City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Larkspur City Council. It's Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 at 6 p.m. I will call the meeting to order. Madam Clerk, can we get a roll call, please? I'm here. Here.

Here.

Here. If you're able, please rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you and now we'll open up for public comment. This is a time for members of the public to come and address the City Council regarding items that are not on the agenda or the consent calendar. If you would like to make a public comment, please approach the podium. seeing none in the chambers madam clerk do we have any public comment online okay great uh we'll move to presentations of which there are none and now we'll move to approval of the consent calendar would any of the council members like to pull any items off the consent calendar for discussion um

I did have one item that I wanted to pull, and I'm sorry, I'm not on the consent calendar right now. Let me get there. It's the transient occupancy tax that will go to the Chamber of Commerce. So I think it's 4.8.

Okay, 4.8? Yeah. Okay. Oh, wait, hold on. Anybody else have anything? Okay, I'm going to pull... One second. I'm going to pull 4.7 off the consent as well. Okay, so we'll pull two items, 4.7 and 4.8 off a consent for discussion. If I can get a motion to move 4.1 to 4.6. So moved. Okay, can I go second? I'll second that. Okay, great. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay, great. So consent item is 4.1 to 4.6. Pass unanimously. Hello, Councilmember Kandel. Welcome. Okay, so 4.7, I don't really want to, there's really no discussion needed, but I just wanted to have a separate vote on that item. You know, I I opposed, you know, the the gas generator when it came to council. I can't remember last year, perhaps. And now that the price has increased, I still have to change my mind. So I just want to have a separate vote on that item. So if we can get a motion to move item four point seven. Sure.

I mean, I just want to say maybe for a brief discussion, if maybe city manager could tell us how much the cost has increased. And then also, I mean, we're all concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, but just a rough idea of what this is in the scheme of things. We're working on a variety of things. reductions and you know I'm assuming this only goes on under storm conditions and you know I just want to know if it's really a major major you know the public works director Julian Skinner speak to the price uh and then generally about options thank you uh yes good evening public works director Julian Skinner um so the request before you tonight is to approve the purchase

of a trailer mounted diesel generator, emergency generator, and the not to exceed amount of $200,000. This was originally included in your fiscal year 2526 adopted budget as a Measure G expense in the amount of $150,000, which is what our estimates were back about a year or so ago when we were working on the budget for this year. Subsequent to that and some conversations, we did reach out late last year and get a quote for a generator. At the time, we found that ordering a spec generator to exactly the specifications that you want takes about a year to build these things and receive them from time to time. They do have models in stock that they build and that are for sale first come first serve basis. And so in anticipation for looking at this expenditure before the end of the fiscal year, we reached out again to get an updated quote and we were told that there's a model that's in stock that's $185,000. That's very close to the specifications that we need that will work for our purposes. We don't believe that includes sales tax. That's why we estimate we'll need the $200,000 in total for the purchase. So that's the, basically it's an extra $50,000 versus what our estimate was about a year ago when we first looked into it. Part of that is the model that's available is a 200 kilowatt So it has a little bit more capacity than we need. Originally, we're looking at a 175, but the model that's available in stock that we could get in about six weeks is a 200. So it's a little bit pricier because it's a bigger model. but they're all adjustable. So it'll do what we need to do for our pump stations and for the library. As far as its use, these are all tier four, which is the highest quality certification for emissions. Now for generators, it's mandated all new generators have to be tier four. It will be used for emergency purposes only. The biggest benefit to having the generator be purchased and be ours is that when we have these events, such as our storm events, we have it here, we have it in the yard. So that's some peace of mind for our residents that are in low-lying areas that are waiting and wondering if we're going to go out and rent a pump yet. Is it that time? And is there still one available or... maintaining the access on Bonaire Road. Primarily one of the locations we would deploy this is on Bonaire Pump Station, which is a major access to the hospital, and that does get flooded, especially when that pump station goes down. But what we would do in this case is we would stage it there if there was a power event, but we're not going to turn the generator on unless we need it for emergency, unless there's an imminent flooding of that road that's going to impact emergency vehicles or there's flooding to the extent that property damage is going to occur, that's when the generator will be turned on. We're not going to mobilize it and turn it on every time the power goes out somewhere. That's not what it's for. But again, it will be in our yard and it's peace of mind that we're able to go and get it and with five minutes take it to a site versus figuring out if we still have one available at the rental yard and then trying to navigate bringing it across the bridge from the East Bay, which is where we currently get them from. As far as the library, again, with the generator we're looking at, we'll be capable of running our pump stations and the library. But this is not the powers out of the library. Let's take the generator over there. The library has a battery backup that'll handle most of your routine PG&E out power outages. Excuse me. What would happen is if there's a multi-day event and we need the heating and the ventilation system running in the library, the batteries won't be able to handle that. And that's when we would have a conversation about, do we need to use the library during this power outage and have the HVAC on? And if the answer is yes, then we would move the generator over. But again, it's not... Every time the power goes out at the library, we're not moving the generator over there. So it's truly for emergency purposes. It's not our first response to the power going out. It's for those occasions where the power is going to be out for a long time and there's an identified imminent threat of flooding to our streets or properties, or we've identified a need where we need to operate the library in a capacity that's beyond what the batteries can deliver.

Okay. And just two brief questions. One is urgency and the other is alternatives. So urgency, I mean, my understanding is we're one of the only cities that doesn't have any system right now. And secondly, alternatives, is there an electric? Is there something and roughly what cost?

Not feasible. So we did some preliminary analysis of alternative fuels that are available and they're still in the early development phases or either very large I think you're looking at containers that are about the equivalent of three parking spaces and over a million dollars to supply the power that we would need. That's obviously coming. Those sizes are coming down and those costs are coming down as that technology evolves, but it's just not there yet. And every other utility agency and agency that we spoke to as far as trailer-mounted power generation of this size. They're all landing on diesel. Okay.

Thank you. Madam Mayor?

Great. Any other questions?

Yeah, go ahead. Just real quickly, what is the cost of rental and what is the lifespan of the unit we're thinking of buying?

The lifespan is very dependent on the hours of use. It's kind of like a car with miles driven generators when you see them on the used market. Very, very, very much in resale value based on how long they've been run for. So we've seen ones on the used market that are close to 20 years old and have... They look like they've been run for an average of three hours a day over 20 years, and they're still fetching close to probably a third to a half of what their original value was. So I would suspect if we kept it, which we're hoping that there's technology available that we can replace it with something greener, but if we were to keep it, I would think it's about a 20-year life.

And what is the cost? You said currently we rent when there's an emergency.

Yeah, they have tiered pricing. We don't typically get it for just one day, but they do have a daily rate. The least we've ever rented it for is a week, and that's just over $2,000 a week. If you keep it for a month, it's about $5,000 a month. There's other fees where you keep it longer that they have a service fee because they have to come out and they have to maintain it so that they can keep renting it in the future, but roughly $5,000 a month.

Okay, thank you.

And I just want to ask a question is why do we feel that that subscription model, monthly rental model, which would cost us $5,000 a month, which we need this probably for... Well, I suppose now with the library, we'll need it potentially during the summer too. But I was thinking just for the storm drains and the pumping on Bonnier, which you mentioned previously, we could do that. I mean, even if you did it for 12 months at $5,000 a month. You're talking, what, $80,000? No, $60,000?

But to be clear, it's $5,000 a month when you're taking the generator for emergency short-term periods. That's not the lease price to take it out of the renter's hands. So we've never asked for a quote for a essentially permanent rental of the generator.

Okay, I thought I saw something about a subscription model that they had.

A different outfit does have a subscription model. So we did interview that outfit. We had concerns about their ability to deliver in a timely manner. They have a number of clients all through the Bay Area. It wasn't clear to us that we wouldn't be waiting anxiously for a generator while water levels were rising.

Okay, so there's no model in which you can just rent it for a year at a time and they would maintain it and they would do all that we need to keep it running and efficient for our needs so that we could buy time as the technology does evolve?

We didn't ask about a longer term rent, but when you take the 60,000, I don't suspect if we bought a generator that it would depreciate by more than 60,000 in a year. So if we did a full term rental on one, let's say it's a 5,000 times 12, that's $60,000. If we bought one and then sold it after a year, I think we would be better off than $60,000 net cost.

Yeah, also, if I could point out, CARB is banning the sale of these types of generators starting with model year 2028. So the used market could actually be enhanced by the fact that there won't be new units available anymore.

Okay. Look, can I chime in? Okay, go ahead. This is the second time we visited this issue. This is for emergency purposes only. And I've sat on the Disaster Council for over 10 years. We've already had two flooding events in this city in the last six months, one pretty massive in January and one just in the high tides last week. We're entering into a super El Nino year. Who knows how much water that's going to bring to our neighborhoods. It's also wildfire season, and that's going to be bad this year. And these are opportunities to provide clean shelter spaces in community spaces. And I think our primary obligation as council members is to the public's health and safety. So I view this as a health and safety issue, and I would like us to proceed with the purchase.

Okay, great. All right, any more questions or comments? Okay, can I get a motion?

I'll move item 4.7. I'll second.

Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay. Any abstain? Okay, no abstentions. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, so let's move on to item 4.8.

Yeah. And so my question was, as I recalled last year, when we approved the TOT funding for the Chamber of Commerce, there was a mention that it was not able to be used for salaries. And so, too, I just want some clarification on that, because this says for operational expenses and operational expenses would include salaries. So if I could get a little clarification on that, I would appreciate it.

Yeah. So the chamber's executive director has volunteered on a number of occasions that for some reason on their side of the equation, they are not using city money to pay. for the salary of the executive director. I was not able to connect with the director today to find out, because you had mentioned this question to me yesterday. I did do a little quick research though. There are a number of IRS codes that do suggest that When you have a certain type of nonprofit and the chamber falls into that category, if you take public money and you apply it to the salaries of the employees, you run the risk of jeopardizing your status under that code section because that person could then be perceived to be under the control of the public entity. And so I wouldn't be surprised because I vaguely recall they had had someone on the legal or accounting side tell them to start segregating the money. I don't see any reason why if it gives you comfort, you couldn't stipulate, ask us to add to the agreement that money would not be used for salaries.

I would recommend that we put that into our agreement as a standard declaration about the use of the TOT funds, yeah. I don't know how other council members feel about it.

Yeah, I think I'm in agreement.

I think that the chamber at this point is grownups and they're able to use the money wisely and we're trusting them with the money with the understanding that if they don't, we're not going to fund them next year. You know, so they report to us and let us know where the money goes. And I feel that over the last year or so, that's been sufficient for me to feel that I can entrust them with this money. They're going to use it wisely. But if people want to have more control over it, you know, it's what we're here for. So I'm not, you know, adamantly disagreeing. I don't think it's necessary. But if that's what people want to do, I don't have a problem with it.

OK. Yes. So I will just echo what city manager just said. It is due to the IRS rules because of the nonprofit entity that they are. They cannot. So if we put in our agreement, that's fine. But I don't think they want to violate the IRS code and then lose their nonprofit status. So that's that's why they don't. That's why it's not in there. But, yeah, if we want to add it, we can. So does someone want to make a motion?

What's that? I don't want to add it, so I'm not going to move that one.

Okay. I'll make a motion to move the chamber agreement. Sorry, I'm trying to get the number of the resolution. Resolution 5226, authorizing city manager to execute an agreement with Larkspur Chamber of Commerce with a notification or a statement which... stipulates that the monies delivered by the city are not to be used for employee payroll expenses.

Is there a second?

I'll second that.

Okay, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Nay. No.

And I'll make a counter motion, which is just to pass it as read.

Okay. Does someone want to second that? Second. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Those opposed? Nay. Okay. Motion passes 4-1. Any abstentions? Okay. Thank you. Madam Clerk, did you get that? Okay. Great. Thank you.

Okay.

Thanks for the discussion there. All right. So now we'll move to item number five, City Manager's Oral Report.

Just a couple things, Madam Mayor. First, I wanted to acknowledge the effort of our recreation staff. to put on music in the park. This is the last chance I think I'll have to do that. They wrap up this Friday. As I understand it from talking to director Nick Stone, this has been the most successful program yet in terms of attendance and the feedback's been almost universally positive. And in fact, we have folks asking why we can't expand the series. And we probably could, but we do know people tend to go out of town a lot in July. So it's kind of been a sweet spot for us. But anyway, I just want to thank them. A lot of positive feedback. Really, I think exactly the type of events that community wants to see. I also want to acknowledge the work of our maintenance crew over the minor flooding that occurred. with the king tides that came in in the last week, you know, that was our normal type of flooding. When we get king tides, it comes into the streets. And then when the king tide subsides, the system draws that water back out. One thing I wanted to share with the public is the king tides are higher than they've ever been. The king tide that just happened was eight to nine inches higher than what had been projected. And so that's concerning to us because had it been another half a foot, we might start to see the water much the way we saw it in January. So we're working as best we can to figure out how we can minimize and mitigate those impacts if they occur. But we seem to be having weather changes that if they're here to stay, we have to start planning accordingly. And then lastly, just a housekeeping reminder, you have one more council meeting on July 1st, and then you'll be going dark until mid-August. So probably one more heavy lift to get us through July because we got a lot of stuff to get set up. But then I think everybody should just plan on a little break. So there you go, Madam Mayor.

Great. Thanks for your report. All right, so council members' reports. Anybody want to start us off?

Well, I'll just take this opportunity, even though the audience is slow tonight, but people do watch this online, to remind people that election season is coming up. in November for city council. And I am retiring after three terms. So if you're interested, now's the time to reach out to me and I will help you figure out what this role is all about. And I'm available to meet up and to discuss and to give you some advice. So please reach out to me if you're interested.

Great. Thank you. We will miss your important voice on this council. Okay, anybody else?

I'll go briefly. So I went to the SMART board meeting and, you know, kind of four big standouts. As everyone knows, Measure B passed, but maybe not everybody knows it passed 75%. So it was really surprising. You know, Senator Dodd brought it down to the threshold of 50 and, you know, that worry of what happened in 2020. But it seems the public overwhelmingly supports it, at least based on that outcome. Also, ridership in May exceeded all previous records. So we had 148,000 riders and we're almost, you know, at the end of the fiscal year, we'll have reached the goal of 1.4 million riders a year. and we're going to up that up to 1.7. So it's, you know, really been growing and that was 40% higher than last year, last May. And then the pathways is another piece, 130,000 people walk. And then for us in Larkspur, we have that smart connect. So going between the smart train and the ferry and that, and that actually reached 2,800 people. And I'm kind of waiting for the moment to, you know, see how that might help our community Bon Air. And, and, you know, I think it, It really, you know, we're starting to possibly see some scaling and some effects. And it's also nice to know that a quarter of the riders are under 20 or 25. So it's really serving the younger community, the elder community. And one report today was what are the economic benefits? And generally, you know, it's seen as a loss, but when you count housing, And, you know, some of the others, it looks like the investment by federal standard usually pays back four times what you put into it. So I don't know if that's true for SMART, but I'm, you know, certainly encouraged by what we heard today. Thank you.

Great. Councilman Margulies? Cantell?

Yeah, just I was asking a quick update on the scaffolding on SMART. A lot of inquiries about that. I just want to assure people that the city is working with property owners and we have a balance of trying to be quick, but also trying to be safe. And sometimes those are not the same. So we're doing our best to make sure we meet both those goals and we'll just keep people updated as it progresses. But I just want to assure people we are aware of it and we are working to try to get it resolved as quickly as we can.

Thank you. All right, a quick report from me. First, the Marin Civil Grand Jury released their report on MCE. It is available on their website. It's extremely detailed and well-written. We will be bringing it to council at our next meeting just so we can discuss it and then provide staff with the direction on how we want to respond. And then we'll bring it back again in August when we reconvene in August to formalize our response to the grand jury. And secondly, it is – the 4th of July will be coming up. Oh, actually, we will have one more meeting. But anyways, it's the 250th celebration of our country's founding, and we – Look forward to seeing everyone in the 4th of July parade. If anyone is interested in walking in the parade or having a float in the parade or having your own group walk in the parade, you can reach out to the Corte Madera Chamber of Commerce, and they're the ones who are organizing the parade. Great, thank you. Okay, so with that, we'll move on to public hearings, which will be the, we will be discussing a resolution confirming the record of costs and setting a special assessment and lien against the falling property for outstanding code enforcement violations. Welcome. Welcome, Community Services Director Mogensen.

I'm going to forego a presentation this evening since I think all of you are aware of the liens and the lien process. Tonight we're hearing a lien for 212 Riviera Circle. The owner is Joseph Seidler. He is aware that this item is on the agenda tonight, but it doesn't appear he's in the room.

I hope he's online.

He did call the city clerk and confirm that he was aware of the hearing tonight. Mr. Siedler's lien is for $10,242. It's identified, the details are identified in the attachment to the staff report. This is confirming the validity of the debt for unpaid administrative citations. And I think I'll leave it with that, if you have any questions about this particular item. He was sick, by the way, at the last meeting, and he reached out at the beginning of the hearing, said he wasn't able to make it, which is why the council continued this item from May 20th.

Great. Thank you. Okay. I'll open up to council. Does anyone have any questions for staff on this?

Sorry, just a quick question, Mr. Seether. When you spoke with him, he didn't mention still being sick or is for some reason not being capable of being here today. Is that right?

I spoke with him last week and he mentioned that he's aware that the meeting was tonight and he didn't have any plans to not be here.

Okay. Okay, great. Any other questions? Okay. I'll open up to public comments. Anybody have a public comment in the chamber? Seeing none. Online.

Looking for any raised hands from the Zoom feed. And there's no public comment.

Okay. All right. I'll bring it back to council for discussion. Does anyone want to start?

This is a carryover from our very, very, very comprehensive discussion of this at the last time we did. And I think we covered a lot, which is available for the community to see on our YouTube channel, our conversation. And I felt Mr. Morganson really explained it very well, the multiple attempts by previous speakers. by our staff to have these codes enforced. So I feel confident that we are still continuing that process with this particular residency. So.

Great.

Quick comment. My understanding is that the fine on this one was already reduced due to some calculation, changes to calculation. And in order to be consistent, which was our theme last time, and to treat this property the same as the other properties, I'm comfortable with the resolution.

Agreed.

Okay. Anybody else have any comments? I would just echo what Council Member Kandel said in that, you know, validating the fees that were updated to reflect the correct costs that also remaining consistent with how we moved in the other four cases that we handled last month. that I would be comfortable with moving forward and validating that this is correct. Great.

Council Member Paulson, do you have any additional? No. Okay.

No, I echo the previous comments.

Okay. I feel the same way. So if we can get a motion to move the resolution.

I'll make a motion, pass the resolution as written.

I'll second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstaining? Great. Motion passes. Okay, moving right along. Item 8.1, establishing policies and guidelines for the use of the community rooms at the Larkspur Library.

Thank you, Madam Mayor and Council Members. This is an item we barely broached upon late at your last meeting, so we brought it back for discussion. We also this time put out notice so that you could actually adopt fees tonight in terms of the rental charges that we've proposed or if you want to propose others. The purpose of this agenda item is that we're ready to open the community rooms up for more broad use. As you know, we've been in a two-month trial period with a number of our partner agencies to get the kinks out. And we feel we're at a place now where we can start to rent the rooms and turn people loose in there on a broader basis. And so we need to go over some guidelines and questions from you. The council have policy implications so that staff can then craft the final documents that will be the policies that people will have to review before they sign to take responsibility for the rooms. Staff has been working behind the scenes with our risk pool that advises us on risk management issues to come up with different types of waivers, depending on what types of activities are occurring in the rooms. We actually have been researching with ABC on different rules around whether or not how an event, what type of license they might need, depending on what they're doing, or if they don't need a license, depending on what they're doing. Should they intend to have alcohol involved with an event? So with all that said, in the staff report, we identified questions. We're looking for some guidance from you so that we can finish crafting these applications and policies. At the last meeting, I did ask, could you at least let me know a little bit about how you felt about agencies and nonprofits booking the room out for longer periods for their standing monthly meetings. I really appreciate you saying you were comfortable with that. It gave me the ability to talk to a few of our groups and let them know we'll plan for them to be there at their regular meetings. I clearly missed the community foundation because they sent in a letter. So we'll talk to Ms. Anderson offline and make sure she understands we'll park a room for her. But that said, we've broken the staff report down. We already talked a little bit about booking in advance for community groups and nonprofits, but the other thing we wanted to talk about is we think we should limit for general use. If any member of the public were going to want to book the room, we would only book out about 90 days. That way we can kind of manage the calendar appropriately. That also, particularly in these early years where we're getting to understand how the rooms are being used, it allows us to adapt. If we've only booked out 90 days, we can always kind of take a step back and say something's not working, we need to change it. So that's one topic that just wanna get your confirmation on. Then we have the standing meetings question that you already answered. The other thing we talked about a little bit the last meeting, and I need some guidance from you, is whether or not we should have a fee for cleaning and maintenance of the room that we would assess to all our users to sort of build up a fund to help defray the cost of cleaning and maintaining the rooms. And then formatting got a little messed up in the report, but the other questions are who can actually reserve the room and how much should they pay? So, you know, I think instinctively we all think of community groups, youth sports leagues groups. We had a speaker from the last meeting who has a Toastmasters club that wants to use it. I've mentioned to some of you, I've had people say, can my bridge club have their sessions in there? We've had a number of book clubs. We've had HOAs already ask us. But then we've also had folks say, can I have a small soiree or party in there? And what would be the parameters for that? Can there be a birthday party? What would be the parameters for that? We need some guidance from you on what you think, at least for now, who should be allowed to use the rooms. Whatever you tell us this evening, we'll craft the right policies to make sure we control those events appropriately. We also have a question. Should there be two rate schedules or even more? One for for nonprofits would essentially not pay a rental fee versus a general member of the public. And then again, about getting into the discussion of private events. And then lastly, do we allow business meetings to occur in there? And one caveat, we cast the net out pretty widely and a common theme is A lot of agencies do allow business meetings if you wanted to just use these conference rooms. I mean, two of them are set up to be nice conference rooms, but typically they ban sales. They ban the use of them for entrepreneurial purposes and instead encourage people to take that activity elsewhere. Then there's a separate discussion we may want to have, and this may take more than one meeting because it's a bigger topic, and it's this idea of whether we would want to allow the community rooms to be public forums. And we gave you a little bit of a description of what that means. But generally, and the city attorney's prepared to speak more broadly about this topic, One of the questions is whether or not all forms of speech are welcome. Anyone can rent the room and they can host a forum, regardless of what that forum's topic is, or whether the city council feels there should be some parameters and boundaries put on what is allowed in those rooms. And one of the difficult ones to parse out is actually political activity. So, you know, instinctively, I've had people say this seems like the big room, the big community room is perfect for, say, a candidate forum. And that might be something you want to allow. But then the question is, do you want a single candidate to be allowed to have an event there for their purposes? And so and those are challenging lines to parse out. And that's why you have your city attorney to help you have that conversation this evening. So with that, Madam Mayor, that's the broad array of topics we need to kind of wade through a little bit this evening so we can start to make these rooms available.

Okay, great. All right, so why don't we take these one by one? First of all, let's ask questions of staff. But why don't we take them, you know, one by one? So the booking in advance, I think we all said we were okay with that. But you had questions about whether, how far in advance?

Yeah, for the general public. So, you know, if Mrs. Smith wants to book it for her knitting club. Sorry, I hope I'm not creating some bad image.

How about her stock pick club?

Oh, that's a better one. I like that. I used to go to the San Francisco Public Library with my stock club. So Mrs. Smith's stock picking club wants to use the room, but they meet every six months. So how far in advance are we booking out the room? Because it constrains the availability of the room. And You know, I do think the farther out we go, the more we need to talk about whether or not there's a cancellation policy, because if you start allowing people to book things out a year in advance and then they're holding that date and we're not making it available to somebody else. I think when you use a shorter timeframe, you can kind of be a little more gentle because people do make mistakes and they book rooms and then can't use them. And, you know, we're not here to collect fees to make a lot of money. The fees are partly to you know, have people invested in keeping the rooms nice when they use them. So anyway, we had proposed to start with a 90 day. Sounds good.

Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. I mean, I do think a cancellation policy is also sensible though. It's not, you know, I, people could book 90 days in advance and two days before say, Oh, I don't need the room. And then they're preventing people. So some kind of, you know, way to motivate them not to make a last-minute cancellation seems to make sense to me.

And we could certainly, for starters, maybe write some language that if you'd cancel out of the blue in a short time window, you're not going to be able to book it for some period of time. I could write that in for now. If it becomes a problem, you know, if you want us to charge a fee, we can do that or we can wait and see if it is a problem. That would be the other approach. It's a living policy.

Right.

Right. I think we'll be back here. I actually plan on coming back on July 1st to revisit the EV charging because we're already seeing enough data to come back and say, hey, we might need to tweak the policies we came up with there. I wouldn't be shocked if we're back here in four to six months saying we need to tweak these guidelines too.

I think 90 days sounds great. And we can have a, you know, out of courtesy, if you have a need to cancel your standing appointment or your standing meeting date, please give the library two weeks notice. Just something out of courtesy.

And are people going to have to put down a deposit when you're charging these groups? Are they booking this stuff online and they just put down a deposit for the fee?

So the way we've written the fee part of this is it empowers staff to charge a deposit if we think there's a risk to damage to the room. So once we get all these guidelines from you, For example, a more social event, particularly one with alcohol, I'd probably want to require a deposit. Serving food, probably want to require a deposit because your chances of needing to clean that up are higher. And those would be refundable for the parts we wouldn't use to cover our costs. But we proposed to kind of leave that a little bit to staff's discretion to figure out what those amounts should be. Since it's refundable, we're not Again, collecting a penalty there. We're charging them our true cost to clean up whatever happened.

Okay. Okay.

All right. So let's see the second item standing meetings. I think we all agreed. Is that correct? That, you know, we're good with the standing meetings for some of these nonprofit or, um, you know, city, um, Actually, do we say that it's limited to nonprofits or those in Larkspur? Oh, it says limited organizations that are based in Larkspur and serve Larkspur residents. So are we good with that?

Or serve. Because there are some groups that aren't based in Larkspur but serve a large portion of our community. Especially, there's a lot of groups that serve the Twin Cities. And I think I mentioned the last time I... I don't really want to say to something that's based in Corte Madera that serves just as many kids, for example, in Larkspur, you're not going to be treated the same. Okay.

So are we all okay with that generally? Yeah.

Serving groups recognized by the city. What do you mean by that? Just under bullet point two, page two. Does a group have to be recognized by the city? I don't... Page two of the staff report and it's bullet point two. Some libraries allow an exception to advance booking limits for community serving groups recognized by the city.

Yeah, so later in the analysis, I softened the language, so I probably should have gone back and tied the... Got it.

I'll look at page three.

The first part, I was sort of summarizing what I was seeing in a lot of other policies. Some cities are very strict. The council actually annually adopts or the library board annually approves a list of organizations that are partner or non-profits. I think I mentioned in the last meeting, your staff has a pretty good track record of sort of understanding the language of Larkspur serving organizations. And we tend to lean toward, let's err on the side of being generous. So if an organization makes a pretty good case to our staff that they serve Larkspur residents, we usually understand that.

So I'm fine with standing meetings. That's what you listed here. So that would be like the Boy Scout troop meets every Tuesday at, you know, 6 to 7.30.

Yeah, I think she'd be all right with me saying I had an email exchange actually, right, not too long ago with the Friends of Court of Madera Creek. I think that's very much kind of in the spirit of what was intended for those rooms, that they could hold their monthly meetings.

in those rooms so can i can i recommend that we limit to the number of meetings i mean i think every week would be a little much because then we have you know five or ten and then they're you know every week it's the rooms are going to be booked up always so i don't know maybe once a month sounds fine do you see any reason to go more than once a month for standing meetings

I think probably let's see how it plays out. But I agree with you. I'm not familiar with a lot of organizations that want it once a week, but there are some. One thing I'm a little sensitive to right now is during this period before we build our new recreation building, we actually had to carve up what space we're still being allowed to use by the school district. And we did sort of tell a few organizations that did meet more than once a month. that the rec room wasn't available to them anymore. So Toastmasters is a good example. A lot of Toastmasters groups.

They meet weekly.

I think what we would say is if we can accommodate you, we will, right? You know, My sense is there's ebbs and flows. There's going to be some days and evenings that are really in high demand. There's going to be periods people don't necessarily want. Maybe we just say to a group, if you want to meet weekly, you got to meet in a slower period. I feel the staff can do it.

Okay. All right. So are we in agreement there? Sounds good. Okay. Let's talk about cleaning and maintenance fees. So I think the suggestion is $25 a cleaning and maintenance fee for everyone, including the nonprofits. Are we talking?

That's what I propose for you to discuss. Okay.

So let me ask a question. I would like to set up a structure, if possible, that incentivizes people to use the smallest room that will work for their group. Because I think it's going to be a waste if you have a group of four people. Yeah, they would prefer to be in the big room. But then you're just taking up all that space. So one way to do that is to charge a different fee structure per room. You know, that the bigger room is a little bit more expensive, not prohibitively expensive, but enough for somebody to say, OK, I'll take the smaller room. So that's one idea that I had. I don't know how everybody feels about that or if anybody cares or feels that that's an issue that we want to preemptively try to deal with or just wait till it potentially happens. Just something I was thinking of.

is the fee structure that they've already put forward in their report does have the rooms renting out at different rates based on size.

Okay. So this is a rental rate or a cleaning?

A cleaning fee.

We had thrown out the question for you, if everyone who books the rooms ought to contribute $25 to the cleaning and maintenance facilities. So we saw a lot of cities that do have that type of fee. We saw other cities and agencies that just use deposits. And they just say, okay, if... If you are going to use our room and we think your activity is more than just people sitting around a table, you need to put down a deposit. We do know from experience with the community room at CMPA that even meetings tend to leave a mess. And so that was one of my reasons to recommend some fee. Again, you might want to say let's not do this yet and see if it's necessary.

I mean, I If a community foundation group wants to just meet for an hour, I don't think we need to charge them for a cleaning fee. But if, like you wrote in here, they're serving food or other messy activities, then perhaps a cleaning fee applies. But, I mean, I don't want to assume that we're going to have messes before we even see if we have messes. We can do that. Yeah. I mean, if somebody is going to use our big room and we do have a food preparation kitchen there, my assumption is many people will be bringing food and preparing things there. A cleaning fee could apply at that time. But if somebody wants to use the boardroom or they have a puppet show or something like that, can we just see if messes are really a problem? I know at the CMPA they... They were having some messes, and so they had to tear out the rug and everything. I get that. I'd like to just see, I hate to burden a cost early on.

Can I? All right. So there's two issues. When is the cleaning fee? And maybe a solution is when you have an organization that has multiple meetings, they put a deposit down and if we don't need it, it just rolls over to the next meetings. They don't constantly have to be doing that. But the second issue is just the incentivizing people to be efficient and And to use the smallest room. And if nobody thinks that's an issue, don't worry about it. I just can foresee people wanting the more luxurious spaces, even though they don't really need it.

Well, if I could. So as Council Member Margulies said, when we get to whether or not you want to approve these fees that are in the reso. Yeah. we did try to create a little bit of an incentive structure. The other thing we're doing is we're actually in these early days, we're interviewing users. Well, what are you going to do in the rooms? So I actually asked them how many people are coming so that I can say, you know, we have, you sound perfect for the smallest room. You only have 10 people. That room's just right. That's why we built that room versus putting 10 people in a room that's meant to seat, you know, 60 people. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. So we are trying to steer people in the right direction. And the other thing is the large room, the library is actually going to book the programming and other uses on a regular basis. So it won't always be as available.

Yeah, I mean, I think I would like to see how it goes. And also in our policy, we can encourage good behavior. But this is a community asset that we've worked really hard to try to create. If you're going to use these rooms, please be responsible as the person who checked out the room for your group to make sure that it's left in a clean state. I mean, I used to use the CMPA room for Twin Cities Disaster Council meeting every Monday, first Monday of the month. And our obligation was we left the room as clean because we just – I think if we set that tone, we might see less behavioral problems.

I mean, on the MWPS, an interesting example because that's almost always elected. And there is some public, but there is food. I mean, I would – I want this to be extending the kind of joy of the library opening and the generosity. But I also think clear boundaries, you know, really help. And I would say, like we were asking about parties, you know, if maybe a simple question, if there's going to be any food, then we want to deposit that, you know, a cleaning which we can return or something. But I think, you know, setting the tone up front, you know, that it isn't, you know, just about measuring people's implied goodwill is better. And, you know, so if it's Toastmasters, you know, just when you fill out the form, are you going to have food or not? And if you do, then, you know, we just want to cover ourselves and You know, we can decide if it's returnable, if it's clean or it's a very small amount or something like that. But and I do like the idea that I trust you that, you know, this is sort of opening that I think, you know, some of the parameters we've set, like limiting how far in advance you can book and all that is good for like a three month. We got the summer coming up. And I think in the fall we can revisit with some experience, you know, what the issues were and what we might need to, you know, be clear about. I mean, I think it'd be nice, but I hope we set some very firm things. And, you know, one question I did have was about the certificate of insurance. So I'm assuming, I don't know if we're going to have that as a blanket coverage or we're going to exclude nonprofits or, you know, just because there's the legal side, like free speech side, but then there's also just the legal exposure. And I'm curious what your thoughts are there.

Oh, it will be requiring. So We're going to use a three-tiered risk assessment process that our risk pools help them to look out. They've modeled in other communities. So the lowest tier is you're having a meeting of 10 people around a table. Sign here. You assume responsibility. And we're going to shame you if you break something and don't pay to fix it. So that's tier one. There's low risk. There's no reason to make somebody go get insurance. Tier two is we do an assessment of the activity and we say, wait a minute, you need some basic insurance coverage here or some significant deposit to give us comfort because there is what you're doing sounds like something might get broken or somebody might get hurt. And tier three is you need to take responsibility for what's going on. There are inherent risks involved. You need to provide a certificate of insurance or an event policy. We do have Two different vendors that we refer people to that can provide an event policy online. I've done it on behalf of the friends and I can get them a policy in like 10 minutes. It's not a onerous task. I will tell most a lot of you all probably know a lot of organizations know you can call your agent and usually get an event one day event policy as a rider on your home insurance program. for almost nothing, it was really cheap. So that's my tip for the day for people that do risk management. The first question is call your agent, but we would always require that. So that's part of what we'll do. That's normal for us to build into our procedures. Thank you.

Okay, so on the cleaning fee, I'm hearing, you know, maybe we wait, but then I think I also heard, you know, Council Member Paulson say that, Maybe there's a deposit that's refundable, and we ask people whether or not they're going to have food or what they're actually going to be doing.

I have sufficient direction. Yes, much direction. I got a $25 fee for now. I'm comfortable with the direction. I'm sorry. I'm comfortable with the direction. So we'll just, when you make your motion, you should not approve that particular fee, the $25 fee. And we'll revisit this when we bring it back, tell you how things are going. Perfect.

Great. Okay. And now let's get to council member Kendall's point about, you know, who can reserve a community room and how much should they pay? So, um, I think this is sort of the table at the, you know, this addresses your question about do we have tiered pricing for the different size rooms? And then what kind of, do we want to charge nonprofits a different rate versus a for-profit entity? I guess these are questions that we probably need to answer. So first of all, are we okay with the tiered schedule as written on page seven of the staff report? I mean, that sounds, I guess.

Go ahead. $125 an hour. I understand. I'm just feeling ambivalent about charging community groups for a building.

We're not charging community groups $125. Most community groups are going to be exempt. Remember, most of them are going to be nonprofits. Even if they're not 501c3s, we tend to recognize them. So we're talking about private use here. So I think you need to answer the question of what is allowed in the room. So going to your stock picking group, should your stock picking group have to rent the room is a question. That's not a, you know, that's not really an organization serving the community. It's a private club. So the question is, should they pay a fee to use their own?

Ironically, that group met at the San Francisco Public Library in one of their meeting spaces for about 10 years when I lived in the city.

This is the heart of the policy, right? Who, if anyone, should pay and what should they pay?

So as written in the staff report, you know, you have governmental organizations. So that would include MNCC.

One of our partner organizations that tested the room quite a bit was the Larkspur Quarterman Air School District staff. They did some meetings with parents in there.

Okay. And then we said nonprofits and community groups. So I guess what are we classifying the stock picking group? So there's fundraising for profit, and then there's bridge and stock picking. I'm not sure what language we put in just if we wanted to exclude them.

All right, just to try to get to a point, I'm going to suggest, first of all, the numbers are too high.

Yeah.

You know, we're a library. You know, I don't want this to be a business. So I was thinking $10, $20, $30 for three different rooms, you know, $20, $40, $60, something that's more in line with a community facility for community members. You know, some kids want to go meet or whatever. This is my thought. The second thought is I would probably recommend not dipping our foot into the political pool and just say we're not going to do that and see how that goes. Because then, you know, all of a sudden the freaking Nazi party wants to have a meeting there and you say no and you have a problem. You know, and I just don't want to... Well, we mentioned two things. We mentioned the price and who's going to rent it. So my thought is keep the price low. Let's keep it for the community and not prohibitive for people who want to use it. And I would restrict it from political organizations. That's my view.

I'm just going to offer a point of reference. I recently rented community room at Drake's Landing and I was able to have the room for four hours for a hundred bucks. So, you know, it didn't have the audio visual set up, but it was a bigger room. It's probably close to the size of the twice of this. Yeah, it was a big room. So I think this per hour also just seems very expensive to me. And that maybe the model should be for a certain number of hours to limit people's ability to meet for long periods of time. but a flat rate. But I do think that keeping the rates somewhat elevated will also help us minimize getting bombarded because current organizations like Toastmasters, they're paying rent somewhere, right? So we need to come in at the market rate somehow in order to avoid getting too many

if people may make a suggestion i think you're answering the questions probably as i listen to you out of order you really need to decide who gets to rent the rooms because you're very focused on the organizations that you know want to use the rooms and i i would ask you can i rent the room to host my buddies for my annual fantasy football draft because if it's 30 bucks i'll tell you what i'd I did happily bring my rowdy 12 friends down and we'd yell and shout in that room for, three, four hours while we drafted our football players. Is that what you want to happen in that room for $30? That's okay. That's what you have to decide.

Right, but I don't think that's based on your fantasy football group. I think that's based on noise in a library. I mean, there are plenty of fantasy football groups who can do that quietly, and I'm not going to ban somebody just because they're a fantasy football group as opposed to some other group.

I'm just asking you what you think I should have to do. pay versus a group or organization.

I kind of feel that this is a community asset that's shared with the community and should not be a market rate asset. As long as it's for people in the community, if that makes sense.

It does. I'll only push back. This isn't anywhere near market rate. And this is below the Middle Valley rates for the community center, which was one of our benchmarks. It's way below what the Valley chart is.

But that's a, well, I mean, that's big community center space. I mean, I wish we had that space, but we're a lot smaller.

We have a lot of small rooms in that. I just think I have no problem. I'll give them away for free. This is your decision, but do you want, you know, this is not market rate. This isn't even market rate for the public agencies that are renting rooms.

So let me ask a question. We have a lot of contractors for our recreation activities, right? So these are, contracting people who we contract with to do an event. Maybe it's a drama class or whatever, something like that. They are a for-profit business. They're a drama instructor. And I would want to encourage our use for that, even though it is a business. Where do you see the differential in that?

So those contractors are sanctioned and advertised as part of our recreation programming with the city logo above them. That's a different offering. And I did mention at the last meeting briefly, and it may have gotten missed, it was late. There's a whole nother process here where a community, let's use a bridge, right? We know there's a bridge club that's really interested in using a community room. If they go to the library director and say, we'd like our bridge club to be an open to the public program, He has a whole separate application process to become a library program. And there are no fees, and we're actually partners in doing that. It's a totally different approach. And I could see some groups wanting to go on that path. That's different, because then we're actually saying, OK, you're making your activity open to the public. That's fantastic. That's programming. That's what we want. So let's figure out how to make that happen. So that's a whole, again, a whole different process. This is really about giving you control of the room for some period of time and who gets to have that exclusive use for that period of time and whether or not they should pay for that.

So I am, you know, Scott, I think I'm, and Catherine both, I'm in agreement, you know, that this is meant to be, you know, for the public and that I'm struggling a little bit because I think we have at least in my mind, four different levels of groups. So what was called out and specified in the staff report was governmental organizations, Larkspur serving nonprofits and community groups. So they're not even going to pay 30 bucks. They're paying nothing. So I think that's really generous. And then I thought the bridge club and the stock and the fantasy football lumped them all together as kind of interest groups. I don't have a better name right now. And then there's like fundraisers, people who come in and actively are using this for business purposes. You know, like you'd go to Perry's and you'd rent that upstairs room and use it for, you know, some. And now kind of based what you were asking, Sarah, and the contractors with the rep department or people who become library programs is like yet another group. So I'm wondering if it would make sense to say, look, if you're a library program or, you know, working with rec or governmental or nonprofit, we don't charge. You know, so we just add on to what's in the staff report. But I think for the interest groups, the Mill Valley rates seem pretty fair. I wouldn't be against discounting it a little bit. But I would also say if people are coming in really for business purposes and, you know, they're, you know, it's about money, then it's not so bad to have these rates are higher. So, you know, I think that meets the needs. the kind of um the spirit of of you know us being public and not a business but but it also helps with the demand issue and i think it you know it's it's appropriate to what people are doing um so anyway those are my thoughts but but i think the categories are maybe they're better ones that we could come up with so i kind of like your categories but i'm trying to think of something similar like

Book Passage has a community room that they rent out to business organizations for holding meetings. So for example, they have a thing called Death Cafe where they, it's a discussion about end of life care, but it's run by a licensed clinical social worker as a conversation thing. I don't know how much they charge, but are you thinking something like that, which would be Somebody coming in, using our space to hold a group meeting, which they are actually perhaps charging for, charging attendance to.

I think the charging part is a good threshold. But Dan, I think you have some experience. I've had this discussion with you. Like there are some groups that it really is for profit. And this is almost like a commercial lease for them in a sense. And I just want to differentiate how we treat them. We can think about that.

I mentioned in the report, most cities ban renting the rooms for the purpose of then selling services. And I asked a few folks more specifically who have those bans, and they said one of the challenges they have is that some of those services and those pitches can be rather predatory, and you really don't necessarily want the city... I'm not trying to pick on anybody, but I heard the term reverse mortgages mentioned multiple times and seniors and heavy handed pitches as one reason those bands exist. And so just, I think banning that type of activity, you know, the rooms are not intended for somebody to use them to sell something versus, you know, they are, I think quite nice if you needed to have a, 10 person conference, or maybe you needed five people to have a conference with somebody else who's in, you know, the zoom capabilities in these rooms are really nice too. So.

So I like your idea on, and maybe, I mean, we're phasing this in, maybe we start with the top four that you just outlined, um, which were the governmental connect committees, Larkspur serving groups and other interest groups. And we pause any commercial conversations. any strictly commercial process until we get this figured out. And we might be able to add them later.

So I'm sorry, are you saying those groups would be free and everyone else would be banned?

No, those would be free. That's the groups we're going to start as we phase this in.

Start as free or start paying?

They're free. This is my presumption or my suggestion that we limit as we move into this space and figure this policy out, no commercial process commercial-only purposes will be used at this point.

And what about the stock pickers and the bridge club?

Well, it was a club.

So are they charged or free?

I think that, well... You know, I could have bought Netflix at a dollar a share.

What about private residents who want to have a celebration of life?

We haven't gotten to that point yet.

Yeah. Isn't that part of the groups though? Don't we have to consider them as, or you're just talking about.

I'm just talking commercial purposes at this point. So if somebody wants to hold like the example being, they want to do a seminar about reverse mortgages and they are a mortgage broker and they want to use our space to do a seminar about That's a commercial purpose strictly or informational and commercial. I would say at this point, let's just not allow those to come in until we've gotten this sorted out. I don't see... The stock picker thing, that was actually a club, so I think that would fit. That was a group of novices who were discussing S&P 500, and that wasn't a group that was selling, being... selling stocks to a group of people. So I think that would qualify. But how's that sound for everybody?

Yeah, just real quick. I mean, I think the free, we're saying what was in the staff report, writing library programs, contractors. So that's number one. Two, celebration of life, stock pickers, bridge club, all that stuff under some fee schedule. And maybe we lower it, Scott. I don't know. But, you know, we have a suggestion. Then we're saying no to, you know, commercial or solicitation and that. I mean, that's what I'm hearing is the general drift there.

Yeah, I mean, it seems like there's a couple of ways we can do this. We can structure the fees based on the type of group that is going to be renting the space, or we talk about, you know, the use of the space and we structure the fees that way. But, you know, separate and apart from that, from the fee schedule, I think we need another document that says, you know, these are the permitted or prohibited uses, you know, in these rooms. So to Catherine's point, it's like, do we want someone selling whatever product, you know, is that going to be an allowable use? It seems like we need another page of like rules. Like, you know, you can't, you can't be conducting financial transactions in, you know, in the space.

As long as you tell me you don't want people making money in the rooms. I don't need any other guidance.

Okay. Yeah. But I'm just saying like, maybe we need to come up with like just a list of rules, you know, real simple, basic rules of like permitted uses or prohibited uses, you know? Um, And then we can deal with the fee structure. So back to the fees, it sounds like we want to try and structure it based on the group that's renting. So what have we just said? Non-profits. Would the bridge group be a non-profit? Could we just say non-profit and not non-profit?

Well, I kind of understood us saying that those four categories were going to have no fees.

I think that's a good place to start. And again, we'll revisit this in a couple of months. But for now, those groups, I think Gabe mentioned it well, can use it without paying any fees. It's not including the cleaning fee. We'll have to talk about that separately. But not a rental fee. And then people who don't fit into those groups will fit into category two, which is you rent it for, again, what is that nominal fee? I don't know. We can address that. And the third group can't use it for commercial purposes. Does that sound make sense? And staff, is that clear? Yeah.

Yes.

Okay. So now, but now the next question is what is that fee?

What is the fee? All right. I don't think we finished the other uses yet before I do that. So you had mentioned like a private parties or a celebration of life type of thing or a birthday party. So private parties that's in here and we have to discuss whether we're interested in allowing private parties to happen there.

I would say that would fall into the category two where you pay a fee. It's not banned because it's not a business transaction, but they pay a fee. But again, there's another thing like your fantasy football example. We have to have some noise. This is a library, you know, and once we have a rec building that's redone, those things should all be in renting rooms at the rec space, not in the library. So the question is right now, if it's a, You know, it's going to be too loud for the library. Library staff is going to have to say, you know, we're not going to do a four-year-old birthday party in here because there's going to be screaming and crying and it's going to affect the other people who are trying to use the library.

Yeah, I don't think you need to get that far into the weeds because staff will manage. what is allowed during library hours. But remember, these rooms are also going to be available before and after library hours. So that was what we invested in, to have a system where we can rent the rooms when no staff is present. So activities might be a little louder during those periods. And I keep being reminded by the library staff that the modern library is louder than the libraries when we were all kids. And I've been over there a few times and certainly felt the energy is a little different. So it's an ebb and flow thing. And they're pretty good about navigating that particular issue.

Okay, well, I'm going to make a proposal like on the fee structure for the community rooms. Why don't we just say instead of $50 per hour, it's $50 every two hours. And we basically cut the fees in half. And we try that, you know, and just see... what the what the response is and if we have any issues you know so the smallest room would be $30 for two hours and you know and people if they want it for a birthday party or a celebration of life or whatever they have two hours to you know like we rent it out in like two hour chunks and then if they need it for longer they can rent it out for four hours I don't know but All right, we could try that.

Does staff have a reason not to do that?

I think I'd rather you said divide all the fees in half.

15 bucks an hour as opposed to 30 bucks.

Just because, you know, then the user makes a choice of how long they want. Okay.

I think that works for me.

Yeah, I think I think it's fine. But the only thought is, it's a little bit hard to suddenly raise rents because the demand so high, you know, it'd be easier to, you know, for them to start at 50. And then, you know, if they're crickets, then okay, we'll reduce it. But I, I don't know, Dan, do you think that there are people you think it'll be filled at 50? Or, you know, potentially?

Honestly, I'm not sure. I think you're going to get a quick, we're going to get a quick rush of organizations are going to book out for meetings and then awareness of the availability of the general public will slowly, I think, start to materialize. And I'm not sure, you know, in the middle of June, the average citizens thinking, oh, tonight's the night the council might decide whether I can rent the room for a party. But I know there are a lot of groups that are anxious for you to adopt some policies because they want to use them.

I mean, I think, Scott, I was initially, and Stephanie both, I want to extend that generous hand, but I feel it will be awkward to raise prices. And I do think all the events and all the places I've looked, it is more expensive. I think it's still a pretty good deal. And I don't think it's going to break anyone's budget. So, I mean, I think the numbers are good, but I wouldn't be opposed. I mean, I think we should, you know, I really want people to feel the libraries of public space, but we're already giving the discount. We've increased all the categories now. So there's so many people who can get it for free. You know, I'm not, you know, feeling like we're running a business.

This is not a hill I'm going to die on. So...

So be it. I'm fine.

I'm going to leave the fees and then we revisit in three months and see how we're doing. I'm fine with that.

I think it'll just be easier to lower than go up. That's my main reason.

I'm fine with that. Okay. So we'll just leave the fees as they are. And I think I would like to charge a deposit just in case, you know, a damage deposit on the cleaning. I think we need a deposit.

I think just giving us direction that we are authorized to do a deposit. We don't need anything else. We'll actually come up with a system with different deposits depending on the activity, whether they're using the kitchen, for example, would be a different deposit than just using the room.

Okay. Okay. That works. All right. So let's see what else.

I don't think we've answered the public forum and limited public forum for political speech question. Right.

Yeah, I'll chime in quickly. I'm sort of in agreement with Scott's, you know, in addition to not having commercial or, you know, soliciting type groups to also just limit political activity for now, you know, with the understanding we may open it later. I know we had this long discussion when it came to flags, you know, that we flew here and it's usually the same issues and we've had. through COVID and some of the bizarreness that followed, we've had people who have sort of abused the system in ways, you know, the people who called in and used profanity. So, you know, just to keep things simple, that may be a good starting point.

So I think this came up because I'm trying to organize candidate campaign nights to meet and greets to the candidates. for this fall and Chamber of Commerce wants to sponsor one and the Larkspur Community Foundation wants to sponsor one, that we would not be as a city sponsoring them, but it seems a logical spot would be the community use room there. We would not be promoting a candidate or there, but it would be an opportunity for community members to be introduced to them and to have the candidates give a five minute presentation about themselves. Where do you think that fits into that category?

I mean, I think that you sounds great, but Sky, it sounded like you had some.

I was going to ask to give us a little guidance on this First Amendment issue.

As with the flag discussion, I will attempt to boil down some very complicated concepts into a couple of topics. basic framework for understanding the issues. So one is the courts have created this thing that they call forums. So one end of the spectrum, non-public forums. Nobody has the right to engage in expressive activity in a non-public forum. Even in city hall, back in the offices, there's no right to engage in free speech activity in the private offices, even in city hall. The other end of the spectrum is traditional public forums, the parks, the sidewalks, places where people have historically engaged in all range of expressive activity. The city is extremely limited in its ability to restrict that. In the middle, there are things like limited public forums where the space is neither clearly restricted or clearly limited. traditional and the public agency can decide we want to open it up to some degree of speech. And it can, within parameters that the courts have described, say these are the forms of speech that are permitted in this space. Once you've done that, though, you're subject to the other rule that the courts have said, which is you have to be viewpoint neutral. You can't pick and choose among speakers. So once you've said we're going to allow this type of speech, like we're going to allow political organizations to meet there, you can't say only some political organizations. You have to allow every public political organization, no matter its point of view, to use the space for expressive activity. So. The simplest rule is the one that says no political activity. That's very easy to enforce and very legally justified. Basically, what you've said is this is a space that we are not opening to expressive activity. It's a non-public forum or it's extremely limited in that it's basically there to the type of things that you can do are normal library activities there. The example that Council Member Way brought up gets us right into the complications because the city may be able to justify it to say, this is not the city speech. We are opening it to community organizations to host events for candidates for office to come and speak. But if another community organization wants to hold a forum for candidates who favor hate speech, Can the city say no? Probably not. Or at least it's going to have a hard time defending that. So if council wants to head down the path of allowing everything, I think it would be helpful for us to understand that I would say, I would encourage you to think about, um, what it would mean to be truly viewpoint neutral in allowing the things that you are considering allowing, and then give us some direction about what you would consider allowing with the understanding that it's going to be viewpoint neutral. And then we can work on trying to craft a policy that opens it to no more speech than the council is willing to permit.

So the example I gave was not a political organization. So it wasn't like the Marin Democratic Party is hosting an event.

But it's a community organization that wants to. Yeah. Women voters, right? They want to host a candidate for them.

If it's something like the League of Women Voters, that's a nonprofit, I guess.

But then my point is, any other community organization that wants to host a forum for candidates, but they want to host candidates who are particularly focused on some form of...

Reproductive rights or whatever.

Exactly. Very negatively on restricting those rights. The council can't really say no to that. It would be harder for the city to say no to that. I don't want to say it can't, but I want to say it creates challenges.

I get it, but it's such a conundrum because we don't have spaces around here to host these kind of things. I mean, this last time when Sarah and Stephanie ran, we had to use the community hall at the local church because we just don't. So I'm trying to balance where we have community spaces to welcome people in to hear candidates when we really don't have any other venue. What about this room? I don't think we've ever hosted anything in here.

I think the same.

The same thing applies. Okay. I mean, we once had a, this is a candidate form as an example. We once used, did it at Hall Middle School. But previous to that, we just. have not had spaces for it. Now we have a space and we did use it at the community room at Drake. But now that we have a space, I'm trying to figure out how to narrowly carve out an opportunity for community to use it for limited political purposes. I get your point. I just don't know how to carve it out.

When I brought up the example earlier about having the Nazi party come in, you would have to open it up to them if we do this. And my feeling is as this is a community library, some people might be offended by that. So if it is someplace like this room that nobody's going to come here unless you want to engage in that forum, great.

But you said it's the same thing.

No, but no. It's the same thing is that you would have to let any political viewpoint have the same thing in this building. But the point is the public is not in this room for any purpose other than for that gathering. If you go to the library to read a book and there's – something pretty offensive going on next door that you can't stop because you opened it up to political speech, I think, you know, the parents and the kids, you know, looking at the books or whatever they're doing, it's going to become a problem. That I have no problem as having a space for political speech, but in my mind, it should be a separate space whether it is here or in a community room, like Drake's Landing, wherever it happens to be, someplace where you rent the room, you close the doors and you do whatever you want, right? I just don't think the library is that space.

Yeah, it's just, it's such, it's trying to, we don't have those kinds of spaces. So, I mean, it's always been a struggle to try to find them. And what are some of the other, like when you've done your research on fee schedules, have you seen this with some of our other libraries? Mill Valley, et cetera, that they provide?

I didn't go. For this issue, I looked at a handful around the whole Bay Area. I didn't specifically go to the Marin cities. I mean, I would say really it's one of two choices. It's choice one is we're going to restrict it. It falls into what Council Member Kandel is saying. Choice two really is we're going to allow it and we're going to hold our breath and hope that our community doesn't, it's just not going to come here, right? And I've seen some far more centrally located and probably more politically diverse communities than ours do the hold your breath approach. So it's hard for me to advise you one way or the other, but I you know, as I think the council knows, I've tended to be fairly conservative on this issue. So I probably lean toward council member Kandel's points, but it's, you know, it's your issue to struggle with.

Can I ask, would it be a problem saying that people can use this room for that, but not the community room at the library is that, I mean, then you're opening up this room for that, but somebody else can't say, Oh, you let them use this room. So I'm going to use the other room. I mean, that's,

Legally, the city gets to decide by room.

Right. So what I'm saying is that you can use, that we can decide. You can have those political meetings, candidate forums in this room. And that's okay. And that doesn't open it up to the library being used for those.

Have we ever had them here? I don't recall ever. But I mean, not that we can't. Right.

I can only speak to my time in Larkspur, and in my time, the only public room I remember is the Hall Gym.

Yeah, 1913. 2013. That's the only time I can remember that we used it, too.

Otherwise, I think the forums have all been in private rooms. And just a reminder, the community room in Greenbrae is a private.

Oh, right.

Not a public facility.

Right. Right. Okay, well, I get the conundrum. I'm leaning towards the grin and bear it and just wait and see if something happens, but that's my situation. I wish we had alternatives that were easy, although your description of here is an idea, and perhaps conference room is another idea.

Well, that's up to the school district. I actually would suggest the community room in Greenbury might be the perfect solution. The private company is not restricted the way you are.

We've struggled, though, to get attendance when a lot of people who live in this corridor don't step over the bridge to get to that corridor of Larkspur. It's just the conundrum, so... Well, that's how I feel. You guys, we can decide. But I don't want to open a can of worms that's going to cause the description that you had. But I also realize we have such limited spaces for individuals to participate like this, that this is an opportunity. So I'll go with what the majority wants.

So I am pretty flexible about most of the stuff that we're talking about, whether it's the prices or whatever it is. This is this I'm kind of I kind of feel pretty strongly about. So but I would I would be OK if we wanted to give direction to staff to start letting political groups use this room as for that use. And I don't have a problem with that. I mean, I'm not against, you know, the leeward voters, whatever groups they are wanting to have an area that, you know, they can use, I'm fine with that. I just, we're just opening the library. I just don't want to open on their own.

I mean, this came up because I think since 2013 is the first time in many years that we've actually are going to have a city council election with more than a few candidates. And it's an opportunity, I think, for the community. That's what I was looking for. Because the last time we actually had multiple candidates was 2013, believe it or not. So this was a chance to see how we can create real excitement and attendance and robustness around that. So if it is to hold it there or here, I'm...

So Skye, the way you laid out public forums and non-public, everything that would apply to the library applies here, right? That the spaces legally are identical, right? That's correct. Okay. And Catherine, we're trying to find a purpose for City Hall. I can't think of a better one. So I kind of, I'm in alignment with Scott, you know, for partly the reasons of separation. But I think for someone who wants to serve on the council or on any board, this space seems to be, you know, the logical venue. And I would, I'd love to see that happen. And And I think if a hate group or, you know, I think the odds are low, but, you know, when it's low, it's odd. So I kind of feel like if it happened here, that would be more containable and not as big of a problem. So I think I'm in agreement with Scott.

I'm also in agreement with Scott and Gabe. Okay, great. All right. Sounds like we agree.

Okay. What else do you need from us?

There is a resolution. Okay. But what I heard is if it gets passed, you're going to strike the cleaning and maintenance fee out of the fee schedule. And I hear direction from the council to interpret community groups rather broadly and in line with what Vice Mayor Paulson outlined in terms of who would have access to the rooms without charge.

Yeah, I think the only addition was library programs and contractors and REC to what you had. And then the exclusion we hadn't stipulated was fundraisers charged free solicitation.

Yeah, remember, I don't need those things in the policy, though. Those are our business things, right? REC and programming, we... We're going to put those rooms anyways.

Did we say we're going to strike the cleaning fee? I don't know.

I heard some. So I guess you should decide that when you make a motion for this resolution.

Yeah. I mean, I, I, my, my thought originally was if there's a chance, like you said, in the, you know, central police, generally it's food, you know, I mean, unless someone's really being destructed, that's another category. So it's generally it's food. And especially for might have a party or even a celebration of life with, and, you know, and then there's, so, so I think if maybe as a simple condition, if there's food, perhaps, as you said, Stephanie, we have a deposit.

I'll just share with you the number one problem, I think, if I ask the chief, is coffee and donuts. It's kind of funny in a police station. But that is food. That is food. It doesn't take many donut crumbs to attract ants, and it doesn't take long for somebody to knock their coffee over and destroy a square of the carpet.

I still have two questions. We're talking about the community rooms. I've had people ask me, can my group meet on the outside tables? What are we doing with the... Is that...

So we're currently not proposing to rent or control those. So if people come out there to have a quiet meeting, we're just assuming that's a space like going over to the park and hanging out. The one thing I would say is... we are also not going to help somebody keep anybody else from walking into that space. So no one can come out there, put cones out and say, I'm having an event and I'm taking control of the patio. Um, you can be on the patio, do something on the patio. And if somebody else wants to wander through what you're doing, you have to let them.

Okay.

Now down the road, we could figure that out, but you know, first the staff's got to get this kind of worked out for the rooms. Yeah.

And then my second thing, and it's not for tonight, but I was in a library last week in Bend and they have a music policy. So I don't want to do it tonight, but there was a harp player in the, just a small groups. There was a harp player. And then two days later, there was a duet who was playing music, soft music inside and Don't want to add that in today, but I'd love to see if we can figure out ways in which we can bring music into that space.

I think that that would be something where members of the public should make suggestions to Damon Hill. That, to me, falls more into operation and programming than it does into, and typically the council doesn't do that at this level. You just let us know that it might interest you, and if a bunch of other folks tell us that too, we'll figure out if we can make it happen.

It was lovely to hear. It wasn't a band. It was just a single instrument. Okay, are we ready for this resolution? Oh wait, we have to open it.

Right, okay, so on the cleaning fee, are we okay with this $25 per reservation cleaning fee? And the nonprofits plus the four other identified groups would be exempt, I believe. So everyone else would be charged this $25,000?

I think everyone's charged the cleaning fee. I think that's what they're exempt for.

Oh, okay. So everyone's charged the cleaning fee.

If I'm understanding correctly.

That's how it's written.

Okay. You can change it.

So does anyone want to make a proposal to change this?

I will go with the crowd on this one.

Okay. What's the? Oh, I mean, did you, did you have a proposal you want to, so it's $25 for everyone. So if you want to put it forward a different proposal.

No, no, I think that's fine. And I, and I think the, the fees we had originally, you had wanted to have them. I'm thinking we keep them as is for now and we can always change that in the fall.

Okay. Okay. All right. So we'll keep it all as is written in the resolution with the exception of the four groups and also not permitting commercial use. Okay. All right.

So would someone like to make a motion? You haven't taken public comment.

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. We need to take public comment. I apologize. Would any member of the public like to comment? Seeing none in the chamber, anybody online? Okay, great. Oh, wait, there is. Oh, there is one.

Good evening, everyone. This is Joanne Yawitz. I saw you a couple weeks ago. I'm the representative of the Toastmasters 890 group. I listened to your lively conversation. I'm very excited about what I'm hearing and want to thank you very much for remembering that we did submit a request and we look forward to hearing from you when things are finalized.

Great. Thank you for your public comment. Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. All right. So if we're ready to make a motion.

Yeah, I'll make that motion. I don't think we need to restate it, do we?

It's Resolution 5426. Correct.

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstaining? Okay. Motion passes. Great. Thank you. All right, onto the next item, which is going to be 8.2, pilot program for the use of the downtown parking lot or library employee parking lot for the farm stand.

madam mayor council members at your last meeting you had a very extensive discussion about use of the downtown parking lot potentially twice a week once by a farmer's market and once by a sole proprietor farm stand in those proposals as it was discussed it was going to necessitate taking 18 parking spaces in the downtown lot out of commission for those two days, Tuesdays and Thursdays. There were a lot of speakers that had concerns about that. The council expressed some concerns and suggested more thought needed to be put into this. Since that time, Mayor Andre and I have met together and we've met with, I met with Jim Baum, the vendor of the farm stand along with the mayor. And I think the mayor's also spoken a bit with the farmer's market. Doesn't look like the farmer's market's gonna work out at this time, but we're bringing this back to you because there may still be some flexibility to make the farm stand work. And we certainly have received A lot of positive comments that are interested in seeing this type of thing come to the downtown area. So the item's back to you. We've talked with the farm stand owner about an idea that would, if he's in the downtown parking lot, would reduce the footprint to seven to nine parking spaces would be lost on Tuesdays. He's also willing to give it a try to take over the employee parking lot at the library area. But as noted in the staff report, he has some concerns about the visibility there. And I would want direction this evening that I have some leeway to work with him to dispense with certain policies about signs and signage so he could work on building up some awareness if that's the location. He feels if he's in the downtown lot, there's enough foot traffic and car traffic to be aware that he's there. Yeah. The items back to you. I think also I had made a mistake in the staff report. I said the rent in the town of Ross is $150 per occurrence. It's actually $150 per month in the town of Ross. So I had gotten that part wrong. So as you debate for the license agreement, if you're going to move forward and give us direction, one of the questions is what's an appropriate rental rate for whatever space we're talking about. And I'll turn to the mayor as she's had a lot of conversations about this topic as well.

Great. Thank you. So the only thing I would add is that we did walk the library space and the main parking lot of the library, unfortunately, just isn't visible from the street. So neither vendor felt that it was going to work there. And the employee parking lot was better, but the farmer's market, Lynn Bagley, she just felt that without the schools in session, she wasn't going to get enough traction. And so She actually would like to come back at some point when school is in session, perhaps next spring, and come forward with a plan, a proposal that will give us some time to work out the employee parking and also do some outreach with the Rose Lane community because we had some concerns there. So she may come back later next spring. She just felt that with Hall there and with Redwood and pickup times or just at times at dismissal where parents would be coming by on Doherty like that. the employee parking lot could work potentially. So that's sort of on hold. In the meantime, with the farm stand, we really shrunk the footprint downtown. And so now it would just be one day instead of two days and the parking would be down to, you know, seven to nine spots. And so we're hoping that that, his first preference would be to be in the downtown parking lot just because it's more visible. And again, there's decreased traffic in the summertime without the schools in session so that's his preferred space to start and you know let's see how the the concept is to see how to try it and to see how that goes and we'll have more data and hopefully by the time springtime when also we'll have more data to go on in terms of you know how the how the how successful the farm stand is so I'll open up to questions and then we'll open up to public comment.

So to the manager, we had 18 spots in the first proposal. Are you comfortable with the seven to eight configuration for liability and safety reasons?

Yes, what the vendor's proposing is to use his own vehicle to serve as a barrier. So we believe it could be situated in a way that it shrinks the number of spots that we have to block out.

Okay.

Second question is, have we considered, like I looked at the other two, San Anselmo and market that the same gentleman runs and the one in Ross now. I looked online at their configuration of where they actually reside, the tents, et cetera. Have we considered using the front of City Hall like on a Friday when the business is closed? I don't know if he's available on a Friday. And then flow into the two parking spots that are in front of City Hall where the van could park. just thinking how they do it in San Anselmo is it's directly in front of their city hall and utilizes the sidewalk and half of the city hall slope there, her lawn. Have we thought of that, or do you think that that's an untenable location?

I hadn't specifically assessed that. The most, you know, I'd have to assess it.

Well, I think the sidewalk might be too narrow because his tents are 10 feet by 10 feet. It would have to be in the street. It would have to be, yeah, in the street part. All right. Well, that answers that. Okay. Great. Good questions. Anybody else have questions? Okay.

I just wanted to thank you for putting so much into this because I know this is, I mean, I've read all the public comment and it's between a rock and a hard place. Everybody wants it, but then you saw the opposition. So thank you. And yeah, I think it sounds like Even from the people who oppose the most, having something scaled down and running it through the summer, which is the zone season, and having time for possibly the larger group to come in seems very reasonable to me. So, so far, it sounds like we've kind of course corrected as needed.

Yeah, I would agree. I think that this seems like the right compromise. It's smaller and it's only one day a week and there's overwhelming support from the public for it. I think we could maybe consider six months versus a year to get feedback and to really be able to make sure that um our downtown merchants are actually on board because they're getting more foot traffic and it's not turning out to be an issue with parking um so that would be my only comment is you know maybe doing a shorter trial yeah well i think the the contract is structured that we can break it or either party can okay terminate the contract with 60 days notice so we could always um

you know, if it wasn't working out for whatever reason, either party can decide to provide termination notice.

Okay, because I was just looking at the resolution and it does say will be considered pilot project that will be considered in insert number of months.

Yeah, I think we were looking at Direction about when to bring it back to you, because I do think looking at what the other towns have arranged with Mr. Baum eventually, and I can appreciate from his point of view, some sense of whether there's a longer term commitment is helpful for him to plan out his business. So I am looking for some direction about when you'd want to get an assessment of whether it's working or not.

Yeah. Yeah, I know I would be in favor of like a six month of assessment, but I do think that from his perspective, it might make more sense to enter into a full year contract. And then we assess it in six months because, you know, he's going to have to hire people, a helper to come. And anyways, he's going to have to hire people. So I think just to be fair, we check in in six months, but the contract is the initial contract term is for a year with termination provisions, as I stated. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions right now?

No, not a question. Just a comment.

I think I agree. I think we're all on the same page on this. It's a good compromise. I also like the fact that we can try to build awareness so that if we do move to the library, people already know about this and he's got regular business coming and then they just have to walk a little bit in a different direction. It'll be much easier than building a business at the library. So I think it's a good compromise.

Okay. So we'll open it up to public comments in the chamber. If anybody would like to make a public comment, please feel free to come forward. Yes. Can you approach the podium so we can hear you? Thank you. Can you speak into the microphone, please?

What about, hi, my name's Terry and I live on Magnolia Avenue. What about the area behind where the parking lot is, the city parking lot where King of the Roll is and all of that? That's such a great walking area. And I think what's going to attract people to this market are the people who live in Larkspur and don't have a market anymore.

That's private property.

Okay. It's privately owned. What's the problem with that?

The owners are not interested in participating in this process.

And having a farmer's market, which would create even more business for them.

That's their prerogative.

Okay, so we're only limited to city property? Or private who's interested in participating. What about a dark park? Having a farmer's market in there?

I think, okay, so are you finished with your public comment?

Or is that your question? I'm asking questions because I'm not really sure and I'm curious. I know.

Is that your only question or do you have other questions?

That would be my only question.

Okay, great. Okay. So let's take all the public comments and we'll respond. Okay, great. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the chamber who has a question? Okay. I see none. Any online questions? Okay, great. Okay, so thank you for your question. We did look at the bike path that runs behind King of the Roll. And so number one, it's too narrow. Again, the tents are 10 feet by 10 feet. And the other vendor said she was not going to be able to fit trucks and tents in that narrow space. In addition, as Council Member Way pointed out, that is privately owned land. I did reach out to the property owner and he wanted the city to pay him. for use of the bike path. So that was not a viable alternative for us. And, you know, with respect to dark park, I mean, you know, look, I think there are, we, we have looked at several different spaces that the city owns. You know, the, the, the nice thing about the downtown area is that it is a hub that people can walk to, it's very visible. So without any advertising, the challenge for the farmer's market and the farm stand is there's no advertising. And so they do really rely on visibility of people being able to walk or drive by. And they need signage to point people to where they're going to be. And so that's almost like the number one priority for these vendors for their success. And we want them to be successful because we want them to continue to be in our town. And so the downtown parking lot is best. And also it's paved. And then we also heard from Lynn Bagley last council meeting. She's tried two markets on dirt and grass. And it just... she doesn't get as much business on dirt and grass. So she prefers to be on pavement. Great, thank you. You know, we've closed public comment. Okay, so we'll bring it back to council for any final remarks or comments. Oh, so I guess one more thing is the license fee. I believe San Anselmo charges the farm stands $60 per occurrence per day. The city of Ross or the town of Ross charges $150 a month. So I think, you know, we just need to figure out like, what would we, I was just going to propose $50 per day and, You know, just in line with the other two towns, looking for some feedback.

I think that's an excellent idea.

I just wanted to ask a question. What level of city resources will be needed? Is that going to cover staff resources if we need to use city resources? Do you want to?

We anticipate that the night before we would need to, before staff went home, put out signs that say tomorrow there's no parking and we would identify the specific stalls that there's no parking in. And so we'd have to put those out and then we'd have to come retrieve them after the market was done. That should be it based on this plan.

Okay. So does $50 cover two hours of work?

Well, no, not really. But of course, you also are making a decision that you've identified this as having some level of public good attached to it, even though it's a private enterprise.

Yes. And I think Jim would say that in San Anselmo, they just put out cones. Basically, the staff puts out cones and then they remove the cones after he's done. So I think that's consistent with what the city manager said.

So why not stay consistent with the $60 that San Anselmo is charging?

Yeah, we could.

I'm just curious why your proposal for $50.

Well, it's just in between Ross and San Anselmo. So I just, I don't know. It was a number. So if we want to do 60, you know, that's fine too. I mean, I'm, you know, I just didn't. I just think that, you know, it's a pilot program. Let's see how it does. I would like for it to succeed. I feel like the community wants it. So I was willing to save $50. So that was the proposal.

I'm fine with that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Did you want to add to that, Council Member Kendall? Okay.

I was just going to back up your $50 proposal, but it's not necessary.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, so unless there's anyone else have any other questions or discussion points? All right, so could we get a motion?

I had this. This is a rare time when I wrote the RESA as a choose-your-own-adventure, so you have some blanks to fill in, and you've changed the rent amount, so we're going to be doing some amendments here. So if I heard correctly where I wrote insert location, downtown parking lots going in there, On the next line, we're changing $150 to, did I hear 60? Was that 50? Okay, 50. And then we're going to come back in six months, but we're going to issue a license agreement for one year. Did I? get all that correctly?

Yes, and I would also like to put in there, and again, I don't know if we need it in there, but if both parties agree to move this to the library, that we wouldn't need a new resolution for that. Is that possible?

I think we'd have to come back for that one.

We could do it on consent, though, if both parties agree, but we would want to come back because you'd want to amend the license agreement, but to It wouldn't need a, it could be done quickly. Okay.

Okay. Great. And it would give us time because we'd have to talk to Rosaline. And anyways, we probably need some time with that just to make sure it would work. Okay, great. So do we need to make a motion?

With those insertions and then changes, yes.

Okay, great. I will make that motion with those insertions and changes.

Can I get a second?

I will second that.

Okay, great. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay, great. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you, Mr. Baum. And I believe you said you could start as early as next Tuesday. Great. Great. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Okay. All right. So now we're going to move on to item 8.3. Wait, I'm sorry. Is this? Yes, okay, I'm sorry. Item 8.3, appointments to the Larkspur Planning Commission, Heritage Preservation Board, and Parks and Rec Commission. Mr. City Manager, would you like to give a staff report?

Well, are you going to put up on the screen, Allison?

Yeah.

Okay. This really is your item, Madam Mayor, but just a reminder that by policy that the council adopted the... committee of the council, which is the mayor and the vice mayor, interviewed all of the potential incumbents to talk about their return and indicated here are the incumbents that were interested in returning for their seats. And then we had some vacancies. And so you conducted some interviews here before one of the council meetings. And so this evening, you need to make the appointments to the various boards and commissions. And so you may want to start and deal with the incumbents, which is pretty straightforward. And then move on to discuss the openings.

Great. Thanks for that summary. So, yes, we do have in comments for Parks and Rec to Victoria Harrison and Michael Koppel, and then to Heritage Preservation Board, Haley Culhane and Carol Goldberg. And so we interviewed, Vice Mayor and I interviewed all four candidates and felt that they were good candidates and wanted to continue. And so we were going to recommend that we just reappoint them.

Yes.

Okay. Great. Heritage Preservation Board, there's one opening and we had one candidate who was interested, Tricia Lacey. So if the council approves, we're going to recommend that we appoint Tricia Lacey to Heritage Preservation Board. And so then the wrinkle is with planning commission. So we have one seat, Commissioner Hull's seat, who is expiring. However, Commissioner Campbell's seat is potentially um up so he's moving yes so he's moving so the question to council is do we want to make one appointment today to fill commissioner hull's seat and hold back on the second appointment or do we want to make both appointments today that's the question basically so open it up for discussion do you want me to start out i um if if liam mr campbell is definitely leaving

then you know i feel we had two great candidates who are open to stepping up and um sitting on the commission and i would be favorable towards filling both seats now um versus waiting for liam's departure which i think is maybe in two months not even we don't know but i agree okay um

Yeah, I agree with that. I really appreciate Mr. Campbell's stepping up as he did. He brought an interesting and younger perspective to the Planning Commission. And I appreciate that he's let us know that he is probably not long for living in Larkspur. So I would agree that we had two excellent Matt and Andrew candidates, and it's probably time for them to, if we can, have them step in now rather than wait until Mr. Campbell leaves, and that could be an inconsistent process then. Yeah. That's my opinion. Great.

Yeah. Okay.

Council Member Cantell.

Agreed.

Okay, great. All right. So why don't we, is there a resolution or what's, is that sufficient direction or do we need to vote on this?

You do need to vote. I think you could identify who you're voting for as one slate.

Okay. Okay.

All right. Would someone like to make a motion then? Sure. I'll move the staff recommendation, which is the incumbent reappointments as listed in the staff report and the appointment to Heritage Preservation Board of Tricia Lacey and Planning Commission Matt Sapar and Andrew Kingsdale with gratitude to Liam for serving for his period of time.

Thanks. I'll second. Great. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Okay, great. Thank you very much, counsel, and congratulations on all the new appointees. And I echo Councilmember Way's comments. Thank you, Commissioner Campbell, for your service. And we wish you well on the next chapter. Okay, so that brings us to item 8.4, which is a public workshop on permitted regulations on vacant properties, including a vacancy property parcel tax.

Yeah, so just quick housekeeping, and the city attorney, Scott Woodruff, is going to actually do the presentation and take you through this item. But as a reminder for the council and for information for the public, when we are going to do an item that's more of a conversation and a learning opportunity for both the council and the community to discuss issues and maybe give staff feedback on future agenda items related to the topic, We tend to call those a public workshop and we indicate on the agenda and on the agenda item that you're not making decisions this evening other than perhaps to give us direction on what should come back. So the goal here is for us all to hear about an issue that the council's identified as one they would like to talk about and then have a conversation. We tend to defer to the mayor, but mayors have typically had a little more free-flowing engagement on a public workshop. You're not seeking public comment. So I leave that to your discretion, but that's been our format in the past. So with this first issue, this one will be Mr. Woodruff, and then in the second workshop, I'll be the presenter.

All right. Well, thank you. It's the unusual presentation from the city attorney. I will say that probably part of the reason that I am doing this is that I have actually worked on one of the topics that's covered, which is a vacant property tax for the city of Oakland. So I've actually been in the trenches on putting one of those together. So I've I'm able to bring a little personal experience to the topic. So as city manager said, there's been some council interest in the topic of vacant property in multiple parts of the city and questions about what options the council has for enacting some regulations to address the Some of the issues that arise from vacant properties, which leads to the question, well, why do jurisdictions sometimes want to regulate vacant properties? And those have to do with there are often very common associated negative impacts on the community when both residential and commercial property is left vacant for an extended period of time. And jurisdictions therefore want to find ways to disincentivize property owners from leaving property vacant. And there's also an opportunity to sometimes generate revenue through a vacant property tax. that can then be turned around to address some of the negative impacts that are associated with the vacant property, which includes affordable housing development, services for the homeless, blight remediation. We'll also be talking about regulation of vacant properties through a registration program. That also involves, as we'll talk about, some heightened standards for maintenance of the property. And that's another thing that, another reason why jurisdictions sometimes look into this is that it allows for greater visibility about what the vacant properties are in a city and greater communication with the property owners and the institution of even higher maintenance standards to ensure that some of the secondary effects associated with the vacant property are mitigated. So as I sort of have implied, there are two basic forms of regulation that we'll be talking about tonight. One is a vacant property tax, and the other is a registration program that entails some heightened maintenance standards typically. So the vacant property tax is structured as a special tax, and explaining that requires a brief diversion into the world of Proposition 218 and Proposition 26, which were statewide initiatives that amended the California Constitution to provide a definition of – among other things – General and special taxes. Special tax is one – the most common definition of a special tax is one that is levied for a specific purpose and the revenue from which is legally restricted to be expended only on those purposes. Okay. There is, however, an additional provision within those provisions of the Constitution that were added that address property – taxes that are levied on property ownership or as an incident of property ownership and push the tax into the special tax category regardless of what the revenue is used for. And the other thing that these provisions did is say that if it's a special tax, it requires two-thirds voter approval. So that is a higher threshold than a simple majority. It's higher than the school district parcel tax threshold of 55%. It's a challenge. In structuring a vacant property tax, I think it's important – you can – Do a fairly nuanced approach legally in terms of defining the types of properties that you want to subject to the tax, and that can include residential property, both single-family and multifamily, or just one or the other. You can limit it to ground for commercial storefronts. You could have it apply to standalone developed commercial and industrial buildings. And you can also apply it to completely undeveloped vacant parcels of land. When putting together a vacant property tax, other things that you have to think about are what's the definition of a vacancy? How long does the property have to remain vacant? What constitutes it being vacant? What constitutes use? Got to think about the tax rate. And you've got to think about potential exemptions. The identification of the vacant properties is one of the most significant challenges for the administration of any vacant property tax. Something that we'd have to think about is something the council wanted to move forward with. One of the things that we would have to think about, given the lean staffing of the city, is what does the administrative structure look like for the city to actually be able to identify which properties are going to be subject to the tax? If one of the purposes for the tax is to raise revenue for programs that council is interested in funding, one of the other things to think about is there may not be a sufficient number of vacant properties within the city that even at a very high rate will generate sufficient revenue to make a meaningful impact on those council priorities. And then the other is that if the tax is high enough to shift property owner behavior to more aggressively attempt to tend into vacant space or to develop it or sell it to somebody who will actually use it more productively, each vacant property that becomes not vacant reduces the amount of revenue. So you achieve the goal that you want in terms of reducing vacancy, but you impact the secondary goal of revenue to address those other priorities that you may have identified. I can pause there and see if you have more questions about the tax, or I can just continue on and then talk about the registration program.

Question. This sounds terrible. Is there an alternate way that we can incentivize people to not have vacant properties? Can we have something in our code that is some type of penalty, sort of like a blight if somebody doesn't comply with our rules? Whatever other zoning or regulations that we have, can we make this more of a city regulation as opposed to a tax?

Well, I'll get into some of that in talking about the registration program. But the one thing that I think I can address separately is just a penalty for holding property vacant. That there's no – there's no – statutory or case law justification for simply penalizing somebody for their decision about how to use property. But there is actually significant legal support for structuring it as a tax. There's a very long tradition of – government at all levels, being able to use taxation to affect, um, behavior. Um, um, think about cigarette tax as very basic example. Um, those, those have long, those have been in place, uh, since before the origins of this country and have a long legal tradition of being sustained as, as something that, that government can do to shift behavior. Um, I realize it feels like a, um, sort of pointless hair splitting to say, well, you can do that with a tax, but not with a penalty, but that's just the way our law has developed.

Sky, in the parcel, I mean the parcel, in the staff report, a vacant property parcel tax may also specify certain exemptions, including financial hardship, active construction, and environmental contamination. Are there exceptions that are valid that are expectations that are put on by a council resolution that there'd be certain uses of the property that the property owner is not interested in doing. And so they keep a property vacant during that period of time. So for example, the Albertson's letter to us in 2024 said that If the city would like to have housing on the property, it would be necessary to keep it free of the burden to include a grocery store as part of the project, therefore maintaining the maximum density by right. So when we passed an ordinance requiring a grocery store there, did we burden the property that gives them the exception that they can't use their property as they would like? So they could keep it vacant because they have no interest in that?

There was no legal problem with the ordinance that the council adopted because it was basically structured as part of the zoning, where it basically said, if you want the maximum density available, you need to include the grocery store. If you want to develop with a lower density, you don't have to include the grocery store.

But could a property owner who has that, I call it a burden placed on them because that's what they felt it was, could they then say that that's their reason for keeping it vacant because it burdens their financial ability to maximize profit from selling the building to a developer for other purposes?

So... Looked at one way, I would say no. The zoning sets the baseline for the allowable uses of the property. And within that, and this is also something that at this point has not nearly as long, but a fairly long legal tradition with fairly well-established rules, city can say, here's the 10 things you can do with your property. Some of them are conditional, and you can't do anything else. And courts have said, yeah, city can, for the most part, do that. If a property owner decides I don't want to do any of those 10 things and decides to leave it vacant, that is not a basis to say that the regulatory burden of the zoning compels them to leave it vacant. And then if they are then subject to the tax to say, well, the tax is invalid because the zoning prevents me from doing with the property what I want to do. So looked at that way, I would say, no, that's not really a legitimate basis to argue that they should be exempted from the tax. I will point out that there is active litigation right now in San Francisco related to their vacant houses tax. In San Francisco, they have two vacant property taxes. They were enacted separately, one for commercial property, one for residential. There's active litigation of the residential tax. tax. And one of the arguments that's being made in that case is that the tax is in effect a taking because it essentially forces the owner to tenant a property that they don't want to tenant. And so they have to allow people onto the property. And so the tax takes away what courts have in other contexts acknowledged as one of the rights of property owners, which is to exclude people from the property. I will say I do not think very much of this argument, but if you extended it to your point, somebody who wanted to challenge the tax might say, well, the zoning is preventing me from doing what I want to do. Therefore, the tax is in effect taking money from me because in combination with the zoning, it is disallowing the use of the property that I would like to have.

Could a property owner also extend that to, let's say, a lot configuration that has multiple owners of a parking parcel and what they really want to do with the property they're limited to because of multiple owners of a parcel that they need, which is a parking parcel? I mean, we have a lot of – I mean, we don't have a lot of big retail stores here.

But I'm just – Yeah, I would say the answer to me is generally the same, which is – inconveniences to a property owner whether they're they're zoning or lock configuration or multiple owners with with reciprocal easements that are necessary for parking that restrict their use yeah those i mean the city council could if the council wanted to move forward with a vacant property tax and wanted to list exemption and provide exemptions for things like that it could but i i i i would not assume a successful argument on the part of such a property owner saying these external factors that make it more challenging for me to make the use of the property that I want to forces me to leave it vacant and therefore pay your tax is not a really – it would be no different from somebody who has a severe tobacco addiction saying, well, I'm addicted to tobacco. I have to smoke, and therefore it's improper for you to tax me for it.

I'm learning things. Can I ask one more question? We had, what is now the property that is Project Homekey, for years it was an empty, was a women and children's shelter, and then it became a long-term care facility. But for probably a decade, it was empty. The understanding was that the landowner lived out of the country and was looking for one of the highest value retail prices. But he left it essentially abandoned for a long period of time. How does this apply then for an offshore or somebody who's a foreign national who may own a parcel in our ability to enforce it if they are holding out for the highest bidder?

So that's actually one of the scenarios where I think that the literature that's available about the taxes and the public policy advocates for this type of tax policy have said these are one of the situations where you actually want the tax. You have somebody who is living out of the country, owns property. it has sufficient wealth that they're disinterested in an immediate productive use of the property. And particularly in California, because of tax, Prop 13 tax bases maybe has a very low assessed valuation. And so their tax burden is actually relatively low. They have very few incentives to, somebody who's in that situation has very few incentives to put property into productive use that is meaningful to a community. And one of the things that the tax does is shift the economics potentially. It forces the property owner to think more seriously about, am I willing to bear the cost of leaving this vacant because it's gone from relatively low property tax and not much else to to relatively low property tax plus this additional vacant property tax so it forces a recalculation um you could look at it in economic terms and say that it's it's it's forcing them to internalize the costs that they're externalizing by leaving making the the community bear by leaving it vacant um but that's sort of the point of it and and The way that it would be typically structured, it's not the only way to structure it, would be assuming you can identify the property, then every year council would approve a list of properties that are going to be subject to the tax. The tax rate gets communicated to the tax collector. The tax collector puts it on the property tax roll. It simply becomes part of the tax bill. If the property owner declines to pay it, then it begins the process of tax foreclosure for failure to pay the taxes. Yeah.

Quick question. Are the regulations that set a ceiling on what this tax can be, like reasonableness or something like that? I mean, if we say the tax is going to be 20% of the value of the property, if you leave it vacant, is that okay?

So the only identifiable limit is unfortunately one that has not been significantly litigated, but there is this concept that the courts have developed called a confiscatory tax limit. which is one that is high enough that basically you are taking the entire value of the property, and so the tax is equivalent to an actual taking. You have confiscated the property. Somewhere between $100 a year and $1 million a year, there's a number that crosses the line, and And if we got further down the road of really thinking seriously about this, we'd need to start looking at what rates council thinks would be both effective and meaningful and then do an analysis of is it crossing that line.

Quick question. Sky, I know that this probably has a prerequisite of defining vacant, but do we have a sense in Larkspur? I mean, everyone's focused on Luckies and we had North Magnolia, but what are we looking at?

It really ebbs and flows, and I think one of the things that City Attorney pointed out is how you define vacancy would be critical to answering that question. Each of our two main shopping centers often have several vacancies, in my mind, at a given time, but I Suppose you could probably craft your definition to stay away from that. That's often circumstances that are very specific to that storefront and the timing of entering into leases and things like that. A great example in Larkspur, beyond the lucky, is that the shopping center in North Magnolia that used to house the Corbett's in its original location, that property owner passed away. And the trust that inherited the property let a lot of that storefront sit vacant, I think, in part because their vision for the property changed. was something very different than the shopping center. But that's probably our most glaring example. But I walked through the downtown right now, and depending on how you define vacancies, there's two or three currently empty storefronts. So are those vacancies? I'm not sure what, you know, again, it would get to your definition.

Sorry, one last question. And again, you know, we've got a current use case, but generally, Sky, you know, you must have done the research. What's the effectiveness? So we know now the threshold of the taking, but what's the threshold of it actually making a difference, you know?

I think actually Oakland and San Francisco have – San Francisco even more because they have a division within the city-county government that produces reports. I think that they would say that the commercial vacancy tax is older, so there's a little more data. I think that they actually have found that it – It certainly hasn't, as everyone knows, eliminated vacancy in San Francisco, and that has been complicated by COVID and changes in work habits. But I do think that they have found that it has actually shifted a little bit on the commercial side and And Oakland, when it was enacted, it took a while. They created a grace period before implementation because they wanted property owners to have an opportunity to make a decision about what they wanted to do. But I think that what they found initially was that it did actually provide a little bit of motivation to some property owners to shift the behavior and do something else with the property, even if it was just to sell it to somebody else who might be interested in doing something more active with it. And one of the things that Oakland built in was that if there's an active application for development and then a building permit, the tax is not going to apply during that whole period. So, yeah. They built, so properties that were vacant may still appear vacant, but there's actually an ongoing development process underway for them. So I don't know that there is, if the council wanted to move forward, one of the things I would do is actually do a new literature review and see what there is out there about it, because it's a topic that interests me and I'd want to be able to bring that information to you. I think that anecdotally, from what I've heard, there has been some effect as a result of it.

Thank you. I was just going to add, to make sure we don't lose sight of, too, regardless how you define vacancy, that doesn't force a use. So, you know, let's use the site that you got all the public comment about, the site of the former Lucky. That's zoned commercial vacancy. There's no guarantee that if you created a system to pressure the property owner to fill the vacant store, that what you'd get is a grocery. So you have to keep that in mind. You could be pressuring the property owner to put something in there, and you may not be as thrilled with what use they choose to put in there.

Yep.

Do you have any questions? Okay, Skye, so I'm interested in figuring out how the exemptions work and how we can structure a vacancy tax so it's more surgical rather than a blunt instrument that applies to... all kinds of different properties. So if I heard you right, you know, we can separate residential out of the commercial. And within commercial, are we allowed to better define what we mean by commercial, meaning like ground floor storefront, commercial storefront, like properties over a certain square footage? Like, can we put these type of parameters in the structure of the tax?

You absolutely can, but you cannot construct a set of parameters that basically limit the tax down to one property or two properties or three properties. It has to be a big enough class that if court looked at it and believed that the city had not basically used the tax structure to target a single property or a couple of properties that were disfavored.

Right. Okay. Understood. And I just wanted to mention for Council Member Paulson's question, which I thought was a good one. I mean, think about Bed Bath & Beyond is vacant. We have Lucky's is vacant. There are a number of banks on Sir Francis Drake next to Bonaire that are vacant. So we do have some vacancy here. And the space next to Rooley's is vacant. I mean, we do have some vacancy in our town. Now, I don't think implementing a tax makes it all go away, but you know, what can we do to discourage the long-term vacancies, which I feel like Bed Bath & Beyond has been vacant for a while and the Lucky's parcel has certainly been vacant for a while. And how do we address some of the longer-term vacancies is what I'm interested in. Okay.

Yeah, I'm glad you pointed those out. So to that point, Bed Bath & Beyond building as an example. So we move it away from the Lucky necessarily location. That's in our housing element as a location for potential housing. So if the property owner knows that and they're waiting for the right buyer to come along to put in housing there, they have a plan. It's not just vacant for vacancy's sake. So could they create a legal argument that they are being targeted I don't know. Am I putting that out correctly?

I might reframe it a little bit and tell me if this answers the question. And I'm going to piggyback some on what the city manager said in answering is... take the bed, bath, and be on it. If the tax were in place tomorrow and the property owner was highly sensitive to the tax, might more aggressively attempt to re-tenant it with some commercial use just to get something in there to avoid the tax. Well, if you assume a relatively standard 10-year, 5-year commercial lease, that's a period of time that that property is not going to be actively planned for housing development. And so this sets up an important policy decision for the council to make about sites like that is, well, do we care more about the vacancy and eliminating it through the tax or about encouraging the reuse of the site as housing development? Now, one of the things you could do in building an exemption is to say, one of the things that's exempt is any site that's listed in the housing element as a housing opportunity site, And then maybe add as long as the owner is actively marketing it for residential development. And then we have a process where they have to submit something to the city to show that they're making a serious effort to try to find a residential developer for it.

Wow. Okay. I mean, those are, because many of these larger parcels are in our housing element. And we have 979 housing units that we need to zone for. And many of the places that we chose to create housing element locations are these larger parcels. So that throws another wrinkle into it, including the property that used to be the Lucky's grocery store. Mm-hmm.

I was just going to mention too, you know, living right next to Bonaire Shopping Center, there were definitely parts of that commercial center that remained empty for long periods of time, but not because they weren't looking to fill the lots like David M. Bryan had. It was a big space that remained empty for a long time, and they had to find the perfect configuration of three different merchants that they could build out the space to accommodate each of those merchants. So I wouldn't want to penalize landlords that are actively pursuing tenants and just trying to find the right merchants for their branding and the kind of community they're trying to create in their market. or in their commercial space, I should say. So, you know, I don't know, like I was going to ask a similar question about how nuanced could this tax really be? And it sounds like you would need to have at least five or six properties or some, you know, measurable number of properties to target a specific, you know, size.

Well, and also, I mean, you know, along those lines, we could, you know, you could structure an escalating tax potentially, right? Like year one is, either free or very low. And the longer this kind of goes, you know, where it's vacant for multiple years, you know, the tax increases over time. So that's another way, that's a way to address that issue. Which I totally get it. Yeah. It takes time to bring in, you know, new tenants. And so we don't want to penalize property owners who are actively trying to But the problem is when it just drags out and there's nothing happening. So how do we, again, that's my point about, you know, structuring something that's much more surgical rather than penalizing people who are, you know, putting in good faith efforts to rent out their space. So anyways, different ways of structuring things. And so I think we need to just, you know, continue the discussion. I mean, it's just sort of, there's, you know, a lot to think about. yeah, it's a lot to think about.

One other point is, you know, Sky, Oakland, San Francisco, you know, we ran over this when we were discussing, you know, rent control. You know, these things, you know, what's the administrative burden? You know, who's going to enforce this? Who's going to measure this? Who's going to, I'm curious, you know, how that, you know, scales negatively when you get to a city of 12,500 or

Even in, even in Oakland, it was a serious discussion that we had about, about how they were going to administer it. And, you know, I think that, that one of the things, one of the points more highlighted in the staff report than the simple slides is, you know, There's sort of a, how many properties do we have? What's the tax rate? What's the revenue going to look like? And is all the revenue basically just going to be exhausted on administering the tax itself? Which is fine if the main point is attempting to alter property owner behavior. It doesn't matter whether or not the revenue is exhausted with administration. But If you have a secondary goal of trying to generate some revenue to address other things like funding affordable housing development and really all the money is exhausted using to administer the tax itself, then the secondary goal is basically never going to be achieved.

Also, Stephanie, to your point, too, you know, we're in also a changing retail environment. And, I mean, Bed Bath & Beyond went bankrupt. Corporation went bankrupt. And people are not purchasing in large department stores those type of items anymore. Many of them are buying them online and having them sent to their homes, et cetera. So... Trying to sift out what our – and then take the grocery industry. There's enormous contracture in the grocery industry, and boutique groceries are where a lot of individuals – I mean, a lot of that corporation is going. And a 1972 large old-scale grocery building footprint is probably not in the – uh what that industry is finding favorable anymore and i'm not sure a tax will make it more favorable to them but it's part of this why we have a workshop so we can talk about these things yeah you know and i think the the flip side of that is if you had a tax that was um

I don't know what the word meaningful without getting to the point where it's confiscatory. You know, does that, does that get the property owner to just have a more sense of urgency, a bigger sense of urgency to do something? Especially if it's, it feels like nothing's been happening for a very long time. So, you know, I just, it's, I think the discussion around how do we define vacancy, what is this tax going to be applied to, and what is the tax rate, really kind of defines our priorities in terms of what is it we're trying to – I would say I don't think we're going to try to make money off of this tax. I hear the city attorney's argument about revenue. I don't see us making a lot of money off of this. I think the main priority has to be just trying to put vacant properties back into productive use for our community. I think that's kind of what our community wants. And so I think that's kind of the goal. Any sort of revenue that we get, I think might be good, but I'm not sure that that's the goal, but we may have to set it high. We may have to set the tax high to get people to actually move towards doing something.

So, so another question, um, The to get it on a ballot, let's say hypothetically, does it does this type of tax have to go on a ballot that is associated like we've had a taxes before and it had to be on the same ballot as a council election ballot? Does this type of tax have to go on a specific type of ballot?

It does not. That's actually one of the benefits, one of the few benefits of it being treated as a special tax is that it does not have to be consolidated with a council election. It can be on any ballot.

So there was one public comment that August 3rd was the last date to qualify for this November's ballot as an example. But you just described that it doesn't necessarily have to be on the regular November cycle. It could be a March ballot or some other time.

It could be March, April, or June.

Got it. Okay.

Any questions?

We try a registration requirement with the housing that worked less than ideally. I think that's the next section of your presentation. So I'm going to ask if it's okay to kind of move forward to that because I think that's going to help us with our discussion. I just don't think we've heard that yet. Is that right?

Happy to move forward with that. Great. Yeah, so this is an alternative approach, and it's something that – it's interesting. Different communities have done different forms of it for different reasons. San Francisco, before they had a commercial vacant property tax, had a commercial vacant property registry program with the idea being that they – wanted qualifying vacant properties to be registered with the city so that they would have better insight into which ones might be targets for vandalism, blight generation, creation of encampments, things like that. But interestingly, on the other end of the spectrum, a lot of communities with More recent single-family residential development during the 2008-2009 housing crisis with the related bank foreclosures found that significant portions of new subdivisions were basically being foreclosed upon by the banks. with no management of the property as a result because the banks didn't care. They had these assets and they were not interested in spending much money to ensure that they were gonna be maintained properly. And so a lot of communities ended up enacting registries for the vacant residential properties that were bank owned with a similar idea if they wanted to have greater insight into it. And as I mentioned, they wanted to be able to establish a higher set of maintenance standards for the properties and to address some things that you wouldn't require of an occupied property like um, additional lights, security cameras, um, either leaving the windows open so that people have insight into who's in, in the building or screening the windows. If the community felt like that was going to be more beneficial. Um, but the idea is, um, Similar to the rental registry that Councilmember Kandel mentioned, similar structure in that the owners of qualifying vacant properties have to register them with the city. They have to pay a regulatory fee to cover the costs of... um the maintenance of of the registry and then when you also implement the higher maintenance standards what that does is put city in the position of having greater clarity on which properties are vacant a higher set of standards that can include in addition to what i already mentioned things like requiring posting on the property of the contact information for the property manager so that a member of the public who sees graffiti, sees an accumulation of debris, can directly contact the property manager and say, I'm at this property, I see these conditions, I think you should come and correct it. And then the city can then be alerted to that and follow up with the property manager about it. So their maintenance standards, and this is something that just requires council action by ordinance. There's no voter approval requirement. It's something that council alone can control and can define things like what the period of vacancy is, the amount of the other qualifying criteria, the amount of the registration fee, the additional maintenance standards, things like that.

Quick question, Scott?

Yeah.

Oh, it's his question.

So I thought I'd provide you with sort of a basic overview.

I appreciate that. That was a great presentation. Thank you. The question is, is the registration program required? And if it is not required, how do we know when properties become vacant? And can we be accused of, I don't want to say playing favorites, but if we notice one property and don't notice another, do we put ourselves in a legal situation by doing that?

It is required. City would need to do some amount of general noticing to the appropriate property owner community to let them know that the registration program had come into effect. But then, so you'll get some number of people who will voluntarily participate. Beyond that, it would be like any other code enforcement program where it would be complaint and observation driven. Somebody sees a property is vacant, they contact the city or city code enforcement officer observes it, get in touch with the property owner, find out whether or not they meet all the criteria to have to register, and then tell them, hey, you You may not have been aware. Disordinance is, in effect, you need to register, and these are the requirements, both for participating in the program, but also these are the heightened maintenance standards that you will be held to.

Okay, wait, so are we talking about two different things here?

Like, do we need to – do we need a – They are not mutually exclusive, but they are two different things.

Okay, so we could do a vacancy tax but not do the registry program, or we could do – or the other way around. Or you can do both.

Hold on. That was the question that I asked you. So the question was, do we need to do the registry program in order to do the tax? Sorry, I misunderstood. And if we don't, then how do we know which ones are vacant? And are we holding ourselves up to liability if we see some and not others?

Yeah. There may be a way to – if you did a vacant property tax, there may be a way to implement it without an official registry, but you do need some mechanism to identify the class of properties that are subject to the tax. So you might end up with a registry, but there might – either affirmatively or indirectly, but you wouldn't necessarily need to maintain a database like the rental registry that counsel had talked about. You'd need to – find some means of identifying the vacant properties, and then some means of each tax year ascertaining whether or not they remain vacant. It wouldn't necessarily require a formal registry program, but it might end up that you end up with something very similar.

Well, as you recall, we rescinded the registry program that we had adopted for rental properties because of a lot of pushback from property owners. So... I assume there will be still pushback in this measure. I mean, we rescinded it after listening to a lot of property owners who said they were just not going to participate.

But is there a limit on this? I mean, I agree, you know, this rental, the registry just seems very administratively cumbersome. But can we just set the fee or whatever is that we want? Is there a limit? Are we limited in what we can set the fee at?

The fee is solely to ensure that the city has adequate revenue to run the registry program.

Oh, that's it? Yeah. It can't be like punitive?

No, it's simply, it's a regulatory fee to ensure that the city has the means to process people who file that their property is vacant, do some surveillance to ascertain whether or not properties remain vacant, fund code enforcement prior to collection of fees if they're not complying with the maintenance standards.

Oh, sorry. So does that mean that then each vacant property would be subject to the same fee? You couldn't charge a bigger property a larger fee because it's not really costing the city anything more to...

Since part of the enforcement of the program, part of the cost of the program is assurance that it's going to comply with the maintenance standards, there may be some basis to charge a larger property more. Again, it's not supposed to be a penalty, but I think that there's... there would probably be the means to establish as part of a record of adopting the fee that it simply costs, while just the registry in itself does not cost the city anymore, there are other aspects of operating the program that cost more for a larger property, like the number of complaints that are received by the city, the amount of attention that it needs to pay to have people go and check what the status of it is, because the maintenance standards are going to be more complicated.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, I need a little more explanation on that. So we will come up with a definition of, if we choose to do this, we would come up with a definition of vacancy, right? Question is, does every commercial event property owner pay towards the registry? Do you pay only when you have a vacancy or when the vacancy crushes? I mean, if it's vacant for a period of time, which crosses the threshold of what our vacancy is, and if so, we may have very few people or property owners in that category, and they're going to pay for the entire administrative process of running this program. that could be a very high fee. Is that what we're envisioning?

Typically, the fee is paid only by owners of vacant property that qualify for registration and the entire cost of the regulatory program is carried by those properties.

Okay. So in a small city like Larkspur, it's possible to There are five to 10 properties that meet the standard. And I don't know what we're talking about, about the administrative cost of running a program for a year. But I mean, we're talking about, we're saying it's not a penalty, but it's going to be a pretty high fee for these people. So even before we hit them with a tax, just by being, by qualifying as being vacant over a period of time, they're going to be hit with this cost. Is that accurate?

That's accurate, yeah.

Okay.

Although I will say – I guess I will say if you did both. If you did both a registry and the tax, the – But the registry's function was simply as part of the tax rather than for this more code enforcement focused effort. So you had a registry of vacant properties, but it existed solely to help with the administration of the tax. I would expect the cost of the registry program to be lower because the costs associated with it are going to be lower.

Right. But at the same time, if you do the opposite, then the cost of the registration – is going to be higher, which may not necessitate the need for tax anymore, which means we don't have to go to the voters and we can just do that ourselves, right? And the five to 10 people who we are attempting to curb their behavior who are going to be paying this high fee would be incentivized to curb their behavior so they don't have to keep paying this registry fee for the future. We may not even need a tax. I mean, am I reading that correctly?

I feel like it's harder to gauge the property owner behavior in that situation. That would be my only answer. But you may be right. It may be that – although I suspect that for legal defensibility purposes, we wouldn't want to set a regulatory fee for a program like this as high as we might set the tax. Exactly.

Well, I know I agree, but but I'm just I mean, we're just going to recover our costs. But the point is, if it's only five or 10, you know, owners that are paying it, it's going to be relatively substantial. And it would be much quicker because we don't need to put this on the ballot. We could put this on the ballot, you know, for the tax, you know, and, you know, whatever, you know, not this election, but a future election. Do this immediately and see what happens. I mean, I mean, is that an option? Am I hearing that correctly? OK.

Just before you open up to the public, I did also want to note I had asked the city attorney's office to include a memo they wrote in April about code enforcement because vacancy policy in cities that have really dived into it and adopted some of these programs is often as much about curbing blight as it is about filling a particular store that were frustrated as vacant. And Blight has a legal definition. And so we do use code enforcement to make sure the vacant properties are maintained to a certain standard. And that is a tool that's available to us. But I want to make sure that was discussed because in the broader context of vacancy problems in some cities, and we've all driven by it. properties in other cities, you know, the graffiti and the crime and the broken windows. And fortunately, we haven't seen that happen to properties in Larkspur. But I do want you to be aware that toolbox is something we do have available to us.

Yeah. I mean, we haven't had the graffiti stuff, but we've had had issues at that Lucky's parcel with people parking there, you know, yeah. I mean, we've tried, yeah, we have to try to move people.

That's right, but those were resolved with code enforcement. Right. Right. So that's just a reminder. I think, and I want to sort of acknowledge that because I think in Larkspur, we seem, I think we're much more focused on the policy of we want our properties active and vibrant than we are that they're truly falling into disrepair.

Yeah. Understood. Okay. All right. So let's open it up to public comments. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment? Mr. Dan, please come forward.

Thank you. So first I want to say, in my view, the registry is a bit of a red herring. The problem is not It's a new bureaucracy and the problem is not necessarily the maintenance of the properties that are vacant. I don't like having to do the vote for the vacancy tax, but it's the right way to get Albertsons to take action and get fresh vegetables back into Larkspur, which is not the case today. The farmer's market's great, but it's a few hours one day a week. It doesn't really solve the problem. So I've drafted a very specific plan. It deals with a number of the things you've talked about, including the exemptions to the vacancy tax. I did a little work on what defines a class. for a vacancy tax, and it can apply to just one or two properties, as long as it's not by name. Other properties that become large in the future would apply to that same class. So I think you should suggest that staff respond specifically to the vacancy tax proposal that I provided, because it's got concrete points on all the items that you've already talked about, and I think it would help move the conversation along faster. I also want to emphasize that the city is really being held up by Albertsons here. They're not even marketing the property. They don't return phone calls. If you enter 94939, you're not going to see the Lucky's Market offered in any way. They're clearly squatting on it. And I provided a flyer with an economic analysis to show that a market can definitely be profitable at this location. They almost operated it to lose as a save mart. The average income for a Save Mart, like $99,000, and it's $200,000 in this neighborhood. We have more than double the home values of the average home value of where Save Marts are located. And those of us that remember the market, it was horribly operated. It never had any effort to really make money. There was no heart in it whatsoever. And if you look at the distance of where we are and where their neighboring markets are, and you compare that to the situation with Nugget Market in Corte Madera and the distance there to Safeway. We're in the same situation. We have the economics to support a market, which is why I think you nailed it with the housing mandate that at least some portion may not need to be as big as the current Lucky's market, but there should be a market there and it should have fresh vegetables and it should be going seven days a week. So the vacancy registry is just a diversion that takes us off of the focus. The focus ought to be how to get a market back in that location or somewhere very close to it, which we don't have today. So my suggestion to you is to keep it moving, look at the specific proposal, react to that, define whether the class is a problem because it may only select one or two properties. My own little quick research during this meeting is As long as it's not naming specific properties, but it's on objective criteria, that's okay. But that's a legal question that you need to deal with. In terms of the compliance, what it does is it says large, if you have more than 15,000 square feet, the owner of the property submits a statement of occupancy to the city every year. Easy. And if you don't submit that because you don't have it occupied, no. The definitions of how many days and what uses and all the exceptions, it's all written out in the proposal that I've provided. So you have a jumpstart to work with.

Yes, it's a workshop so we can ask questions. Mr. Gann, I saw it on Nextdoor and I was the one who said, please send it in for public comment. So I read your memo and I actually went into a deep rabbit hole after reading your footnotes because, and I appreciate that ChatGPT gave me a lot of good information, but just help us with this process because Save Mart, as we know, on all the different layers of who owns groceries and all over, and they're fighting with Kroger's and there's antitrust suits, et cetera, et cetera. So Save Mart sells to a Los Angeles-based private equity firm. They sell their entire portfolio to Kingswood Capital Management, which was in one of your footnotes. And I was like, whoa, I didn't even know that. And then King... So... We're now dealing with a private equity firm who, as we know, what they want to do is flip and leave and make profit from it, right? So their incentive is not to serve the people of Larkspur. Their incentive is not to serve the people of Central Marin. Their incentive is to make money. Let's face it. And then, wait, hold on. And then, because I followed your memo, so I learned something. They did a quick flip in 2024, and they sold that interest to a British Columbia company. called, and it's in your note here, but I looked it up, called Jim Pattinson Group, who is now the owners of Save Mart, which owns Lucky's, which owns this whole list of other entities underneath there. That's a big corporation. It's a big private equity firm. How do we, as the five of us in a small city, navigate and incentivize them to pay attention and care about us and i i'm being totally sincere about this because i've been thinking about this for a long time and i like a grocery store back too but we are tiny little pebble in their great big private equity ocean and that's a 1972 building that's falling apart that was kind of a shitty little store to begin with frankly so help us how do we do it

So I think it's a unique bespoke problem where they own the Safeway that is grocery markets are, it's a thin market, thin margin business.

Absolutely. Tiny margin.

Tiny margin. So if you can knock out a competitor and get twice the volume, you're going to go from like, I don't know, 3% margins to 5% margins. And that's a lot of money that more money that they're making at the other location. And they even said when they closed it that we're going to have this shut down for a long period of time. So they're clearly squatting on it. They don't want anything to go in there that has a competing market. And they've worked out the economics that they can just sort of sit. So the city is backed into a situation where it only has one solution, which is a vacancy tax. It's the only handle you have. And so what I proposed would be $5 per square foot. It would be around 130,000 the first year, and then it doubles to 10 and 15. So it goes up to like 400, 450,000. By then somebody's gonna say, okay, this is not only embarrassing, But yeah, we should probably get active on marketing the property. Maybe we should even put it up on a searchable website with our broker so that if someone searches 94939 for a market, they can see this and maybe they'll start returning calls. You're forcing the action by proceeding with the vote. Just the action of the vote and the press and the conversation around it will also force the action.

Thank you. I mean, we've been all trying to figure out this for a long time. And, you know, I did read your memo and I was really appreciative that you had spent the time to do something because I learned something from it too. I'm just in a conundrum as to whether we're going to actually get any of those corporations to care about us.

Yeah, they'll be cared by the economics. But what we need to do is we need to, we don't have a lot of time to get this on the ballot. No, you said August. So my strong recommendation is start with the straw man template proposal that I've drafted and work with that, get opinions on it. Do we define a class objectively with the 15,000 square foot number? Maybe it's a good thing that also applies to Bed Bath & Beyond. I really wasn't thinking about that when I set this up. and then work through the exemptions and think through the process. It's not administratively burdensome to do this once the vote goes through, as I haven't. They have to submit that they have the place occupied more than half the time, and if they can't, they're subject to the tax. So I would immediately park this vacancy registry thing. It just sounds like a lot of bureaucracy and it doesn't actually solve the problem of getting veggies back into Larkspur.

Yeah, great. Thank you for all the work, Mr. Gann. I mean, this is really, the handout is really very useful. and spectacularly laid out i mean we have so much talent in our community it is just mind-boggling so thank you for all the time that you put into this um so i guess for a city attorney oh i'm sorry is there is there anyone else who would like to make a public comment in the chambers okay seeing none anybody online oh we have some public comment online first public commenter you may unmute yourself

James Holmes Clark Spry, I have to offer an anecdote. When I was growing up here in the 50s and 60s, about 10% of the houses in the canyon were vacant. They were former summer cottages, and the original owners were dead, and the heirs were either too old to use them themselves or were otherwise absentees. Two of the vacant houses were of particular local note because they still had outhouses in their yards. The story I've heard is that a sharp real estate agent saw these vacant rental agents, saw these vacant houses, and went to a lot of the absentee owners and said that they would find tenants for them, which he did. Unfortunately, the tenants were hippies who were leaving the hate after the summer of love went sour. So that's how the canyon became a hippie haven in 68 through 71 or so. Ironically, in that case, the neighborhood was much worse off than when the properties were vacant. And hopefully history won't repeat itself and we end up with a use which is much worse than what we have now, which is at least quiet and maybe is a big, giant apartment complex inflated by all those bonuses and waivers that the state requires them to get. As the saying goes, watch out for, be careful about what you wish for. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Holmes.

Hi, this is Dawn Matheson. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you. I just, as a resident, I am not, I don't know how my fellow residents feel, but I would be happy with anything being in there. I wrote, I kept hearing you talking about penalizing property owners, but I had a realtor who said, you can sell any house at the right price. If it's taking a long time, greed has to be considered as the incentive. And in my opinion, whether it's a sex toy shop, an escape room, or an Aldi's, any of those would be an improvement to what we have now, which is an empty, ugly storefront.

Great. Thank you, Dawn, for your public comment. Great. Thank you. Well, we also have received many letters, public comments on the vacancy tax and the overwhelming, I didn't go through and count, but I think every single one was in favor of trying to get the property owner to deter long-term vacancy. So that is the gist here. And I just want to point out that As Mr. Gann's flyer or handout says, it's targeted at large vacant commercial properties. So we're not talking about homes, residential homes. I do think that we really need to, there are exemptions in his document that we probably need to discuss. And I would also like to just make sure that we can structure it in a way, again, that it's very surgical and that we're not capturing property owners that are in good faith trying to release and retenant their spaces and that, you know, it's, it's a staggered tax and that it allows time for people because vacancies, you know, do occur and we need people to be able to, you know, have time to, um, release their, their properties. So, you know, holding all that together, I, you know, let's, I don't know if, you know, if we want to go through, you know, what is in this handout. Um, I what's what are what are people's things like we could have the city attorney come back in August at our August meeting with more information or some direction or we want to continue the conversation. Yeah.

Can I ask city manager we. For a number of maybe a year or two ago, there was an ability to have conversation with the representative from Albertsons per this August letter. And I know you've had conversations in the past. Do you think after listening to this conversation and public comment, there's an opportunity to reach out to them to say we are actively considering this issue? taking on a challenge of a vacancy tax out of our, from the council? Do you think there would be any momentum from previous conversations you've had with the property management? Or are they, have they kind of ghosted all of us? Yeah, there you go.

Mike's going to have some trouble tonight. I'm going to preface my response with we at staff are privy at times to conversations with property owners, some of which I can speak candidly in front of the public about and others I don't feel comfortable about because I know quite a bit about why the M. Bryan store was vacant for as long as it was vacant and Those business owners and that shopping center owner are entitled to the decisions they made to keep that store vacant. In my mind, they kept the store in good shape while they tried to figure out what their plan was. I regularly speak with the owner of Marine Country Mart. I have a lot of knowledge about different things that have gone on as he's pursued what to do with the Bed Bath & Beyond store. So my point is, you know, just because the store is vacant doesn't mean the property owner isn't talking to us. It's harder for me to get Albertsons on the phone.

I have had intermittent conversations with Albertsons.

Albertsons isn't related to Save Mark, by the way. Thank you. The I can only offer you my complete speculation. I 100% believe that if you figured out a way to put pressure on Albertsons, they will fill that store. I 100% believe they will not fill it with a grocery if Albertsons is the owner. So that's something, you know, that's Dan Schwartz speculating. But I've had enough conversations since that store went vacant that I think if you had a hammer... And I'm not sure this is a hammer to a big corporation. They might shrug about it. But if they were concerned about it, I have enough belief they'll just fill it with a tenant.

Sorry, fill it with what?

A tenant.

A tenant.

Can I ask a question? First of all, Mr. Gann, thank you for that. It was fantastic information. To our beloved city attorney, We have one meeting before the date when this would have to be completed in order to be on the ballot. While this gives us a great foundation, I find it difficult to believe that you would have something by the next meeting that we would be able to vote on and approve to get on the ballot for November. Am I seeing that? Do you disagree? Do you think that's a realistic goal to shoot for? And again, we haven't even talked about whether we want to go forward with this. We haven't talked about if we want to have this type of tax. But hypothetically, if we said, let's try to get this tax on the ballot in November, is that even remotely possible?

Yeah. It is. Okay. I think that council, I would need, um, there are a lot of variables that need to be addressed. Um, and, um, You know, I would, given the, either council would need to have some special meetings. Now I'm veering into city manager territory, but I'm just being realistic. It's like, either you'd have to have some special meetings or we need a subcommittee to work with because there are some policy decisions in there that, you know, I'd feel closer to the mark bringing something forward if I had feedback from council about some of these important variables than if I tried to guess at some of them. But the structure of the ordinance is not that challenging. As I said, I've written one. The handout's great. It actually pulls a bunch of stuff from the Oakland ordinance, so I'm very familiar with it.

So, City Manager, you've

Yeah, I was wondering, though, if you might ask the city attorney to comment about an ordinance, a tax structure that is designed to only apply to one or two properties, because the speaker is adamant that you can do that. But in every aspect of law I've ever worked with a city attorney on, you can't do that.

No, no, I completely agree. And while I appreciate, you know, everyone's viewpoints as city council, We are going to follow the legal advice of our legal counsel who is going to give us an opinion about how to best protect the city from potential litigation for targeting one, two, three, you know, individual stores. So, you know, but I guess my question is more along the lines of. So I don't want to waste our time. You know, if you're saying, you know, this is basically, we're not making any decisions. This is a workshop, you know, so we're not voting on anything right now. So should we be talking about, should we tell the staff to come up with a complete ordinance by the next city council meeting? And should we give them direction on every single blank that has to be filled in? So we have a final ordinance. I just... I'm not sure that's realistic, because it just feels like there's a lot of work that has to be done before that. And as this does not have to be on a regular election of city council, my gut is telling me we should discuss it more, maybe have a, you know, a separate, you know, workshop on this where we can talk about it, maybe have a special meeting. I don't know, just something to make that decision, but probably not today. And probably it's not going to get resolved given our full agenda already for the next meeting. But yeah, Again, I'm asking more than making a comment how people feel about that, how our staff feels about that.

If the council wants to have a special meeting before the election deadline, your staff will make that happen. I'm sure that Mr. Woodruff will be properly compensated to make that happen in a short amount of time.

But also to your point, Scott, in the lessons learned during our very lengthy discussions about rent control is this requires reach out to property owners. And this requires reaching out to commercial property owners of a certain size. And that took us a while with rent control because we really needed to – If we're going to put a tax on property owners, they need to be part of the discussion. And that takes a lot of time, too. We had for rent control, I don't know, how many meetings did we have? No, we had dozens of meetings in which we definitely listened to property owners. We listened to renters. We listened to small property owners and large property owners.

But I think, Catherine, isn't the difference, we were, you know, there was a fork in the road and we did have an ordinance too, which we passed. Then it went on the ballot. I think here we're saying- Not originally.

It then went on the ballot the second time.

But this, I think what's under consideration is just leapfrogging to that second step where-

input or no input i mean you don't want to craft someone with a lot of craft you know uh you know an ordinance with a lot of legal exposure but short of that it's the will of the voter yeah but but i think i mean we we really are a town that we want to be responsive to our commercial property owners and you know not blindside them with attacks without having conversation about what they could do to help meet this challenge that we have.

No, I'm in agreement with the communication and the outreach. Just the analogy breaks down for me because what we did with rent control was to try to pass something as five of us. And I think what we're discussing here is bypassing that entirely and just putting it on the ballot, which is what ended up happening with rent control as well.

Yeah, I guess my point is, I mean, we're hearing concern and angst and understandably about an abandoned property But I think we also have due respect that we have to give to property owners to hear their side of the story.

I mean, just bigger picture, I'm in agreement with that. And I also take seriously what the city manager said that, you know, with all due respect to what, you know, Claude, you know, can come up with, you know, we have specific dynamics here where the end result of a grocery is not good. in the path of legislative control. It's not economic control. I mean, if this were something for fair bidding or, you know, but this is about property rights. And if they want to maintain a monopoly and hold that property, there's a certain calculation, which if we do this tax, we will be targeting them. And that's legal exposure. So I don't see this path as productive to getting a grocery. I think the more general question is, do we have a bit of a blight issue in Larkspur? And I think we do. Is it going to be solved by this? You know, your first reaction, Scott, was I don't like this at all. And I think that there's more positive ways to work. with the owners, but part of the problem is we don't even have a definition of the problem. So I don't know that I'm going to lump Luckys together with Bed Bath and Beyond. I think they're two completely different circumstances. And those are the leading cases. And North Magnolia has already been taken care of. So we're back to targeting Luckys. So I don't know. I mean, I share the frustration, but I am not seeing that the toolbox has really given us anything.

Okay, Sarah, do you have comments? Okay. Well, thanks for bringing up outreach to the property owners because I did meet with a couple of our larger commercial property owners. Yeah. So... you know, they didn't like the tax, but they understood, you know, the frustration. And so, again, if we're able to be surgical about what it is that we're talking about, so not residential and, you know, ground floor commercial, you know, above a certain square footage, you know, I did have conversations with a couple of large property owners that, again, they'd rather not have the tax, but if we were trying to solve for something, there was a pathway, I guess, is sort of – It is, is, is what's there, but I guess what I'm hearing from the rest of council, I mean, I, I agree with council member Paulson's initial discussion is, you know, we're just going to put it on the ballot and let the voters decide. And so that's, that was sort of my initial inclination. I mean, we do want to craft something again, that doesn't catch that isn't overly broad and catches everyone. But it sounds like the rest of council wants more time to really kind of talk about this and think about, you know, whether or not we want to do this. And so, um, you know, I'm, I'm, I think maybe we should bring it back at some point, or I don't know, are you, are you all just saying we don't want to do this at all?

Is it possible to have, um, a loan workshop just for this subject? Like we did for, um, are you not, that we did for rent control where,

I actually really like something Vice Mayor Paulson said, which is what's the problem definition? Because I think the problem definition I'm actually hearing is We don't like the lucky left or we don't like that there's not a grocery store. So maybe this is actually the wrong workshop. Maybe the right workshop is to revisit the downtown specific plan and have a discussion about your vision and desire for what should happen in the downtown. Because all of you know and all your staff knows this is not the only property in the downtown that frustrates the community.

Yeah.

And I'm not going to pick on anyone tonight, but we all probably know exactly which property most frustrates the community. And maybe we should open that document up and talk about whether there's ways to refine our vision for the downtown and incentivize what we want to see happen in the downtown.

Wow, that's big.

That's your mission for fiscal year 26, 27. You can have lots of conversations. But, you know, that plan hasn't been touched in 20 years. So I'm looking now. It says 2006. So that means it's been 20 years since you've talked about your vision for the downtown as a community. And maybe it's time to crack that open a little bit. have that conversation. Cause I think you're going to, you're going to keep having this ping pong match. Yeah.

That's an interesting idea. I mean, cause that does involve other parcels that have been contentiously discussed off and on for decades. Yeah.

Right, but the other parcels aren't necessarily vacant. I mean, I just feel like we have a very specific issue.

I guess it goes to your definition of vacant because the property that I hear the most about on a regular annual basis is undeveloped. Is that vacant? I think I heard the city attorney say in some communities that might get defined as vacant.

Mm-hmm. But it's part of a larger parcel. And you did put undeveloped land as a category for the tax.

Yeah, I mean, this goes into the nuance of it is, you know, if there's undeveloped parts of a larger parcel that is partially developed and the other part is undeveloped but could be developed under existing zoning, you could apply the tax to that property on the basis of the portion of it that's undeveloped. I mean, that's – but this gets into where why one of my points is – If the council wanted to have a thoughtful process about how to construct something that was for Larkspur, it's going to take some meetings. If you want to just put something together and throw it in front of the voters, that can be cranked out relatively quickly. But I think you just identified a property where there's actually – it's an example of something where a community that wanted to be thoughtful about it could really think about how to structure something that was meaningful. But it takes more time.

Right, right. Okay. So look, it sounds to me like we want to take more time with us. I mean, that's kind of what I'm hearing. So why don't we come back with another workshop where we can potentially talk about the downtown plan? I mean, I don't want to get into some theoretical thing where we set forward a vision, which I think is important. But at the same time, I'm all about you know, actually moving towards a solution and I don't want something where we just update a document and it kind of just, I want to be able to, you know, implement something where we are trying to work towards a solution.

I hear you.

Yeah.

I think one reason I thought of mentioning revisiting the CLAST, that's the Downtown Specific Plans title. How important is it to the community to have a grocery? And how willing is the council to put money and skin into the game? I mean, that's a real conversation, right? Because there are plenty of communities that go that avenue. when they have a particular use that they want and are you willing to sacrifice other uses of public money to pursue it right that that's a legitimate conversation and that would fit whether or not you're you want to realize a particular vision so it's just food for thought okay okay um all right well it sounds like we do um

It sounds like it would be rushed to, you know, put this. Is it August 3rd? Is that the correct date?

The technical date is August 7th. Okay. It's still the first Friday in August. Yeah. But your first meeting would be the third. Yeah. Well, it would be the fifth. Okay.

All right.

That would be your last regular meeting. Yeah.

Yeah. I think we're dark. Yeah. So we're dark.

The fifth would be your last regular meeting if you put it back on the calendar. Right. Okay. But the seventh is technically the last day.

Okay. The seventh. Okay.

All right. Well, so look, it sounds like maybe we bring it back for further discussion. And, you know, if it's not on this ballot, then maybe we discuss putting it, you know, on the ballot in the spring. But hopefully something will happen with the Albertsons parcel at some point. I mean, it feels. But, you know. So I think I think that's kind of where we're at, is that we're going to bring this back again. as potentially a special meeting or a special workshop where we discuss our vision for downtown in addition to a potential vacancy tax and other potential solutions, including investing some public money into acquiring some real estate.

Is there any way then to, you know, communicate this discussion and our intentions to move forward with?

I'll be happy to convey to the extent that I can.

I know. I know.

Before we close, I did want to share, and I got this information actually from Council Member Way, there are discussions occurring in Sacramento that are tangentially related to this, and that's that some legislators have become aware that owners of vacant grocery stores often sell them with a non-competitive clause included, and there is discussion in the legislature about potentially banning people from entities from putting that type of restriction into their sale document. So that's something we'll monitor at staff because we do have a property that obviously we would be interested in seeing how it would be affected by that legislation. If it, if it turns into an actual bill and starts to move.

That's helpful. I didn't know about that. That's great. Yeah, sure. Can you come to the microphone just so everybody can hear you? Thank you.

I think the workshop is a great idea. I think it'll really be unlocked and more impactful if we get specific advice from council on this safety of defining a vacancy class to a class that's in a legally defensible way and doesn't expose the city. So if we can get you to move that forward so that when people arrive at the meeting and we have clarity on that piece of it, because maybe it's about this property, that property, and then North Magnolia at some square footage, do the math and clarify it. Then I think the other issues around the vacancy tax and whether you want to move forward to a vote can comfortably move forward at an efficient rate.

Great. Thank you for that. And we can certainly work with the city attorney to maybe to get some better clarity on what kind of parameters that might look like in terms of defining a class. Does that make sense? Does that make sense?

I mean, I city attorney. Yeah, I can, I can do that, but I'm not sure the answer is going to be satisfactory.

Okay. Okay. All right. So let's all right. So we're going to try and find a time to do a, you know, a special meet or maybe if we can fit it into a regular meeting, we'll try and do that. Otherwise we'll do a special meeting to discuss this, the downtown visioning and vacancy tax. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Oh, we have another online. Oh. Okay, let's listen to her comment. Go ahead, Don.

Oh, hi. I'm actually Don's son, Jory. I just wanted to... Well, first of all, I don't... From my understanding of this, of the specifics with... uh, the luck, what the previous were the luckies or the Abelson's used to be. I mean, first of all, it's been years and nothing's there. Um, and second of all, I, I think the people who own the property also own a Safeway. So I, I don't really see, like, it seems very kind, like, it doesn't seem like they should have, like, the right to specifically leave that property vacant with regards to, so they don't have to, you know, so they don't compete with their other grocery store, because that just seems like you're saying they have a right to monopoly, which seems like, like, that seems like we shouldn't, we would not want to say that. I just wanted to make you know, make that clear that it, it feels like we, competition is good is all I'm saying. So, um, you know, even if they end up being forced to sell it and to, uh, potentially either another grocery store, even just random, whoever, um, it doesn't seem like they should be able to intentionally make it vacant just so like they don't have to compete with their other grocery store. That seems against the free market. Um,

Great. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much for your public comment. And we will continue this conversation. I know that site is central to our community, and there's a lot of community interest in what goes there. So we definitely will continue this conversation. I hope that you'll join us when we schedule this next session. Thank you. Thank you, Conrad. Okay, so let's see. Now we're moving on to 8.5. Oh, is that? Okay. So this is another workshop, correct?

This is also a workshop. Okay. Another set of conversations that council members had indicated. Sorry.

Can we do a five-minute bio break? Sure. Okay. We will reconvene in five minutes at 9.40 p.m. Thank you. All right, welcome back, everyone. It is still June 17, 2026, and we are reconvening our meeting at 9.40 p.m. So we've decided to push item 8.5, the public workshop on the city's schedule of user and regulatory fees to our next meeting. And so we are going to move into closed session. And we will return after closed session. But we are going to break now and go into closed session. Thank you. All right. Great, great. Good evening, everybody. It is still Wednesday, June 27th. It's 10, 10 p.m. And we are reconvening from our closed session with no reportable action. And with that, we are adjourning to our next regular meeting. on Wednesday, July 1st, 2026. Hope to see you there. Thank you. Good evening.