and our storm drain pump station facilities in the same building, which was not a great setup. We don't like our two systems to mix for various reasons. And this was pretty aged infrastructure. And so we had funding built up and Ross Valley were also planning this in their capital program. So we worked together to do a combined project. We definitely had some economies of scale here working together to rebuild the pump station, split everything apart. put it up on a platform here. So it's above the 100-year flood level. And this project is, we're just doing the final, final punch list right now, but it will be closed out before the end of June. And this is on Diane Lane over in the Heatherwood subdivision. A couple of smaller projects. We did a corridor study of Magnolia Avenue. As you recall, we split Magnolia up into two segments. This was identified in the Marin County Local Road Safety Plan report. As a corridor of concern, so we did an engineering evaluation. We had some public outreach meetings, and we developed a few concept improvements for how we could address some of the concerns that came up around Magnolia Avenue North. So this was completed in the last fiscal year. As you'll see, when I get to next year's proposed project, we're now looking at doing a similar study on the South section of Magnolia. So that's from Doherty South to the city limits. And then on the right, we completed the upper Elm stairs. This was a continuation project of a similar staircase that was completed 15 years ago or so on a lower section of this path. So this connects the upper portion of Elm and the lower portion of Elm, where it was before just a dirt path. So it wasn't very navigable. And so folks either had to do the long walk around the whole way around the street, or they had to venture down this unpaved kind of steep pathway. And so we now have A staircase that's been constructed there. And then we did complete the Monte Vista Avenue paving project at the very beginning of this fiscal year. That's the last of our five-year paving plan streets that were paved. And that project was delayed due to some utility conflicts. But that's the last street that was paved under the five-year plan. Some ongoing projects. This has been approved before. There's no new ask of any funds. The funds that were allocated in previous fiscal year will carry over into 26, 27. This is the new recreation offices over at Piper Park. So there's about 3.1 million that you've already allocated in that project to build new offices and some community space in Piper Park, just to the west side of the parking lot there. And then, as you recall, as part of that conversation, we discussed adding some additional electric vehicle charging stations with part of that project. So that funding is not included in the recreation offices project that's approved. We'll have to come back to you to request that funding when we determine we continue our talks with PG&E and we determine what kind of electric vehicle charging stations facility we're going to construct there and the reason we're separating it one is there are grants out there and some of them are federal and we don't want to federalize the entirety of the rec offices project by having federal money in it so we've split that out and when we understand better what that project will be for the ev charging stations we'll come back to you probably early in the next fiscal year and we'll have discussions about the funding for that project This is a project that's underway. It's progressed into design. You've previously awarded a contract to Schaff & Wheeler for designing a replacement pump station at Larkspur Plaza Drive. This street, Larkspur Plaza Drive and Creekside, was underwater during our recent king tides, and this is one of our areas that is one of the first to flood in Larkspur when we do get those king tides. And so as we do with all of our projects, we evaluate sea level rise and other flooding issues. And so we've identified with a need to replace this pump station that we can strengthen and slightly elevate the existing wall that's along Larkspur Plaza Drive out here, and we can give some protection from king tide. So what you see here on the left hand side, there's some kind of some red lines there. There's a blow up of that. That's the new pump station. But the light blue lines here are where we're proposing to install a flood wall along Larchford Plaza Drive that will keep that intersection free of water during those king tide events. This is a continuation project. It hasn't started yet, but this was a Transportation Authority of Marin Safe Pathways to School grant that we were awarded last fiscal year. So it's already been programmed, but the funding wasn't allocated until this coming fiscal year. So this is the connection of a pathway along the east side of Magnolia Just south of Doherty Drive on Magnolia, there's a short section of multi-use path that started next to the gas station there. And then it stops, and then there's a gap. And then there's a pathway in an easement that's behind the strip mall that goes over to Ward. So the existing pathway here you see on the dashed line. The solid yellow line is what this project proposes to improve with this grant. So this will be around that park area. And then we will redo the crossing of Post Street, which is the back way into the old Lucky's parking lot. And yes, we will get rid of that big dip that's there. This is the second of our pavement maintenance projects after we've transitioned now from our Measure B paving program. We're going to be repaving Skylark, which was paved just before Measure C, which was just before Measure B. It's due for repaving, so this will be repaved in its entirety from Magnolia all the way up to the turnaround. At the top, that project's been awarded. But based on where the contractor is right now, the construction probably will flow over into next fiscal year, into July. And then on the right, if you've been on any of our pathways lately and you've seen cracks, they're highlighted in orange. It's for a couple of reasons. One is if we're notified of a crack, we highlight it just so that it's more visible for persons. But also for this project, they've been highlighted because we now have a project to go and fix those. There is a TDA grant that makes up part of the funding for that project, and that is grant can't be spent until next fiscal year. So that's another reason why this project has been approved previously, but it's rolling over into next fiscal year. So that's a lot of patch paving on our pathways. And then it's the complete repaving of the pathway that goes behind the Creekside residence. That pathway has deteriorated to the point where it needs to be repaved. And then a lot of patching on some of our other pathways. There's a couple of ongoing projects that we add money to each fiscal year. We usually do them on like a five-year cycle. And these are for the smaller projects that are a little bit above and beyond what we can manage with our operating budget, but they're not big enough to be in and of themselves a big capital project. So we have an ADA transition plan update implementation. So every year you allocate some funds to address items that are on our ADA transition plan. Bicycle and pedestrian improvements, similar. These are projects that are not as big as, say, that Magnolia pathway that I showed you. but there are needs for bicycle and pedestrian improvements. And so an example of some of these that were completed in the last year is we did put the radar feedback signs up on some of the pathways and we did replace the ADA ramps over at the Piper Park entrance. And then also we have an ongoing project similar to those two for our climate action plan implementation. So I'm going to move on now to our proposed new projects. This is the first one is over in Piper Park.

Mr. Skinner, hold on one second. We have a question. Before you move on to new proposed ones, can I ask you a question about slide seven? Yes. The ongoing project of the bike connector and Magnolia pathway at Post Street.

Yes.

So I ride my bike on that area a lot and we come down the main bike path and then we hit that pothole, pothole, pothole over like crazy behind King of the Roll. And then we hit the new path. Is there a way to incentivize the repair of the path behind King of the Roll?

I'd like the public to all be aware the city does not own the part of the path that's being described by Council Member Way. It's a stretch of path on private property for which the city has an easement. We don't actually have the right to go on the property and repair it and would have to work out some sort of arrangement with the property owner.

I just wanted that to be clear because I know it's a discontinuous, is that the right term? But we own part, then it becomes private. Now we're going to repair the public. But that section in there, we have limited capacity to work on unless the property owner maintains it. So I know that we get a lot of, I get questions as to why there's a difference in that area. Thank you.

So I'll move on to the proposed projects. I'm just gonna go over the projects first and then I'll have some slides that describe the funding that's associated with these. The first two projects are in the parks category. One is improving the dugouts at the softball fields. There's some fencing around the softball fields that has been replaced from time to time, but the dugouts haven't really been addressed and the biggest A concern that we've received is that there's no shade. And so we think some minor modifications to the fencing, we can accommodate some shade at those dugouts at the softball fields. And then the other is also at Piper Park, which is the tennis courts. And so they were last resurfaced about six years ago. They need resurfacing again. And as part of that, we're also going to look at some other improvements around the tennis courts, possible improvements to there's a water fountain there that could be upgraded. The pathway has some issues. The oleander bushes are problematic because the roots are actually lifting up the court and they're causing problems. some of the damage. So we're proposing to remove those and replace them with something that's better suited for that condition. And then we'll be looking at the fencing and some other improvements like that too. And then doing some minor patch repairing to those tennis courts and then resurfacing them and then restriping them. And then that configuration will be determined after the working group that's working now on the tennis and pickleball coordination at that location. We also propose to resurface the Centennial courts. There's two courts at Centennial at the same time, mostly because we'll get some cost savings in doing all those courts at one time. They're also in need of resurfacing, and they're in different locations, but we're lumping them together into one project so we can have one contractor do them and get some cost savings. The next three projects are we're doing an annual pavement maintenance program. And so the next two kind of streets that need some work are Larkspur Landing Circle and Redwood Highway. There's some other things going on development wise on both of those streets, which has pushed them out pavement rehabilitation wise. And so we'll determine based on what those other projects develop as whether we're doing repaving or we're doing crack sealing and patching. But those are the two streets. And then, as always, if there's other streets in town that were paved with Measure C, you know, 10 to 15 years ago, and they're starting to show some distress, now is the time to fix some of those things before they really get into significant issues. The last two years, we've had storm drain improvement projects that have installed flat valves and replaced aged pipes. corrugated metal pipe segments. We're proposing another project. We've still got some storm drain improvements. We've got a lot of storm drain improvements, but we've got some immediate needs that we've identified that we need to do in the next fiscal year. So we're proposing another storm drain project for 2027. And then the other project is the corridor study that I mentioned before for doing the south portion of Magnolia Avenue. And the slide here, I show this whenever I can. This is the MTC's rating of all of the agencies within the nine-county Bay Area and showing their pavement conditions. So we're at the top. Our pavement condition index on a scale of 0 to 100 is 87. And actually our pavement condition is actually starting to go down a little bit just because it's been a few years since we finished our five-year plan. And every year that the pavement sits out there, its condition gets a little worse, but we're still four points clear of the next one below us. And we're still about seven points clear of when we may have to start considering doing some more pavement overlays. So you're going to see a lot of maintenance in the next four to five years. Yes.

Through the mayor, just a quick question. Are you finding that I believe, you know, there's some more inflationary pressures like asphalt costs? Are those something to consider for the budget? Or I mean, it doesn't seem like we have a lot of repairs at the moment.

Yeah, they're not really impacting us at the moment. I think if we were doing our five year program right now and we were paving five miles of streets a year and spending four million dollars, I'd be a little concerned about some of those things blowing out our budget. But at the level that we're going right now, it's not really impacting us too much.

Okay, thank you. And I did have a quick question about the storm drains. I've been trying to monitor that. I know, you know, years ago, there was an issue, just an assessment. And I'm wondering, you know, one of the closed out items was, you know, 23303, the storm drain repairs. So we're rolling that into another portion. Are we, you know, are we done with the assessment? I mean, do we even have a sense of, you know, where the highest risk vulnerable, you know, sections of the storm drains are?

Yeah, so we focused or we prioritized our assessment on corrugated metal pipes, which typically will fail before a concrete pipe or a plastic pipe. So we addressed or we got cameras in. all of our corrugated metal pipes. We didn't get it all the way through all of them because there were some issues that we ran into here and there, but that was our first priority. Our second priority were pipes that were not in the street, but they were behind houses and downhill sides and that were hard to get to and were not as visible. And so we wanted to get eyes on those. Those have all been taken care of. And so as far as the assessment goes, we still have some pipes that a lot of them are ones that are close to the creek where the pipes will silt up. And in order to properly inspect those, we need to remove the silt from the pipe, which is proving to be an issue because it's hard to get rid of that material. Once you take it out of the pipe, we have to dry it and test it and then take it to a landfill. And that's really adding a lot of cost to that process. So I think a lot of our pipes in our lower lying areas that are closer to the creeks, we still have some assessment to do with those. And those are the ones that we're focusing on for this 2027. project yeah julian um back on the road repaving so how much do you anticipate needing to spend on just road maintenance on an annual basis roughly yeah so at the moment where we are um it's in the probably the 500 000 to a million a year um and we're probably good in that range And it'll get a little bit more every year. So conservatively, I'd say probably about a million dollars for the next three or four years. And that's a lot of our maintenance heavy. That's a lot of our crack sealing or patching and maybe some slurry seals. And then we're going to get to a point where we're going to be in about five years. We're going to be about 20 years on from where Measure C started. And we're going to have to start doing some overlays and some repaving. And we're going to be getting into the two million. And then a few years after that, we're going to be looking at three million a year. So for the next five years, we're probably close to about a million dollars a year. And then it's going to ramp up probably two million for the next five and then three million for the next five. So, yeah.

Okay. And when we repaved all the streets in five years, like what was the expenditure on average per year? That was like, it was like a $20 million bond, right? That we took out or 25?

It was, we spent 23 million on paving 25 miles of streets in five years. So every year wasn't the same, but it was roughly four to five miles of street a year. Okay.

All right. Great. Perfect. Thank you.

This is the funding allocation summarized for the projects that I just showed you. Actually, this slide's a little out of order because I haven't shown you the funding by project yet, but this is what all the money adds up to. These are your funding sources on the left that we're proposing for the projects that we're presenting to you. General fund reserve, county parks measure A, two types of gas tax, vehicle impact fee, TAM, local streets and road, which is measure AA, transit mitigation. So a total of $1.785 million is proposed to be added in to the capital program this year. On the right, that shows your fund balance. So these are separate from the general fund. These are special funds that you can see in the budget document. This shows what the balance was at the end of June of last year, which was the last time these were audited. You can see how much we're allocating and then what the balance is. And then what this doesn't show is how much comes in each year. But I'm happy to talk to that if there's any questions about that level of detail.

Sorry, Julie, just one question. I mean, one of my, you know, as we listen here, there's probably so many engineering concerns and, you know, financial, but, you know, it's the balance sometimes between quality of life and public safety. So, you know, pickleball courts or that, you know, we're doing those things, but, you know, I'm concerned about storm drains and, you know, the pump stations as well. Now, do these funding sources kind of constrain, you know, the caps that could be done? Like, you know, you could not take the County parks measure a money and use it for public safety. I mean, you could use it for wildfire, you know, sort of what vegetation management or I'm curious if there's if those are kind of the categories public safety versus quality of life, you know, is there a certain amount that that's earmarked there that's hard to move around?

Yeah, there's restrictions on most of these funds other than the general fund reserve at the top. County Parks Measure A is primarily for parks. I'm not sure about vegetation management in parks. Yes, I think, but... We have typically spent that money on development of parks and not on parks operations. So we try to keep those two sides of the house and anything that takes place in a park that's vegetation management or it's supporting operations has been done through the operations budget. And we've been taking the county parks measure a budget and applying it to improving our parks. It's not a lot of money. It's about 90,000 a year. And we haven't had a lot of development. So it's one of our few funding sources to actually build up that infrastructure in a park. So, yes, pretty much anything in a park would qualify. But our practice to date has been to actually have physical improvements in the park with those funds.

Okay, so it's really the general reserve that can move around into different categories, but some of them are really like parks for parks kind of, you know.

Yeah, and your gas tax, your vehicle impact fee, your TAM, local streets and road, RMRA gas tax, that's SB1. Those are all street related. So that's street, storm drains, traffic signals, anything that's connected to the street or transportation, bike facilities, sidewalks. things like that. Thank you.

Julian, I have a quick question. I just wanted to go back to the REC building and the EV infrastructure upgrade for the charging stations. Can you just explain why you're not asking for the funding upfront as a capital improvement project and holding off and coming back to us? Why wouldn't we plan for it as part of that project?

So two parts to that. The reason why we took the EV chargers out of the rec building project is because we know that there are a lot of grants out there for electrical vehicle infrastructure. Some of those grants are federal. And when you take federal grant money, there are a lot of restrictions that come with the federal funding that you have to follow certain guidelines when you're running your project. There's a lot of reporting. And so if we had money, federal money to do the EV charging stations, and it was part of the rec building project, it would make that whole project subject to that federal audit and potentially higher costs associated with that. So that's why we, that's a, why we separated out and made it a separate project because we anticipate we'll get grant funding. It might not be federal, but if it is, we don't want to complicate the rec building with federal funds. And then the reason why we don't have any funding program for it is because we're still in the preliminary stages with PG&E as far as what that project is going to look like and how much grant funding. and how much city funding and whether it'll be level two or level three. We had a placeholder of 450,000 before when we talked to you about the rec building. When we added that project into the CIP, that cost will go up quite a bit if we land on being able to do level three charging there. But I don't know at this point what the ask would be of the Council of City Funds. It will be based on what kind of rebates and what kind of grant funding is available. PG&E also have some new programs that are available to pay for infrastructure to support electric vehicles. It's called Rule 29. And so that funding is able to pay for a lot of the infrastructure that you need to get the power to your stations. A lot of the grants that are out there are just for the stations themselves and the rebates. But the new PG&E program will actually pay to upgrade the power that may be needed to support your structure. And then the way PG&E operates is sometimes you can choose to have PG&E do the work. Or you can choose for the city to do the work and get reimbursed by PG&E. And you have to get a certain way through the project development to understand which way is going to be most economical and the quickest for your project. So I don't know exactly what that funding scenario is going to look like, I think. In the past, you know, we probably could put a CIP project in there that just shows it's unfunded as a place marker. I just I didn't. But we could. We could also itemize it on the unfunded list. I think if somebody wanted to see that that project was in the works, because right now it's just kind of a footnote to the REC project. building. And then we could just use the 450,000 estimate that we generated for level two. It's going to have to come back to you regardless, because whatever funding I show in there at the moment, when we work through the rebates and whatever grants are out there, it's bound to change. So it'll come back to you in the new year when we have a better idea of what the project is. But we can put a placeholder in there, so it's itemized and people can see it's there. I'm not going to forget about it, but there's a couple of different ways we could footnote it.

Okay. I mean, given the current environment with the federal administration and funding for renewables, and it seems to me that to hold off on planning for it based on federal funding might not be a great strategy. But with regards to PG&E, understood, obviously, if they can pay for bringing the power to the infrastructure that's worthy of waiting for, although given the size of PG&E and the rate at which they move, uh wouldn't it will it prevent us from doing the project at the same time you know we we talk about economies of scale and running projects side by side and the benefit of doing that we're going to be trenching for electricity for the rec building so of course we're going to want to bring along the electricity for the ev infrastructure at the same time Will it in any way prohibit or delay our ability to do the EV infrastructure at the same time as we're doing the rec building?

It should not, and that's the plan. They will be separate projects on paper, but much like the library, was completed as six different projects on paper. Everything happened to once. And it's not that we're delaying the project. We're just delaying how it's shown in the CIP. We're actively working on that project, on the project for the EVs. We've already met with PG&E. It's just not being run through the capital project right now because it's kind of pre-project. And so that gets absorbed in the operating budget of Public Works. It's a lot of our project planning. And before we know what a project is, it gets handled by our staff and by consultants and before the CIP is created. So we're not delaying anything on that project at all. We're moving. And in fact, we think the

um getting the pg e service and the meter is the long lead item on that project so we've already started with that with that work okay um i'm not i i think for the benefit of the of the climate action forum uh listing it as an unfunded um improvement plan uh capital improvement plan would be great to have it there just for visibility purposes, given that the focus is and a priority, number one priority is, you know, identifying public sites for EV infrastructure. So I think it would be a great ad.

Okay.

And it would be appreciated.

Yeah. So there is an unfunded list. That's one of my last slides. And so it was adopting the capital improvement program. You could add, you could adopt it with the addition of the Piper Park EV chargers as an additional unfunded project on that list.

Okay. Thank you.

I just want to chime in here, Sarah. You know, MCE has rebates and grants for EV chargers. But as Julian was saying, in order to apply for them, even, you know, some of these are state grants or federal grants. And even though it's a state grant, they do have, they adhere to like federal, for whatever reason, federal requirements. And so that really will slow things down. So I think what Julian's doing here in separating the two projects makes sense so that we would qualify for potential grant funding for the EV, for simply the EV chargers and not for the building. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

Okay. This next slide is kind of the breakdown of that 1.785 million. It shows you how much is going to each of those projects that I described. So this is the project name. The first column is some of these are carryover projects. So they've had previous funding. That's the prior funding column. And then this We haven't used all of the money. There's still some money left over. That's what the estimated balance is at the end of this fiscal year. And then the blue column, the bold at the end is what's before you as the request for the budget action tonight. That's just a total amount per project. The next slide goes drills down one more level, and it actually shows you the funding source that we're proposing. for each of the projects. So this is, as I showed you before, the general fund County Parks Measure A that were in that table before. Now they are the columns. So your project listing is on the left. And then as you go across, you can see the amount of funding that we're proposing for this year's budget. And then the source of that fund is in each of the columns going from general fund all the way over to transit mitigation for the Magnolia traffic study. And again, it all sums up to the 1.785. This is the Capital Improvement Program is a five-year planning tool. So part of the budget adoption tonight, we'll be asking you to allocate funds only in fiscal year 26-27 for these projects. But we do... project out over five years what we believe the allocations will be in the future for some of these projects. So this is your five-year CIP. So each column here is a fiscal year. The yellow is this coming fiscal year that is part of your allocation request tonight. in bold and then moving over to the right those are subsequent fiscal years that we anticipate there will be um additional uh funding requests for um and again you're not you're not approving those future year allocations you're just approving the five-year plan um at this point so this starts with uh building projects as i mentioned we have one library project we're carrying over And then a couple of carryover building projects. And then there's a list of parks projects. And then you see some that have no previous and no 26, 27. They're just future years. So those are projects we haven't started yet, which is Greenways improvements and Piper Park master plan priorities. Moving down, and these are all the streets projects. So the same thing, you see the ones at the top here that have current projects. funding and this year fiscal year funding and future years all the way. And then when you get down to the end of the list, you're looking at projects that are a few years out. And these are our paving maintenance projects where you see that $1.2 million a year that we're projecting we'll need for the paving in the out years. This is your unfunded list that we review every year. We update it a little bit. Again, most of these projects have not undergone a significant engineering review or analysis. So a lot of these costs are a rough order of magnitude. You see City Hall renovation is on there at 26 million. The fire stations are on there. Piper Park Master Plan implementation all the way down, all your storm drain improvements are on there. Some of these numbers will actually go down as we start to address, hopefully will go down as we start to address some of our storm drain and especially our pump stations in the coming years. Those are going to be big number projects. So we expect to see some of these numbers go down. But the reality of this, if you look at $123 million, there's a lot of needs there. And so this is the list that if in approving the five-year CIP, you wanted to specifically add EV charges at Piper Park, we would add them as a line item on the bottom here at that $450,000. So it's in the CIP. And I believe that was the last slide. So it is a public hearing. I think we're doing the public comments separately. So if you want to open up the public hearing, I'm available for any comments before that. Questions?

Great. Thank you, Mr. Skinner. Very helpful. I just have one question on that last slide. What is the $20 million for library phase two?

That's a leftover from, there was a master plan for a library and a community facility that was going to be 24,000 square feet. And so when we did the unfunded project list, initially we had a library phase one, and then we had a library phase two. We've done the library, so I took the library off, but... I never took the library phase two off. It's just kind of a leftover. We haven't really had any conversations about whether that's something that should be kept on there or should go away, but that's where it came from. So it would be the next 14,000 square feet of a library on that site.

Okay, great. If I could, just as a reminder, the unfunded lists we treat as a policy statement by the council as to if opportunities to acquire funding for any of these projects materializes, we at staff view the unfunded list as instruction from you to pursue those funding opportunities. So actually, the question about library phase two is a good one in the sense that If the council no longer feels that's something staff should be working on or monitoring for funding opportunities, taking it off would be consistent with the general policy approach that we've had to this list in the past. And then I also received a lot of questions today about the CIP late in the day, and a good one I received made me realize we actually need to up one number in there, which is the trash capture item. It's actually... ballooned a bit in terms of the estimates i believe to four million based on some memos i was reading so still unfunded at the moment but we're working on getting funding for that item but that one keeps creeping up in terms of cost and for the benefit of those i won't go in a lot of detail but that's to prevent trash from getting through the storm drains into the into the creek and out to the ocean okay great so do we need a motion then to remove library phase two off this list I think if the council wants to amend and that's your instruction, I would think you should incorporate it into a motion or take it as a separate motion. Yeah.

I don't know. How do people feel about that? Oh, go ahead.

Great. I, I think it's too early to take it off because we are still, we've just opened library phase one. I think we need to live in it for a while before we decide we're going to narrow our opportunities by removing that. This is just a policy statement. We're not budgeting for it right now. So I think keeping it there allows some creative thinking about expansion possibilities.

Okay, anybody else?

Yeah, a quick question, Julian. I'm just trying to follow the five-year plan. Looking ahead for the Larkspur Plaza Drive pump station, that's 25304 on slide 16. So that's $2.8 million. And then am I correct that we had a pause or a hold on some of the Measure G funding? Is that what that amount is? And I'm sorry. And one other question is going back to slide 12. I didn't see measured gene there. Maybe I missed it. I thought that that was a funding source for some of these projects.

Yes, so I'll take the second question first. So the columns that you see here with the funding sources are only for new sources of funding in fiscal year 26-27. There's no Measure B or Measure G in here. There is some Measure B and Measure G in other projects that were previously allocated in previous fiscal years. And there will likely be some Measure B and or Measure G in future projects. And so we've met with the Tax Oversight Committee and talked about some of what those costs might be for pump stations and trash capture. But they're not in the 26-27 CIP. They're forecast out for future years. So I think that city manager can speak.

I was wanting to acknowledge the mayor and I actually had an exchange today about this very topic. When we get to the budget, you'll notice Measure B's fund balance is pretty high. We've been holding some cash, and that's because we've been trying to build up toward the two projects that Julian mentioned. So the trash capture we now think may take $4 million. We've actually parked about $3 million in the fund balance for Measure B to deal with that issue. We may need to supplement that with Measure G if the project materializes. sooner rather than later. And we parked $2 million of fund balance for a pump station out behind cost plus. So those are two priorities that we know are coming up. And so our recommendation that the sales tax oversight committee concurred with is that this would be a good year not to put all our money to use, but allow it to accumulate so we can tackle these big ticket issues.

Okay. So just to clarify, I mean, my notes are that Measure G had an informal reserve or a hold for $2.5 million, and that's for what you just said, right?

So Measure G also has the fund balance building up, and that's for broader storm drain projects. I'm actually speaking specifically to Measure B because one of the policy directions from the council in the past has been that if we have sufficient other restricted monies available to deal with our pavement program, we should start to apply those other funds toward other infrastructure projects. We, right now, actually, this year, are not proposing to spend a lot of Measure B or Measure G money to allow it to build up because we know these projects are on the horizon. We'd love to do all these projects in one year. I've tried so often to tell Mr. Skinner to do a bunch of projects, and he's reminded me there's only so many projects contractors in the world and so many hours in the day and so he's spending as fervently as he can uh but so this is again what he's scheduling for this year i work a lot with him to start to plan the money for the next three years and so i'm feeling comfortable we're building up the right sums to do that

Okay, so sorry. And another just one more very basic question. So we have the 1.75 million in new funding. And then I think we have like 7.8 in the carryover funding. And how is that distributed on this? The carryover is part of that burndown that you're pushing forward. So we have money and the question is, how soon can we deliver on that?

Yeah, so the carryover is funding that you've allocated in a previous fiscal year that we don't anticipate we will spend by the end of June of this year and will instead be spent next year on projects. that's different than money that we think we're going to need to add in the future, like for the Larkspur Plaza Drive pump station that we're going to need to add in the future to finish that project. So a big chunk of your carryover money is that you allocated money for the rec building last year, but we haven't spent it yet. So that $7 million includes $3 million of money for the rec center that we haven't spent yet. And then the pavement maintenance project that I presented to you for paving a Skylark, we think based on the contractor, most of those expenses are going to occur next fiscal year. So there's almost another million dollars there. So that's That $7 million, there is a planning sheet attached. It wasn't in my presentation, but to the staff report that shows you the breakdown of how much money is in each of those projects. That's that $7 million in carryover. Once you've allocated it with a project, It's different than the operating budget where we start with a clean slate every year. These capital projects, once you allocate it to the project, they stay with the project until we spend it. Every year I get together with the administrative services director so that her budget docs will have my best estimate of how much of that money we're actually going to spend in a year. But for example, the 3.1 million for the rec center is, That doesn't show up in the budget docs is all being spent last year, even though it was allocated that stays with the project. And then it gets spent over however many fiscal years it takes to finish that project and it gets It gets budgeted once up front, and then it gets spent in the fiscal year that the actual work gets completed. So it's a little different where once you've allocated, we don't have to reallocate it every year, but we identify it on the sheet as just a reminder that there is money that you've allocated before for these projects, and it's going to stay with that project into the next fiscal year.

It might be helpful for the benefit of the public too. And just a reminder, what you're being asked to do in this item is twofold, right? You're going to actually adopt the proposed allocations for the current fiscal year, and then you're effectively concurring with or endorsing the current plan for the subsequent four years. But plans are subject to change. New monies materialize, new priorities materialize. Our interests as a community and as a council and as a staff change, and we're constantly adapting. So the action is to fund the current year and recognize the implications for the next four after that.

And just as a cap, I mean, that was very helpful, Julian. So in some sense, a measure of where we are, the carryover money, if it's growing over time, means we're kind of getting behind. We'd like to get stuff out to the public, but for one reason or another, say COVID, I imagine the carryover went up considerably.

Yeah, I mean, it depends. So for example, when we did the Bonaire Bridge, that was a $30 million project. Typically, when you award a project, you need to show that you have the funds to pay for that project. And so your budget in the year that you awarded the Bonaire Bridge project had $30 million assigned. It took us four years to spend that money. So you had huge chunks of capital money that were being carried over every year. So yes, and the library had big chunks of funds that were carried over every fiscal year. It's good policy to have your funding lined up when you award a contract to a contractor. So typically you front load your capital budget in the year it's awarded with all of the money and then you spend it over the years. And then some of them are just projects that have been withheld because of or delayed because of environmental conditions or for other reasons that they take a little bit longer to implement. So it's usually one of those two things. Either it's a big project and you plan to spread it out over multiple fiscal years or sometimes there's some

uh factor that caused that project to get pushed out a year or something like that thank you okay great any other questions from council members okay we'll open it up um to the public any members of the public have any questions on the presentation seeing none in the chamber any questions online Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Skinner. That was a very helpful presentation. Is there a separate report, Mr. City Manager, Mr. Schwartz, for Part B, adoption of the fiscal year? Are we going to get a separate presentation?

So I'm going to do this very simple presentation to make sure you and the public know exactly what each of these resolutions does. But we've already done three meetings to prepare. So I thought we'd more open it up to any questions you have at this point about the budget.

Okay.

Yep, go ahead.

No questions just to Mr. Skinner and Ms. Gabrielle in the back. These are fantastic and they're thorough and they're easy to understand. And I just want to say thank you to both of you for all the hard work put into this. Thank you.

Great. Anyone else have questions? Any council members? Okay. I don't have a question, but I do have just a point for consideration, and I brought this up earlier today about the bonds that we issued for the road repaving. I mean, it sounds like we have extra money. We've been building a reserve for specific projects, which I would agree with. I guess my overall sentiment would be, you know, we need to build up a reserve to make sure that we can pave our streets so that we're not using money. And then when we in five years, we have to start repeating our streets and there's no money there. I think our residents would be very upset about that. But if we are creating a lot of reserves that we're not using, based on the information that Ms. Gabrielle told me, I mean, these bonds are trading at a premium. So one, does it make sense to refinance? So maybe we should have our bond council perhaps run some models to see whether it makes sense to refinance. And two, just weigh the costs. If we are earning – I don't know, 4% yield on the reserves, but the interest rate on these bonds is 5%. Does it make sense to pay down some of the interest on the bonds if we're not earning the 5% yield on our investments? So I think there's some analysis that I'm hoping maybe the municipal bond advisor can help us with just to see, because it does sound like we are getting a significant amount of money through all these taxes and all these different measures. And just want to make sure that we're, one, make sure that the money is there when we need it. But also if we have extra that we are thinking about, you know, the best way or the most, the highest return for our dollar. So thank you.

We'd be happy to return later this year after we had a chance to speak with the municipal advisor and prepare an analysis. As you and I know from our exchange earlier, this is really a discussion about use of money, cost of money, and opportunity cost. And I think the council needs to look through all of that before making a change.

Thank you. And I do want to just say, thank you, Ms. Gabrielle, Mr. Skinner, our community development director, Mr. Schwartz, all of our staff. I mean, the budget is a huge lift every year and it's very detailed and it's a very tight budget. So thank you very much for all the work that has gone into it. Did anyone else have any other questions? Okay, so do you want us to make a motion, or what's your preference?

It might be helpful. We usually do the CIP, take the motion on that. It sounded like you wanted to add a project, I think I heard Council Member Margulies say, to the unfunded list.

So I just, I guess being new at this, I'm not sure I understand because what I heard was that the unfunded list is a policy statement about moving a project forward if funds become available. Did I understand that correctly?

We interpret the unfunded list that it's a project the council would like to have done if there are funds available and the council should and the staff should Be looking for opportunities to fund the project.

Okay.

In this particular case. As Mr. Skinner's indicated, we already have direction from the council to fund that project somehow.

Okay.

But I heard from you, you wanted a little more. documentation that that project's in the pipeline. And the simplest way to do that would be to add it to the list now. My guess is by the end of the summer, there's a pretty good chance we'll be turning it into a funded project because we'll know where the funds are going to come from.

Okay, okay. Then it's probably not imperative to put it on the unfunded list because you have direction to fund somehow the project. And Mr. Skidder will be meeting with our Climate Action Forum to talk about the projects and the plans. And so I think if you feel confident that this is going to probably have funding opportunities, in the next six months, then it's not imperative to put it on the unfunded.

Yeah, and if I could just underscore, while we're talking about this project, the council will recall when we were looking at the library, we had speakers come and say, why are you doing level two chargers? We'd really like some level three chargers. And we said, the infrastructure is not there. Mr. Skinner's exploring with PG&E. They have a potential new program to upgrade their infrastructure to create the possibility of higher level chargers. And so... We were shocked to find out that was even a conversation we could have. And that's probably why it's taking a little longer than we would have liked to bring that to fruition. And we may not realize that goal, but it's an intriguing one we want to pursue.

Absolutely. I would love to see level three charging there. Thank you.

It sounds like you could just take up the resolution to adopt the CIP as a motion.

Great. Can I get a motion? I'll move Resolution 37-26.

I will second that motion.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Great. Motion passes. Wonderful. Okay.

So very briefly, Madam Mayor and Council Members, this evening, now in the second part of this public hearing, you're taking up my final recommendation for the budget for fiscal year 26-27. We had a preliminary budget discussion at your last meeting. You gave me some instruction on items that you wanted adjusted. And I'm taking all the credit, but of course, it was really administrative service director Amelia Gabriel is in the room and did all the work to make sure this happened and got published. There's a team supporting her from the assistant city managers group, Shannon O'Hare and her team. actually put the book together, which is not a small feat. So thank you to Shannon and her team. Probably the most significant change from my perspective is strong direction from the council to invest a little more in our planning division so that we're prepared for all the projects in the pipeline. So we have actually restored funding for a planning position. I also wanted to note, we had already talked about the last meeting, we've restored funding for a librarian position. However, We are talking about whether that's the right position since our goal is to start to move toward more hours. And we're talking about whether there's a different type of staff person that would actually be better suited to that. More to come. We're going to make sure we get the, you know, as we've talked about, we're trying to get the right mix to meet the largest number of demands and interests in that building. Yeah. With that said, I'm not gonna belabor the written reports, very detailed. We're prepared to answer any questions you may have about the final budget from you or the public, but I do wanna make sure everybody understands what's happening at the conclusion of this public hearing. There are a number of policies that the council reviews each year as part of its budget process. They are published in this budget book, and they need to be reaffirmed through adoption of these resolutions. The first is that a few years ago, the council established that it would like to adopt a list of vendors that are on call with the city. So these are vendors that in any given year, we don't necessarily send a substantial amount of money to, depending on your definition of substantial. But since we have an ongoing relationship, we felt to be fully transparent. These are firms that year after year are getting a significant amount of taxpayer business, and so we wanted that to be documented for the public. The second is the investment policy, a reminder that Ms. Gabrielle is also the city treasurer. She is empowered to invest on behalf of the city. She flatters me by asking my opinion once in a while, but we do actually have an outside advisor, so we're not operating in a vacuum here. And so we are guided by California law in what our investment policy can be. And so every year we review it to make sure it's consistent with state law. We have a purchasing policy that clarifies my spending authority, the spending authority of the department, priorities in terms of spending, what are local priorities, what are green priorities that we have within our spending. That's all captured in our purchasing policy, which we also make sure is consistent with state law every year. We adopt a general fund reserve policy each year. There are actually two components to the policy. They total 25% of the operating budget. So every year we have to make sure that our reserve has 25% of our operating budget available. That serves several purposes. Obviously, as a reserve, its primary purpose is if we have a problem, we have the money and resources to deal with it. One of our reserves is designed so that if there is a catastrophic event or a closure that results in a substantial loss of sales tax or property tax to the city, we have a pot of money to deal with that in the immediate aftermath. And then on a practical level, I like to remind the Council of Public Affairs We live basically two paychecks a year. Like most of our money comes in twice a year in April and December because we're primarily a property tax revenue town. And so the reserve is actually how we do cashflow. It's how we get from paycheck to paycheck. So it's really important to keep a healthy reserve in our accounts. Lastly, we're required by state constitution to establish our appropriation limits. There's a formula for doing that. Ms. Gabrielle calculates that consistent with state law every year. That's how much money we can effectively or essentially spend in a given year. And then each year, to be consistent with the California public employee retirement system, we adopt a resolution for the authorized positions and the salaries. And then lastly, there's actually adopting the budget. I'm very pleased to report, as I said earlier, you are allowed to take all of these resolutions up as a slate at the end of your conversation and at the end of taking public comment, should you so choose to.

Great. Thank you for the very thorough explanation of all of the various parts of passing the budget. Thank you. Anybody have any questions? Council members? I see none.

Okay.

Any questions or comments from the public? on the fiscal 2026, 2027 budget. This is your chance if you have a comment. Okay, anybody online?

And there's no public comment.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, so we'll bring it back to council. Would somebody like to make a motion?

I would. And I'd first like to thank, you know, Ms. Gabrielle and Dan for, you know, one of our, you know, sort of points of pride that we run things cautiously, you know, with good risk management and have done so for years. I think I've earned some of the voters' trust for that. So thank you very much. And I'm happy to make that motion.

Which motion is that? Oh, gosh.

Well, let's start with what resolution?

You can say adopt the enumerated resolutions and it's fine.

Well, that's sure. Adopt the enumerated resolutions starting from 3826 to 4426.

Second. Great. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, great. right the budget is yes congratulations thank you very much to the staff and all the hard work um actually i i should also say last time we didn't really uh mention this but there was a significant saving or pope savings in our budget from the reorganization that's happening at rvpa and also at central marin fire And that was led by Councilmember Kandel, our city manager, and also fire chief Reuben Martin. And so we really need to thank them for their work in saving the city almost three quarters of a million dollars. So that's great. Thank you very much.

And I'm going to put that back on city manager Schwartz for leading the charge on that. So thank you, city manager Schwartz.

Great. Okay. All right. So now we're going to talk about, okay, we're almost to the farmer's market. Do we have, we do have our vendors here, but Chief Martin has been here since the beginning. So yeah, well, I think the paramedics will go quickly. So let's, let's do the Ross Valley quickly and then we'll get to the farmer's market.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor Andre and members of the Council and members of the community. Ruben Martin, Fire Chief with the Central Marin Fire Authority. I am here presenting Resolution 4526, which is the amendments to the JPA of the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority, also known as RVPA, and restated that same agreement. What we're going to go through, I've got a small presentation. Here that will highlight a little bit of the history of the members of the public and members of the council may understand where we came from just so we can go back about approximately 40 years and about 1981 or so the members within the Ross Valley looked at. We didn't have any paramedic services within any of our jurisdictions. And so all the 8 member agencies, which is all the municipalities within the greater Ross Valley. came together, created a separate JPA or Joint Powers Authority that included the town of Fairfax, Sleepy Hollow Fire Protection District, San Anselmo, the town of Ross, Kenfield Fire Protection District, the city of Larkspur, the town of Corte Madera, and the county of Marin. And why they say the county of Marin is because within all of our jurisdictions, They're small pockets of county service area. And so we've been putting a tax measure on the ballot since 1983 to be able to provide paramedic services. If you look back at the original agreement that was signed in 1982, which includes the signatory line items, it's a total of two pages, which doesn't meet any of the state and or legal regulatory requirements for modern day joint powers authorities. With that, as we mentioned, the authority has been in operation since 1982, providing paramedic services throughout the entire valley. It started with one paramedic ambulance located at Station 18 in the town of Ross. It was just two paramedics throughout the entire valley for several years. In 1998, due to prolonged travel times and response times into certain areas of the jurisdictions, for example, Corte Madera, which was receiving long response times, an agreement was brought about within the town of Corte Madera and the RVPA for them to become a subcontractor, allowing them the ability to collect their own tax measure, maintain it, collect their own ambulance revenues, and then upstaff a second ambulance along with paramedics on the engine company. Fast forward to about 2024 with the RVPA looking at a long-term lease for facilities with the town of Ross and potentially building a new paramedic facility. Staff within the Ross Valley had asked the Ross Valley Board to look at the overall governance issues. and financial situation of the JPA to make sure that if we're going to, as a government agency, invest about $75,000 a year over the next 30 years in a facility, let's make sure that we're placing the ambulance in the right location. So part of that is what came to light of the rewrite is when we identified that there was a lot of holes within the GPA language that really I didn't identify major components within it. Um, so for example, um, So, as I mentioned, it's an 8 board member, so the primarily most of the framework within the stays the same. However, it identifies certain areas within the governance. who the eight board members are. They're typically appointed by the respective elected bodies of the city that represents the RVPA. So for example, Council Member Kandel represents the city of Larkspur within the RVPA. It also looked at the voting and governance structure within the RVPA of what required a simple majority versus a two-thirds majority vote. Part of that would require, for example, if there's expenditures above 3% of the approved budget, it would require two-thirds majority vote in the affirmative to approve that. Other things within the administrative structure, it identified what the actual fiscal year ran through, which is July 1 through June 30th of every year. Talks about mid-year budget increases also for funding and what would require that two-thirds majority vote. It also identified who the treasurer is, and current treasurer is held as part of one of the member agencies through the city of Larkspur. And so Ms. Gabrielle is the finance director for the RVPA.

It also talked about...

member um on the two-thirds vote of uh say if there's a new member that wanted to become part of the rvpa what is that required if there's a member within the rvpa member agency if one wants to leave it would require that two-thirds vote and a 24-month uh notice so that way the rvpa can then start planning for future changes in revenue sources um and then it also um looked at legal protections, basically indemnifying and protecting the member agencies for many actions made by the also looking at the finances that any debt incurred by the stays with the doesn't go back and affect the local member agencies. Um, 1 of the biggest things that came out of it was, um, Within the RVPA, so when I look back in 1998, when Corte Madera started running their own ambulance as a It kind of bifurcated the system in a way. So there was two different billing policies, two different tax rates, two different ways on how we staffed the ambulance. And so part of this reorganization was trying to reconsolidate everything back to the RVPA as a whole under one agency. So, for example, all of the tax measures beginning in 27-28 will be moved forward to the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority. We're going to centralize all of the purchasing. So there's one procurement policy, one point of ordering. So hopefully it'll create several efficiencies for both the Ross Valley Paramedic side and the Central Marin Fire side. And then the biggest thing that we're also correcting with this is with a tax measure is equalizing the tax measure amongst the all the member agencies. So, for example, right now, the kind of quarter of an hour is tax measure for paramedic services is about twenty four dollars less than every member agency within the greater Ross Valley. So as part of which will be the next item come forward as part of our annual. tax measure, what we're doing is to try to correct that, is Corte Madera is being asked to increase their tax rate at a slightly higher rate than all the other member agencies. So in order after the four-year tax cycle, everyone will be equalized, we'll have the same tax measure. And just for context, they took action on the item last night and passed both the JPA amendment and the tax measure. And so within the next four years, we'll all be equalized. One of the other things that was identified within the two different methodologies of running the paramedic services is that within the tax rate of within the greater Ross Valley is for non-commercial or excuse me, for non-residential commercial space. we were taxing for every 1,500 square feet. The town of Corbinera on their side was for every 1,000 square feet. So we equalized that so both sides will tax at the same rate at 1,000 square feet of non-residential commercial space. So that way it'll also create a little more revenue for the Ross Valley side and equalize their expenditures. Let's see with that.

Ruben, have all the member agencies heard this presentation yet and approved it, or has it just been Corte Madera?

My understanding is the agencies are taking it within these next two weeks, the first week of June and the second week of June to their councils.

And do all eight have to approve it to become? Yes, that's correct. Okay.

And so that kind of concludes the big major portions of the GPA rewrite. I think it's definitely a long time coming. After 40 years, we went from a page and a half or two complete pages of signatories to about, I think it's a 13, 14 page document. That's actually very substantive that I think will carry us as a strong agency moving forward. And with that, that'll conclude my presentation. I'm open to any questions that you may have.

Great. Thank you. Any questions from council members? Okay. I'll open it up for members of the public. Anybody have any questions? Anybody online?

And there's no public comment.

Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah. Who wants to move this one?

Sure.

I will make this motion.

Can we get a second?

Anybody want a second?

Sure, I'll second it. Great. All right, all those in favor of adopting Resolution 4526, say aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Any abstaining?

Motion passes. Great. Do we have one more?

Yeah, we have one more. Thank you, Madam Mayor and members of the council. So this is kind of coincides with the resolution you just passed of the JPA amendments. And this is resolution 4626 requesting the council to place the RVPA tax measure onto the November 3rd ballot. Just for a little context, as I mentioned earlier, we've been placing this tax measure on the ballot since 1983, and typically it has, an escalator that kind of coincides with your current cost of living increases, which traditionally has been about 3%. I know we've seen slightly higher over the last five or six years, but the Ross Valley Paramedic Authority feels that based on their projections moving forward, that placing this tax measure on the ballot at a $4 increase over the next four years, so $16 over the next four years, starting in 2027, It'll be sufficient enough to move them forward with their budget projections for the next four years. So what we're asking is if the city council is willing to place the the RVPA tax measure on the November 3rd ballot. And I'm open to any questions if you have any.

Great. Thank you. Anybody have any questions? Any council members have questions?

Yeah, I just have one question. Does that mean that all of the other seven jurisdictions that are part of the JPA also have to put the tax measure on their ballots as well?

Yes, that's correct. So every member agency that's part of the RVPA places every four years the tax measure on the ballot.

Okay. So then it's important that all of us pass this in order to fund the JPA.

Yes, that's correct. And so the tax measure is the primary funding source for the JPA.

Okay.

And so that's where they collect the most of their revenue for providing their operational budget.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions? Okay. Any questions from the public? Seeing none in the chamber, any online questions?

I'm sorry, Ruben, this is a measure that requires two-thirds approval from the voters?

Yes, that's correct. So two-thirds from the voters. That's a high threshold. And when's the last time we had this on the ballot? So the last time we placed it on the ballot was the 2022 election cycle, and I believe valley-wide the measure passed that at about 84%. Okay.

Right. Well, I think public safety, emergency services, I think everybody wants. So hopefully it will see similar passage rates. Okay. Does anyone want to make a motion?

So I'll move Resolution 4626. Second.

All those in favor? Any opposed? Any abstain? Great. Motion passes. Thank you, Chief Mark.

And once again, I want to thank... Councilmember Kandel and City Manager Schwartz for working with us and trying to get this across the finish line. Well, thank you.

Well done. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Chief Martin. All right. So now we are at item 8.2, which is discussing a pilot program for the use of the downtown parking lot for the farmer's market and farm stand operations.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, council members. I'm going to do a brief presentation, and I believe the mayor has invited two vendors to speak as well. So I just wanted to provide some additional context, particularly after hearing some questions that came in from members of the public and members of the council. We're here tonight in large part because the mayor and other council members have been hearing from the community that the closure of the Lucky Market has really been a hindrance to the community, and we brainstormed different ways we might provide something to the downtown area, and Farmer's Market is something that came up quite a bit as a conversation. So I want to acknowledge the mayor took the initiative to work with staff to start to sort of find out what was the public's interest and also who was out there who might fit in terms of what we would do. We also did a fairly exhaustive study of this area to figure out where we might site a farmer's market. And unfortunately, there's not a lot of public land in this part of town. So you really end up, if the city's going to be taking the initiative, talking about street closures or the downtown parking lot. I know that a lot of folks have said to me, why aren't you putting it at the Lucky parking lot? That's private property, and the three property owners that have parts of that parking lot have no interest in hosting a farmer's market, so it's not an option for us. So, with all of that said, we started to take a look at the possibility of using the downtown parking lot. We've had two vendors be interested, and they both have slightly different business models, and I think you'll hear a little bit about that tonight, but it's significant because staff's been sort of puzzling how to engage them from a city contractual approach. Right now, I think you're going to hear this evening that we have a farm stand that wants to operate on Tuesdays, starting sometime in the late morning into the early evening or into the evening hour. It's a for-profit single proprietor business. That farm stand currently operates in San Anselmo and in town of Ross. So if you're familiar with that setup, if you've been there, you've seen this operation and I'm sure the vendor will speak more to that. We also had conversations with one of Marin's certified farmers markets, which is a nonprofit. If you're not familiar, the Ag Commissioner in Marin certifies certain market operators to operate farmers markets that sell local goods. And so this is an operator who would be bringing that set up to our jurisdiction. And she's, I think, going to present tonight and she operates some markets elsewhere in the county. As I said, the property that stood out to us is to use a portion of the downtown parking lot. And we've highlighted the area that would be set aside for these operations. So in order to make this work, one of the things is we have to make sure nobody parks there before the markets come to operate during the day. So it really means closing the parking first thing in the morning because we don't want to be in the business of towing cars midday to facilitate these markets. So both of these markets are talking about their operations going into the later part of the evening. So we're really talking about the parking generally being out of commission on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the marked area for the entirety of those days or the significant portion of them. There's an error in the staff report. We had originally counted 15 spaces but the public works director took another look and realized there's 18 spaces that are affected by this proposal. This alignment is important though because it maintains the ability of cars to safely come into the lot and park in the other portions of the parking lot. It also makes sure that the ADA parking spaces are still present and available to the public. so the other issue that came up that we looked at and i referenced a little bit in the staff report is the farm stand operation is pretty modest in size and doesn't need the entirety of that square but the problem is when you start to think about where you're going to safely set up that arrangement you start to realize that if you try to open up any portion of the parking in that rectangle You are creating a situation where car may be traveling toward the stand. And as you all know, we not too long ago experienced what the police turned out term is pedal confusion, which is when somebody inadvertently hits the gas when they meant to hit the brake. We had a very, very public incident of that not too far from us at the Silver Peso. And so we have to bear that in mind. And so really for safety, at least while we get this off the ground, even for the farm stand, our staff believes we need to block off that entire rectangle. Yeah. There are fees involved, and so the primary purpose staff is here this evening is these fee structures are kind of awkward for engaging these vendors, but they're what the tools are that we have that you've adopted, and only the council can change fees. So you have the option, we don't, as staff, to negotiate fees or change fees or waive fees. These are the fees that are necessary in our mind to facilitate bringing these operations into that location. For the farmer's market, they need a temporary use permit, and it would be a one-year permit, and it could be renewed each year. They need an encroachment permit. An encroachment permit is what you get from Public Works when you're going to be operating on public land. That's where we actually get into a lot of the details to make sure that we're protecting the public interest So I know there's been some questions about making sure that things are cleaned up after the market leaves That there's conditions making sure other parking spaces aren't taken by the market These are the types of things we would restrict in a in an encroachment permit condition list But lastly is this question of rent, if you will. I'm going to just use the term rent. But what we have is a fee for the use of our public space. We have a lot of different fees for that. The one that seems most appropriate here is a use of public right-of-way, which is $0.03 per square foot. This is roughly $170 per occurrence that the market would come out. I think that's probably one that's a little unusual for arrangements with the farmer's market, so the council might want to be talking about that after they hear from the vendor this evening. For the farm stands a little different because it's a sole proprietor. It's not really a relationship where the city's just trying to sort of facilitate bringing in a number of vendors and it's not a nonprofit. We looked to the examples from San Anselmo and Ross to see what they had concluded. And they concluded that a slightly different arrangement was probably more appropriate, which is to ask for an encroachment permit and bundle it with what's called a license agreement, which looks a little more like a contract between the city and a vendor. where we would essentially allow a private operation, a for-profit operation, to occur on public space. And so a slightly different approach, but it gets you to the same place at the end. Again, we would instinctively, as staff, go to that same formula for calculating out what the rent would be, which would be that use of public right-of-way. So we would write into the license agreement that there would be $170 per occurrence. I had also put some language in the staff report and as part of the resolution is maybe to grant me some authority to kind of negotiate this or modify this as we go along, because we're gonna be learning as we go along. And especially if we could figure out a way to reduce that space need, that safety buffer for the farm stand, it may be appropriate to adjust the rent accordingly. So wanted to have a little bit of authority to do that. So I put that into the resolution. I'm certainly happy to bring it back. And you can take it up each time we need to tweak it. But I thought that might be something you didn't want to have to deal with. So that's really the details. And I think you want to hear from the vendors about what they're actually envisioning and approaching and imagining for the space. And we also, at the request of the mayor, we attached the actual survey results that we did a survey monkey. I think a lot, certainly all the council saw, we got very high response rate, one of our better response rates of recent memory and a lot of support for it. Certainly a lot of discussion about the days, but after sort of working with the vendors, these are the days that make the most sense given, you know, they are operating elsewhere and they have to factor that into their, their thoughts about which day they want to use. So turn back to you. I don't know if Madam Mayor, you have any comments before you bring the vendors up?

No, I think, you know, a lot of this was based on community feedback. And so really wanted to respond to a lot of the comments about, we all hear about Luckies being, you know, shut down and really not having the opportunity to buy groceries downtown. So I would like to have the two vendors present because I think that will give everybody a better idea of their business models and what they're trying to bring into our downtown area. But before I do that, do the council members have questions of staff of the report?

I just had one question. You were talking about the, like a contract. How long of a contract is this? And I mean, I'm sure this is kind of experimental and I want to make sure we're not locked into something we're not comfortable with.

Yeah. So, so typically with a license agreement, we usually write a termination provision that's 60 days. But in addition, we would anticipate this is a one-year commitment concurrent with what we're doing for the farmer's market and And that's why we've labeled this a pilot program because I don't want the vendors or the public to think we're prepared to make a long-term commitment. We want to work through some of these details.

So I'm sorry, when you say it's a one-year commitment, I think you said it was a 60-day termination. So basically it's a 60-day.

It's a 60-day commitment. Okay. But we as a city don't typically activate termination clauses for good actors, right? So if somebody's fulfilling what we wrote the license agreement for.

No, I'm just, I guess my concern is, again, what we do is just a balancing act, and we have the merchants in downtown who are going to be losing parking and things like that. I don't know if this will positively or negatively affect them, but I just want to make sure in case this goes badly, we just head it out, that's all.

Even if the vendor's doing nothing wrong.

I completely understand your point, yeah.

Have we – we don't have a lot of our own land, as we know, so we only have that one parking lot. Have we explored – relationships with private landowners. You mentioned Albertsons, who owns Lucky's, but last year Marin Primary, Marin Middle School, Primary and Middle School offered their parking lot as an option for some farmers market opportunities. Have we taken the time to look for other non-city land that may be wanting to partner with us?

We looked in the downtown.

That's it. And so depending on your scope of what the downtown is, we did not reach out to Grand Primary.

But there are opportunities. Well, we can hear from people, but I'm wondering if there are other locations that may serve the same function that would be on partnership with private landowners who may be less impactful for parking. But I think we'll have to hear about that. They had offered last year to have negotiations with us to talk about it.

So I don't know because that never reached out. Yeah, it didn't reach. But a reminder in primary doesn't control their property. They're a tenant. Oh, they're a small district. That may have been part of the complication.

Right.

Right.

And I'll also say I did walk many different parts of our city with the vendors and also talked to the property owner of the strip mall and looking at the bike path and different parts. And this is where it made the most sense. So yeah. So we looked at the grass, we looked at Piper, we looked at the bike path behind King of the Roll, we looked at the grass space where Mr. Skinner was talking about fixing the pedestrian path. We looked at the grass patch that is owned by the property owner of King of the Roll. And then we looked at this parking lot. So we looked at many different places in downtown. All right, so at this time, any other questions from council right now? I'd like to invite the vendors up to give a short presentation on what they're... I'm sorry, we're going to hold public comment until... Okay. Uh-huh.

Let's see if you have a specific sub-agenda for how you wanted to run this portion of the meeting. And I guess my question would be, before delving into how you're actually going to roll out this farmers market and understand which vendors are gonna offer. What can we consider an order where we start with why we're doing this, what the rationale is, what the research was behind it, and then what actually the impacts are from different people in the audience around the impact of using that particular site. But particularly since most have been here since six and we would love to be able to do this before we have to listen to what your proposed vendors would propose.

Well, I think part of the rationale was, one, we had a community survey with almost 600 respondents who expressed interest in having an area downtown where people can come and buy fresh produce and groceries. And it's really in reaction to that, but also trying to create more foot traffic downtown that would lift all businesses and create more economic vibrancy in our downtown corridor. So I think that was the impetus for this project. And the city reached out to the community. We got overwhelming feedback from the community through the survey. Again, nearly 600 respondents. And then we also got a lot of public comment letters as well in advance of the discussion tonight. So that was the rationale. And then... in conjunction with but okay so anyways so the order so the process is we had a staff presentation council gets to ask questions we've invited the vendors to do a presentation and then we'll open up for public comments and questions thank you

Well, you're going to get your time here. I appreciate you trying to accommodate the speaker, but there's a standard order to the way this flows. This is very consistent with how all your agenda items are done.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is the way we normally run the agenda items. Okay. So if I could, I'll ask Jim Baum of the farm stand to please come forward and give a presentation.

Good evening, Mayor Andre and Larkspur City Council. Thank you so much for this opportunity to present. My name is Jim Baum. I own and operate Marin Community Farm Stance. Marin Community Farm Stance is originally established in 2003. For the past 23 years, the Farm Stand has aggregated from over 40 local and regional organic farmers, ranchers, fishermen, and artisans. We feature seasonal local organic produce, peak season, pasture-raised meats, local beef, pork, lamb, poultry, and sashimi-grade seafood. The Farm Stand, as mentioned before, has contracted with some neighboring municipalities This marks our 20th year in San Anselmo in front of the town hall and our 18th year in the town of Ross. Just recently, talking about the nature of the length of our contracts, we just got awarded a five-year contract with the town of San Anselmo and recently got awarded a three-year contract with the town of Ross. Thirteen years ago, I leased the space out in Forest Knolls at 6700 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, a former gas station. And today, many years later, it was for sale and it was an amazing opportunity. We were able to close escrow on that about eight years ago. So the farm stand has a permanent home in West Marin in the town of Forest Knolls, where I'm open year round seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. And it's just been such a joy to be able to aggregate from all these local growers, bring these goods and services into town. And ultimately, we operate in towns that are traditionally just too small to support certified farmers markets. While the mere idea of a certified farmers market is a good concept, not every town has the sheer density to support it. That being said... all our markets are in operation as of today. Thank you so much. If you have any questions, I could answer them.

Great. Thank you. Any questions from council? No problem. Okay.

Sure. I'm sorry. I have a question. Yes, sir. So the range of products, I guess my concern, I'm happy with the produce. I read in one of these documents about potential selling candles or something that may be non-produce that might compete with some of the vendors. I was wondering what your – Yes, no.

My market strictly is agricultural products. We have artisan products, but those are products that are made – you know, jams, cookies, chips, all different types of food products, but we don't deal in any other products outside of food distribution. Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you so much.

All right, and Lynn Bagley of the Certified Farmer's Market. Welcome, Lynn.

Lynn Bagley, Director of the... Marin Community Farmers Market Association. I've been running markets for 43 years. I founded the Marin County Farmers Market in 1983. And I just want to thank you for taking your time, everyone, to hear our plight today. I met with the mayor, I guess, a month or so, and we looked at the site. And I have to say that we've already operated two markets in Larkspur, pop-up markets, back maybe 20 years ago. And we were really welcomed by the community. It's a very warm community. And I've always wanted to do a market here, but it's fine if you just want to have Jim Baum. And if we're too big and too much, it's fine with me. Don't worry about anything with us. But if we are going to do the market, I just want to allow you to understand that the Farmers Market Association is one of... almost 1,000 in California, 8,000 across the nation. But what's unique to California is that we devised a direct marketing system where the farmer can only sell what he grows or she grows or produces from the farm. And it's a very elaborate regulatory system like we always have in California, where each farm is actually visited by the Ag Commissioner to guarantee to the public that the product is direct from that farm. And the purpose of that was because back in the 70s, they weren't able to sell direct to the customers and the farmers were going bankrupt at the time. There was a farm crisis. This produce was down to three cents a pound. And the peach farmers all came around the capital and gave away their peaches, saying it's cheaper for them to give it away than to sell it because of the extreme packaging, sorting, et cetera, regulations. It's fine with the big farmers, but it's impossible for the small farmers. So what the state did in response was to come up with a direct marketing system where each farm carries an agricultural producer certificate. And is allowed to not have to sort the product grade A, grade B, all this packaging because the customer sees it. When you have the middle level handlers, they can't see it. But the problem with the middle level handlers is they get a lot of the profit. And back then, you know, on average, the farmers were getting, like I said, three cents a pound for certain products, but on average, 20 cents of the food dollar. And so you can imagine that farmers, with all the problems we have right now, they're starting to go bankrupt again. And there's a 55% increase in bankruptcies right now since 2023, according to the Farm Bureau. So the purpose of having the farmers markets be non-profit, which is why I'm here, is that we do not want to be a middle-level handler. And our cities and counties and schools and churches that host farmers markets, they shouldn't be middle-level handlers either because the whole purpose of direct marketing is the product goes from the farm to the customer without the middle-level handlers. Therefore, the price is better. It's a fresher product. They get to meet the farmer. And there are all kinds of secondary and tertiary benefits that come off of that, which is like... listed in the letter. But one of them is that according to many, many studies, there is overflow in shopping. In other words, if the customer comes to the market, their tendency is to 30% to 70% of the time to also shop the shops. And according to numerous studies, because, you know, these farmers markets have been around now for almost 50 years. So there's numerous studies and they, on average, spend average about. 50% of what they spend at the farmer's market. So if they spend $40 at the farmer's market, they will potentially spend $20 in nearby shops. I figured it all out based on what I thought we would do here. And your shops would gain $200,000 in a year, and the city would get a sales tax benefit of $2,000 a year. So that's if it's a very moderate market. It could do much better, potentially. And then in your letter, I listed all the ways that all the cities and counties and the way the state has invested thousands and thousands of dollars to make these markets successful. Because the way the model works, it's difficult to get the word out without spending thousands of dollars. And yet, because we can't charge the farmers a lot of money, we're not able to produce that much revenue to do the advertising. So what cities and counties in the state and state schools have done is they have relaxed or waived or provided funding to get these markets off the ground. Most markets spend at least $10,000 in advertising to get off the ground, so we can't afford to then pay all these fees that were mentioned earlier. And then, you know, I just talked to Vance Corum. He worked for the state. He was an agricultural expert at the state. He's been consulting for 47 years. He said he's consulted nationally, internationally, all around the state. He's helped directly develop 87 markets. He said 90% of them pay no rent at all. And so this is just how markets work. I'm sorry, but it's just how they work. And so we're asking that we pay the initial fee of $500 and the other $100 encroachment fee and that we do as much as possible any anticipated services that the city may want to do themselves. I've run over 20 markets. We've never needed a single city official to help us with anything in the 43 years of running markets. So, I mean... I think in some cases they've put up no parking signs, but other than that, that's about it. And so I think I'm done.

So is there any questions? Yes. And so could you clarify, we're going to block off, and how many vendors you might be bringing in and what types of vendors?

Yeah, I think we do offer a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, organic, some food like Moroccan food or Pakistani food or baked goods. Everyone who comes has to produce the product themselves. That's the whole point. It's a producer-to-you direct marketing concept. And some of the other benefits of farmers markets are for, you know, direct to your community is it provides community unification. It provides social, social atmosphere for people that are isolated or lonely, which has all been documented. of late and it creates a communion. And it's a big part of why people prefer farmers markets. There's 11 to 12 more social contacts at a farmer's market than there are at, say, a supermarket where there's maybe one or two. So I could give you a long list. It's all in your letter of all the benefits. But anyway. great thank you and so at the downtown parking lot you're thinking about bringing in about 20 vendors is that um or how many it depends on the year but you know at top potentially 20 but at the time of year sorry the season in the winter maybe closer to 15 or or 10 but i'd say 20 spaces not necessarily 20 vendors okay 20 because some of the farmers take two spaces okay

Got it. Oh, okay. Great. Any other questions? So you were, Oh, sorry.

So the corner Madera mall farmer's market has maybe 10 vendors set, set up on Wednesdays. Correct.

Well, I just counted them. There's I think 20 tents, 20 tents, 23 tents. And we're kind of limited because they did some redevelopment and we lost a whole bunch of space.

So we're, I mean, We're comparing, I mean, we're going to have to hear from the community about whether this is actually going to be something people want. But now that we've heard the two vendors, one is a single proprietary vendor, probably bringing one van, maybe two. Setting up a shared resource like you have would bring additional vehicles that would need to park, maybe 10 additional vehicles of vendors who would have to actually then park in the downtown area to bring their produce and their product.

Where would they park? They park in the site, within the site, within the... They bring their vehicle in, but... Yeah, for the most part, we would probably be parking them parallel rather than perpendicular. That's the way we do it. I see. That's the way all markets do it. We try to keep... All vendors want to be as close as they can to their vehicle.

I see.

That won't be a problem.

I was thinking in the corner of Madera Mall, they have to obviously park in the parking lot because one of the big concerns that we've seen in the letters is the lack of parking and the impact on downtown parking. And your model sounds like that it's interior parking and inclusive parking as opposed to taking up more street parking.

Yeah, and we offer to direct people to the mall with, you know, directional signs, parking, farmer's market parking signs, getting people. And I thought that possibly you could have signs on your, you know, in the strip where the actual stores are saying, you know, merchant parking only or store parking only to, you know, satisfy that need because we don't need the parking there. We can use the, potentially we can use the lucky parking.

Okay, any other questions? I just wanted to confirm, thank you for your presentation. I did want to confirm that you are then, your vendors and merchants would be selling products Products from the farm, but also finished products, products that are potentially like dips and those types of things?

Typically, most markets have kind of a certified farmer's market section, and then they have producers who, artisan food producers who produce their own foods. So that would be bakers and, yeah, like sauces and dips.

But it would strictly be food products. There would be no candles or... We can if you want us to, or we don't have to.

It's up to you. I mean, we don't care if we have artisans or not. That's not our main feature. But sometimes, like the city of Middle Valley, they were asking us to add a bunch of artisans to our market. It's not our strength. Artisans are not what we're interested in doing.

Right. No, I think more from the concern of our downtown merchants, they would not want that competitive aspect. We don't want to compete. But even from a prepared food standpoint, that gets a little bit slippery because we have, you know, bakeries downtown that are already selling baked goods. So keeping it more strictly to products that are produced on the farm and brought so that people can buy fresh groceries would be ideal. Okay. Try to do that.

Sorry, just following up on that. Is there at some point, let's say we decide to do this, is there like a back and forth where you propose, hey, here are the 10 or 15 vendors we're thinking about, and we can say, you know what, that person is baked goods. It's probably not a good fit. Is there somebody else? I mean, will we have that opportunity?

You know, when we set up the Mill Valley Market, they provide us with a green city coordinator, and she... created an advisory committee and we met several times before we opened and they actually reviewed the products as part of that.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be the city council. I just mean someone in the city to.

The way you can do it.

Perfect. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you.

Right.

Any other questions?

But just, I mean, our target date for opening is the 18th. So we don't have a lot of time to, you know, have meetings and things.

Yeah, she's already having conversations with vendors to try and get people here. Okay, great. Thank you, Lynn. Okay, thank you very much. All right, so now we'll open it up for public comments. So if people have public comments, please approach the podium. And just given the number of people, we'll do two-minute public comments.

Okay, thank you. I want to thank all the volunteer work that you all do on the council. I know that it's an enormous amount of work. I was on the actual school board, and I was on the Niven committee, and I know these are often thankless and difficult jobs, so I want to thank you for doing that. I learned about this very recently. I didn't get the survey. I live on Rice Lane, and I'm extremely sensitive to issues that have been brought up in my neighborhood around parking and around retailing. What I don't understand from having looked through all the information on the website is the driver behind this urgent need. I saw that staff was asked to put out a survey. I saw something about the fact that there was concern because we lost Lucky that there needed to be a replacement. What I don't understand is how this solution solves for the loss of Lucky. And when I think about Lucky and what people used to get at Lucky, I'm not sure that it was... specialized food offerings and fresh produce so much as it was basic necessities if you ran out of eggs, if you ran out of cottage cheese, if you ran out of baby diapers, if you ran out of... So I am not clear from anything I read on the website or anything I've heard today that tees up why this has become a solution that solves for the loss of Lucky. And I don't understand, particularly when you mentioned Ren Primary, where my kids started out, Whether there has really been us if this is in fact a solution for that stated problem and it reaches the criteria of it's more important than the loss of parking. It's more important than the impact on downtown retail, if those things are true. And I'm not certain that I've heard that they are. I also haven't heard that there's been a really scrupulous review of where else it could be in Larkspur and whether we've pushed hard enough. If it's solving for a problem that we've identified as high profile and very important and really addressing the lucky issue, whether that's literally the only place you can put it.

I'm Margaret von Trestow and I own the building 476 McLuhan Avenue.

I operate a retail store. Oh, sorry about that. Is that better?

I haven't heard anything from merchants. We've had an ongoing problem. I've had the store 26 years. We've had an ongoing problem with parking. My biggest complaint from customers who come from outlying areas, I'm not talking about local people, people who drive from Tiburon or Belvedere or Mill Valley or so forth is, sorry, we couldn't find a parking space. It's been ongoing. And a big problem is our parking downtown is not enforced. We might get a cadet that comes around every three months or somebody who's training or something like that and catches everybody off guard. But it's not a regular thing that happens. It is a big problem, always has been. And so I haven't heard any. And now you're taking away our only parking lot. I just don't understand that. I mean, in Ross, you keep saying, oh, Ross and San Anselmo, they haven't given away any of their public parking. They're on the pavement. And then Mayor Andre was good enough to come by and talk to me. And she did, when I first heard about this, I first heard that it was going to be in the Lucky parking lot. I thought, that's wonderful. We all love a farmer's market. I have nothing against farmer's market. My biggest problem is our parking situation. It's really going to highly affect us all. And this is going to be year round. What's going to happen when we get a little busy? Right now it's quiet. But we're all suffering a little bit. Online retail, the retail business is really tough right now. And the last thing we need to do is worry about parking. So I'd like you to really consider this issue. Thank you.

I'm Terry Berkmeyer.

A follow-up question about parking or observation about parking as well. We've got two different operations. One I understand is a truck and another one is a group of independent smaller farm stands. The question when you think about that you know let's say there are 15 farm stands pick a number out of the air but what about A farm stand that has an additional employee that drives from somewhere else because it takes two people to operate it. Suddenly we've potentially doubled the number of vehicles that need to park beyond what will be actually selling stuff. And what's already a tight situation gets magnified even more. And this is at the same time as when downtown Larkspur is crowded, you can't find parking on Monta Vista. You can't find parking behind Magnolia. It's all taken. You walk, you know, the Lark Theatre puts the opera on. You don't find any parking in the parking lot already. So how do we justify robbing the current merchants without understanding how many extra vehicles This is going to bring just to allow the vendors to operate the way they plan to. Thank you.

David Monson farmhouse, local 25 Ward street on Larkspur. Um, that was very well said, you know, it's, it's not only the, uh, the, the initial vendors, the employees that they might employ, but let's assume the things of success, how many people are going to park here? Let's say we have 12 customers here. Now we've reduced our parking for our entire downtown merchants. to 15 spaces. Parking has always been the number one issue in downtown Larkspur. You're not taking half, you're taking far more.

Hi, I'm Becky Fry. I live in Larkspur. And I am a dedicated farmer's market person. I go weekly to either Corte Madera or to the Civic Center. I love the farmer's markets. I just see this farmer's market as i i understand that lynn is talking about the trucks but i see how these farmers markets work and the amount of space that they take up even in corto madera without the trucks is substantial terry's point about the number of people that will be assisting i feel that's an important consideration um i'd like to know about bathrooms porta potties that where will they be and where will they be every day of the week during the season in our downtown parking lot. What are the ballards or the water, the guards that keep the cars out? What do they look like? Where do they, if they're filled with water, they're not moved on a regular basis. They're going to have to stay there. And that, so that's our downtown all the time now is, has porta potties and these ballards. And I don't know if, how many times you go in and out of that parking lot. But there's a lot of traffic that comes through. I'm not suggesting getting rid of that. But people come in from Ward Street, even though the signs say, don't come in from Ward Street. And then people come out the other way. And I see this If you're going to go – even at the Civic Center where they have redone all this parking, that's a mob scene unless you go to the parking lot across the street. Getting in and out of that area that's right around the vendors is tricky, and this is all really pedestrian. So – I also see that the parking is going to move back into the neighborhoods, which are already full. And I imagine that by the time those farmers market days, that parking is going to go all the way back on Ward and onto Meadowood. I really feel those, in addition to the merchants who are losing their parking, Just feel like this location is not so great. I have nothing against being able to get farmer's market produce within walking distance of my house. I just don't see how it can work effectively and provide the parking that is already limited in Larkspur. So thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

I am Tina MacArthur. I can see the small farm stand one day a week. I think it would be minimum. He'll take a minimum amount of space. I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to try it for 60 days. The idea of farm trucks coming in is sort of out of the question. I think a town without being able to buy food is horrible. crazy and there are a lot of people who don't have cars there are lots of people on the boardwalk there are people at rose uh you know rose lane that don't drive and there's no place to buy milk or eggs and i think if you know you would have milk and eggs that would be good but i don't you know i don't think a large uh uh farmer's market is is the answer here in town

Any other public comments?

Very quickly, I'm Carol Svetkov. I'm a Larkspur resident for 50-some years. And when I initially heard about Farmer's Market, oh, exciting, exciting. But after all the discussion, I mean, it didn't all compute about, gosh, we're going to lose all these spaces. And I'm just thinking, yay, fresh vegetables. I don't have to go to Woodland or Molly's or Safeway. I do agree with Tina, however, I think a compromise, maybe one day a week, try it and see if it would work. And also, as much as I love all those vendors at the Civic Center, I don't think we can handle all the trucks and everything that goes with that. But I'd sure like to try the farm stand. Thank you.

My name is Kristen Abbott, Lurksboro resident, and I too am a farmer's market devotee. I think that could be, even though it's a smaller type of farmer's market, I think that could be overwhelming. I think the farm stand fits our city size much better. And I appreciate all the merchants that are here. I shop at their stores and I eat at their restaurants and I don't want them hurt by this. I'm actually hoping this might help them, especially because summer gets a little quiet around here. But there is that large Lucky parking lot that is, anyone can park there. It's only 200 yards away from where we're talking about this happening. I mean, maybe you can say, you know, all farmers, our farm stand parking has to park in the Lucky lot or something. But there is that gigantic lot that's sitting there unused. So let's not forget that. So thank you.

Can I take a pause for a second and just ask staff, the Lucky parking lot, is that available for public parking? Have we talked to the owners about negotiating maybe leasing that for public parking? Is there any way that could be used?

it has not been uh they have not been interested in any sort of agreement with the city we looked at it potentially as an overflow arrangement for the library i think that probably is because they don't want to constrain their sale that they're working on um it's entirely their call whether they call the police They have properly signed their lot to tow people. So my impression is they are not doing that. But I can tell you from personal knowledge that those cameras are live and they're paying a service to monitor the lot 24-7. Okay.

Thank you.

Can I also ask, the farm stand business model that I have seen in San Anselmo is on the sidewalk. it used to be on the sidewalk in front of city hall i think it's actually now in the park that was constructed by private funds adjacent to imagination park i believe so kind of on the dg at the edge of the park i thought okay it's still on the city hall property so have we considered in front of this building I mean, that's how they do it in San Anselmo.

Yeah, we can't site something on the sidewalk here because it's a path of travel. So that would be a problem for us.

I think the thing, if I could speak. Sure.

The vendor has to want to do it too. It's not, I think there's this maybe tenor that the city staff or Mayor Onder or somebody else just cooked all this up. We've been asking the vendors what works for them too. So don't, you know, none of us run this business. No, I know.

Yeah.

We have to keep that in mind.

And I'm also just going to ask the people in the audience, we have people online. I want them to be included. They can only hear if you come up to the microphone. So we'll let everyone come up to the microphone, but please don't just yell out because people listening won't know what's going on. Thank you.

Okay, great. Yes. Hi, I'm Steph Tuzignat, and I run the bookshop at 501 Magnolia. I'm brand new, so I'm going to say I don't know much about the town, so I don't want to say I know everything about the town. But I do want to say that the timing of the proposed markets feels like... prime time. And I get to work every day at eight. And I slide right into any parking spot at 8am. And I open my store at 9am. And I am the only merchant besides coffee that is open. And it's quiet. And parking's not an issue. And so 11 o'clock opening to me for some of these markets, and I know you were saying that you have to work with the vendors, it feels like prime time. To me, opening at 8 or 9 feels like a compromise.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the chamber want to comment? Okay, we'll go online.

Being unmuted.

James Holmes, Larkspur. A farmer's market seems like a great idea, but I think that closing off the entire market for two full business days, as I thought I read in the staff report, correct me if I'm wrong, interrupt me, that would be too much. It would be especially unfortunate because if I understand the staff report, The actual space needed is not the entire lot, but rather the entire lots being closed off because neither the city nor the promoters want to pay for barriers to cordon off the market area. If only half the lots were being closed, then that might be a reasonable balance. But closing the entire lot because no one wants to pay for the partial closers seems like insult to injury. As it happens, the Tuesday closure would hit me hard because that's when I usually park there for my errands, and I really appreciate the proximity to mobility problems, and that raises a broader issue. We talk a lot about ADA accommodations and pay money for ADA modifications, but here we have a made-to-order ADA facility, which we could be making unavailable to those who need it most, and, you know, whenever I park there, I see poor wretches who can barely creep who are parking there, and I think they're going to hobble over to the restaurant. But anyway, not everybody can traverse the 200 yards. ADA aside, I'm told by a reliable source that a lot of the merchants disagree with this, and I think you've heard some of that. It seems to me that given the extent of the closures, It caters to one particular segment of shopper buying one particular product to the disadvantage of a broader segment of shoppers who will use all the stores. It's great that the parking lot can be a multi-use facility, but let's also remember that its primary purpose and intent is a parking lot. There's a colorful story about how a former council member got a relative who was in the post office to derail the post office's attempt to buy the lot. that was in the early 70s we needed parking then and we needed even more now so if it's two days all day that would be too much and other sites should be considered thank you thank you for your public comments anybody raised hands on zoom and there's no further public comment okay okay

Hi, Trisha Lacy from Larkspur. I really appreciate this discussion. I came in gung-ho farmer's market, and I can appreciate the... the vendors and the merchants, and so I see that this is really complicated. I have some questions. One, to clarify, is the market being proposed for both Tuesday and Thursday, or is it an either-or situation that if we went with a for-profit, it would be Tuesday? And if we went with the nonprofit, it would be Thursday. So that's my question one. Two, I also have a question about pricing. Is the farm stand for profit model significantly more expensive? I would love to know how much like three things of strawberries are. And then third, I know you said that you discussed a bunch of different locations. I'm wondering about that grassy area area. Maybe it's outside king of the role that you can see on the perimeter of the parking diagram. I realize that likely would not work for the larger nonprofit farmers market model, but if it's just a single farm stand, could that accommodate and then it wouldn't have the same parking implications? Thank you.

All right, great. Any other questions or comments in the chamber? Okay. All right. So I am going to try in, there were some questions that were brought up. And so I am going to try and answer your questions. So one, does this solve the Lucky's problem? You know, obviously no, but it, does it help alleviate some of the you know, issues that I hear from residents all the time. So that was the impetus. Okay. So yes, we're not going to, I can't bring a grocery store. We are a city council, you know, a farmer's market seemed like it was a way to bring some level of fresh produce and groceries into our town, into the downtown area with the closure of Lucky's. You know, where else can we cite this? Well, as I explained earlier, We looked at various sites downtown. The city only owns the parking lot. We looked at the bike path, which is owned by a private owner. We also looked at the grass patch that is also owned by a private owner. I spoke to the private owner. We would have to – the city would have to pay a price to use his land. And on top of that, he's not willing to maintain the grass patch, so we would have to spend money to mow – and make it appropriate for a farm stand. So there are issues with going on private land that the city doesn't own. So we control the parking lot. It's flat. We can maintain the space. We can make it how we want. If we enter into an agreement with a private owner, one, we would have to negotiate pricing. And the private owner in this instance was not willing to put in a single dollar or any effort into cleaning up and making his space usable. Let's see. Overflow parking can go into the Lucky's area. And by the way, in the course of me trying to research this, I have walked the downtown area at all hours. Tuesdays at 5 p.m., I met with Lynn Bagley. I was in the parking lot Thursday at noon with Jim and the city manager. I've gone down there many times at different times of the day. I was down there speaking to Margaret. There is parking. I'm sorry. Tuesday at 5 p.m., the lot was half empty. There is parking. I mean, I know there's some concept like we don't have enough parking. There was plenty of parking. We were down there, you know, Thursday at noon. I mean, I walk down by the parking lot frequently when I walk my dog. So I guess my point is this is something that I've heard that residents want. It's a pilot program. Before we even get, you know, I'd like to just give it a chance to work and see what happens so we can assess the impact. And then we can see, you know, what is the impact on parking? What is the impact on our shopkeepers and our restaurateurs and our merchants? I mean, I hear this. Like, we don't want to disenfranchise one group. you know, to benefit one, you know, we don't want to disenfranchise one group and have it benefit another group, but you know, is there a way where we can have a program where we then run it for a certain period of time and see so that we can assess what the impact is. So that's, that's kind of what, you know, that was my thinking in bringing this to council. Okay. So all the questions about the extra vehicles from vendors and, We've spoken to Lynn and to Jim. In Lynn's case, it's very clear. This is the space that she has been marked off for her vendors. They are going to park their trucks within that space and set up their tables. They like to have their tables close to their trucks. And so that's the agreement. And we've been very clear with the vendors on that. Bathrooms. So we've had – thank you for bringing up this question. We have a store owner on Magnolia who's offered up her bathroom facilities. City Hall is literally – Leigh Anne Touzeau- Less than 200 yards from the parking lot, we also have the library, that is also so there are bathroom facilities that are nearby bollards so we are not going to put up bollards we've we've we've talked to public works about the barriers that fill up with water. Leigh Anne Touzeau- It would cost. the vendors would have to pay for city staff time to put out the bollards and to, you know, and to, to bring them, to move them back and forth. And so it's just not, um, it's not reasonable with the farm stand. We have thought about because his footprint is much smaller. We have thought about having him park his truck in front to serve as a barrier. So that is something that, you know, we are, we are considering that could, that could be a consideration that we can talk about. Um, And then, so the Tuesday, Thursday schedule, yes. Tuesdays for the farm stand, Thursdays for the farmer's market. Pricing, I think the vendors would have to speak to the pricing of the products and the grassy area. I think I addressed that already. So I don't know if there are other questions that people have. Yes.

Is this an additional question or is this?

About the hours that you have, the hours, that's 11 to 7 for one of the days. Can you clarify that? Because 11 to 7 is a long, and the parking lot does fill up in the evenings for the restaurants.

Are those negotiable, the hours? Yes. So the proposed hours are Tuesdays from 10 to 7 for the farm stand and Thursdays from 2 to 6 for the farmer's market. And yes, I assume the hours are negotiable. But again, we have talked with the vendors and these are and we put out in the community survey. So I don't know if any of you saw the community survey. There were definitely. OK, so it's a community survey that has been out there now for three or four weeks now. It's online. You can just go online. Anyways, we had different time slots. We have gone back and forth with the vendors. These are the specific dates and the time slots that would work. I've also spoken to many other merchants, the American Legion, the Lark Theater. These are the time slots that would work for most people, for the merchants downtown. It's trying to balance. Again, it's a balancing act. There's no perfect time. So these were the two dates and the times that would work.

Madam Mayor, I'm sorry. I have a question. I know you said you looked at different locations. What were the challenges with Piper Park? Because that has lots of parking, lots of area. Is it just too far from downtown?

So the challenge of hyper park is there's no visibility. That was something that I heard very clearly from the merchants is, you know, the farmer's markets need visibility. And also it would have to be, unless we shut down a part of the parking lot, it would have to be on grass or dirt, which was not ideal for a farmer's market. Lynn, is there anything else I missed from that? I don't know. Yeah.

Mayor Andre?

Say what the heck. operated two markets in the dirt and they they did horrible until we moved it to a parking lot i you know i thought it would be fine but no and um so but i think the main hindrance with hyper park is the lack of visibility if you don't have advertising money you can't be in an invisible location i mean i think we all know about location location and so those are the main reasons i

In the same vein as Council Member Kandel just brought up, there was public comment that was submitted and my mind has been floating to that employee parking lot that we've created for the library as a potential space and parking in the library. Did we consider the library as a spot potentially?

No, we did not. I think because it was just brand new. I was hesitant to... to just take up that space. I mean, we could certainly consider that, but I was really focused on sort of the downtown area near the downtown for the merchants and walkability.

Yeah, I mean, it just seems that that is a space that's close to downtown. And we've had these discussions about creating the really nice paved pattern so that if we wanted to do things in that space that we were really always looking at half of that parking lot as a potential space for events. So it just seems that that might be something we might want to consider. I don't know if the vendors would be okay with that, but it's a thought.

Yeah, I mean, we could definitely, I don't know if city manager has any comments or thoughts about that.

I think a future discussion for the council then would need to be whether that farmer's market fits with sort of, you haven't fully defined what you want to allow in the parking lot as an activity and how frequently, you know, there's been general discussions over the last three years about being conscious of impacts to the Rose Lane neighborhood. So you'd just want to have a separate forum so that effective people could have that discussion. The strip that you're talking about where the employees park, That'd be probably a possibility for the farm stand operation if he was so interested with the acknowledgement that on a busy day like a Tuesday or Thursday, there's seven employee vehicles parked there. So they got to go somewhere.

So thanks for everything. Bringing their information. I'm ambivalent about it too. I hear you. There's a Saturday farmer's market at Marin Country Mart. There's a Wednesday one at Corte Madera Mall that's been there longstanding. I sometimes go to the Mill Valley one, which is from nine to one in the CVS parking lot. Strawberry has one on Tuesday. Ross and San Anselmo later in the week. There are a lot around, I get it, that are opportunities for people to shop at. I don't think this idea has been fully fleshed out. I think we need to spend a little bit more time. 18 parking places removed is a lot for our downtown area for the chunk of time of eight hours. Way too much time to take off the parking lots for me. I would definitely not do it twice a week if we do a pilot project, but a nine to one may indicate for the bookseller, the book woman who owns the bookshop, a better timeframe if we do that. But I really feel like we have not fleshed out other locations well enough and have looked at private property and a relationship with private property landowners who may allow us to participate in their property. I, I, I think we need to spend a little bit more time on working this out. And for the benefit of all of the merchants downtown, the restaurants, I was on the council when we had dramatic conversations about parklets during COVID. And parklets were removed because of the concern by many people that they impeded the pedestrian and customer flow to our downtown merchants. And the restaurant. So, I mean, I hear you on Ward Street. We haven't even looked at, like, what San Rafael does. They close Fourth Street on Thursdays. They actually close their main street for a farmer's market. We haven't talked about that. What streets could we possibly close for a temporary period of time? So I think we need to flesh this out a little bit more. I'm not confident that we're ready to launch... And the pressure to launch by June 18th, we haven't thought about this enough for my pleasure to feel confident that we can do that. I think we need more analysis. That's where I'm standing on it. Okay.

Other thoughts?

Yeah, I'll go. I mean, I first just want to say I'm appreciative of this conversation because it's, you know, I've also heard from the time Lucky closed, you know, what that loss is and thinking about the members of Rose Lane, of Blue Rock, you know, people who can't get to the store. You know, when you say that you go to Mill Valley, that's not who we're talking about. The issue of parking is inevitably coming up. It did come up with the parklets. It comes up with everything. And the one piece of data that would be helpful, and I know we've talked about this with staff, is exactly what the demand profile looks like. Because I'm in agreement with Mayor Andre. I've been, you know, I know that I... The rush hour times when you take your kids to school or in the evenings when the restaurants are full, those are really – or when the Lark has a movie. There are times where we really need that parking, but there are a lot of times where we have – empty lots and that demand analysis match and the trade-offs, you know, it would be nice to have that. I think, you know, where we sit tonight, I'd like to understand a little bit more about the June 18th. You know, I think the conversation should continue. I think you know all 27 letters practically you know express support and and i want to thank mayor andre for an enormous amount of work which is you know we're all volunteers up here and this is someone who listened to the community and really made a good faith effort to deliver a service so just so we all understand that and and yeah there are some trade-offs but um I guess my lingering questions maybe to staff are, is there any way to understand parking better? And I know this question's come up ever since I've been here in 2019, and the answer is probably we can't tonight. And then for Mayor Andre, what maybe a timeline looks like? Because I do want to pursue this conversation, but maybe it does need a little more airing, as Councilmember Way was saying.

Yeah, in terms of the timeline, I mean, it was really to take advantage of the peak season produce as it's coming into season, like right now. I mean, to start a farmer's market in like the winter or the fall just would – You know, like, I mean, the idea was to just bring it when all the all the produce was coming into season. And so that was in that was June. And that's what we were hoping for. And then also, you know, council is going to go on hiatus in July. So, yeah. I don't know if there's a rush, but we want to launch this at some point. If we want to launch it, it would make sense to do it when all the produce and the vegetables are coming into season.

So we really have one more council meeting until we don't meet until the middle or end of August anyway. And for staff, I mean, Lucky has put a monitor into their parking lot. I mean, is there any way, you know, because this is a very limited location, even for a one week, you know, between now and the next council meeting, hypothetically... Would there be a way to see what I mean, I'm tempted to build a home built remote camera and just, you know, throw it into some AI and say how many spots were empty between 10 and six on Tuesday, because I'd really like to know that. And I know you live there, Dave, so you probably could do that for me. the camera in our lot is that well that where this will be located because i think i think the question really is around the legion in in that nazari area you know how much how much availability how much opening is there in these time slots i'm sure that for some amount of money we could install it so i think the answer is we won't know that so i i could make the public works director come up and speculate how much

And I was actually shocked how much it costs to have a temporary camera at the job site for the library. So just words of caution. I'm sure we could do it, but I don't know what it would cost. Alternatively, you know, I could try to figure out how one staff person could walk down there once a day and count. You could just get a sense that way.

I just want to conclude. I mean, that seems to be I don't think anyone in the room here, correct me if I'm wrong, is opposed to the idea. It's really parking and parking specifically for the convenience or for the business use of some of the shopkeepers and different businesses. you know, restaurateurs and the movie and so forth. So if that question, you know, if we had some numbers, let's just make it up. We saw that there are eight spots available on average in that time slot. I think that would make this a lot easier of a conversation. I think those who live there just are sensitive to that and don't want to lose business. So it's clear to me, but I wish we had better numbers.

Yeah, I also want to thank you, Mayor Andre, for coming up with a solution that we have heard overwhelmingly from our residents that the loss of a market downtown has really been pretty much a disaster for them, not giving them access to food. And that I really appreciate all the work you've done in coming up with a solution that that is a really great solution. And I do hear loud and clearly from the merchants in the room, the concern about parking. And I appreciate their fear around that. I would say that, you know, from my experience, I am a devotee of the farmer's market at the Marin Civic Center. And of course, they have a lot of parking, but parking moves very quickly to people When they go to a farmer's market, go do their shopping and they're out. So it is a circulation of parking. It's not that people are coming and parking for the day. Although we're talking about the spaces that would be used by the merchants in our municipal parking lot. And I know that that's really important for our merchants downtown. So I would love to consider potentially another spot. The library, I think, might make a great location. The other thing is, we've had overwhelming public response that people are in favor of this market. So if there was a way to potentially, given our time frame and the urgency with regards to produce and the bounty of summer to potentially start with one day and, and maybe go with the smaller farm stand as an option. So we're bringing something downtown and it sounds like he provides, you know, a plethora of goods, everything from meat and fish to cheese and packaged goods, as well as fresh produce and, And that would certainly eliminate one day of parking constraints and give us an opportunity to collect some data, hopefully bring some additional traffic also to our merchants downtown. And I don't know if it's negotiable about the time frame. I mean, I know his hours are 10 to 6, which is a long day, but potentially... You know, there was discussion of using his truck as the barrier. And I don't know if we could potentially use less space because we're not inviting as many vendors with as many vehicles to set up. So looking for some kind of compromise and solution that works. Also, we're hearing loudly and clearly from the merchants in the room that they don't want their parking to be taken, as well as lots of public comment from our residents that they really, really would welcome the opportunity to buy fresh groceries and produce downtown. Thanks, Scott.

I want to say, I want to thank our community, but also our city council, because I have been to lots of city council meetings in other cities. Everybody on the city council is really trying to do what's in our community's best interest. And it's apparent. And it's, you know, you go to other city councils and there are factions and, you know, people represent some groups, people represent other groups. We are really just trying to strike that balance, you know, which is hard because we have people who want produce and we have people who need parking. And there's a conflict, you know, and we've got to figure out what is best for our community. Yeah. I would probably be okay with once a week as a pilot program. I would probably be okay if we were able to modify the hours because I have heard that there are hours when the parking is more needed than other hours. I think if people really do need their produce, They can come down in the morning. They don't have to wait until four o'clock in the afternoon to get their produce if that's a priority for people. I think there's probably a compromise that would work as a pilot, as a let's test it out and let's see what happens. And it'll be for a short period of time. And if it ends up being a problem, we would stop it. You know, we'd say it was a good try, it didn't work, and we would do something else. I also think there may be other locations that we have not explored yet, which might be better. I think the library is a perfect example. You're absolutely right. We put the special pavement on part of it for the exact purpose of, hey, we may want to have some things here, like an event, that they're going to want pavement and we're going to want space and a little nicer than a parking lot. This is exactly what we were talking about. So I realize we haven't looked into that yet and we don't know if that's right. So I know we want to make a decision tonight because it's the season and we want to start going. I agree we don't have full information, which makes it difficult. I don't know if we'd be comfortable maybe empowering staff or the mayor and staff to say, let's try it as a pilot in location A while we're exploring location B and maybe move it if that turns out to be better. Maybe we put this over and do a little work and come back at the next meeting and make a final decision at the next meeting. I mean, I don't want to not do anything. I think doing a once a week is a minimal intrusion, especially if we can change the hours so it doesn't affect the merchants. But it's a compromise, you know, and everybody's got to give a little bit. So, you know, that's, those are my thoughts. And, you know, I'm happy to talk about it and figure out a compromise that works for everybody.

Okay, I appreciate that. I mean, I appreciate the feedback. So I guess the question is, I do have a question for maybe the farm stand and also for Lynn. Are you familiar with where the library is? And okay, so we would have to talk about that. Okay.

Yeah.

I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah.

I want to caution this creativity at the dais, if I could. On Monday, we put a sealant on the parking lot. It took longer to cure than we thought it would. So the parking lot was closed on Tuesday. The large bus of senior citizens from the Tamalpais who showed up were not really pleased. They couldn't have the bus park anymore. in the right location so they could enter the building in a simple and conducive way. We're still learning our pattern in there, but that parking lot's full a lot. So I would be hesitant to just sort of say to your whole point, you've got to be consistent, right? We don't have the data to say the library can handle losing the parking lot. So maybe the employee parking, if I'm Don't mind telling them they got to go park at the park, but I got to send them somewhere. So somebody is going to lose parking.

um so you know that's a pretty modest footprint okay i think that shows that we have to think this through a little bit more clearly as to other locations that are potential so i would propose that we um postpone this until um it's some of these questions that have been brought up are fully investigated um and if there's an alternative or a private parcel or better times or um uh, that we haven't fully investigated those.

Well, I would just say that negotiating with a private party, I mean, I started that and that will, that, that is not a quick process. I mean, that's just not a quick process. And so I think we're just going to miss the window if we, if we go down that path. Um, you know, I do appreciate the comments about limiting it to maybe one day a week, having the potentially smaller footprint for the farm stand. And maybe we, you know, figure out a way to close off a smaller portion of the parking lot. Because his footprint is, I don't know if you saw it in the staff report, but his footprint is really, you know, 50 feet by 10 feet. And he would fit into that corner. He actually wouldn't take up any parking spaces other than the fact that We are worried about, you know, for safety reasons, we were going to block off that whole area. But if we could get his footprint down or the number of spaces down that he would take up, that may be something that we could do and also talk to him about different hours. Yeah. just doing it like one day a week so that is something however with lynn and she has put so much time into this she's tried to come to lurks for you know for like 20 years um so maybe with lynn's concept you know we can try and find an alternative space that might work where there are more vendors and we can take a little more time to see whether the library might be a fit for you you and your group Oh, right.

Sorry. Can you talk into the microphone so everybody can hear you? I'm sorry. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. So, okay, so... Madam Mayor? Yes.

I think that is a fantastic idea, and I would support that. I don't know if you want to call the other vendor up and see if you'd be willing to... negotiate the hours, and we try to finish this today, or if you want to just put a motion that we give you the authority to negotiate those hours if we want to do that, and say we're going to do this one day a week in as small a footprint as possible, and we give the mayor and the staff the authority to do the details if people are comfortable with that. But again, did staff have a comment on that?

Okay. Okay. Brett KenCairn, yeah I just one thing I as a technicality is it I didn't read the authorization quite closely enough, but it looked like it was just authorizing the resolution was authorizing the fee structure, but not the pilot program itself is that true.

Janet Callahan, We haven't gotten to the fee structure.

Brett KenCairn, The results effectively a de facto approval of the concept okay. You've already delegated to staff the authority for all the other aspects of this. So we're, you know, if you say yes or no, thumbs up, thumbs down. We know what to do after that.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'll just weigh in that. I mean, the council member, you've been most vocal about it. But, you know, in the room and in general, there are concerns. And I'm wondering, you know, we meet again in two weeks, if we can try to... Because I want to respect and I really, again, admire all the work that went into this and the potential. But if in that time, we can try to bring this again up for a vote. You know, I think we may not be able to do this, you know, from your perspective. But I think there may be some things here, you know, to work out with the vendors and to discuss with the public. Because it seems like some people... you know, they did not know about the survey and now they do. You know, it's really been, we've gotten our first reading is my point. And maybe in two weeks we can finalize this. I would feel more comfortable tonight. I'm a little on the fence with the vote because I know that there's such a trade-off for some. And I also don't feel all the data's there. And I would also make an effort to, you know, to find that out too.

Okay. But I guess what kind of additional data would we get?

Well, I guess from the vendor, are you saying you already got the sweet spot? There's no movement in the hours?

No, no, no. I'm just saying we could negotiate the hours and reduce it to one day a week.

I mean, for me personally, the parking, you know, I, you know... this is going to sound hokey, but you can almost put a mount, a GoPro that takes a picture every five minutes and you'd have your data, you know, who would do that?

I mean, I mean, what kind of, you know, I guess it's just what kind of data, yeah. Additional data.

We probably won't have it. I mean, that's the truth, but, but I, anyway, I, you know, maybe also for other community members just to sit on it for two weeks, you know, there might be some back and forth talking to some of the people here. So that's, I mean, that's my inclination. Okay.

The other data I would suggest that we would gather is the possibility of using the library. And, you know, libraries close a couple days a week, right? So that's an option. Maybe we change the day.

Sounds good.

So I'm going to answer your questions. Yeah. So I agree that maybe a pause on this conversation and further exploration to gather. I'm trying to specify what kind of data we need to gather because I appreciate all the hard work that's been done. I hear the residents really want something like this. And I think that we can maybe find a better solution than the parking lot that is our municipal parking lot downtown and a better location.

I want to say that that is brilliant and that if we can do this in the library, when the

I just want to be on record. My strong encouragement is the only discussion is Sunday, because I've got a lot of community members demanding I figure out how to get the library open on Mondays. And if you suddenly block that parking lot, you're going to create a little different kind of

kerfuffle all right well maybe please only talk about sundays maybe sunday is the winner because we'll bring extra people to the downtown it won't be taking up any parking maybe maybe that's the answer so maybe putting it over for two weeks and and can i make it yep so can i say we've gone on sunday okay so the sunday is problematic so okay please jim come forward yeah yeah just

I would just say, you know, Civic Center's operating on Sunday. And, you know, we want to pick a different day.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I think we...

So, yeah, so... You know, part of the hours of operation for the park... I think, Madam Mayor, given the time, it's clear we're not going to reach a consensus this evening. I think there's sufficient feedback to staff to have conversations offline and come back.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So what I will say is we, on the community survey, we did, we did put Sunday on and then with the vendors, it was problematic because civic center operates on Sunday and Mondays, everybody is off the farm. You know, everybody, all the vendors are off on Monday. So Monday is not a viable day for bringing in a farmer's market. So that's just a consideration. And yeah, A lot of the vendors, some of them might be at the Civic Center, which is problematic. Some of these vendors are going to be at the Civic Center, and so having to come to Larkspur Sunday is challenging.

So I would propose we wrap this up because we still have two more items to go. We've had a lot of conversation, and I think the staff has a lot of direction where they can try to refine this and bring it back. Okay, so...

Well, all right. So what we will do, yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, Lynn, can you come to the, to the microphone?

I really don't want to pursue this anymore. If we're not going to have any kind of leniencies about fees, because, you know, I'm just spinning my wheels. I'm sorry, but. Yeah. You know, 20 years. Yes. I don't know. I just want to ask if there is going to be some kind of leniency. I mean, and then I'll keep going with you. If not, I just can't.

OK. OK. All right. Yeah. So we haven't even gotten to the fee discussion in terms of, you know, whether so. Staff has put forward what's actually in our code. Our encroachment permits are not written away to contemplate things like a farmer's market. So what you've heard from Lynn is that the fees as written under the encroachment permits are prohibitive and would really just drive prices up. And it's really hard for the farmers to pay that fee. So if she's going to continue, she's asking for some sort of indication from us as to whether we might be amenable to reducing or waiving the fee under the encroachment permit. So what we're talking about is the $170 rental fee for every occurrence, for every time that we have the farmer's market or the farm stand. So are we open? I mean, I don't know. Indications, I guess, I don't know if we're going to take a vote, but indications are, are we open to reducing or waiving that fee just so we can continue conversations with Lynn? Otherwise she's

I don't think we've even concluded we're going to have this farmer's market and where it's going to be yet. I mean, I don't think we've even reached that decision-making. Fees, schedules is secondary to whether we're actually going to do this or not. So I would say that gets postponed also. If we do do this, I think policy-wise, we charge PICO for an encroachment on the private use of public land. We're going to have to look at that too. Public use... Private use of public land, we have a policy that we charge because it is taking public funds for private use. So we're going to have to think about that. And I don't know where we are yet.

Okay. I mean, you know, she's a nonprofit, right? I understand. Yeah.

So we haven't even decided if we're going to have this or not yet. So I don't think we need to talk about these yet, but...

Okay. Yeah. I'm not looking for an assurance, but I'm just trying so that, you know, give her some.

I would give an indication that I would be very happy to consider that if we decide to move forward in that direction.

Okay.

I'll second that.

Okay. Yes. Okay. All right. So that's enough. I mean, just to continue some conversations with Lynn to see if we might be able to work something out that might work for all of us.

Okay.

Thank you. all right so we'll table this discussion for the next meeting we'll work with both of the vendors to see if we can incorporate some of the feedback that we've heard from the city council and then bring something back for consideration um at the june 18th meeting okay great thank you thank you everybody for sticking with us thank you so much i appreciate everybody yes

Madam Mayor, in light of the hour, I could bifurcate the next item. There's some feedback I urgently need and there's some feedback I could postpone until June 17th. So I could sort of, because there's some pretty substantive conversation around a few of those topics that I just think is going to be hard for you to accomplish in 30 minutes. But there are some just quick questions that if I could get I would know how to deal with certain parties over the next few weeks who are very anxious to know kind of what direction we're going in.

Great.

Okay. Sure. Why don't we do that?

Just ask your questions, and then we can revisit the full item next time.

I didn't want to stop you from introducing the item. I just wanted to suggest ahead of time that that might be a useful way to move on.

That works. Thank you.

So the last item on your agenda this evening. Oh, and then we have the, sorry, we have the archeology item too. I'll be really quick. As you know, we're all really excited to take the next step with the library, which is to open up the community rooms to the community. There are a lot of questions around that. And so tonight, as I just signaled, I'm going to separate that into two packets. There's some complicated questions that we can postpone to the next meeting. And then there's some immediate things that I need to know because of certain groups that I think are very anxious to know what your general direction or policy is going to be. So specifically, one of the things that I need to know is we have a lot of partner agencies and we have a lot of partner organizations and nonprofits that want to know if the council's comfortable with them. Making the library sort of their monthly home where they would have their monthly meetings and they're planning out their calendars and they're getting anxious to know. is that one of the uses of the building? And I do think those community rooms were envisioned that that would be one of the uses, but I need some clarity and feedback from you because I've got at least three organizations that are like, could you please just let us know so we can calendar out or do we need to be somewhere else? For this two-week period, I'm really talking about the nonprofits we work with a lot. Community Foundation is a great example. They'd really like to know if this is the home of their monthly meeting. You know, all the groups that support the library. There's a few others. Others we can put off two weeks and have a broader conversation as sort of where we might be drawing those lines. But I just want to make sure you're comfortable because I will then start to work with them to program out their calendars a little bit. That would be a key thing to let me know. The other thing that I can postpone, but I would like some general direction. One question staff has is if you are at all in favor of the concept of a cleaning and maintenance fee for everyone who uses the room. We kind of wanted to do that because we're trying to think of sort of making sure everybody has a little skin in the game in terms of keeping the rooms clean. And also, it would be nice to have a little bit of contribution from the users to defray the meetings. I just would like to signal to somebody who might be contemplating using the room, once or twice a month that they would be charged some level of fee. We wouldn't charge it until you adopt it as a fee, but I could at least kind of give them a little bit of a signal about that now. I think we need to postpone the broader rental conversation to the next meeting and in terms of what those actual uses would be. And I think we need to postpone the private events conversation and we need to postpone the commercial purposes for two more weeks. We'll make sure this is item number one at the next meeting so we get to it. And there's a very complicated discussion we need to have about whether or not these rooms serve this purpose that the law calls a public forum. And so that actually could be a lengthy conversation that we need to have that we signaled in the staff report. Most we would like to know, are we comfortable with standing meetings for a lot of our non-profit partners and contributors so I can start to help them book out their meetings and calendar? Two weeks would actually buy me some time to actually bring more of a fleshed out policy so that you could see everything in writing. I do want to remind folks in the audience about two things before we break about this item. One is If you are seeking doing collaborative programming with the library, this is not what that policy is about. We actually already have in place a way for organizations to contact the library staff and say, we would like to collaborate with you, use your room to host some sort of open program. And the staff has a process to evaluate if that's appropriate and what risk protections need to be put in place. So for example, I'll actually use myself as an example. Last Saturday, not at our library, but another public library, my wife and I found out how to play Mahjong by attending a community room event that was hosted by a private organization in collaboration with that library. It was free to the public and you got to learn how to play Mahjong. It's kind of fun. I'll encourage you to all learn how to play Mahjong. But you need four people to do it right. So anyway, that's the kind of thing. If that interests you, you do not need this policy. The library would love to talk to you. There's a whole other process. Reach out to the library director. The other thing is the council's not being asked to book specific dates or specific events. I saw some stuff come in asking you to bless certain days, certain events. That's what the policy is. empowers the staff to review. And there's a whole process of risk management that's involved with setting up specific events. And so folks who want to get on the calendar with specific events just need to talk to staff. And we'll be happy to have that conversation now and get it started so we can set some parameters ahead of the conversation on 17. So two questions. Comfortable with booking out the calendar? Should I start to signal that there will be some sort of cleaning fee for use of the room?

I just want to ask one question. Thank you. You said two questions, comfortable with booking out the calendar. So are we authorizing you to move forward with nonprofit Larkspur community serving organizations to leverage use of the community rooms, that be any one of the three, or specifically limiting them to the two smaller ones?

So we assumed we would be talking with those groups about specifically what their needs are. We've been trying during our pilot period to steer groups to an appropriately sized room. We haven't always got it right. Actually, the Climate Action Forum, which is one of our own groups, we put in the wrong room. You were pretty crowded. So we'll make sure that doesn't happen again. We've been sort of, you know, everybody loves the big room. They love the windows, but it's big. And if you only have 10 people, it's really not the room for you. And so we've been steering people to the smaller rooms when that's appropriate.

But I am accurate in suggesting these are nonprofit, Larkspur-serving organizations. Yeah.

For the next two weeks, I just want to engage those groups because they're very anxious. They've been very patient. And some of them have been working with us to get the kinks out of the system. I feel really bad for a couple of times when alarms went off and interrupted meetings, but we kind of fixed all that, I think. I'm going to look at Julian. He's not nodding his head. Anyway.

Okay. Do you have questions or comments?

So, I mean, we need to get going on how we're going to use these rooms. So I'm game for the next, I mean, we're in a trial period. The building's only been open a couple of months. And I know there's a lot of anxious community groups. Some of them were here earlier who are really interested in getting in line to get there. So I think we need to authorize that you can start working on that process. Larkspur specific for a while so that we know who these groups are and we can kind of flesh that out as it goes along. And I also would like to see our recreation programming get priority too for spaces that they may need. Let's say chair yoga for adults.

Library programming.

Library programming, but that they may need to better serve the community for the type of programming that the library has done in the past. They get priority there.

Yeah, so it'll always be library first, city purposes second, and then outside uses third. But let's use the community foundation was mentioned. If we agree that we're going to use it once a month, Tuesday evenings, we'll only bump them if we absolutely have to. We will try to always honor that that's the day and time they would like to use it.

Right. And I've had people approach me for council city council meet and greets this fall for the council members who are running. And that would be a political event, but not hosted by us, but hosted.

And that's the kind of conversation that's going to take longer than 30 minutes.

I'm not too fond of a cleaning fee. Cause I think that's what we made. I would like to see if someone brings in a large amount of food or something and to the large conference room and leaves a lot of debris, there may be a cleaning fee associated with that. But when there's just a small group who's meeting to have a board meeting, why would we charge them a cleaning fee?

Well, we don't have to now. And then we can document and bring it later. I can only tell you from our experience at Central Marin that until we banned all food, we were spending a lot on janitorial. I know. Because even... Meetings I've hosted have not always been good and careful about food.

Yeah, and people spill coffee. I know that.

That's all.

I would say yes to once a month. I would say yes to the fee. And I would say yes to a graduated fee with the smaller fee for the smaller room, which would incentivize people to take the smaller room that's the most appropriate for them. That would be my vote.

Dave, do you have an opinion? Yeah. Okay.

I mean, I...

Sorry, Dan. I think you're saying... Can you just repeat the booking calendar?

We're focusing right now on our nonprofit partners, which unless I've read the tea leaves in the room wrong over the last several months, no one on the council suggested to me those groups should pay... a rental fee, but I am proposing perhaps they should pay a small fee.

Understood. I guess what I was getting at was just the clarity. Maybe it's understood by others, but Larkspur serving nonprofit, is that like a 501c3?

I don't like to restrict it to 501c3 because we've learned over the years that a lot of community groups call themselves a nonprofit, and when you really talk to them, it's a group of folks that are operating something out of their house. It works great, but it is not a true 501c3. It's a community group that grew organically. And sometimes we've actually had 20-year arrangements with groups like that, where it's just a group of neighbors and residents.

Okay.

But should there be like a quorum of Larkspur residents? We tend to use that language of Larkspur serving community groups because our staff knows who those groups are, and they may also be serving other folks. The footprint may be broader than Larkspur, but they are bringing something into Larkspur to help Larkspur people. And we, we use that language a lot in other policies. So we have practice with that language.

Okay. I'll trust your judgment. I mean, that's my only concern is, is I know this is early, but you know, I jotted down at least 50% residents in membership leadership and programmatic focus on Larkspur.

I don't know if that's just really hard to do that. Right. And then, you know, We could get back to the days. No one on this dais and myself were involved, but we could invite some former council members into the days when Larkspur and Corte Madera had jurisdictional fights about how much people would pay. But the reality is we've evolved to, they're our friends and neighbors too. So if an organization serves 60% Corte Madera and 40% Larkspur, I wouldn't want to like penalize them because they aren't serving 50%.

I'll trust your judgment. I just don't want it to be like the FAR argument that we're having on the planning, like everyone's its own case. That's fine.

So like Friends of the Library have written a letter wanting to hold an event there. We're now kind of giving permission for them to navigate that with you because they are a nonprofit Larkspur serving group.

And they're a very specific library partner.

Yes. Okay.

Okay, yes, so I agree. Yes to the nonprofits, luxury-serving nonprofits. I agree with Councilmember Kendall. A cleaning fee sounds reasonable, but for people who are going to be hosting larger events and using the kitchen and all that, that cleaning fee needs to be much higher than $25.

We're not there yet in the next two weeks. I won't be booking those kinds of things. Those bar mitzvahs aren't... Because we need to have a broader conversation about... Oh, okay.

So we'll have a different... Okay.

I really am focusing now on... We have several regular Larkspur partners that are saying, please let us know if that's going to be our monthly meeting place.

Okay.

All right. So yes, I'm open to some sort of cleaning fee, but...

which I won't be able to impose for two weeks anyway. So you can talk about it two weeks cause you'll have to adopt it. Okay.

Okay. Great. So that gives you enough direction.

Okay. Yes.

All right. Well, public comments. We'll open this up. Any public comments? Um,

Yes. So I just I'm very grateful that we have now that desirable gathering space. It's something that was part of the emphasis of the whole community space. So I have to admit, it has been hard to have it there and not be able to access it. But I do appreciate after reading your staff report that. the thought that went into preparing it. And I really, really like all of your recommendations. And at Friends of the Library, we support all the things that you are considering. So we don't have any concerns or objections to anything that's there. We think it's great. I think that we would love to be able to meet there on every other month. We meet by Zoom in between. So we only need every other month a chance to meet, not every month. So we're grateful for the opportunity to meet there. It does sound like our desire to have an event for the book sale may be a separate conversation than this. But we would love to be able – we're holding 7,000 of the library's books right now. And we'd love the opportunity to be able to sell them and bring that money back to the library. I did mention to Stephanie that we'd love to be able to use the large meeting room and the patio. And you thought that maybe the patio might need to be a different discussion? so i just wanted to bring that in and then also i did see mention of a liability insurance policy and would love to know more about you know the what how how much that might be type of policy that might be required if we came in and did an event like that so

Yeah, that's not really, I mean, unless you want to change historical practice, that's the risk manager's domain. But I wanted to signal people need to understand these rooms come with liability issues. I'm actually working with the risk pool. to make sure there's a very simple waiver of liability for a 12-person meeting in a conference room. Just signing something that says you break it, you replace it kind of thing. But you start to hold an event and people have the possibility of getting hurt and the city's not controlling that event. It's pretty standard to require some level of coverage by the entity. We have resources so people can buy one-off policies and A lot of people, a lot of organizations have their own policies.

So we would be open to the insurance policy aspect of it. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I can't wait to get in there. So I appreciate all your consideration for this. Thanks.

Thank you for all you're doing. Thank you, Diana and Friends of the Library. Thank you. Okay. Any other public comment? Yes, Barry.

I'm Barry Fegan, and I'm so thrilled that we have got this facility. It's after all these years of... Anyway, I would love to be involved in helping make this work. I've said to several of you, including the librarian, about a group to help move it forward. It's going to be an experiment like you were talking about the farmer's market as a and try this and try that and just see how it works. And I'm so excited, but whatever we do, it should reinforce community and how we do it should be in a way that pulls people together because it is a community center. And I hope that everything that we do, everything you do is done in a way like you're doing with the farmers market discussion, pull people together and that's enough. I'm thrilled by where we are at this point and the potential. Just to give an example of what community means, a lot of people have suggested there should be a little coffee cart down there so that people can gather and hang out. And I thought we should do that by involving Rulies and the alley coffee shop up there. They should be involved in thinking through if we have a little coffee cart down there, what does that mean? How do we do it? And enough.

Thank you, Barry, for your comments. Thank you for your positivity. Love it. Love all the people in Larkspur. All right. Wonderful. So does that give you enough direction? Oh, yep. Sorry. I'm sorry. Yes. We have a public comment online.

Yes.

Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Great.

Thank you all for staying so late for the meeting and giving us the opportunity to speak about the meeting room in the Larkspur Library. My name is Joanne Yalwitz. I'm a resident of Marin. I'm here as a representative of the Toastmasters Chapter 890. which has been in existence for more than 70 years continuously. Most recently, it's open to everybody in Marin. For those of you who don't know Toastmasters, it's all about helping our members become more proficient as public speakers. Most recently, we have held our meetings in San Rafael. Before COVID we had wonderful free meeting space because we are a nonprofit 501c3. We were meeting at Biomarin. It was great space. COVID happened. They told us we had to leave. We tried to return post COVID and they've shut us down. Currently we're meeting at Embassy Suites. I've seen the library. It's beautiful. Our membership currently is about 25 to 28 members. We meet every Tuesday evening, 7.30 to 8.30 p.m. Of the 26 members, we are a diverse group from all the towns in Marin. Our ages vary from 23 years old to 77. Some people are working. Some people are retired. Amazingly, we're an incredibly cohesive, supportive group. We would be thrilled to have the opportunity to meet in one of your meeting rooms. We also have in place liability insurance. And if this is Any incentive, we hope it is, that our club, as all Toastmasters clubs have around the world, there's local dues and there's international dues. For people in the library, if we would welcome them to attend our meetings who are employees and offer them free membership to our group. I want you to become familiar with what we do. It helps everybody in their work, in their relationships, if they can be effective communicators. I'm open to any questions you have, and I'm eager to find out what the next steps would be for us to attempt to have our regular meetings at the library. All of our meetings, there's no food, there's no beverage.

Great. Thank you, Joanne, for your public comment. And as you heard this evening, we will be talking about a policy for the library at our next meeting in two weeks. And at that time, City Council will be finalizing a reservation policy and use policy for the community room. So please check back in with us. I mean, it sounds like you have a wonderful group. We'd love to accommodate you at the new library if we can. And so we will We will make a decision in two weeks. So thank you very much for coming on, just letting us know about your group and your needs. Okay, so is there any more that we need?

I have sufficient direction to move on. I thought I'd just share before I give up the mic because Mr. Woodruff's going to handle the remaining item. We've invested to make it so we can monitor the large room from the circulation desk. So I know there's been some people in the community who are frustrated when every seat in the library has been taken, and that's actually been happening, which is exciting. So we're making plans that when we're that crowded, we'll open up the big room just for people to go in and sit. I think that will really help a lot, and it'll get a lot of use during the day when it's not being used by a group for a meeting.

Great. Sounds like a good idea. All right, Mr. Woodruff. Sorry, I moved your item to the very end of the meeting.

All right. And I will make this as brief as possible. And Allison, you don't need to bring up the PowerPoint. I will in an effort to keep it brief. Before you tonight are two ordinances. Both of them are intended to modify the municipal code to make updates that are consistent with changes to the city's general plan and zoning ordinance. The general plan update made changes to the city's policy regarding evaluation of development sites for archaeological resources. The municipal code contains a process that appears to have not been updated since the 1970s. And so one of the ordinances is intended to bring the municipal code in line with the general plan. The other ordinance amends the subdivision ordinance to bring it in line with the housing priority overlay zone that was created as part of the suite of changes that were made to the municipal code when council approved the most recent housing element update. As part of that, the zoning created several sites that are available for what is called by-right development if the proposal complies with development standards that are outlined in the zoning ordinance and as part of the by-right approval that includes approval of subdivision maps. The subdivision ordinance was not updated at the time to be fully in line with that and the proposed changes just clarify how that process would be undertaken. Beyond that, the staff report, the written staff report adequately covers all of this. I don't think I need to add anything to it. I will note that there's one small change that I would like to propose that the council make to the ordinance for the subdivision changes. That is on page two of four. in what will be section 17.04.110 c2 that section begins based on project specific information the community development director may determine that an application for a subdivision map for a condominium i'd like to strike the words for a condominium and make that for a subdivision map merger or lot line adjustment we realized after we had published that this was slightly too narrow to be consistent with the rest of the section with that i'm happy to take any questions and if you're agreeable with the proposed amendment you can include in the motion to introduce the ordinance with the proposed amendment outlined by the city attorney okay all right any questions for the city attorney

All right. Seeing none, you covered. Oh, do we have someone online? We have someone online. Sorry. We'll open up to public comments.

Speaker James Holmes.

James Holmes, waiting till the bitter end. Two points about the subdivision ordinance. First, subdivisions are a pretty broad category of land use action ranging from buy right lot splits to huge developments. If I understand the ordinance language, it does not provide for public hearings on subdivisions, only notice and written submissions. I think that we should make very sure that we are not unduly limiting our options for public hearings to any greater degree than is absolutely required by the draconian state laws. Secondly, the ordinance says that there is no appeal from the planning director's decisions on boundary adjustments and lot mergers. In contrast, there is an appeal process for subdivisions, but boundary adjustments and lot mergers can be substantial. Adjustments can involve multiple adverse parties, and I can recall extensive hearings on lot mergers. Hence, I think we should follow for these processes the same appeal standards that are available for other matters, be it subdivisions or almost any other type of staff action, including even sign positioning. But in any event, I think we should be able to appeal that. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you for your public comment, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Woodruff, do you want to just quickly respond to that comment?

The proposals that we've included in the ordinance are basically the minimum that are necessary to implement the by-right development standards that are necessary to comply with state law. We did a careful review to make sure that what we were doing was basically creating a streamlined process only for the things that required it. And by doing so, we would stay compliant with the requirements of state law. the decision about there not being administrative, the recommendation to not have administrative appeals for those minor actions is basically because the standards that have to be applied are, the decisions have to be made on a by-right basis and require evaluation of objective criteria. the the our our feeling is that the decision of the community development director um is not really susceptible to a meaningful public hearing because it's basically like a building permit where you look at you look at a set of documents that are submitted you compare it to a checklist to determine whether or not his it has meet the technical standards and if if you check all of the boxes you approve it So it didn't seem to us that there was additional value to have a public hearing process for that kind of a decision-making.

Okay.

Makes sense. Yes. So this is for ministerial review by right. Yes. For by right development. Yes. According to objective standards.

Okay.

Perfect. Makes good sense. All right. Any other questions from council you think people want to discuss? All right. Well, then can I get a motion?

see this is items boy so this is um i'll uh move and uh the first this is the first reading and introduction of ordinance 1097 and 1098 by title only are you okay with that yes with it with it with the recommended change that that i read with the recommended change that the attorney would have read into the record

I would be honored to second that.

Great. All right. So all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstain? Great. Motion passes. All right. Well, I think that brings us to the end of this meeting. It is 1025, and we will adjourn our meeting to the next regular meeting of the City Council on June 18th. 2026 or June 17th, sorry, Wednesday, June 17th, 2026. Thank you. Good evening.